This week saw us meet with two different kitchen designers. Now, you would think that a kitchen designer would, oh I don’t know, design your kitchen? However, what we found was that we really had to come to them with a series of ideas first, before they could start their design process. So back to the drawing board, literally.
There are lots of fancy-pants online programs you can use to draw up your plans, but after a few frustrating attempts (and some choice words from Yours Truly), I did it the old fashion way. With grid paper, a pencil and a ruler.
To refresh your memory, here is the space we have to work with:
This style of our kitchen is called a Galley Kitchen – meaning it has two units facing each other in lines. The back wall unit (the one with the fridge and cook-top in it) is slightly longer than the island unit. Here is my initial plan for the wall unit.
Going from left to right, you can see it has:
A full-height pantry – bottom-half drawers/ top-half shelves. The appliance shelf needs to be tall enough to store a kettle and toaster.
- An example of a pantry combining low drawers and high shelves
An oven/microwave tower with cupboards above and below. There was a lot of debate about this. The “tower” is the latest trend when it comes to your oven and microwave. Traditionally, your oven goes underneath the cooktop, which I think looks more symmetrical. But considering you are pulling out hot, heavy pans, having the oven higher up makes things easier. Plus you don’t have to bend down to check if your cake is rising!
- Oven/Microwave Tower
Next comes the cooktop with 6 large drawers underneath for pots, pans, plates, mugs etc. Above the cooktop, I have designed 2 glass-fronted french-door cabinets. I am probably going to have to clean the glass on a regular basis thanks to the cooktop underneath… but I reeeally wanted some transparent cupboards to break up the solid cabinetry.
- An example of pretty french-door, glass cabinets
Then comes the fridge! I have already chosen our fridge. It is a Fisher and Paykel french door fridge. Isn’t she purty?
So that’s my rough sketch so far for the wall unit part of the kitchen. In PART 2, I’ll show you my plans for the island section of the kitchen.
Would love to hear any thoughts, ideas or concerns you have about my kitchen plan, I’m still in the design phase so can change things!
Hope you are all having a lovely hump-day:)
– Penny xo