Need a book giving advice on planning a new kitchen

[OldieMum]

DH and I have decided to grasp the nettle and replace our horrible, sixties formica kitchen (and get some other building work done, including renovating an equally horrible conservatory). A cousin of mine, an architect, is giving advice on structural changes we need to make, but we would like to find a book giving us ideas for what to put where in our new kitchen and also some ideas about styles and decoration. There seem to be dozens of books on this on the Amazon web site. Can anyone recommend a particularly good one?

No, but I'm terribly impressed

great idea...will be looking at this thread with interest as plan to start planning new kitchen before the January sales!

You haven't seen how horrible both rooms are. My cousin was a bit gobsmacked when he came over.

I collected pictures and ideas for months before we did ours,put them in a scrapbook and discussed them with the architect.

From the mountains I read,the important issues are storage,lighting,cleanability and having sink,fridge and cooker in a triangle formation.

I will confess that I am quite simply contemplating moving to avoid having Builders In Residence. Particularly as I work from home and would end up having to sort out crises I wot not of [shudder]

Oh and always have a gas cooker.
Electric is shite-doesn't give a fierce enough heat for things like searing and stir frying.

Unusually, we probably have the builders bit sorted. We have had buiding work done before by a wonderful firm who work efficiently, to time and on budget. The down side is they are pricey, but then I'd pay a lot not to be driven insane by unreliable builders.

oldiemum, have you tried going round loads of kitchen places and picking up all the brochures?

We have started collecting brochures, but I'd really like to get some impartial advice about principles to use when thinking all this through.

We have planned ours this week. You can download a brilliant planner thing on the IKEA website, which allows you to put in the room dimensions and play around with different units, then look at the whole thing in 3D. I know I'm a bit of a cheap date, but I was dead impressed.

Helped us no end as we're having 2 rooms knocked together and I couldn't imagine how the space would work. Deffo worth a look.

You can also try the free Alno kitchen planner - choose your language then go to kitchenplanner then virtual kitchen. The Ikea one is better for planning an unusually shaped space, but I find the Alno one has a greater choice of types of units. My virtual Alno kitchen is much more stylish than my virtual Ikea one!

bump

In the middle of a new extension myself and had no idea about how to plan the new kitchen, i know exactly what I want if we could afford it but we're on a tight budget seeing as we got two for one from the "going for a second child department"
and so it was down to B&Q and making an appt. with their planner. He turned up with his p.c and was brilliant, full of very good ideas, explained the reality of some of my ideas and how they wouldn't work! It really wasn't what I was expecting, he took a long time and showed me in 3d just what it would look like in various styles and appliances.It's totally free and no strings attached and you get everything printed out to keep for reference. I thought it was brilliant but then I get excited when streetlights come on!