I spent hours poring over the Kitchen Lessons Learned thread, and six months planning our almost-finished kitchen. This is what I've learned...
- It was worth taping up the floor like a crime scene to work out what layout would work best for us
- Ditto writing on the plan where everything would go, including sockets
- You can save a lot of money by shopping around and project-managing it yourself
- Researching appliance reviews was time well spent, as well as finding a brilliant kitchen fitter whom DH and I are both slightly in love with
- Great things to have are: Two dishwashers (with a little sign we've put on the handle to remind us which is the 'clean' one), a boiling water tap (we went for this one, as it's guaranteed to be 100 degrees: www.hyco.co.uk/products/boiling-water/zen), deep pan drawers with a hidden drawer, granite worktops with undermount stainless steel sinks; an appliance garage with a tambour door (but be careful which tambour door you buy, the first one we had scratched easily because it was basically plastic with a coating sprayed on, we've changed it now for a solid metal one)
- I wish I'd thought to have: a plug socket for phone chargers hidden in a drawer
- I also wish we'd found a decorator in advance rather than put ourselves under pressure to paint the new kitchen walls and ceilings ourselves over a weekend
- Setting up a 'field kitchen' in the garage with a camping stove, kettle, microwave and slow cooker kept us fed and watered during over a month of work (we had walls knocked down)
- It's easy to sell your old appliances on Gumtree
- It's worth spending time and money on great lighting - I love the plinth lighting, and we have LED spotlights which we can 'zone' for different parts of the open-plan, and also dim in the dining area
We bought the kitchen from DIY Kitchens, who were excellent. I probably wouldn't have considered them if I hadn't seen recommendations on Mumsnet. The quality is as good as much more expensive kitchens, and they were easy and pleasant to deal with. We wasted a lot of time looking elsewhere first.