Slightly awkward kitchen

sibot74

Thanks - the cabinets either side of the cooker in that new plan are 500mm Ikea 'pull-out function', which is a slab door with three drawers inside, the bottom one attached to the door.

A slight snag when clearing out the existing stuff in that corner - there appears to be an old water rising main taking up 80mm of the space on the left hand side of the alcove bit, which was hidden behind a hardboard panel in the existing layout. If it can't be moved I can work something out with 400 units I think and still have drawers or pull-out, or a 450 drawer-line cabinet from somewhere else but definitely won't be able to fit 500 full-drawer cabinets. Looks like i'm heading under the floor at some point, and it's a long crawl from the hatch to the back of the kitchen .

LittleMax

Yes it looks good ...

Agree with StatisticallyChallenged about the corner cupboard. We had a carousel in the corner and this worked well (we had Wickes, and having seen the carousel in Ikea, the Wickes one is better)

We have just moved into a new build and the kitchen they have given us has 2 useless corners (they haven't even used corner cabinets) and it is driving me up the wall!

Jaynne

LittleMax wrote: »

Yes it looks good ...

Agree with StatisticallyChallenged about the corner cupboard. We had a carousel in the corner and this worked well (we had Wickes, and having seen the carousel in Ikea, the Wickes one is better)

We have just moved into a new build and the kitchen they have given us has 2 useless corners (they haven't even used corner cabinets) and it is driving me up the wall!

You can buy nice pullout fittings online to retrofit existing units. When we did our kitchen the supplier didn't have the size of corner pullouts we wanted so we just bought a regular corner with no insides and the pullout separately. You can fit them with everything in place.

LittleMax

Jaynne wrote: »

You can buy nice pullout fittings online to retrofit existing units. When we did our kitchen the supplier didn't have the size of corner pullouts we wanted so we just bought a regular corner with no insides and the pullout separately. You can fit them with everything in place.

Thanks - I'll do a search - we were looking at this pull out unit by Wickes, but are concerned about how easy (or not) it will be to fit into an existing cupboard. We have a 500 mm door on this side.

http://www.wickes.co.uk/le-mans-corner-pull-out-unit-lh/invt/197839/

The other corner is very annoying with only a 300 mm opening ... arrgggh

I also have the same problem with the corner on the wall units.

I am so frustrated with the units used, after I spent time and effort planning the perfect use of space in my last kitchen.

Jaynne

LittleMax wrote: »

Thanks - I'll do a search - we were looking at this pull out unit by Wickes, but are concerned about how easy (or not) it will be to fit into an existing cupboard. We have a 500 mm door on this side.

http://www.wickes.co.uk/le-mans-corner-pull-out-unit-lh/invt/197839/

The other corner is very annoying with only a 300 mm opening ... arrgggh

I also have the same problem with the corner on the wall units.

I am so frustrated with the units used, after I spent time and effort planning the perfect use of space in my last kitchen.

We got a magic corner rather than a Le Mans - most fit a 500mm door but we needed ones for 400mm doors which we found on ebay. 300mm I *think* you can get le mans for but that's pushing it. Just check that your units fit all the minimum measurements and you should be fine.

Its not hard to fit in place, you will have to take the existing door off, virtually all the screws went into the base and it probably took 40 minutes to do including deciphering the instructions. The second one was much quicker.

Steve_the_fitter

Dont think you will find any corner pull out with will work with a 300 door. As far as i know you need a 400 minimum and then theres only 1 or 2 different ones for a 400

sibot74

A carousel for a wall unit should work with a 300 door though? Don't know if that would be any use for a base cabinet though.

See what you mean about the ikea carousel's being flimsier than others, although there appears to be an updated model in their newer layouts in the store which seemed a bit sturdier. Still not as nice as one of the others we saw which was bolted on rails to the sides rather than the pole-through-the-middle type though.

LittleMax

Jaynne wrote: »

We got a magic corner rather than a Le Mans - most fit a 500mm door but we needed ones for 400mm doors which we found on ebay. 300mm I *think* you can get le mans for but that's pushing it. Just check that your units fit all the minimum measurements and you should be fine.

Its not hard to fit in place, you will have to take the existing door off, virtually all the screws went into the base and it probably took 40 minutes to do including deciphering the instructions. The second one was much quicker.

Thanks Jaynne ... but I don't think we can justify the cost of a magic corner. I can see us replacing the kitchen within 2 years (if I had the money I'd rip it out now!) The kitchen layout is probably our biggest compromise on buying a new build, and has illustrated just how important it is to get it right at the design stage. Some things aren't worth scrimping on.

Jaynne

They're expensive aren't they! I think ours were £190 each! They are completely worth it though for us as we have two corners and after a 900mm pan drawer they are our biggest base cupboards.

As you say its all in the design, for us making sure we could access these spaces was key and now we have easy access to everything without having to pull anything out.

A lot of designers don't care about this sort of thing - their kitchens look fab but what's the point of spending thousands if you can't get your stuff?

StatisticallyChallenged

I've had a magic corner and a le mans, and personally would go for the le mans if you can fit it in. It holds a huge amount.

We actually have our old magic corner sitting in our hall - we took it out of the old kitchen and can't decide whether to fit it or have one "normal" corner for storing electricals, tupperware etc.