A kitchen renovation is a major project to undertake in your home with lots of variables to consider. It makes sense to research the dos and don’ts of kitchen design to ensure you get the kitchen of your dreams. The team at Easy Living Kitchens has compiled the following 7 Kitchen Renovation Mistakes and How You Can Easily Avoid Them.
1. Poor Workflow Design
Before you go considering surfaces, look and colours for your new kitchen, it’s important to plan based on how you use your kitchen and how you move around your kitchen most efficiently. A well-designed kitchen saves time and energy.
Design your kitchen into zones and as a result you will have everything you need exactly where you need it. Every kitchen can be divided into five separate zones, consumables, non-consumables, cleaning, preparation and cooking.
Download Blum’s Tips for Kitchen Planning and understand the principles of workflow design.
2. Neglecting the Finer Details
It’s easy to design your kitchen for workflow and aesthetics and miss the elements that really make the differences in kitchen efficiency. The seemingly small add-ons and storage solutions transform your kitchen from wow to WOW!!!
Drawer dividers and pantry drawer pullouts allow you to gain the most storage efficiency for the space you have available. Nobody likes rummaging through kitchen drawers trying to find a utensil and risking cuts from sharp knives. Likewise, how much do you really like reaching into the back of pantry shelves to find the long lost herbs or spices you know you have somewhere. If you’re like me, you’ve probably bought items again because you couldn’t find or weren’t sure if you had something you needed.
3. Choosing your Appliances Last
This is a mistake that should never happen, but too often does.
It’s much easier to build your cabinets and benchtops around your appliances shape and dimensions rather than the other way around.
By choosing your appliances first, your kitchen designer can ensure all cabinets fit together without unnecessary fillers or gaps around your appliances.
4. Choosing the Wrong Benchtop Material
How do you use your benchtop? Do you cut on it? Do you place hot pans or pots on it? Does it receive heavy impact, or red wine spills?
With many different types of benchtop surfaces ranging from laminate through to concrete, manufactured stones, natural stones, timber, bamboo, stainless steel, porcelain or tiles, each has it’s own strengths and vulnerabilities.
Factors to consider when choosing a benchtop material include; stain, impact, abrasion and cutting resistance, as well as heat damage.
Caesarstone is a manufactured solid surface made of up to 93% natural quartz and provides exceptional properties of heat, stain, scratch and chip resistance.
5. Neglecting the Style of the Rest of Your Home
An ultra modern kitchen in an ultra modern home is a match made in heaven. An ultra modern kitchen in a traditional Queenslander, perhaps not so much. Trends and colours go in and out of favour. Overall house styles are pretty much fixed unless you’re embarking on a major complete home renovation.
Choose colours, surfaces, features and appliances that work with your existing home style rather than contrast it. A good kitchen designer will work to the strengths of your existing home foundation to design a complementing and true style, which ultimately provides the greatest bang for your buck.
6. Going Too Trendy
Building on the last point, consider how long you want your new kitchen to last. Kitchen trends can change as often as carmakers release new models. If you’re happy to replace your kitchen every 5 years or so, by all means match your new kitchen to what you find on the TV shows and in the glossy magazines.
If you’re like most people and expect 10 – 15 years from your new kitchen, consider a more conservative approach and choose colours and styles that stand the test of time. Neutral colours can be dressed up with accessories and coloured benchtop appliances to give your kitchen the trend factor without changing the foundation.
7. Choosing Poor Quality Hardware
Nobody wants loose fitting door hinges, doors that slam and drawers that grind on worn out rollers. Even poor quality hardware starts its life as all new fittings should. It’s only a couple of years before the problems surface and the regrets of not choosing top quality kitchen cabinetry hardware arise.
The benefits of investing initially on superior hinges, lift systems and drawer runners will reward you with trouble free operation for many years, in fact your kitchens whole lifetime.
Avoid these 7 Kitchen Renovation Mistakes and you’ll be well on your way to getting the kitchen of your dreams that functions as it should for an entire lifetime.