New kitchen what did you learn…?

[FillyerBoots]

Know this has been done before but a while ago,

Just moved old kitchen into new kitchen last night.

Lighting is so important, dh ans electrician decided no spotlights over sink….so I’d say get on same page about lighting and really think about it. We are having something retrofitted.

We’ve got on 300 mm pull out larder cupboard. That isn’t enough for all our bottles, oil, pastes etc.

We got extra tall units from howdens, just a shallow box on top of cupboard and longer doors, pretty unusable. Looks nice when shut.

We got lots of electric sockets…still not sure it’s enough.

Lovely downwards venting induction hob….the instruction book is massive. I’m a bit intimidated.

No point having lovely lights in glass fronted cupboards if the shelves aren’t glass.

Watching this as our new kitchen will be fitted next month. ( Possibly a bit late as the units are now residing in the garage).
We've gone for extra tall cupboards too. I hated the dust collecting useless gap at the top of the cupboards in our current kitchen.

We've not moved yet, got another few days.
We also have the Howdens tall units. I cant reach the top shelf without a step stool, so Im thinking that will be for things we dont use often. Still more useful than empty space above the units i think.
I love my new tall fridge, our old kitchen had 2 under counter ones. Weve lost a bit of worktop space but have gained cupboard space so we'll have to be tidier and put things in cupboards. Im glad we did a huge sortout moving out, so have less stuff to put back.
I wish we had got in and painted on the weekend between taking the old kitchen out and starting to put the new one in, i didnt think of it until after.

From living without a kitchen for 4 weeks Ive discovered that uncle bens microwave rice is vile, but the microwave pilau rice in the readymeal fridge aisle is quite nice. Cooking from scratch on a couple of camping cookers in the living room is too much of a faff to do more than a couple of times a week and m&s readymeals are ok. We've also tried new new restaurants.
Ive discovered i have enough clothes to last 4 weeks without a washing machine, and the trousers at the bottom of the drawer i never wore are actually a better fit than the ones i was wearing and washing every week.

pourmeanotherglass I very much appreciate your rice and trouser advice! 😁

I'm currently batch cooking things I can microwave, as I live too far from any takeaways. The weekly fish and chip van may be getting my custom though. Temporary kitchen being set up in a spare bedroom.

My builder has said he can put the washing machine back every night if I need it! Hurrah!

Extra wide drawers instead of cupboards are the business and worth the money. Wall cupboards make the room feel smaller. 2 dishwashers!

Be ruthless and through stuff out as the more storage you have the more crap you keep.

Good lighting above the sink is so important- horrible to be washing up and not clearly see what you are doing.

I like extra tall units. Can’t reach the top shelf but better than things sitting on the top.

Drawers are great, we have two wide sets, and one drawer stack.

Pantry cupboard essential if possible - keeping all the food together is game changing.

Two dishwashers is a nice to have. We could have got away with one but there are times when having two is great.

Separates (hob and oven) are superior at cooking (especially with thinks like steam ovens or combi micros) but range cookers offer a better use of space sometimes.

Maximise worktop space as much as possible.

Hobs and sinks on islands end up looking messy.

Wooden worktops look nice but are awful to clean and maintain.

The whole ‘feel’ of a kitchen comes more from the unit colour and accessories than the style - we have shaker in modern colours with modern handles and lighting; our friends have a more modern door style with traditional lighting, taps etc and theirs feels more traditional overall.

Great idea for a thread and very helpful for those of us yet to put in an order for a kitchen.

I agree with the 300m pull out larder point as the last kitchen had one. It only held a fraction of stuff we thought it would and it wasn't sturdy enough for jars and tins so we just used it for dry food which tended to fall to the bottom and couldn't easily be cleaned .

Those carousel steel corner units inserts break too easily and can't take the weight of jars and tins. Indeed steel inserts in cupboards aren't a great idea unless for a small amount of pots and pans.

We've just finished ours and I love it!

No top cupboards mean it looks huge and loads of worktop space.
Drawers instead of cupboards mean that I can fit loads in!
Shelves to put a few bits of stuff on but not really for storage
A white sink means it looks lovely and bright but already it's a bugger to keep clean!

Not moved in quite yet, but we have those under counter pull out larder things either side of the drawers under the hob. Im hoping they will take all the bottles that tend to accumulate next to the hob like cooking oil, salt, soy sauce, spices and make the hob area look tidier.

We did a kitchen in 2015 and now we have moved we'll be planning another new kitchen. Here's what I think we learned:

• iroko wooden worktops were well worth the faff of oiling and then keeping up with the oiling. It's such a beautiful warm, smooth tactile surface, there's nothing else like it. When you walked past it on a sunny day you'd see beautiful shimmers in the grain. However next time I think we might go for a different worktop around the sink as I reckon we'd do a big island in wood and the other stretch of worktop in something not as porous. The bit behind the taps did go very dark before.
• we got the layout wrong in terms of where the sink and draining board were, and where you'd put dirty things. Really worth getting this right!
• Our layout had lots of corners which were so hard to get to, determined this time to avoid so many useless corners.
• Really consider zones and stations. We had a bread bin and toast station far too close to the hob and so I'd want to cook in a place covered with jars of jam and crumbs and it was very annoying. Also we didn't have enough space for laying out plates to plate up. I'd prioritise the biggest span of worktop so the plates would be here so you're not stressed in moving other stuff out of the way just to put plates out to dish up the tea.
• I am dreaming of a corner full height larder where it would have lots of shelves, keep pretty cool, have a marble shelf for butter etc.

I learnt that good trades, from the designer, sparky and Gas Safe guy, to the fitter are booked up at least a month to three ahead. So book up early.

(Designer was booking projects one month ahead, sparky six weeks, gs guy seven weeks and fitter three months, all of these vital traders were independent )

I've got a new kitchen. Sink lighting matters so much, doesn't it?

Get the biggest extractor fan your budget can buy - I've been amazed how long the automatic sensor on mine keeps it on for (and that probably explains why the house was damp before!)

Be really careful with those funky tea/toaster/kettle cupboards - they get damp unless they're really well designed - most of them aren't.

Think about where you need height above your work tops if you've got wall mounted cupboards - my knife block doesn't fit, neither does my coffee machine or bread maker - which means the bit of worktop without cupboards above is really cluttered.

Steam ovens are incredible but they're expensive and you have to clean them every use.

Not all wee corner carousels are created equal - extra money on the really good hydraulic ones makes them much higher capacity.

Splash money on handles not cupboard interiors - the insides all do the same job but you look at the handles all the time.

If you have a lot of corners think about how the cupboard doors will clash of they're open at the same time.

Drawers are more expensive than cupboards and they're worth every penny.

Don't forget to think about where your bin and in-use tea towels will live before you plan your units - designs one and two feel by the wayside when we realised there wasn't anywhere to store recycling.

have a marble shelf for butter etc.
@Mrsjamin wins for the best idea ever. I'm not sure we have enough butter to be worth it but watching for more ideas.

I know a designer says that he recommends running through your day when at the planning stage: morning coffee, where is the machine versus cups? Grabbing car keys and stuff to leave, where are they? He recommends the adults in the house have a drawer each for random stuff, be that elastic bands and head torch (my DH) or forms for school and coupons that won't get used (me).

We have a very odd layout kitchen diner.

Due to that our bread bin and toaster are away from hob and next to the fridge that contains the butter/spread/jam. The 2nd fridge is by hob/sink/oven - it works really well because the crumbs etc are all contained away from the cooking prep.

@RandomMess that's my dream, I just need much more space around my hob. The literally-falling-apart 80s kitchen we have in our new house is just dreadful for this. I feel so hemmed in a corner. I'd really like a hob on a kitchen island so I'd have nothing at head height and space at both sides for all my chopping, serving up etc.

We don't have wall cabinets as I'm a complete short arse and can only easily reach the bottom shelf 🤣

I love lots of worktop space, I treated myself to a small corner microwave because it takes up less worktop space and makes the best yes of a useless corner.

@LittleOverWhelmed like you wine storage idea. The ones we have would only fit one row of wine. The fitter took the top off the cabinet and the bottom off the box then screwed the box to the top of the cabinet. And then I put a shelf in from old kitchen. It’s worked well.

We’ve just got too many jars of interesting things bought at the local international shop…

Wish I’d read the tip about having a under counter pull out larder either side of the hob!

Check the units against the plans- we lost a cupboard and the worktop had already been cut .....
Our new window's opening lights are too high for a short a* like me
And I wish our velux windows were the self cleaning variety. Or something

It's all horses for courses, isn't it?

The thing I hate most of all about my old kitchen is the pull out larder. It's going and having a big cupboard and two drawers in its place. Can't wait!

Thank God I've found you all! Our new kitchen is being fitted in the next few weeks, we're knocking a wall out to create a kitchen diner and the date of the building work has suddenly been brought forward to Tuesday. I've spent the weekend manically packing up the dining room and have barely touched the kitchen. I've no idea how the hell I'm going to get this done.

We were in Howdens last week with the designer but we need to go back. I'm interested in what a few of you have said about the pull-out larder. That looked great to me, but would you recommend just having shelves in there instead?

Ah CopperLily I shall be stalking you.

We are also having a wall knocked through to make a kitchen/diner, (also Howdens) but have a month before work starts. Unless our builder does what yours has done. I've started clearing cupboards, taking down lampshades etc just in case....

Pull out bin in the island where we do food prep. It's a game changer!

We had ours done this summer, I agree about the handles etc contributing more to the overall look than the unit style. Ours are white gloss but with polished steel knobs and do look traditional overall. I also agree that it's worth splashing out on good quality knobs or handles.

I also agree about good lighting over the sink, we've got a high cupboard over ours as it's on wall with no window so we have got one of the undercupboard spotlights over it.

We hardly use the ceiling spotlights, the under cupboard ones are warm white, bright but cosy at the same time. I much prefer spots to striplighting.

Yes to thinking about layout in terms of a series of actions - one niggle we have is that the fridge is at the "cooking end" of the kitchen and also the cutlery drawer is there, great for cutlery and small utensils when you are cooking. But the sink, bins and tea/coffee corner are at the other end so you make your drink and have to walk to the cutlery drawer for your teaspoon, get the teabag out and then take the drink back again to the other end of the kitchen to put the milk in. IYSWIM.

We have gone for quartz worktop on the sink/cooker/cooking side of the kitchen and wood for the breakfast bar where we sit and are really pleased with the combination. The quartz is super easy to keep clean after cooking and doesn't damage easily, the wood is cosier looking and warmer when you are sitting resting your arms on the breakfast bar eg when using a laptop like I am now.

If your fridge is going to be in a corner, make sure there is a gap for the door to open more than 90°, otherwise you may not be able to open the salad drawers or get the shelves out for cleaning because of the bottle racks in the door , we nearly got caught with this, luckily we have just enough space.

We are finding our white ceramic sink far easier to keep clean than our old stainless steel one which developed tea stains within a day or so of cleaning every time. Also we switched from 1.5 sinks to one bigger one and prefer it, much easier to wash larger items.