Please give your opinion on this kitchen design

PasturesNew

Clear the whole room, then get a big table in the middle, a wall-mounted telephone and an A-Z index file filled with home delivery leaflets.



Edit: ... oh - and a state of the art, high quality bin.

jackieb

jenner wrote: »

yes, i dont like the microwave that high up, the plug sockets arent planned yet, we have some but not many at the moment
we would always have a slimline dishwasher, i dont even want a dishwasher but OH wants one so it has to stay, at the moment its in the utility room and due to problems with access, its either always full or empty, with dirty washing up crowding the minimal worktop space we have at the moment
we are just a couple with adult children but i love to cook and we have them down a lot, so its a bit of both really
no, i wasnt sure about the oven next to the fridge either, he reckoned it was ok, but i think i want it changed.

My OH also wanted a dishwasher. I told him no as i'd rather have more storage. I also like eye level oven and grills but it would have made less workspace and blocked some light so we went for an under the counter one.

Does your door open in towards the utility room?

puddy

Doozergirl wrote: »

jenner, what is your budget? It's fine that everyone rearranges your house layout for you but is there money in the budget to do that at all?

It's great to be able to move all the plumbing, gas work, doors, carry out structural changes to the back of the house but it all really adds up.

you're right and i need to stop myself getting carried away. OH goes very white when i have indictaed before about knocking down walls or re jigging. he hated my idea of blocking up the utility door and putting the door under the stairs when i first suggested it months ago and couldnt wait to prove me wrong about the practicalities of it (although i still hanker after the idea)

i keep wandering around the kitchen looking at this bit and then that bit.

i feel i may stick to the design he's done, but get rid of some of the smaller angled cupboards, put the oven under the hob somewhere, get an undercounter fridge (RIP lovely red fridge freezer...) and a microwave/grill thing for the counter top.
use the utility room to store most of the 'big' oven things like slow cooker, steamer, cake tins etc, thereby freeing up lots of storage space.
then have a lot of these pull out systems whereby you maximise space, get more drawers put in

i think, but whoever said it above somewhere is right, i am well dizzy with all this thinking

puddy

jackieb wrote: »

My OH also wanted a dishwasher. I told him no as i'd rather have more storage. I also like eye level oven and grills but it would have made less workspace and blocked some light so we went for an under the counter one.

Does your door open in towards the utility room?

not at the moment but we will be making it open that way eventually

puddy

budget? well dont laugh, but i wanted to pay about 2k tops for the kitchen and then about 1.5k tops for fitting, electrics, gas, tiling etc.

i thought this was feasible until the man who did the design said i was looking at 6k min for the kitchen and then 1.5k for fitting, plus electrics and tiling

is that right???

im seriously looking at the cook and lewis red gloss kitchen now in b and q, wondering whether to get that (i know people on here will knock it but i had a b and q kitchen for 12 years, v good condition)

its such a small kitchen, i cant see how it would cost 6k

we plan to use the current carcasses for the utility room, add a worktop and replace the sink out there.

missile

Years ago, we had a gloss red kitchen and it looked fab.

We had an expensive combi microwave / grill / oven. When it broke we got a standard microwave and put it in a cupboard. You might like to borrow that idea?

I would seriously suggest you get a.n.other designer, if you shop around you should get it much cheaper.

edgex

jenner wrote: »

budget? well dont laugh, but i wanted to pay about 2k tops for the kitchen and then about 1.5k tops for fitting, electrics, gas, tiling etc.

i thought this was feasible until the man who did the design said i was looking at 6k min for the kitchen and then 1.5k for fitting, plus electrics and tiling

is that right???

im seriously looking at the cook and lewis red gloss kitchen now in b and q, wondering whether to get that (i know people on here will knock it but i had a b and q kitchen for 12 years, v good condition)

its such a small kitchen, i cant see how it would cost 6k

we plan to use the current carcasses for the utility room, add a worktop and replace the sink out there.

Cooke & Lewis is simply a B&Q brand, & their quality has dropped in recent years.
youll also find that their 'sale' prices are what they were charging 6 months before!


the problem with having a 'designer' from somewhere like B&Q to do the 'design' is that they are not designers, theyre sales people.
once they start adding in the fancy bits & pieces, the price rockets.


look at your hob & oven:
if that oven went under the hob, you wouldnt need those drawer fronts.
you would need a bigger door on the tall unit, but that probably wont be as expensive as those drawer fronts, & fake drawer, under the hob.

also, you could get a cheaper finish for the doors, the glosss red may look nice in the renders, but try & imagine what its like to live with. red can be a dark colour, & make the space feel smaller. ok in a dining room, where you want it to be cosy, but in a working kitchen?



"i like the idea of moving the door into the 'kitchen diner' but, the current kitchen area is not big enough to accommodate a table and chairs easily whilst still giving access to the utility and back garden doors, plus if we had the kitchen re done in the current dining room, what happens to drainage and things for the sink and dishwasher, they would be up against an internal wall??"


drainage isnt that much of an issue, theyd have to channel it under the floor, which being a kitchen i would assume is concrete.

if the back door moved to where the window is, would that free up more usable space for a dining area?



a few years ago we needed to do something with our kitchen, & it was either spend quite a bit on structural changes & a new kitchen, or do the easy & much cheaper option, which realistically a new owner would want to change, of just shuffling round some of the units, new doors, worktop & appliances.

weve just had the bathroom done, & even having a wall taken out, shower & radiator plumbing moved, it wasnt much more to do all that than just have new fittings.



with the structural rooms like kitchens, you do have to think about the long term. are there any plans in the next say 10 years to change anything else in that part of the house?
are you thinking of changing the utility room at some point?
you can always get someone in to give you a quote, at least then you know what sort of costs your looking at.

BaileyB

How long do you think you will stay in the house? If so IMO you should stay away from these very bright high gloss ones and just go for a cleaner modern colour that in 5-10 years still looks great. If i done my kitchen out 4 years ago i would have picked the Red gloss one from Ikea but now think it looks very bad.

Just make sure you take your time and dont go rushing into anything.

but if you do like the Red Gloss design i would make sure you get really good quality units then say in 5-10 years and you don't like the colour you just change the doors then.

turk3y

jenner wrote: »

budget? well dont laugh, but i wanted to pay about 2k tops for the kitchen and then about 1.5k tops for fitting, electrics, gas, tiling etc.

i thought this was feasible until the man who did the design said i was looking at 6k min for the kitchen and then 1.5k for fitting, plus electrics and tiling

is that right???

im seriously looking at the cook and lewis red gloss kitchen now in b and q, wondering whether to get that (i know people on here will knock it but i had a b and q kitchen for 12 years, v good condition)

its such a small kitchen, i cant see how it would cost 6k

we plan to use the current carcasses for the utility room, add a worktop and replace the sink out there.

Does that 2k include appliances? or is there another budget for them?

I ask as a new oven / hob / microwave / fridge could easily cost that much itself.

Smeg do retro red undercounter fridged so you dont have to have a plain white one, but it costs. If you had an integrated one you could have the red cuppboard doors on it tho.

If you are thinking of loosing the big stack then perhaps you could look at a microwave that fits into a regular wall cupboard? this frees up some workspace, but it will be small and from what I can see there isnt much choice as I am desperatly trying to find one now as our supplier sent the wrong one. It will probably cost more but will free up some much needed worktop space so might be a cost worth it in the end.

If you want to keep the stack could it go next to the boiler? It might make the corner unusable but would "open" the space up.

Given the budget and your happy with the current kitchen quality (or so it seemed to me) can any of the units be re-used in the kitcehn and replace the doors with new funky ones? or are they all for the utility? this could cut the cost down alot, a door with handle might be say £30 (maximum). You would just need new units with a similar internal colour so it all matches?

diy-kitchens is often mentioned on here, they appear to have a sister company called ellegant kitchens with a gloss red kitchen which you can buy I assume just the doors as the doors and units are priced differently.

http://www.elegantkitchens.co.uk/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=5267&cat=OPUS%20MORELLO%20RED%20GLOSS%20DOORS

to find the door add the unit you have, so 600 base unit and it will then tell you the correct door, add it to the cart then remove the base unit.

Can you just buy the doors from b and q ?

I think you can do better than 6k, not being a designer I dont have much to go on bar my own costs. Removing the angled units would reduce the cost anyway, and if you can resue any units and just buy doors you will save even more. Dare I say 4k inc appliances? total guesstimate btw.

Do you have the measurements of the kitchen?

puddy

no, the designer who did this kitchen is NOT from b&q, but having seen the design and the approximate cost that he mentioned when he came round, i have re thunk and dont see why i cant go for a b&q kitchen and the one i like is the red gloss from cook and lewis ( i know they are b&q).

the 2k doesnt include appliances.

i love the smeg fridge but its not really undercounter, if you look at the measurements they are not meant to go under the counter as they are too tall.

we dont have any plans to move anything at all in the house, there is such small scope to do things like extending into the utility room because of problems like the electric meters, gas meter, drainage and the fact that none of this was factored in when we bought the house because the kitchen looks good, it is simply impractical for me to cook in (i think).

with regards to colour, its either red or white, as these are the only colours that OH and I can agree on liking. personally, i would love cream gloss but he cannot abide cream, i dont want white because i think its too cold therefore its red! neither of us like the wood look

the carcasses could be resued for the kitchen quite easily, i dont have a problem with this, however it would then mean buying new carcasses for the utilty room, so why not have new in the kitchen and old in the utility room??

im plucking up the energy to measure it all (i find it incredibly hard to do things like that!!)