Kitchens - I've lost my marbles

[kif]

We;re moving in to a place with a really run down kitchen that needs to be replaced.

I've a pile of kitchen catalogues. I've done the showrooms. Unfortunately I've discovered that I'm missing some programming somewhere that allows me to appreciate a 'nice' kitchen.

Dh is thinking lots of tall units for good storage, and to keep oven high out of reach of kids. Granite, high gloss units, wood floor etc etc etc.

I'm struggling to get engaged with any of that. For me the kitchen is a light industrial area. If I didn't need to keep an eye on resale value - if I was designing just to suit my whims - it seems that I'd like:

• double depth stainless steel worktops to be able to put my slow cooker/steamer/breadmaker/coffee machine/toaster well out of reach, but to give my good workspace in front of them.

• No oven at all. Just a decent combi oven/microwave. Only thing I use my oven for is pizza.

• Mainly free standing units with a without wheels. Kind of like IKEA beech things, or stainless steel industrial shelves. Antique dresser for crockery.

• Hanging rack for saucepans etc.

• laundry chute and insinkerator. Lino or rubber floor.

It's a smallish room (3.5m square) - unless we do an open plan kitchen/family room at the back (which would make my Metropolis design ethic even more peculiar).

Basically I seem to aspire to the kitchen of the run down 3* business hotel I used to work in as a child .

Is it just me? Am I broken and ungrateful? Should I just submit to the judgement of the Magnet lady?

no i think you are just a bit jaded with the daily grind that most of us have to perform in the room which you are talking about -- but most of us try and improve that grind by prettying up what is little more than a food/washing factory..

dont look at the brochures, they are not the real world, think about your friends kitchens and which ones you like or buy magazines with real peoples in them adn mayb eyou will find it more inspiring..

but what you describe doesnt sound that bad to me!

I find a lot of my friends kitchen either 'meh' or a bit ... precious.

I'm not really into 'perfect' / suburbia / the house as a shrine to design thang.

But Dh makes a reasonable point that we'll need to sell within 5 years. Hence, getting something conventionally predictably 'nice' will be virtually no cost overall - since it'll make it easier to sell (without a lunatic/ unkempt discount).

I'm worried that the compromise between my 'workhorse' and everyone else's 'sensible' is probably expensive and bespoke!

If you really can't be fagged with it, give your husband a list of minimum requirements/deal-breaker features, agree a budget and let him (or Magnet lady) get on with it. Freestanding hard to get right and you do need to get a kitchen right to sell on.

Why don't you tell your husband the bits you want and then just not fuss about the rest.

So you could specify antique dresser with crockery, and hanging rack for saucepans. You could compromise with beech units and a black granite worktop, so your dresser and rack looked in keeping.

Who does most of the cooking and cleaning? They probably ought to get to choose the floor and the work surface.

FiredEarth has a sale on with some very posh looking (and apparently hardwearing) ceramic floors for £20 / m2.

I do most of the mass catering cooking, and most of the cleaning (apart from the final scrub down for the night).

I'm not sure my 'must haves' exist in the mass market (a.k.a. what I'm happy to spend on a room I will be attacking daily with the full fury of fire, ice and helpful toddler). The Magnet lady said it couldn;t be done.

My kitchen basically has to be designed around my slow cooker , and to not need me to micromanage the kids around it (i.e. I dangerous bits well out of reach)

I think this would be achieved by:

• 80 or 90 cm deep worktop (or some kind of tambour units to keep my appliances working and available, without them dominating the worktops).
• cabinets that would work with that (i.e. not a 30cm overhand for the kids to knock themselves out on)

Everything that is needed in a kitchen plus a dining table must be fitted in a 3.5m sq kitchen - so it's very tight.

The worktops that you get for breakfast bars are 900mm wide. I suppose you could use those along one wall with normal sized units but brought forward iyswim.

I think resale would be easier with a more conventional kitchen. A build in single oven would be a good compromise on the oven thing. Would be eyelevel but not too big.