Noddy, lalalonglegs, mrsmaidamess, cece, doozle and anyone else that helped with my million kitchen questions. It's neary done, want to nose??

[navyeyelasH]

Not sure if anyone remembers my many posts but back in June we bought our new kitchen, ripped downs a wall and slowly put it all back together to make a lovely playroom/kitchen.

It's ever so nearly finished (we did literally everything ourselves, god bless flat pack I am now a assembling godess!)

I had many many question about workmen, lighting, wooden worktops, kitchen stlyes and I think the ast post Re the kitchen was a mini panic attick that the gap between the units was too small and we would have a galley kitchen! Thank you doodle, noddy and mrsmaidamess for talking me down from that one

Anyway pictures are here, here and here. Have a nosey. Still not finished but hopefully will all be done by Monday after some hard core DIY! Excuse the mess and alcohol, I'm just cleaning up from xmas guests!

Thank you all one again!

Absolutely lovely and I love your green glass. I have bookmarked the suppliers.

We are having an extension soon and making a similar kind of living/kitchen room. Very useful and interesting to see all the pictures.

We got a lovely big trivet from IKEA. Think it was quite cheap... will see if I can find it.

This is it.

Hi navy (I WAS mrsmaidamess!). Love the kitchen, esp the silver dome lights above the work top. Sit back and enjoy it now...

Oh, navy and cece, I love both of your kitchens? Do you know what teh dimensions of your kitchens are? 2010 is extension year (maybe??) and I need to visualise what kitchens look like in the intended extra space.

My kitchen area is about 4.1m x 3.5 m but that doesn't include the other end of the room where the sofa and table and chairs are.

I love the green .

It looks great, and much bigger than mine .

Thanks Navy for the measurements, if my house sale goes through (at the crucial stage where we are asking last few questions before exchange) my new kitchen will be 244cm wide and units only run down one side, I was wondering about running them down two sides after we extend it as it is only 250cm long.

So we will make it much longer but cannot increase the width, my current kitchen is over 5m long and has units on both sides as it is 310cm wide so I am losing a lot of cupboard space.

I love your glass splashback, did you fit it yourself? I so love your kitchen

DS's exact words when looking at the play area were:

"that's a party! I want my party to look like that"

how brilliant, well done you.

I think 244cm is wide enough for units both sides if you are cunning with the layout, Fizzy.

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I have 290 wide and only have units on one side

said hmm not totally sure on the measurements, think it's about 2.5m wide and 4ish long - that excludes the playroom part.

fizzylemonade fingers crossed your sale goes through ok! And yup we fitted the glass ourselves, we had to measure it exactly and get it sent the right size (as it's difficult to cut) and then attached it with some low modulus silicon (I think that was what it was). From the supplier adhesive was about £50 and we got it for £12 from screwfix!

blithedance, glad your son like it! It's slowly coming aong and I think it will look so much better when we have all the storage boxes we need.

Mrsasp, I am a bit of a chair geek! We got the chairs from here. They sometime come up on ebay too. They have lovely painted ones on that site but I just couldn't bring myself to paint mine!

Thanks cece and navy for measurements. Love those chairs as well.

Thanks Navy and Noddy for your kitchen measurements, I have a feeling that Navy's layout lends itself to having units down both sides because of the back door and the opening through past the breakfast bar. You wouldn't feel hemmed in,

My new kitchen has the back door at the top end so the bottom of the kitchen would see the sink dominating the end wall under the window.

My plan is to extend it enough so we have a good run of worktop as I currently have a 2m stretch where I prep food with one child either side of me destroying helping me My husband has very fond memories of making bread with his Mum when he was a child so we like to get the children involved in some baking and chopping! They love it.

I will put a breakfast bar on the other side just to have somewhere to sit.

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GOod thread, lovely kitchen navy (and cece too). Really like the kids chairs.

We are planning a kitchen renovation plus building work this year, not sure where to start for ideas re kitchen planning.

Those of you with new kitchens did you go straight to kitchen designers for ideas or did you start yourself trying out room plans etc?
Have never done a big kitchen refurb before, feeling a bit lost...

I went to about 5 different places to get my kitchen 'designed' and then took the best bit from all of the designs and changed it to suit what I wanted/how I work etc. I knew exactly where everything was going to be stored/where I would work at the design stage.

Thanks cece, good idea to shop around for ideas, though lots of places locally charge for this service now.

Do you mean you knew before getting the designs done where you'd work/store things?

Well it sort of evolved. After a couple of plans I started thinking where I would put things. I made sure I had a nice area for chopping which had a few down the garden. I put a cupboard for mugs, tea, coffee etc above where the kettle was put etc iyswim.

I went to Wickes, a local independent kitchen shop, a local rep for County kitchens, Benchmarx and also played about with the Ikea kitchen planner.

when we designed the last kitchen I planned it down to the last shelf. I spent ages with tracing paper fine tuning the layout. Anyone could do it and who knows better than you what you do in your kitchen and what you need?

I suspect kitchen designers start from "we need to get a fridge, sink and cooker in this room and cover all the walls with cupboards".

Like cece I start from - I want a good prep area next to the cooker. Space for breakfasts, sandwiches and kettle next to the fridge. Ideally another area for baking/laying things out. Often you see layouts with the cooker and sink plonked in the middle of a run with no actual worktop you could stand and work at.

Thanks for the tips.

I agree that I am the best person to work out what we need from the kitchen design, but I also need some advice about some quite fundamental structural changes, but am bit disullusioned with architects.
We did ask an architect (recommended to us) to do some drawings and asked for sketch ideas but he didnt want to do this and we ended up shelling out loads for some very posh CAD drawings which we're not sure are what we want...