What do you regret/ love about your fitted kitchen?

[QueenOnAPlate]

We are just in the process of having a new kitchen designed. The designer suggested a wall of cupboards and units and then an island, which does seem to be the trend, but I’ve come home wondering whether that is going to be right for us - we love cooking and have lots of appliances - kitchenaid etc, and they would all have to go on the island which would make it cluttered and reduce the workspace.

I’m also torn about style. Part of me wants all white units and worktop, but I’m worried it will look like a lab!

We are a big family and the kitchen will be very lived in. When we last had the kitchen done (15 years ago) it was really flawed - too dark, fridge in conservatory so not ergonomic, and not enough cupboards. I want to get it right.

I’d love some comments from others to help me decide, particularly about worktop space.

It’s a big space, we are extending and making it open plan, so anything goes!

I love the underfloor heating in mine. The room had a concrete floor, high ceiling and a draught from the cat flap, so was freezing in winter. The floor now has thermal insulation boards, with heating wires and then terracotta tiles on top. It’s very cosy.
I second the PPs who recommend lots of deep drawers for pans, oven trays and so on. Also plenty of power sockets including on the island, so you can prep food on all of the work surfaces. Good lighting. A dimmer switch for the lights over the dining table if you eat in your kitchen, so you can have nice candlelit Christmas dinners etc.
“Magic corners” (rotating carousels) in corner cupboards, that swing the stuff forwards from the back of the cupboard for easy access.
Laminate worktops. Indestructible - my previous ones lasted 30 years! Granite can be chipped and gets damaged if you spill acids like vinegar or lemon juice. Wood can get stained or burned, and needs maintenance like regular oiling.
Plenty of cupboards - you always need more storage then you think. At least one tall one for brooms, mops, ironing boards, etc if you don’t have a utility room.
Good size tall free standing fridge and freezer. I have one at each end of the run of cupboards. Quickly accessible and loads of room in each.
I have an attractive tall copper pedal bin, visible under the worktop. It saves faffing round opening a cupboard every time to get to a concealed one, especially if you have your hands full of messy rubbish and don’t want to smear the door.
Think about ease of use- it helps to have the cooker and sink near each other for draining hot pans, so you aren’t walking halfway across the kitchen with a pan of boiling water when the kids might be underfoot.
Have units in a neutral shade - cream, white, grey - and have a colourful shade on the walls. It’s much easier to just repaint the walls if you fancy a change of colour scheme.

This is a peninsula, it's attached not floating, it depends how much space you have to walk around it, if we'd had an island then we'd have two smaller gaps instead of one large one.

Pic attached

Great thread! Recently moved and hate the kitchen so much. It's truly awful. Will spend the next year saving and planning - I see lots of graph paper in my future

I can see everyone seems to love big drawers, but in the holiday rental me and my friends stayed in recently, I was constantly asking people to move so I could open the drawer.

I hate drawers, other than for cutlery and crap! Best tip ever is built in/integrated bins. As many as you have room for.

Haven’t read tft but;
Spices are in a drawer - labelled on top - they nearly ALL are from generic supermarkets so you might be surprised
Pan drawers - brilliant
Island, love it, have a little area for seating with plugs
Quooker all in one tap. BEST MONEY SPENT. It wasn’t a great deal more than a nice kitchen tap!
How clean a cook are you? I keep inadvertently having to wipe down my units as now they aren’t cream you can see watermarks. However white can be brutal - I have grey units white work top combo. I love it and surprised I love it!
DONT get a wooden work top unless you don’t cook or wash up. I’ve had two PITA total PITA. Hated them

Mainly, what do YOU like about your current kitchen and what have you seen you might like? Ignore the kitchen designer as this is YOUR space and you are paying for what you want, not what they think will look nice without being lived in! You can tell them it doesn’t work for you. Remember at the end of the day their job is to SELL to you.

Good luck 😊

Things I love: bins in a cupboard, all of them. USB plug sockets, boiling water tap, toaster in a cupboard too! Pull out drawers for storage, narrow drawer for spices (with IKEA spice trays). We didn't have space for an island so went for peninsula with breakfast bar. It's the bomb! Plinth heater is amazing for warming my toes on cold mornings and handy for drying things on the clothes rack that can't go in the tumble dryer. Samsung appliances have all been great buys.

I love everything about my kitchen, it’s 11 years old and I wouldn’t change a thing .

Layout - everyhthing is grouped, so I don’t have to walk very far.

Dishwashers next to sink, cupboards for dishes and glasses and plate racks directly above, bins under sink. Cutlery drawer next to sink.

One very double cupboard with all my cooking dishes.

One smaller cupboard with all baking items.

Large pans drawers opposite Takes casseroles too.

One very large larder with all my dried and canned food.

Surfaces - I wanted a kitchen that looked good even when it wasn’t immaculately clean. We are a family of 6 and cook a lot so it’s rarely spotless.

For me that meant no white and no gloss. I have wood and granite worktops, wood and painted cupboards and wooden floors ( original to house ).

However it mostly looks neat because

1. Two bin cupboards for all my recycling
2. Two dishwasher means no dirty dishes on worktop ever.

IME have fewer larger cupboards . If you have a large room, use a company that will make them to the sizes you want. Otherwise some designer will put in endless stupid tiny cupboards and filled panels just to make everything line up.

If you have high ceilings, get tall wall cabinets and use the top shelf for all these things you use occasionally .

I think you are right - proper layout is everything. Followed by accessible storage, followed by good lighting and ventilation. Then choose the units.

regret not having stool seating along one side of the island
Love larder cupboard with large ' worktop space' for gadgets.
love large drawers for cutlery with internal dividers I can move
love large deep drawers for crockery and pans
love pull out bin
wish I had enough space for a sofa / coffee area

I think I’m going to have to start from scratch - such great info on this thread!

In terms of worktop, I’ve been looking at white corian with a built in sink - how is this for staining? I make a lot of curry and my kids are the sort of teens who spill Ribena and don’t wipe up.

Otherwise some designer will put in endless stupid tiny cupboards and filled panels just to make everything line up
Yes! Designers can get carried away with symmetry rather than function.
First draft of our kitchen included 2 x 150mm wall cupboards.
Totally useless.
And drawers inside cupboards. Why not just drawers.....

We got a new kitchen fitted in last summer and I absolutely love it! Ours is pretty big and the walls are all white, so we got grey units with marble effect laminate worktops. One thing I insisted on was white tiles in a brick effect instead of a splash back (inspo pic from Wickes attached) and it turned out exactly like I wanted.
I've found the deep drawers very handy to store all my pots, pans and baking equipment along with a deep corner cupboard with lazy Susan style shelves (we have 16 units in total). Wish we had got a pull out larder and an integrated bin.

I also originally wanted an island which the designer and DH thought would make the kitchen seem smaller and they were completely right. I just know if we had an island I'd keep bumping into it whilst cooking!

love:
All base units are deep drawers - some with drawers within drawers iyswim. Drawers make life easier. brilliant, efficient storage.
Wall units are steel, open, kind of industrial looking - kungsfors in IKEA. Keeps kitchen light and airy.
We didn't overdo it - could have had an island but decided to just go with big table. Makes the kitchen v spacious.

Would change:
got a wooden worktop, which works, but I wish we'd invested in a better tap. Current one v splashy, which means lots of splashing of water on wood, cue lots of paranoid wiping etc to avoid wood being damaged.

If you get an island, leave the top clear. Don't put a hob or sink in it. You make too much mess when you're cooking and a fancy tap blocks a view. A clear top Is such a useful workspace, homework spot, coffee and chat spot or a place to leave your cakes cooling. Hidden sockets - usb is useful - flush drawer and cupboard handles work well.

Slab-tech worktop - it's matt so doesn't show up every smudge and any scratches just buff out. My fitter used the off-cuts to make windowsills and inner back doorstep.
Using mini pull-out larders in gaps instead of filler.
Under mounted sink instead of inset. I just wish fitter had cut the hole in the work-top for the sink a little smaller, so there was a few mm overhang.
The integrated bins - pet proof (so far)
Self cleaning oven
Induction hob. Fucking marvellous.
The Coloured Flooring Company rubber floor. Am thinking of replacing the stair and upstairs carpet with this too.

For some reason I was fixated on having plug sockets inside some cupboards. I never use them!
Only regret really is that I didn't put my foot down with the trademen enough, and ended up with the boiler cabinet lower than I'd have liked

Avoid islands unless your kitchen is massive. We have recently moved house and we are in the process of ripping out a kitchen which cost the previous owners about £50,000 but it does absolutely nothing for the shape of the room. They knocked down a wall to make a larger room but then plonked a stupid big island in the middle of it so effectively divided the room back into two smaller rooms again. They also fell for the trend of F&B painted units (Hague Blue) with a different coloured island - I swear there are kitchen designers out there (laughing at us all) getting paid to flog these ridiculous coloured kitchens.

My advice is to think long-term - pick a classic colour/style kitchen and then use paint on the wall, your flooring and your accessories to make a mark regarding colour. It is so much easier to update that than having to replace a whole kitchen.

Work has just started on our new kitchen, one of my proviso’s is that it has to be easy to keep clean we have gone for Floor to ceiling cupboards along one side, these house integrated fridge freezer(keeping old fridge freezer in garage) double oven, 2 larder cupboards and a utility cupboard. We don’t have a separate utility so are having a cupboard built to house washing machine and tumble drier, they will stack one on top but not integrated but hidden away. We mainly have drawers on all base units, these include bin storage and a tea towel pull out(read about that one on MN). Induction hob, integrated extractor fan. All of this equals minimal cleaning compared to old kitchen(black granite, free standing gas hob range, stainless extractor and cupboards with grooves) We are having white quartz on aquamarine for base units mixed with concrete effect on wall cupboards and floor to ceiling units. We have done a lot of research on boiling hot water tap and are going for one, there’s only about 5 on market that give true boiling water and we getting one that doesn’t spit. Hoping to get kitchen right this time, had various designers in, echoing what previous poster says some just want to sell you as many cupboards as possible, we went with a kitchen designer who wasn’t afraid to tell us we would make a big mistake not moving the boiler(we decided to replace and move), he also suggested a couple of minor building tweaks, moving doorway and making window bigger, which would give more light. None of the highstreet kitchen shops cared about the end result, just how many units they could fit in and they were shockingly expensive and the independent kitchen shop didn’t come out much more expensive for the kitchen, we have much better appliances and use local fitters.

White corian is easy to stain with turmeric.

I went for quartz; got samples from 4 or 5 companies & liked Samsung & caesarstone but went with Silestone. I chose almost entirely on how well the sample resisted Turmeric that was oiled then heated in. I wanted something that was essentially warm white with a fleck - mainly because if it had been plain white, every last crumb would have driven me batty till I cleared it!

I chose deep drawers throughout, with inner drawer for cutlery & spices. Also a 90cm induction hob with a 1.2m extractor fan made to order by falmec (deals well with curry smells) & the biggest possible sink from Blanco - my roasting tins & oven shelves fit in with room to spare!

Freestanding fridge freezer & cupboard for washer & drier plus brooms.

Bins in drawer under sink.

All Hacker, blonde wood drawers & warm white gloss cupboards above.
Glass splashback between, no grout lines & like the hob & worktops, a doddle to clean.

No island but a huge table - sits 8 day to day & 14 comfortably if extended. Can be pushed around easily depending on what's going on.

Dont regret any of it!! Love it all, but especially that it works for us. Took a lot of thinking about though.

If your kitchen will be lived in then you NEED a utility room. If necessary, sell one of your children to afford it.

That’s where I have my freezer, washing machine and tumble drier, laundry baskets, ironing basket, Sheila maid ( ceiling mounted clothes drier ), 300 jackets, wellies, boxes with gloves and hats ( one per person ) , cycling kit, ironing board, vacuum cleaner and Belfast sink. And cupboards with cleaning and laundry products and random shit.

That’s why my kitchen is beauuutiful 😬

In terms of worktop, I’ve been looking at white corian with a built in sink - how is this for staining? I make a lot of curry and my kids are the sort of teens who spill Ribena and don’t wipe up

Life is too short to martyr yourself for a kitchen worktop.

following with interest as desperately need to upgrade ours

Love my silestone work tops. Love my deep drawers to replace cupboards where you can't see in the backs. Love my induction hob which is ridiculously easy to clean. Can't think of any regrets apart from not having a hidden away bin, which is a minor niggle.

If you get an island, leave the top clear. Don't put a hob or sink in it. You make too much mess when you're cooking and a fancy tap blocks a view. A clear top Is such a useful workspace, homework spot, coffee and chat spot or a place to leave your cakes cooling. Hidden sockets - usb is useful - flush drawer and cupboard handles work well.

I agree with this. I have a big island with loads of storage/extra oven underneath but absolutely nothing on top. It looks great and is also perfect for serving food/coffee/cooking/etc.

The best thing I did in my kitchen (3 years old) was have a separate pantry with shelving/cupboards/countertop and sliding door. All my small appliances (other than coffee maker) are in here - I can just close the door and my kitchen looks uncluttered. I also built up cornices from the tops of the cupboards to the ceiling so I don't have to worry about the tops of cupboards getting greasy/dirty.