what do you wish someone had told you before you redid your bathroom and/or kitchen?

[Heathcliffscathy]

following on from the awesome breastfeeding thread, and on a much smaller and less important scale obv, i'm looking for your collective wisdom as i embark on major building works in my house.

weirdly not only am i going to hopefully benefit from your bathroom and kitchen wisdom...but as i'm preg AND undertaking building works of doom i'll be benefitting from the bfding thread too...

so your dream kitchens and bathrooms linked please...and also things you wish you'd known.

TIA

DON'T DO IT... just kidding. Ours was truly awful, but we did it on the cheap. Move out if you possibly can, and budget realistically for rent.

one of those 3d room planning programmes makes you feel like a knob but works really well. Although I must say that we inserted the middleman by spending 2 hours in Homebase (we booked a babysitter ) getting ours drawn up for us... and changed, again and again. Then we were finally happy, they gave us the quote and... there was no way we could afford it .

However, the planning was well worth it.

If you have tiles on your bathroom floor, have a half-tile row around the bottom of the walls. Our builder's idea and much better than skirting.

Pull out larders are wonderful, provided you get the thin ones - the thick ones are pointless as you can't reach/see right across them.

I planned and now have a laundry cupboard for dirty washing/ironing which is wonderful, but then we have a small house and before the works I kept the dirty washing in the shower.

i love my metal shelves for my saucepans (ikea grundtal) - room is much lighter without wall units.

No no, just keeping a low profile. Not pg at all. Am fairly low-profile oldie, just glad to catch an update on how things are going for you.

yy to underfloor heating and free standing fridge and buyers & sellers.

TOP TIP for kitchen: get a kitchen designer to plan it , NOT an architect. If you do the latter, it will look beautiful but be thoroughly impractical.

TOP TIP for bathroom: do NOT position your shower away from the rest of the plumbiung, meaning you have complicated underfloor plumbing. Because all you'll get is a STINK
that can't be shifted.

If you are replumbing do NOT bu a Keston boiler

[bitter experience x 3 emoticon]

And if I had a totally blank canvas, I would put my washing machine and tumble dryer upstairs, like they do in the States

Never ever, ever, ever have pale grout between the tiles on your kitchen floor. I did this, and regretted it immediately. It stayed pale in some areas, but discoloured almost straight away around the cooker and sink.

so squeaver which boiler then? megaflow? worcester?

Fuck knows, just not Keston.

(sorry)

note to self...not a keston

Congrats on the pg Sophable that's brilliant news (sorry if I'm late on this one, I remember you from a 2ww thread a while ago!)

If you live in the SouthEast I can recommend a great (and reasonably priced) - also I can recommen one to avoid lol!

My tips would be:
No wall cupboards (so light and airy without them)
Pan drawers are fab for storing pans (obviously) but also crockery - with some clever plate rack inserts etc.
I've gone for a seperate larder which I love!
Look online for worktops - I found them MUCH cheaper from worktops4u than from the kitchen company or our local independent supplier (who were the most expensive).
Definitely gas for the hob but electric (fan)for the oven. You might find the kitchen company you use have a good 'relationship' with a particular appliance supplier eg Neff (who are very good) - I recomment Bosch for dishwasher though. It's definitely worth choosing what you want, checking prices online and then getting the kitchen company to give you their best price.
OOOoooh I love kitchen threads

Can you tell I've done this recently

a great what??? a great what???

i am in london!

ooh I can help for once
Congrats on the preg sophable
There are a couple of threads on this I bookmarked
Lemme find em

Oh another vote for wet underfloor heating, I love ours

LOL! A great kitchen company...

I think it was called handmadekitchens-direct. They have a showroom/workshop in Christchurch near Bournmouth on the south coast.

Also another vote for buyers and sellers.

Give me your email Soph and I'll give you the details and see if I can find pic of kitchen to show you.

"Let other MNers learn from your mistakes"
kitchens
bathrooms

Hope this helps.
I need a thread like this for my WHOLE house

We did both recently. Bathroom : should have had underfloor heating, should have NOT had pale white grouting on the floor (is constantly filthy, our tiler did repeatedly warn me but I didn't believe him!). Good points are the wide, deep, long bath so 6ft DH can have a proper bath (and DTs can share without squabbling), no taps on bath (there is a filler on the overflow), a shower that beeps when it reaches the right temperature (no more getting in a cold shower!),no pedestal on sink, large wall mounted cupboard for all clutter!

Kitchen: not quite finished yet BUT I am a big fan of wall units! Esp with DCs, mine are 2.9yo and in every single low level cupboard, so the wall ones are great for all the stuff you don't want them to touch. And I was persuaded by DH to go for an amazing looking white glossy stone worksurface. Which shows every speck of dust and smears and water marks!!

Good luck!

i don't wnat to put email on thread...can you not tell me the names of the suppliers and i'll look them up?

Bathroom pics now on my profile

Trying to stay anonymous myself Sophable and have been blabbing about new kitchen to all my friends! Do you have CAT or something like hotmail address?

OH sod it, I'll just name change after this anyway - hate this name. Not posting pic of my lovely kitchen though
They are called Burnhill Kitchens, you can google them easily.

If you are doing more than one bathroom/ shower room at the same time, do NOT be tempted to do them the same (DH convinced me this was a good idea As a result I have decided that I don't really like the colour of the tiles after all, and now I hate BOTH rooms as a result.

Think carefully if you REALLY need a big bath. You may find it ends up taking up so much water, and so long to fill that you hardly ever use it .

Underfloor heating deffo if you're going to have floor tiles.

What do you do with your stuff if you have no wall units?

Thanks for starting this thread Sophable and really glad to hear all well with you

If you choose to have a wooden work surface in the kitchen it will get waterstains and need regular re-sanding.

You MUST have a separate bath and shower in the bathroom (as my DH says, you get too old for a leg-over jobby).

Be v v precise if someone is fitting it for you. I thought I had explained everything to our bathroom guy, but he laid the wall tiles vertically, not horizontally. Has ruined my life.

Oh, and get a pump for your shower, so you always get a decent shower, not a British drizzle...

Good luck.