Come help design my kitchen!

[GlaikitFizzog]

I've been waiting for my dad to do my kitchen for nearly 3 years. Today he tells me he's doing it next week!

So, I have chosen the kitchen, Cream Gloss, with a walnut block worktop, but I need to choose tiles and wall coverings.

I have bits of Emma Bridgewater polka dots so could pick a colour from that as an accent. Maybe?? Is that naff??

Or do I stay neutral?

Dad is doing the tiling too as he is a perfectionist and won't let anyone else do it, so he says no mosaic tiles.

Anyone?

What do you mean by wall coverings?
What colour is the floor?

Paint probably for the walls, need flooring too, forgot about that bit!! :o

I can't believe that you have waited 3 years and haven't chosen everything down to the cabinet handles, and which cupboard will hold what! Surely you must have some ideas? I redecorate my home in my head at least once a week. Mind you, my mum is an interior designer so it is prob hereditary!

Exciting! I too am designing my dream kitchen, as ours was destroyed in a house fire 2 weeks ago. But I'm trying not to get carried away, as we are still wrangling with the insurance about a settlement. I was really really hoping we would have it in for Christmas ( I would be ecstatic- LOVE cooking Christmas dinner, and to do it in a lovely new kitchen would have been wonderful), but it doesn't look like it is going to happen. In my totally planned out and measured up kitchen head I think I'm going for white gloss units and slate/ black worktops. We had ceramic floor tiles in our old kitchen, but they were awful cold and not the easiest to keep clean, so I think we will have good quality tile-effect laminate this time (I know laminate is seen as the anti-christ on here, but it is very practical for us!)

I like your polka-dots accent idea. I think the red (in small doses- we had red walls in our old kitchen, not chosen by us, and it was a little overpowering) would be lovely with the cream.

What are you thinking for the flooring?

Well you see in our last house I had my dream kitchen. Knocked down the wall between the kitchen and dining room. It was huge and lovely. Walnut cabinets, black granite worktops, slate floors and cream brick style tiles. Was beautiful and very ££££. But we had to move away with DHs work and I had to leave my beautiful kitchen .

In our new house I took a hit on the kitchen because the rest of the house was so good. So it's tiny in comparison. Also, we are doing it on a budget because I'm currently on ML money's tight.

I've been debating sinks and taps tongith with dad. Basically I tell him what I like, he says that its shite and tells me what to get instead!!

I've been looking at tiles on line and I like these or these and then maybe go bold on the walls.

For the floor I'm toying between Walnut laminate (I'm not posh, laminate is practical!) or a tile effect vinyl.

Jooly I'm sorry about your fire, what a nightmare for you.

I have just done my kitchen, white with oak benchtops and white tiles (so maybe not your street) but the best thing without out a doubt is my pull out bin under the sink! How did I live without before.

Ps prefer second tiles! New kitchens are best.

My bin is getting it's own little enclosure :o and I'm getting pop up sockets :o :o! I thought about cream tiles, but it's getting the right shade to match in with the units might be a problem! What size & shape are your tiles icapture?

quite boring rectangle 10x 20 they are the only think I don't love 100%. DH wanted glass upstands but I wanted to tiles and now I am kind of regretting it! I have a set of Bakelite and a set of tin cannisters from my grandmother so am going for a modern/retro feel so think maybe the tiles work a bit better than glass (sorry to bore on!).

I got a new kitchen in earlier this year. I also went for gloss cream units with walnut butchers block laminate w/top with matching upstand instead of tiles.

For the floor, we went for a slate tile effect laminate.

My kitchen is an L shape. Two of the walls are a kind of mushroomy beige colour. The small end wall is lime green and the large end wall has lime green / beige & brown flowery wall paper. It sounds awful, but it's actually really nice and the lime definitely adds a bit colour to what would otherwise have been a very boring room.

We finished off with a black glass boat shape table with cream faux leather chairs. (Looks great and also very practicle choice for young children).

I absolutely love everything about my kitchen and so far, would not change anything. Ask me again this time next year though and you might get a different answer!

Good luck with your new kitchen Glaikit. :-)

Bridget you kitchen sounds vv like what I'm getting!! The upstand, is that just like the worktop but on the wall? I like lime green. There isn;t much wall left doe apinting just round the window and door really. I could get away with a really bold one.

I like the thought of glass upstands too

Yeah- I've been looking at wall panels, which look a bit easier than tiles (and easier to clean) Nothing to do with the fact that I usually end up doing the tiling, and I hate it...

Thanks, Glaikit (love the name, btw!)- the fire was horrible, BUT I have hated my kitchen for years! Like you it was a trade off- love the rest of my house. I'm planning to pay the extra to knock it into the kids playroom next door, and finally have some space ! My old kitchen had things that really really wound me up, that might help you avoid them!

-the cooker hood looked swanky, but was just the right height to smack me just above the eye virtually every day when I tried to check the pots on the back rings! the folk who lived here before must have been shorter..Will be avoiding oversized fancy cooker hoods this time, or at least putting it at a reasonable height!

• The roll-out larder was a thing of joy for me when I first saw it BUT

it rolled out happily whenever it felt like it, and refused to stay rolled back in. was like a bloody assassin creeping up behind you at the sink, and gave Dh a black eye once, as he didn't realise it had done its stealth roll, turned round and smacked into it

• The integrated dishwasher was a disaster, as the water from the appliance warped all the integrated front, and it looked crap.
• the taps were fixed in a stupid place, so that if you turned the mixer tap (which you hardly dared to do) over the other sink, you risked a flood that was caused by a leak at a joint right up behind the pipes, and virtually impossible to get at
• There was no space for the fridge and freezer, so they had to live in a back kitchen/ porch, and you had to open the door into the (freezing) back porch every time you wanted something out of the fridge.

actually I shouldn't really complain about that too much, as it was the freezer that went on fire, and the fact that it was in that horrid back kitchen meant it didn't spread to far, and we had time to get out, so I take that back!!

We're ditching the cooker hood too as we've never used one and DH has brained himself many times on the one in this house and our last one. Dad is putting in a floating shelf thingy with LED lights instead.

I had one of those slidey out cupboards in the last house, but there's no where to put one here :(

I don;t like integrated appliances after staying in a rental place with about 20 lower cupboards and I could never find the fridge! Always opened the diswasher instead! It was like an ongoing game of matching pairs, where you keep turning over the wrong card!!

Our Fridge freezer is a big american style one thats far too big for the kitchen we have now but I'm buggered if I'm getting a new one, it's only 4 years old and cost a bomb. We took it when we moved.

Right I'm off to bed to ponder colour schemes!