Kitchen ideas

[WorryWife]

Hello,
I need your help!
I am renovating my kitchen and made a plan, but I am not sure it is practical and good.

Can you tell me what you think?

Somw bits can’t be changed - the hob, extractor and sink need to be there as can’t be moved. The rest like the oven and the fridge can be moved around.

what do you think is practical position for these?

The bar area is open plan to the living room so there is part wall and then part is open up to the other room where I plan a little peninsula area with 2 chairs.

more info needed. can't see a hob on this plan. any reason you haven't gone for cabinets under the window? Is your oven an undercounter type or eye level?
Do you have a utility room and so don't need space for washer and drier?
I would make this a U shaped kitchen personally otherwise it's going to feel longer and thinner than it is.
Imagine how you want to cook and use this kitchen, plan for where you will prep your food, ideally between hob and sink. where are you storing all you food? is there enough cabinet or shelving room for all your stuff? Do you like wall cabinets? Tall cabinets?

Does the coffee zone also function as a worktop? IMO you definitely want a workspace to chop food right next to the oven, it’s a small thing but you’d go incrementally mad walking to the other side of the room with it every day (or I would anyway!)

Have you got a place in mind for your bin? And will you be having a separate utility as there’s no washing machine listed.

We have utility so no need to include washing machine.

the hob will be where the extractor is, there will be no boiler there, not sure what the label says boiler.

i was thinking of closing the door and putting the oven there but i thought the kitchen will get too crowded, for some reason i dont want furniture around the window as i want to be able to open it without leaning.

the chopping area close to the oven is a good point - the oven will be high, probably I can use the coffee area - a coffee area sounds posher than it is, it is just a counter where the coffee machine will be haha.

I don’t know whether it will be practical.

my concerns are that the fridge is too close to the wall so would I have access properly? And the oven across the hob I’m not sure this is practical also.

i can potentially swap the oven with the fridge?

thanks for the questions they give me food for thought for sure … my current kitchen is very different layout so i have no clue how this one will work out :)

I think your hob is in the wrong place. Looks like a door opens on to it so how would you use it? Plus, I hate hobs next to walls. I'd move it to next to/nearer the oven and the window.

Is the coffee zone basically worktop with a kettle, coffee machine and toaster on it?

I can’t move the hob, it’s a flat so this is where the problem ventilation opening is and my extractor will be there, if I move the hob I won’t have a proper extractor :(

the coffee zone is exactly that :)

The job really needs to move, in a corner, by a wall and behind the door is the worst possible place for it.

I would swap the fridge and oven so milk is next to coffee and you get more space where you are cooking

Oh ladies, it seems I planned it all wrong :D
I don’t know what to do now, back to the drawing board lol

I’d put the fridge where the coffee station currently is.
Move the coffee station to where the oven is.
move the oven to where the fridge is currently.

The diagram looks like an odd scale. It says your dishwasher and fridge are 70cm wide, is that correct? A fridge also needs extra space around it to allow the door to open fully (do you have this clearance from the side wall?) but a UK dishwasher is normally 60cm wide (50cm for slimline), so 70cm would be too wide. But the 70cm is showing on the diagram as much wider than it is deep, and normally countertops are around 63/65cm deep, so it shouldn't look that much wider.

Do you know what company you want to order the kitchen from, do they have a planner on their website?

It might be possible to put the pipe to the extractor a little way along the ceiling over the cabinets, to allow clearance from the hob. I am not sure you can have a hob next to a door like that, it seems dangerous - what if someone opened the door while you're standing there?

What is the current layout of the kitchen? Or is it an empty room?

Take a photo and stick it in chat gpt or copilot and see what it suggests.
You can test different colours with it easily.

I just had a look at the diagram and it’s not perfect there is a wall behind the door so the hob will be some distance away from the door and not behind it directly!

I have played around with AI and I will attach what I have but my question was more about the practicality of having the hob away from the oven and the fridge at the other end.

ideally I would have the hob and oven next to each other but this is not feasible as I will lose a cupboard to a huge pipe that will extend for the extractor.

The main things to play around with are the oven and fridge.

someone suggested swapping the oven with the fridge and this is an option I have considered but I’m not sure this is better as then the hob and oven will be so far away.

The current limitations are because this is how the kitchen was built and I want to change as little as possible as it is a very old flat - it is the flat I grew up in and I am now renovating it. It won’t be for my main home for now but we will spend there considerable amount of time so I need it to be practical.

i hope the background helps.

as I said there is an option to use the wall where the door is but that would mean it will feel crowded and I’m not sure there will be enough space between the kitchen cupboards and the entrance to the living room. :(

I can play with a planner or a tool but it is not about how it looks. It is about practicality and longevity of the design.

im attaching what im currently thinking of doing but it maybe totally stupid as a plan. :) I take criticism on board!

The images make it look so much better. I'd swap the fridge with the oven then the cooking bits are all on one side and the milk in the fridge is nearer your coffee station.

Can you change the way the door opens - either the other side or into the next room?

Beware AI drawings. They tend to make things look amazing but not necessarily to scale.

The DIY kitchens website has a good planner which will show it you in 3D.

If people are sat at the breakfast bar, where will you put down what comes out of the oven? I dislike broken up worktop, rather have one decent run.

Stand in your space and mime opening doors, taking things out of oven and fridge. You'll look insane but it helps to get a feel for things, shows you where you've blocked yourself in a corner etc.

I too recommend the DIY kitchens planner. If you end up buying from them they do (or used to) review your plan free of charge, they suggested a couple of minor tweaks to ours that worked well.

Hob and sink being near each other is good, but if you often start things off on the hob and finish them in the oven you might want the oven nearer the hob as well. There's also not a lot of space to the right of the hob, it may need a bit more (I'm thinking of long handled pans or spatter guards).

That display cupboard is restricting the breakfast bar area for whoever sits on the rightmost chair and/or whoever is getting stuff out of the oven. Also, if you do want chairs rather than stools the rightmost chair even empty is in the way of putting stuff down and may be at risk of something coming out of the oven getting sloshed on it.

As well as the planner we mocked some stuff up on the floor using masking tape and a few cardboard boxes.

So much excellent advice! Thank you! I will play around with the planner with my actual measurements and see what I come up with.

i know chat gpt makes things look too good so maybe better exercise to try an actual planner see where things can sit.

i fell like i definitely need to move the oven on the other side, I just need to decide whether to move the fridge as well or leave it where it is and just have a lot of cupboards on the opposite wall!

Thank you all again, so good to be able to hear different perspectives as some things I really haven’t thought about!

YY you need a proper planner which is designed to work with the space you have. AI is great to get an idea about colour and style, but it doesn't understand how to keep things in scale and so the images can be misleading and show things which are impossible to create IRL.

The design you have shown here could be fairly easily done in the Ikea kitchen planner. I haven't used DIY kitchens myself but have heard good things about them.

For extractor pipe fan, if the ceilings are normal height and you want the cupboards to go all the way to the ceiling as in your pic, you can't generally easily use the very top cupboards anyway, so can be a good place to hide duct work. But bear in mind that the further you are taking the air, the less efficient the extractor fan will be, and the noisier it will be.

Is the door which looks like it overlaps the hob able to be re-hung? If you could have it opening the opposite direction so it is not blocking the hob, I think it would be less of an issue. But this might not work if e.g. it is the front door to the flat.

You do also need to be careful with blocking escape routes in case of fire particularly with an appliance (hob) that is potentially a higher risk of being the point where a fire could start.