Omlet Smart Autodoor - New in box

[wannabe smallholder]

Don't tell the OH but I'm already planning our new kitchen that we've agreed to have next Summer. Well I say planning, more like looking for ideas. The trouble is magazines, brochures and pics on internet tend to be the 'showroom' kitchen, huge rooms with central island etc, nothing like mine! Its an elongated U-shape about 3.5m x 2.5m, not a bad size I suppose. I'd love a range cooker which I think I can squeeze in and a retro style Smeg fridge (other retro style fridges available!), probably white or cream cupboards to lighten up the room which only gets the sun until mid-day. Does anyone have a kitchen like it or would be willing to share a photo of their kitchen for inspiration? Hope I don't sound rude! Thank youXx

[Cinnamon]

Things I love about my kitchen are the American style fridge freezer (STILL not big enough!),the Rangemaster slimmer width Range cooker with duel fuel, & the conservatory roofed extension that we added a few years ago,which bring in heaps of light.

I also love my dark granite worktops & solid oak units,both of which were an expense at the time,but really worth it.

 

My kitchen too is long & narrow (well,not exactly narrow,but one half has the stairs in it,so can't be used for units).

Things I would change if I could? Easy - underfloor heating,which we have upstairs & would be perfect for the kitchen too

Edited September 29, 2012 by Guest

[snowberry]

I originally saw these worktops in B&Q. One day I will have them in my dream kitchen The flecks in them glitter but are not too blingy http://www.affordablegranite.co.uk/black-galaxy-granite.html

& I'd actually enjoy cleaning the floor

[Olly]

Ooh, I love planning things! You might find this thread helpful.

[Pearls007]

I have galaxy granite - make sure you have lighting above it so that it glitters!

Edited September 30, 2012 by Guest

[Snowy]

If you want lots of fridge/freezer space, might be worth considering side by side full height matching pair instead. Thats what I went for - cheaper to buy the two seperately rather than an american style FF! We still manage to fill them both though

[counturchickens]

Get b&q or someone in to do you a plan, you don't have to buy their units.

[bettyhen]

We recently had a kitchen fitted by these people.......loads of piccys on their website and they have a facebook page with loads of pictures of kitchens that they have fitted....all shapes and sizes....

So if you want a wooden kitchen.... http://www.murdochtroon.co.uk/bespoke-kitchens

They weren`t any more expensive than our Howdens quote.

 

I love ours...

Definitely agree about the big fridge

Edited September 30, 2012 by Guest

[majorbloodnock]

There are several things that spring to mind for me - especially since I'm currently doing some work in our kitchen at the moment - but I'm not sure whether or not they'd qualify for "inspiration".

 

Firstly, I'm sure you would be able to get a range cooker in, since it's only a matter of finding a 900mm wide gap rather than a 600mm one. If all the other design is changeable, it shouldn't be too difficult to find somewhere practical for the range to go.

 

Secondly, flat-pack units come in standard sizes, so, unless you're hugely lucky to have a room with dimensions that are exact multiples of the standard unit widths, you will be left with some wasted space. The smaller the kitchen, the less space you have to waste, so the greater the compromise in using standard units.

 

Thirdly, are you thinking of doing this yourself or getting it fitted by someone professional? Although it can seem quite daunting, none of the woodwork is particularly complex, so is well within the scope of someone handy. What's more, if you do it yourself, you can get it all to fit precisely, so ensuring no wasted space. There's nothing wrong, incidentally, with designing it so you make up the carcase, then fit standard flat-pack doors onto it, or, indeed, mixing and matching standard units and bespoke to fit your needs.

 

Standard laminate worksurfaces are very good functionally, but many people like something different from that even thoug any alternatives generally come with a huge price premium. However, if you can find a decent supplier of good quality fine timbers, you may be surprised at the cost. As an example, for one of my work surfaces, I bought a 2.7 metre long plank of Cedar of Lebanon (40mm thick, 560mm wide) from W L West near Midhurst - my closest decent timber supplier - and it cost £116. It has some beautiful detail, which will come out nicely when finished, and yet works out cheaper than the same quantity of bog standard generic softwood at Homebase prices. Ludicrous that a nice worksurface should end up cheaper than the constructional timber supporting it, but there you go....

[HennyPenny59]

We have cream gloss cupboards, which we were informed by the manufacturer reflects light around the room, and an almost matching 60cm square porcelain tile, which I think makes the floor look bigger. There are also white painted walls and a solid oak work surface .. So, the whole room is very light, but we have accents of colour such as a bright red rise and fall light above the kitchen table, a vase of fresh cut flowers, and of course all the others bits and pieces that add interest and colour.

 

Also, is there anyway your roof can accommodate a Velux window?

[The Dogmother]

I spent a lot of time planning mine a couple of years back after a small inheritance. I knew the look I wanted and it had to fit in with my Victorian house too. I snipped loads of photos and bits over the course of a year and shopped around to get a really good deal on all the bits and pieces.

 

I spoke to my builder who is a joiner by trade and does lots of shop fitting, so he works to a high standard, he recommended Wickes kitchen units as being very well built. I got Wickes to design a suitable layout which I played around with, then I beat them down in price on to of the sale reduction and got my joiner to fit it all for me.

 

The bits I am happiest with? Probably my Leisure range cooker and the quarry tiled floor - the original tiles would have been red and black (blues for those in the trade) in a diagonal pattern but they'd been removed; I tracked some down at a very reasonable rate to a salvage yard in Stoke drove up there one day to start them off with a selection of what I wanted, they filled the pallet with the right number and shipped it down here for £30 delivery.

 

I'd really like a bigger freezer but I am looking to re-organise the utility room to make better use of the space there, so may well get a bigger freezer in that.

 

Have fun, it's really great when it's done.

[Olly]

My kitchen was installed by the previous owners of the house, but I loved it on sight as it had several things I'd always hankered after including a tiled floor and beech worktops. A word of caution - the tiled floor takes no prisoners, I have lost a lot of wine glasses over the last six years since I moved here! It's also quite cold - it is easy to clean and so on, but there are a lot of advantages to laminate/cushionfloor. The cedar described above by The Major sounds lovely, but wooden worktops need regular maintenance and can stain easily. I still love the look of mine but I'm not sure I'd choose them if I were redoing the kitchen.

 

I loathe 'show' kitchens - they never have anywhere for the bin/recycling, nor do they ever have cat or dog bowls, or things like calendars, pinboards, compost bins, shopping bags - my kitchen is lived in, not a work of art! It's really worth spending some time planning not only the look but also the layout to suit your personal use of the room. I'm a big fan of Ikea kitchen cupboards, they are very well made and have lots of handy fittings.

[The Dogmother]

mine is a very cosy and 'used' kitchen Olly; I know what you mean.

 

I have to admit that I hardly ever oil my dark oak worktops, but then I'm not one for agonising over things looking pristine.

[wannabe smallholder]

Thank you so much everyone! I knew this was the right place to ask! We are looking to strip the whole room down to its shell so a redesign of the entire space will be possible. Think we will be getting someone to do the project from start to finish, I know it costs more but think the stress of OH doing some and flitting from one workman to another would be too much to bare! Love the idea of collecting pics over the coming months with a wish list. I definitely want a lived in kitchen, with a 5 and 8 yr old I have no choice! But I love baking so need space for my mixer and cookbooks etc, and plants for my window sills, not to mention somewhere for the bin and recycling... Thanks for the threads to other sites, some beautiful kitchens to drool over. You never know, in a year I could be posting about my new, lovely kitchen! Cheers guys xx

[majorbloodnock]

...The cedar described above by The Major sounds lovely, but wooden worktops need regular maintenance and can stain easily....

They can do, but it really depends on the finish. The work surface I'm putting in is replacing a different piece of wood I put in not far of 20 years ago, and the only reason I'm replacing is that the sink was in the wrong place for what we now need to fit underneath, and you can't move a hole. When I put the previous surface in, I varnished it with a 2 pack varnish by Sadolin (here's the clicky linky, although I got it from Brewers) which is designed as a floor varnish. Having examined it closely now after all this time, I've found that despite hosting a kitchen sink, the varnish hasn't started to lift yet at all. It has taken everything kitchen use can dish out and has been utterly reliable in protecting the wood underneath.

 

Unsurprisingly, I'll be using the PV67 varnish again for this piece of wood, and reckon it'll give another couple of decades of service quite comfortably. I'll add too that, since the varnish once dried is entirely inert, it doesn't suffer from stains from acidic foods (e.g. wine or wine vinegar) that can literally eat themselves into marble. However, because it is covering wood, it is a tad more forgiving than granite when you drop something brittle onto it - a crystal decanter being a case in point.

 

Of course, if you decide not to varnish and put a different finish on it - wax or Danish oil are two that spring to mind - you will need to be a little more careful with it, and will certainly need to give it another coat every year or so to feed the wood. However, because it's wood, if you do get a bit of a stain then you still have the option of planing, s"Ooops, word censored!"ing or sanding a little off the top to get back to relatively unblemished wood.

 

Our current house is a Victorian cottage, so granite, corian or other stone style worksurfaces would look out of place. However, I can think of several friends' houses where those sorts of materials would suit far better than wood. There's a place for all sorts, but also an answer to almost all the problems with each, so I'd make your choice based on budget and style first, then work on the detail afterwards.

[Geoid]

recommended Wickes kitchen units as being very well built. I got Wickes to design a suitable layout which I played around with, then I beat them down in price on to of the sale reduction and got my joiner to fit it all for me.

They are very well built and solid (except the drawer units, they are rubbish), but they are a pain to assemble!

[The Dogmother]

Really, they didn't report any problems with mine and I helped them assemble the drawers, so they can't have been hard. Perhaps they are a different design.

 

I will say though that the designer at our branch was consistently hard to track down and the planning stage took far longer than it out to have; that may just have been our branch/planner though.

[Smudge]

Agree with Olly re the breakages - I was highly delighted with our new kitchen a couple of years ago with lovely slate floor tiles and granite worksurfaces, but I've had more breakages since, than in all the years before! You might expect it if something is dropping onto the floor but we've found that even things that are just knocked over on the granite worksurfaces are now likely to break or be damaged irreparably. It is also quite cold, and a touch echoey with all that stone in there; in hindsight I'd have had a wooden worksurface which would have gone with our units just as well and softened things a little.

[Geoid]

Roughly how big is your kitchen? You can be surprised what you can do with a small space.

[wannabe smallholder]

Its not a bad size I guess. Roughly 3.5m x 2.5m if it was completely gutted. Two windows along one long wall and two doorways. A kitchen planner would advise us on getting maximum storage and worktop space i suppose. I hate having to lift out loads of stuff to get things from the back of the cupboard or walking round in circles like a demented dalek looking for a space to put down a hot tray on busy cooking days!! Xx

[majorbloodnock]

Well, I should have remembered this before - sorry - but you could start having a bit of a play around now.

 

I found a bit of software from a kitchen manufacturer called Alno that they provide free of charge for planning kitchens. Surprise, surprise, it's based around their range, but hey, since it's all standard sizes and so on, it's good for seeing what'll fit where. The landing page for the software is here, and the link is at the bottom of the page to take you to the terms and conditions whence you can wander on to the actual download.

 

As software goes, it's a tad simplistic, and also has a few flaky bits but it's overall pretty useful as a starting point.

[Olly]

I'm impressed with the long life of your wooden worktop, Major. I do mine with Danish Oil, as that's what the previous owners had done, but I find it needs re-oiling more than once a year, especially around the sink. I still love the way it looks but I am not sure I would choose it again because of the time it takes to maintain.

 

The other thing I was going to add to the original poster was that if you're going to gut the place anyway, think about any other changes you might make. I did my last kitchen from scratch and the fitter suggested that if we moved the back door six inches or so to the right, I could get a whole extra unit in. Yes, there's some work and cost involved but the difference it made was enormous, so don't be afraid of looking at changes like maybe moving plumbing or the gas point, or widening windows/doorways, if it makes the kitchen work better for you. I'm off to play with that software - even though I don't need a new kitchen!

[WitchHazel]

 

Best way to deal with this is to have pull out drawers in the cupboards, instead of or as well as shelves (or go for pan drawers instead of cupboards). Top of the range stuff would be like Blum - take a look at their website for inspiration. Or Ikea have excellent internal fittings for a much more competitive cost. Hafaele provide internals for most mid rnage kitchens.

 

When you go for units, make sure the brand you choose - whichever brand it is - has plenty of holes for anchoring shelves/pull outs, then you can adjust the heights to fit in whatever you are storing.

 

When looking at internal drawers, pay close attention to the actual size and shape of the pullout bits. We've had some which are ridiculously narrow compared ot the size of the cupboard housing, and we've had others where the sides sloped, which was a waste.

[The Dogmother]

I'll second the pull-out drawer idea - I hate my larder cupboards which are stacked with tins, jars and packets; I recently came across some sturdy cardboard 'trays' about 4" deep and I am using them inside these cupboards as makeshift drawers and they work very well. I have also invested in some (cheap as chips) battery operated stick on lights which come on when the door opens... absolutely brilliant!

[majorbloodnock]

I took a different approach with tins and jars. It so happens that our kitchen is part of a larger physical room, and is divided from the rest by a stud wall. When I had to remove the old stud wall, I replaced it by creating a framework from six inch wide planks, then only covered one side of the framework. That left the other side open, allowing me to install shelves and therefore make constructive use of almost all the space the wall would otherwise have taken up. It's amazing how many tins, jars, packs, packets and other containers it holds; in fact, since I did the wall before ripping out the rest of the kitchen, I found that it swallowed up the entire contents of a fully stocked 1200mm under-counter cupboard.

 

Even so, I heartily agree with using tricks like pull-out drawers in cupboards if it addresses something you find irritating. Even small bugbears over time become sources of real annoyance, and personally I hate not having what I need to hand when I'm in the middle of cooking. I'd also recommend that you experiment with heights, too, since if you're shorter or taller than average, the "standard" height for a work surface may not be the ideal for you.