Lay My Hat Forum

[kyreniagirl]

We are biting the bullet & installing a new kitchen as the original although perfectly clean & usable is rather old fashoined & I feel we need to if we want to increase our rates at all. Picture on website link on my profile - still can't manage to load a picture onto LMH!

Fitting is all sorted as we have a friend who does it. Would welcome any suggestions from previous experience as to do & don'ts. Is there anything that you put in & wished you hadn't or didn't put in & wished you had? I think a small eating bar with a couple of stools, enough for a coffee & newspaper or breakfast would be useful. What about a small wall mounted TV - unneccessary expense? We have all the white goods we need, they are all freestanding for ease of replacement. What about taps - my instinct is to go for a good quality brass bodied but simple mixer tap expecting anything more complicated to get broken - am I wrong?

Do you think a high spec kitchen sells a holiday let or as long as it's clean & modern it doesn't matter? Bearing in mind this a terraced house & a bespoke kitchen would be totally out of of sinc.

Thanks in advance.

[Beachcondo]

Mind you, this advice might be totally out of whack since you say that you have all the fittings in place (but to be totally honest, I am not completely sure about what you mean by fittings)

Anyway, in the totally controlled Sweden there used to be guidlines for kitchens. They were laid down in the 50s, but for a god working kitchen I think this rule still applies:
Between your kitchen sink and the hob you shall have a work area that is 1,2 meters wide. anything between 80cm-1,4m is ok though. Since that is where you will do the food preparation and drain the pasta etc it is a very important area.
I get really tired when you get into luxury kitchens and thay have like 40cm to work on.... or when it is 3m between water and hob!
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[kyreniagirl]

Hi.Thanks. Yes good advice, my own kitchen is large & sometimes I get worn out walking from one end to the other to get stuff. OH says we need to have a one way system!

Fitting in the UK means that I have someone to 'fit' i.e. install the units which over here is probably the most expensive part. I haven't ordered the units yet though.

[Greenbarn]

You've beaten me to it with the free-standing and easily replaceable appliances!

A couple of thoughts - I agree with a decent but simple mixer tap. We have a couple of taps in our house with pull-out spray spouts, and having fitted them myself I'm aware of how easy it would be to damage them in use. I don't think they're really that necessary in a kitchen anyway - ours get used mainly for muddy boots! I'd strongly suggest getting a tap with quarter turn ceramic disc valves rather than screw-down valves. I've yet to come across anyone who doesn't think it's a Good Idea to give a screw-down tap a really good extra turn "just to be sure", which eventually wrecks the rubber washer and you've got a dripping tap and the need to find a time when it can be fixed. BTW - it's probably normal now anyway, but make sure isolating valves ("service valves") are fitted so that you can turn off the supply right under the tap, rather than the mains, if you ever need to remove it for some reason. They're cheap.

When we put the kitchens in our three properties I plumped for units with soft-close drawers, which I think was a really good decision. They give a feel of quality, but far more importantly they're (almost) guest-proof! It's virtually impossible to slam them shut, and it's slamming drawers that makes everything work loose after a while. Ditto cupboard doors - ours just have the simple piston dampers on the carcase, but I think there's some fancy (and no doubt expensive) hinges that also do the job. Not a great deal wrong with the cheapo dampers, though.

Some friends of ours did their kitchen recently and used Maia worktops, which look fantastic and are apparently easy to fit - easier than standard laminate tops and way easier than granite etc. I don't know how much they are , but worth a look perhaps. They must be cheaper than granite (and much lighter, so reinforced carcases aren't required) and considerably cheaper than Corian (dream on), but probably more than decent laminate. I'd go with it if I was having new worktops now.

Plenty of lighting under the wall cupboards to light the worksurface, as extra lights are a pain to fit later.

Final thought - I've just sacrificed a bit of floor cupboard space in each of our units in order to fit pull-out multi recycling bins so guests have got somewhere to separate out stuff in the kitchen. It makes it easier for them to keep various recyclables separate - which translates into less work for us.

Have fun!
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[tavi]

A breakfast bar is a great idea, especially if there's no other option to eat in the kitchen...I'm guessing you only have the dining room.

Not sure of the layout of the room but you could consider maybe an island with food prep area and eating bar area? Is there a view? Can the breakfast area be next to the window?

I would be inclined to remove all the tiles unless they are antique or something. I know you want to keep the kitchen in the style of the house so you won't want to go too modern, however many people nowadays only have splashbacks behind sink and cooker (in glass, granite, tile etc.... and the rest of the worksurfaces have a short upstand in the same material as the worktop.

Get the microwave built-in under (or above) the worktop, looks sleeker and frees up a lot of worktop.

Love the idea of a wall tv or even a flip down tv.

See here! http://www.coolvision.co.uk/flipdown.htm

[Ju]

Don't be tempted by hygena - no matter how good the offer.

Do consider Ikea - virtually guest proof - and easy to change out one door etc if anything does get damaged.

Don't assume you need the same cupboard space as you would at home, holdiay rentals rarely have quite the same number of unused casserole and ramekins as we fill our cupboards with.

Do leave some cupboard space unallocated so that guests have somewhere to put their food.
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[pepsipuss]

Sound advice from Ju.

I would put in a large hob if you have space. A standard four burner hob is a nightmare if you really like to cook as there is hardly enough space for two large pans. A five burner with a large central one makes a huge difference.
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[CarolineH]

I have fitted 8 Ikea kitchens in the last 10 years - I love them - there is never a component missing - they do lots of nice touches now - shock-absorbing cuboard door closers (optional) and also drawer closers (standard).

My mother had a £12,000 kitchen fitted at the same time as my Ikea one which cost 2,000€ and I prefer mine! With my own kitchen (the 7th fitting) I started to adapt their standards to my needs : I have an island unit that is made up of 2 floor units and 2 wall units, making it 1m x 1m and I have fitted locking wheels on to it, so I can push it around to change the space a bit. By doing this I needed to order bespoke worktops - the laminate ones that they do are really good quality and the joints are factory made, which makes them invisible.

Another thing that I did in one of my gites, which you might find too radical - I cut away half the wall and installed a bar-type top just two tiles above the worktop of the kitchen - you can just about see it in the kitchen photo here. It really transformed the living space, but it would depend if you walls were load bearing (and of course, what is on the other side of the wall!)

Lights are very important - you can't have too many, but beware of very high wall units - I'm fairly average height, but I often find a lot of the crockery in the gites moved down to a lower level.

The other thing that is important is tiles - light and simple that won't age - I got some really nice cream tiles, but rectangular in a landscape sense (if you understand) which brings a touch of modern - but hopefully will last a bit longer than very modern touches.

Good luck and enjoy - I love doing kitchens!
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[Normandy Cow]

I'm so glad that we didn't put in built in appliances. When our dishwasher needed replacing we just whipped it out and installed a new one within 24 hours - much cheaper and quicker than it would have been otherwise.

But my one HUGE regret is that we put in a cheap hob. The plastic knobs keep coming off and I am dreading the time when we will inevitably have to replace it - buy cheap buy twice.
I wish we'd spent a little more and got one of the large smeg hobs like I have at home - that would be so much better quality.
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[pepsipuss]

[wallypott]

My splash backs are the floor tiles, which are the really big 50cm ones, and they fill any spaces between top and bottom cupboard units.

I'd second Ikea kitchens, and the surface Caroline talks about, it looks like its going to last much better than their cheaper version.

I did back to back ikea 47cm units for my island with an over hang on one side so you can have stools (so it is good for cooking on and its wide enough that you can have people using both sides and socialising and helping at the same time). The cupboards on the far side of the bar have the stuff you use less often in it.

In terms of design, you should be able to unload the dishwasher without ever taking more than one step in any direction.

Actually kitchen layout is my "thing" and it makes the difference between enjoying cooking or not.
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[pepsipuss]

I used those floor tiles for splashbacks in our 'second' kitchen, Wallypot. I am thrilled with them and wish I had thought of it for the main one.

I love kitchen design too, but I made some mistakes in my new house - although the kitchen is nearly twice the size of the one in the house that is now the rental, I don't actually find it any easier to work in. The only advantage is that more than two people can be in there at once without getting in one another's way. I must have designed the small one really well from a cooking point of view!
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[Greenbarn]

A thought on hobs - if you're installing a ceramic hob, the touch control ones are soooooooo easy to clean! No knobs to trap yuk. (Ignore if you're lucky enough to have gas.)
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[wallypott]

Ideally, you need enough space for two people to work, get passed each other etc in the floor space between your work surfaces. There is no such thing as too much work space. In my own kitchen I have about 10m! But clearly thats not reasonable in a rental. However, the gite of mine I would least like to rent is the one with a separate kitchen and very little work surface.
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[CarolineH]

Just finished the washing up and the only thing that I feel has gone downhill at Ikea are the sinks - they feel cheap now - I have a stainless steel one.

A few years ago I had a Franke sink which was wonderful - if I was to redo my kitchen tomorrow, I'd put in an Ikea one with a Franke sink. I also get a friend who fits kitchens for a living to cut the holes in the worktops for me (much less stressful).

I know that appliances are not in question here, but for other readers, don't touch the Ikea ones - I think Whirlpool downgrade the quality of them, specially for Ikea
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