teeny tiny kitchens

[puppydavies]

am getting all at suzywong's thread with those people who have room for more than one appliance in their kitchen at a time.

ours really needs updating but am at a loss for what to do with it. it's around 6ft by 8ft and has 3 doorways in it. rules like "don't put the cooker under the window" or "have work surface next to the cooker" are pretty pointless here as you just don't have that much choice

the setup we have at the moment works okay but looks shite and is starting to fall to bits.

anyone else fixed up one like ours? would it be useful to get a designer in? or is just a case of work out where you can put the appliances and put them there... best space saving tips and tricks much appreciated too.

My kitchen is a bit smaller than yours puppy - though only one door so perhaps slightly more useable. I have no gadgets - well, a kettle and a microwave but not even a toaster. I also have a half size dishwasher which I love. My tip? I don't have any food - it just uses up precious storage space .

we have a stove-top kettle to save work surface and no microwave, but couldn't live without toaster.

actually a dishwasher might not be as utterly ridiculous as i once thought. it's not too small a space to work in but it rapidly becomes so when the dishes start to pile up. can a dishwasher be fitted under a sink or does it need to be full height? how does a half-size dishwasher cope with a home-cooked meal for 4 (e.g. roast dinner)?

is it possible to get half depth cupboards? i think a full height, half depth cupboard to use as a larder might solve a lot of my problems.

maybe it's worth going bespoke? seeing as we have so little space to fill it might not be prohibitively expensive...

Is the third doorway essential? We blocked off the doorway from our kitchen to dining room and that helped both rooms quite a lot.

Yes you can get half-depth cupboards (Howdens certainly do them anyway as my Mum has them).

Get a kitchen company in and they'll do computer generated options of different ways of planning and using the space you have.

You can get half-depth cupboards. Just use the ones intended to go up on the wall over the worktop. I have seen this done in many kitchens, either with a shallow worktop on top, or with unit directly on top of unit in order to create a full-height cupboard - with 2 or 3 doors, obviously.

A dishwasher is very useful, and does save space if you don't wash everything up the minute you use it. But it means you may need more dishes. One 6-piece service will only last one-and-a-half meals for 4 if the dishwasher is run once a day.

space saving

I had a small kitchen in a previous house and with some careful planning you can squeeze everything in!Do you use all the doors or could you lose one?Building in cube shaped storage boxes to the ceiling gave us masses of storages and looked great.Small dishwasher and build shelving in to every recess get a good carpenter and not neccesarily a kitchen co like mfi.

We had our dishwasher in the kitchen and the washing machine in a little shed outside the back door. I called itthe utility roon .

rofl at blocking off doorways - are only essential if we want to a) get upstairs b) go to the bathroom or c) get into the kitchen

interesting point about dishwashers/crockery. crockery lives in back room anyway as definitely no room in kitchen so extra wouldn't be impossible.

not sure what you mean about storage in ceiling noddy. as it is we have full height cupboards on one side and sloping roof on other, although could definitely squeeze something onto third wall.

we have an alcove for the washer and boiler, is known as futility room

thanks for all advice keep it coming!

well there's only me and my girl so a half size dishwasher works fine for me but if I do have people round for dinner it's ok, might have to do two loads but it's actually good because it's somewhere to put stuff out of the way when it's dirty rather than piling up waiting for someone to do the washing up.

Also, and I think this is crucial, mine is old so a cycle only takes 40 mins. By the time you've finished clearing up after a big dinner it's almost ready for another load. The newer ones seem to take over two hours which is ridiculous. If you do get a half size one, make sure it has a sensible length of cycle (and not just the half-baked cycle that is only any good for cups and glasses iykwim - my 40 min cycle is a proper one that gets plates and saucepans properly clean)

i can empathise with you i have the tiniest kitchen ever 4ftx8ft i have washer dryer thank god and the fridge/freezer spent time in dining room for ages until council re did my kitchen and moved the boiler from in front of the cupboard under the stairs thats now home to the fridge/freezer and my cooker is tiny

oh and i got to doors on opposite walls