Kitchens! What do you wish you had/hadn't done when you got your kitchen done

[Legoless]

Just planning ours. Two sides of a room (wider than a galley but not wide enough for a centre island). Dining table is in another room which is attached so you can chat to people when they are at it but does not eat into kitchen space, but washing machine and dryer and boiler are all in kitchen.

@gazelda no, although that's where we got the idea from. Our kitchen is from Howdens and our carpenter built our larder to our specs using extra panels

A FF with frost free DRAWERS. I love being able to look and see all the frozen things without pulling things out.

I also love our pull out kidney shelves in our tall corner unit. Again because I can see everything.

The only bit I wish I had done was to plan our normal larder a bit better but I still blame the kitchen company for not explaining about hinges etc. I wish I had asked for those lovely wooden drawers inside the larder but I thought as hidden the normal grey ones would be ok. They are ok but I kind of wanted them to be fab. Boo.

Best bit of our new kitchen is two narrow pull out storage units under the worktop - previous kitchen had a couple of filler panels to fill gaps, but our kitchen designer suggested pull out storage racks. Brilliant idea - I have all our cleaning stuff in them - just wide enough for bottles of window/surface cleaners etc - maybe 6 inches or so wide. Wouldn't be without them- they're soooo useful!

Glad I have

• lots of drawers, very few cupboards
• one very deep drawer for tall stuff
• larder with separate external drawers (not the kind where you have to open the doors then pull out drawers, that would drive me mad)
• double door fridge freezer, love it
• spray tap
• boiling water tap
• integrated bin
• 2 wall cupboards not open shelves (I know myself, they’d be a mess) except one for decorative stuff
• double sink with one very large sink and one small
• dishwasher right next to crockery/cutlery drawer
• charging drawer insert for phones etc
• lots of drawers for random crap that isn’t cooking related but lives in the kitchen anyway
• excellent extractor, flush with ceiling
• tiled floor rather than wood. Wood would’ve been damaged so many times by now
• underfloor heating
• laundry machines out of the kitchen - do this if you possibly can, even if it’s just a cupboard upstairs
• getting rid of corner cupboard problem in L shaped kitchen by carving out the corner area & adding it to the room on the other side of the wall instead.

On the fence

• eye level ovens, not as life changing as I thought. Under counter was actually fine
• microwave inside larder, a bit of a pain tbh
• induction hob. It’s fab to clean and looks sleek but still not quite got used to the shift from gas (esp tapping menu options rather than just turning a dial) and have scratched it already
• paying a fortune for a snazzy bespoke kitchen company who made so many mistakes it’s unbelievable. Still finding errors months after installation. Would’ve done better with a local joiner

@BIWI yes. get a local handy person in to make the under part of the stairs protected . Dryers are the worst culprits of 'combustion for no particular reason' . If I does go you don't want it blasting away your exit route out of the building . Add a fire alarm in there too ( hard wired if possible )

Watching with interest. Need a new kitchen soon.

we fit Howdens carcases and either their doors or bespoke , that way excellent carcases and your choice of door

everyone is after a larder now and a seperate utility even if it compromises space as he kitchen is then just food prep and social

@BIWI I love your pictures and all the things you've said. Please tell me all about your kitchen in detail!

I made two mistakes with my (very small) kitchen.

1. I shouldn’t have bothered with an extractor fan and used the space over the cooker for extra storage instead. I rarely used the fan and opening the back door for a minute works as well to disperse steam or smoke.
2. there is a narrow gap between the cooker and the cupboard under the sink. The kitchen designer suggested a pull out wire rack for cans etc. I refused as I thought they might explode next to the cooker (!) so there is just a little storage area there which looks like a tall thin base unit without a door and I use it to store trays, cereal boxes, multi packs of crisps etc. It looks untidy. Even if I didn’t want the bloody rack I should have had a door put on it!

I’ve got a stand alone larder cupboard - literally like a big wardrobe which holds all the dried food and tins- it’s amazing how much goes in there. We had an island built with 3 drawers on one side and a pull out rail for tea towels on another and finally a slot for storing chopping boards which I like. Sockets with USB ports are handy including one in a cupboard so can charge things out of sight / harms way if needed. I don’t enjoy the high cupboard over the fridge but that is probably because I’ve stuffed it full of cake tins and I have to stand on a chair to rummage and then they all try and land on my head. In fact think about it I need to swap what I keep in there!

papergirl could you use thin space for cooking books? Or chopping boards? Or a pull out tea towel rail?

The waste disposal is the best thing ever (was in our kitchen when we moved in so had a new one fitted when the kitchen was refitted)
Brilliant bit of kit!

It did have a rail for a tea towel, Cath, but it fell off!
And I don’t have any cookery books as I never cook anything which requires a recipe
I like your thinking though...

Deffo get - wine fridge, tall pull out larder, pan drawers. The best quality worktop you can afford, recommend quartz.

We also had a cupboard that looked like a cupboard but actually had pull out bins, loved that.

Don't get stainless steel splash backs.

I miss my old kitchen :(

I’ve just been and had a cathartic clear out of kitchen drawers! No more cake tins to the forehead

Quooker Tap
Induction Hob
Warming drawer
Built in Miele/Nespresso machine

Our kitchen involved extending the house. I would have preferred to have spent more on underpinning and RSJs so we didn't have to retain a structural pillar. Doing that would have meant we could have had a table in the kitchen.
I wouldn't have had an under counter fridge and freezer. I'm getting too old to crouch down to clean them out.
I wouldn't have had glazed cupboards to display our best china. We don't have any best china... but we do have a good selection of crisps and biscuits on display.

I like having lights at the bottom of the units. Wish I had had more sockets put in. (a pop up electric thing was toyed with and then we didn't ) I wish we had ...put a seating area both sides of the island not just one

@WindFlower92 what do you want to know?!

Boiling water tap, we love it

Wish we had put in the pop up plug socket but we are going to retro fit that soon

Pull out bin drawer

Pan drawer

Induction hob

We cut back slightly on some things so we could get a very poshe coffee machine and I do not regret it one bit

Love the fact my wall cupboards go right up to the ceiling (got tall ones). No more loads of junk piled on top of them. Also love our Franke filter tap that gives filtered drinking water as well as normal hot and cold. It was expensive (about £300ish 10 years ago) and you have to change the filter every six months but so worth it.

Wish I had insisted on the granite fitters waiting for us to remove some (newly installed) wall cupboards that had been put up, so that they could get one of the worktops in whole - they cut a part off (which they fitted separately) so we now have a cut mark which didn’t need to be there. Less haste.....

This thread is a rich seam to mine for me. Just got architects drawings and thinking about the kitchen next.

Don't get stainless steel splash backs.

@TheRealMrsHopper would love to know what you hate about stainless steel splash backs. I am currently very taken with the combination of stainless steel worktops and pale (sycamore) wood doors. I live the simplicity of glass or SS splash backs doo please tell me your worst

our kitchen has zero farty carousel things and the only integrated appliance is the oven. The fridge is a large one in a custom built space, which will be big enough for an integrated fridge if they don't make similar free standing when this one fails. Freestanding microwave on counter top, freestanding washing machine and dishwasher. This halves the price and makes for better kit and less weight on doors. You will get old one day.

everything is simple so hopefully less to fail. Towels hang from push in hooks, not in a cupboard (Stupid idea, opening it with wet hands) and the bin and recycling crate are in an alcove under a worktop so you just chuck stuff in, no opening yet more doors.

no upstands unless you are made of money - use tiles. Glass splashbacks are a fifth the price if bought online, not from your kitchen supplier.

lessons learned; check that the kitchen designer has measured the room right, don't let him assume that 60cm appliances fit in a 60 cm space and don't let the installer do anything except install the kitchen. Get the floor screeding done by the floor company and get a plumber to do plumbing. No one is jack of all trades even if they think they are.
Oh, and go through the design and cross out all the decorative panels between things - do nothing except waste space and earn easy profit. Check to make sure the designer hasn't sneaked them back.
only cockup is the worktop, which we didn't realise is stupidly designed to be the same width as the units. So when you wipe it down theres' no overhang to allow you to catch the debris and it falls on the floor.

I would love to have drawers under the base cabinets. Such a waste of space.

I love

Pull out bins
Deep drawers
Under cupboard lights
Upstands continuous with work surfaces
Cupboards that go right up to the ceiling
Waste disposal unit - although you will get someone here tell you how ecologically unfriendly they are. But I don’t give a shit as it means I don’t have a stinky food waste caddy.