Anyone good on interior design? Help me with my kitchen!

[reastie]

OK, DH and I are rubbish on this stuff. At the minute we have these units] with a handle [[http://www.revivekitchens.co.uk/shopexd.asp?id=482 like this . Splashback tiles of the brick shape with butterfly and bee and dragonfly painted tiles every now and again .

Floor we have this amtico type flooring . Worksurface will be laminate vaguely similar to this .

It's a kitchen diner and we have victorian chairs I need to upholster which look very roughly like this . I don't know what look to go for with the material to upholster and it needs to be practical with a toddler (or we will just leave them until she's older and use our painted wood chairs for now). Our kitchen table is like the top picture here with painted legs. We can easily repaint them another colour. We also have a table in the shed very similar to the one below only in a dark wood (mahogany?) which I dislike as I find it too pub like, but we could use this instead (?).

I was thinking of getting muslin type roman blind for the window and long curtains for the french doors and do some hand embroidery on them, maybe with butterflies and bees etc to tie in with the tiles.

We were thinking of white walls but think this might all look too wishy washy, so maybe a colour, or a large bold painting on a wall.

We are also having this oven in cream and a white ceramic sink. Lighting will be those circular lights in the ceiling everywhere seems to have now I'm not technical and a light maybe a bit like this over the table.

We have a victorian house and want something more traditional than modern.

We just have no clue whether this will be nice, or look rubbish, and we don't want to muck this up as, for us, we're spending alot on it and don't want to get it wrong. ANy interior design help appreciated whether this will look nice, or bland, or how to accessorise, or anything to help really [clueless]

these units I mean

Oh, and the painted tiles will be in brown not black!

Lots of nice elements but a teeny bit bland in my opinion. Could you consider different colour on your units or tiles? If all the rest of your house is very neutral, then fine.

I'm really sorry, but I don't like the worktop.

The worktop is only very vaguely similar as I can't find the exact online. Tbh if I saw that sample I wouldn't like it either. I'll have to do some more hunting and see. We are worried it will be a bit neutral but then we're hoping this will play to our advantage in that we can change the look of the kitchen easily - paint the walls a bold colour, paint the table legs/chairs coordinating colour, get coloured kettle, a few bright ornaments and a bold painting for the wall. That's the logic

I have gone a bit bland too - quite similar to yours actually - off white shaker, smoked oak floor, black granite worktops, white walls. Have taupe/cream/grey-brown large checked curtains and cream sofa and chair in the family bit. Oak dining room furniture wth gold-ish coloured chairs. Black Esse. I was thinking along the same lines of jazzing it up with some bright accessories. And then I unpacked my Granny's old sage green Denby teapot and a sage green Lancashire pottery vase I got for my 40th...and they are perfect. So I am sticking with quite muted. Have "house-shopped" and grabbed some dark mushroom and cream sumptuous throws and cushions from the sitting room and added a few more neutral "textures" to the family room and (bar the light above the dining room table) I think I am done. Not to some people's taste (and actually when you say it/write it "creams and browns and blacks" it does sound a bit "meh" ) but to me it is calming and warm and welcoming. It is tactile.

If I hadn't had the teapot/vase/oak furniture....well....the look may have been different. Hell if I could have started totally from scratch (ie not having to work in existing furniture) I may well be handle less gloss with raspberry and green splashbacks...who knows. But truthfully - I am a neutral lover. I hate patterns, I love texture. I love the serenity of it.

I shall stop waffling. If you want to have a feel for the finished look do the interior magazine/kitchen brochure flick through....find ones that have elements of what you are selecting....do you like them put together? Or do you find them "meh".

I would hold off on the light fitting...that may be where you want to add your colour/statement.

I like it all, but not the tile - soz.

My friend has that oven, it's fabulous.

Thanks guy, pork it's good to hear someone likes the oven - cooking is a big thing for me

We have been debating tiles and are now thinking of these in the mint colour - it's kind of bland but adds a bit of colour with which to work around and we could have a light fitting the same colour.

fish I think I quite like bland things, but at the same time I can like some bold things, I'm hoping a bland basic kitchen choice will mean we can snazzy it up with accessories.

Hi,
Have you checked that the oven does not clash with the units? It looks yellower on line.
This is the problem with "bland" it all has to match. I would be tempted by a darker cooker.

We have a sample of the oven colour and the unit frontage and they aren't the same colour but they do go together. We were wondering about a black or baby blue oven but in our opinion which is slightly dubious it goes together fine

Hi reastie, had to come and be nosy have a look at your plans!

I disagree with lala but then I love neutral as I agree that if you have a neutral base then you can liven things up with accessories and do it as often as you like. Personally, I love everything but the mint colour for the tiles. My mum has some that are almost the same and they sort of remind me of municipal areas iyswim. I think the other tiles are a lot better but then it's all so subjective isn't it? I also covet these tiles.....

Your oven is to die for!

If you like those fired earth tiles, take a look at these

I am using them in our renovation and they are just gorgeous.

OK, went to fired earth this morning following tile feedback and we are now vey tempted by these . They don't look anything like what I would have picked IYKWIM but work really well with the worksurface and we'd have the walls the greenish colour in the tiles. We can only afford to have them one tile high except more above the cooker though.

oooh reastie, I didn't see those, they are beautiful!

Thanks itsok . We saw the tiles you liked but they didn't quite work with the work surface (in our possibly bad opinion). We bought some samples home to admire look at and I am seriously tempted by them - like I say, not at all what we imagined choosing but I think they's work well.

tempted by the ones I linked to obv, not the ones which didn't work!

Reastie - those tiles are absolutely gorgeous! What I would say is get yourself down to Mandarin Stone if there's one near you. We are about to do our bathroom and have ordered some absolutely beautiful green and white tiles from them to go in a panel behind our freestanding bath. They are a similar look to those FE ones - highly decorative and an encaustic style tile. They come in sets of 9 different patterns (and 4 different colourways I think)and together they look stunning. They're quite a lot cheaper too (£99 per metre).

However, they're not online yet as we went to the head office in Monmouth and they'd only just come in and no-one knew much about them, but we were able to order them and they're due in in 2 weeks. The style is called Laccio, I'm assuming that when their sale finishes at the end of January, perhaps that's when they'll put these new tiles online.

kits just checked and there isn't one anywhere near me

You can just phone Mandarin stone to order. Tis easy. And they will send lots of samples to help you choose

When you look at kitchens check out the carcase quality and hinges / mechanisms as these are things that can fail if cheap quality.

We are getting a German made one which looks to be very sturdy/designed to last so hopefully should see us through a number of years

Right, tiles have now been ordered (the fired earth ones I linked to earlier). We are now thinking the oven previously mentioned might work better in black than cream to tie in with the worksurface and tiles???