When did all kitchens in London/property mags start looking like this?

[AsparagusFern]

I'm a bit slow so bear with me but do all kitchens now suddenly seem to look like this?

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-52431113.html

Huge knocked through kitchen, velux windows, bifold doors, kitchen island.

Nothing wrong with the look - I just suddenly realised that they seem to be everywhere.

I guess there does also seem to be a slight conformity to the look though, too. Just musing. Slow Sunday

[AsparagusFern]

Yes Bonsoir it's the sweeping away of features that worries me. How is this different to taking out old fireplaces and doors which we now think to?

[Bonsoir]

It's incomprehensible to me. We have full original features in our apartment (1929) and I love them!

[museumum]

I find it amusing that people choose their kitchen/dining solution based on having dinner parties :)
We have a kitchen diner cause 99 out of 100 meals are just our family and it's nice to sit down in the same room as the cook and all pitch in chopping / finishing the meal and getting drinks etc rather than sitting in a separate room to be served.
Maybe it would be nice to have a life where having a breather during a dinner party is a more regular concern? Maybe I'm just jealous

[ReadtheSmallPrint]

Well, those of you that dislike the kitchen in the OP are going to hate this one:

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-52343639.html

I'm going to confess that I actually like the house. It's a huge house for the money (compared to what else you can buy locally) and I'll swap period features for lots of space any day.

I don't think I'd like the maintenance of the wood cladding though.

[Bonsoir]

That kitchen is bog standard IKEA.

[Lollipopgirl8]

This is a fashion in London though creeping into Birmingham too.

Possibly because of changing living styles plus if you do this you will definitely increase the value of your house in London.

It doesn't make that much sense to do here in Brum now as I think property values are not that high and such things cost a lot.

My neighbour has just done this and thinks his house is worth 100 grand more but really there is a ceiling price for this road.

If I was to do it I would want to keep some period charm so would go for aga style cooker, wood burner maybe, really nice period style bifold doors and plenty of greenery but it would be hard and probably expensive.

[SusanMichelson]

Easy to clean I suppose, and to keep looking tidy.

It's similar in every aspect of home design I think. We have a Victorian house in a Victorian street and each house is different - most have a nod to artisticness and colourful gardens, doors and paintwork.

There's one over the road that is as plain as you can get. It has flat, white blinds in all the windows, no decoration on the outside, a white door, grey marbley slate chip type things in the front 'garden' so it looks like a large square grave.

It's awful in one way as it looks so dead, but I can totally see why she does it - it's got to be easier to keep looking tidy than somewhere like ours which is all bits and pieces.

Part of me longs for that - but the bigger part of me appreciates beauty and colour and interestingness too much to actually do it.

Our new kitchen is very simple, and easy to clean, but it is colourful and interesting and lots of things on show as I don't like wall cabinets too much.

Trying to find a compromise I suppose.

[ijustwannadance]

All the colours in the world and people still choose fucking beige! Just looks like every other boring arse house. Various shades of cream/brown, same boring, meaningless accessories, same bathroom etc
Interior 'design' ha ha.

[Tobiasfunke]

Posh kitchens in Edinburgh have looked like that for a good few years. My friend and I when we peruse the property porn in the weekend paper always joke about someone taking a fantastic shot through his/her bifold doors.

[bigkidsdidit]

Blimey. I linked to this yesterday on another thread. I know I know I know about jobs being in the south of England . But they're the same bloody price!

here

[BikeRunSki]

£1.75M!!!!

Flipping Norah
I grew up about a mile away from there and SW11 was never that desirable even at 1980s prices with "modern box" kitchen, admittedly "The Sisters" (assuming this is the area around Edna St, not Sister's Avenue/Elspeth Rd due to reference to N Battersea) was one of the more desirable areas, but, wow. We could've been millionaires! (Actually, we couldv'e!)

[BeaufortBelle]

I quite like it. I think it's one of the better ones and Orbel Street is nice; know it well.

But, the big open plan living area at the back has been going on for a long time now and I think it will change back quite soon as people get fed up with the reality of never being able to keep that huge space tidy. Those kitchens look lovely in the pictures. In real life I've never seen an immaculate one and there's an awful lot of space to be untidy.

Just sold a house with a much more modern version of that; it worked, it was OK, but it had no soul. Wasn't Victorian, modern. The kitchen in our Victorian House was more characterful but I had to refurbish to get it up to spec to sell the house. I preferred the old style we had.

[DelBoyImNot]

So any better ideas/ examples for making a bigger family kitchen space I'm a Victorian terrace?

I think this is a bit better
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-52776407.html

[AsparagusFern]

Wow BigKid love that Scottish, er, castle!

That'd be great for a game of Cluedo.

Yes DelBoy - at least that West Norwood one isn't quite so identikit as the usual 'look'.

[AsparagusFern]

Beaufort that's interesting that you had to take out your characterful kitchen to get it to sell.

That's the thing - it must be hard to sell in London now if everyone's expecting the extension/velux windows/bifold doors/kitchen island thing.

And re 'provincial' houses reaching a ceiling so extensions like these being more expensive than you could possibly recoup - so true!

Up here the price of houses is almost the same as one of those extensions (assuming they can cost up to £100k to do?).

[Belleview]

My sense is that the velux window /bifold door back, in London, has peaked and tide has turned. Cosier and more privacy, diverse spaces, doors that can be closed. ... Inevitably the grass is greener, the pendulum swings and enough people know now that your soft furnishings smell of cooking and you spend too much time cleaning windows and tidying up in those large open plan rooms.

Kitchen diner won't go out of favour though, because it works, practically.

[Marmitelover55]

Im going to go against the grain. We have done something similar to our Victorian semi and I love it. We have a separate sitting room at the front.

We didn't rip out any original features to do it and the old dining room has become our new snug. We kept the original cornice and lovely fireplace and opened this room up to the new extension. We knocked down the old single skin 60s/70s extension/conservatory and replaced with the new extension.

It has completely transformed the way that we live on our house

[AsparagusFern]

Ooh have you got a pic Marmite? Keeping the cornicing and having it more as a snug sounds like a good compromise!

[Coconuticetea]

Yes lots of people extending on the ground floor these days have kitchens like this. Obviously you can fill it with more things that you like so it looks less soulless.

[Marmitelover55]

There are some pics of it here - not sure how well you can see the cornice, so have added another pic.

www.houzz.co.uk/projects/787449/open-plan-extension-with-office-corner

[Marmitelover55]

Just to add that the ceiling wasn't in very good condition so we had it overboarded and the builders left a shadow gap around the edge of the cornice. It's not an especially nice cornice but original so we wanted to keep it

[Amethyst24]

I think the key thing is that it means the kitchen is no longer a drudge space where one person works while everyone else does their own thing elsewhere in the house. I live in a Victorian terrace that's just crying out to have that done - at the moment, if one of us is cooking (usually me) the only way anyone can talk to them is by perching on the stairs, or standing around and getting in the way. Galley kitchens are the devil's work as far as I'm concerned.

[AsparagusFern]

Ah yes I see what you mean about keeping the snug and a sense of the old house Marmite!

PS. We have the same radio

[Marmitelover55]

[sleeponeday]

I've occasionally idly wondered why people don't put the kitchen in the front room, then dining room stay where it is, and then extend more creatively so you have a huge living room opening in to the garden? More private, and in some ways also surely more practical. But apparently houses like that are hard to sell, as people don't like things that back to front from expectations.

I like big kitchens, though. We live in ours, which rather wastes the living room. I'd like a much bigger kitchen.