Does anyone have an UN-FITTED kitchen?

[LittleEsmeWeatherwax]

I don't know whether I'm getting a bit carried away with Pinterest, but I love the look of a mostly unfitted kitchen - individual units with their own worktops, open shelving instead of matching fitted cupboards etc.

Has anyone opted for this? Please tell me about it, before I get too carried away!

It sounds very fashionable.. But a bloody nightmare to make look tidy?!

Beans, yes, that's part of my cons list. In reality, do they work?

I used to have one. Very hard to make it look tidy with things on shelves, and very hard to keep clean if things fall between the cooker and other cupboards, etc

Ask someone who grew up in the fifties when they were all like that. My mum had a free standing cupboard with a pull down worktop. I remember she had a wooden topped table to work on and a Belfast sink. I like that look myself .

I wonder if I could combine a few fitted, with some unfitted? Would that look too 'random'? Also, would it be cheaper?

We had a kitchen company come round who specialised in that look. I know the companies advert was in the back of Country Living magazine and the guy started the company as he had his own kitchen done and everybody kept asking him who he used and how etc etc. He travelled nationwide.

I've done this several times.

It only works in my experience if you have loads of space, so you can have a big table and various appliances or units on their own without little gaps in between. Otherwise yes it is a mess and not very practical.

I'm currently building my own kitchen and tbh a proper, long, cleanable worktop is top priority. The cupboards underneath will be built out of wooden frames with mismatched old wooden doors, to fit a small room with odd alcoves and so on but I really need the worktop and it unifies it as well. Cooker is free standing with work top both sides hopefully.

We have had a free standing commercial sink for 6 months but it's crap so it's going. You get a lot of water down the sides too.

There is a company close to us who makes standalone kitchen furniture. Some of it is closely based on fired earth units. They are called Rural Interiors. Can't link as on phone. They are very helpful and will chat to you about options.

Oh also we had a giant old wooden school cupboard in the kitchen for a few months and that was wonderful for storage and would have looked good with fitted stuff, but we didn't have room for both as the whole room is about 7x9.

You can mix and match but just make sure you have enough work space as trying to cook anything on a dresser or tiny cabinet top is impossible.

My friends kitchen is like this and In reality it looked awful. Sorry! There was always mess on the floor from crumbs that had gone down edges and it always felt / looked cluttered because my eye was drawn to so many things (hope that makes sense!) she's putting in a fitted kitchen now and I'm actually relieved! It never felt restful to visit (selfish I know, and I would never say that to her!)

Btw I hate chipboard but you can have wood instead. Built in without gaps is much easier and nicer to keep clean and so on. Have a mixture of both.

Me - love it. We have one fitted bit with a sink, small cupboard under sink, dishwasher, two drawers and two doors underneath. In oak with walnut worktop over it.

Then we have a big old butchers block, old wooden shelves in aninglenook fireplace and one big old freestanding old cupboard.

We have two big walk in pantries though, not sure if that makes a difference. I like the randomness of it all, nothing 'matches' but lots of old wood.

I can't imagine installing a 'proper' kitchen in any house tbh. We spent about £3k on the 10ft of wooden fitted bit and it looks great/works well with all our furniture.

We have freestanding Habitat units - it doesn't look busy because the units match. We recently got a wider oven - it was no problem because we just shuffled everything along the 30cm we needed. I don't know if Habitat do them anymore - can only see them on Ebay.

We went for majority fitted, part unfitted. We have a U of fitted which ends with a freestanding range and a large butchers block. We also have a freestanding fridge. We would have gone for another unfitted at the other end of the kitchen, but we had to obscure some pipework so couldn't do it. Having unfitted at ends of unit runs works really well - PM me your email addy if you want me to send some recent photos.

This is excellent advice - thanks everyone. Lots to think about.

I would LOVE to have a wander around each others homes - some of you have great ideas, I'm betting.

Neeps, I've PM'd you.

Actually in our last rented house we had a kitchen that was huge and had free standing ikea units with a wooden worktop over the top. Looked absolutely fine and I don't remember fighting crumbs particularly.

Something my dad used to do a few years ago was to play around with the heights and measurements of the cabinets. So you'd have the eclectic and unique look for a 'un-fitted' kitchen but when you go to the worktop level everything was straight and square (which lets face it that's where most of the clutter and cleaning occurs).

It actually became wildly popular and he is even considering starting it again with his own designer ranger.

But as an example what he'd do was take a tall cabinet and instead of it being floor to ceiling, he cut it down to about waist, chest height. The idea being that you get an added surface but still have the functionality of a tall unit. There were a number of other things he told me about but I can't remember them right off the top of my head.

The reality is that along with the con's there are plenty of pro's however one thing from personal experience is that whilst you should play around with cabinet sizes and shapes you should aim to keep the work surface area as fitted as possible. Avoids alot of cleaning and maintenance headaches in the long run.

We have a mix of fitted and unfitted, which works well for an old (500 years!)rural house with odd size/shape of kitchen. There is one run of units with a work top between cooker and sink and a separate run of dishwasher and washing machine with a uniform worktop (washing machine has a cupboard door). We also have a dresser and various fitted different cupboards here and there. Most of the individual pieces are painted in the same shade of paint which pulls it all together.
To be honest, this was a pragmatic reponse to the room and our budget but I actually really like it and would do it again. It also means I can change elements if I get bored of them.
Our house is also of the age where it would have been the norm anyway.

We had this a few years back in a Victorian house that had a very awkwardly shaped kitchen.....

It was also a very tiny room, although it did have a large walk-in larder/pantry off the kitchen and a conservatory (added by a PO) that we utilised as a breakfast room with scrubbed pine table and additional storage, as well as housing the washing machine and a second sink in a utility area.

The kitchen itself - with three doors, one window and a cut-off corner - was only about 8' x 8' and originally had a floor-standing boiler, that we replaced with a wall-mounted one freeing up a little more space. We had a 6' pine dresser along one wall, a custom built butler sink unit with drainer to one side and cupboards under in front of the window, a stand alone oven on the cut-off corner and a small butchers block for prepping meals with a couple of stools so DS could sit and do homework (he had just started pre-prep) alongside me.

It was a ridiculously impractical workspace although it looked naice and tbh I don't know how we coped with it for the three years we were there before selling up and buying somewhere with a larger kitchen. The new owner - who kept our dresser but put it in the conservatory - soon fitted a 'proper' kitchen, but she was an elderly lady so our set up was probably even less practical.....

In a larger space I think it would have worked better - in fact in our next house we kind of had a semi-fitted kitchen - with one run of wall and base cupboards (including plate rack and Belfast sink), range cooker in the chimney breast, mobile butchers block and 1m island unit, old repurposed sideboard and pine table as extra work surfaces/storage and a fab original built-in dresser.

This was a much larger space (two rooms knocked through) of about 25' long and it worked fine for us - although I agree about crumbs etc being an issue between free-standing pieces - but a few friends, whilst saying they loved the look, admitted they would have filled the room entirely with fitted units as the lack of a long run of worktop was impractical in their eyes. It worked for us for ten years and AFAIK two house sales and eight years on it's still like this.....

We've a part-unfitted thing going on. L of base units include a sink and good bit of worktop. Freestanding fridge and cooker. Freestanding larder cupboard and a separate "dresser" made of units for plate/cups/kettle etc. All painted the same colour. A few open shelves and hooks that are only allowed to have attractive storage jars or very frequently washed things on them. I've no idea if it looks good but I like it and it suits our house.

I couldn't make the layout work with freestanding units without having almost zero worktop and storage. I've only seen that done well in a big London kitchen and it was a couple without DC who didn't make a lot of mess IYSWIM!

I've no idea if it looks good but I like it and it suits our house

- likewise!

Yes I will we have just got a council house with no appliances fortunatley I have a washer,drier a chest freezer and dh step father has an oven in the shed that apparently was dh mums before she died ten years ago that we can have have to say I,m very greatful just need a small fridge .

My mum's kitchen was like this.
It was a big room so she had a free standing table in the middle. The cooker was an aga on it's own in the fire place. There was a larder for most of the food although some was keep in the cupboards of the Welsh dresser. Plates etc was on the dresser or shelves on the wall. The then had a random array of old pine cupboards that she used for work tops.

Also it was in a country cottage so the look worked and a fitted kitchen was impractical due to none of the walls being straight.

We have one where we live at the moment, it was amazing when first finished but 7 years on it looks a bit kind of unfinished, and the area is huge yet we are short of storage really. I'm not sure I'd do it again.