This customer wanted a clean contemporary, fairly minimalist looking kitchen for this house. They needed a fresh pair of eyes to plan the new look. The colour scheme was to be white, maple & light grey.

Kitchen CAD plans;

Every project starts with a plan. The room / house is surveyed, with attention paid to all the services (electrics, plumbing, draining, etc.). A CAD plan is produced for the room, or this case initially the ground floor of the house. This enables customers to see the overall picture for the project.

Once the overall plan for the work is agreed then more detailed plans for just the kitchen are produced. The kitchen in this house had been in the small square room. Both the existing kitchen & dining room had poor light levels. People now want large bright rooms, especially for the family areas (kitchen & dining). So it was agreed to take out the wall between the dining room & kitchen, to create one large open plan space.

From a planning point of view this was tricky, as there were 3 doors & 3 windows in the new enlarged room. But 3 windows had the advantage of lots of light flooding into the new large south facing room, making it very light & airy now. A Large 'L' shaped kitchen proved to be the solution.

The client wanted quite a minimal look in the room, not to look too much like a kitchen. They didn't want wall cupboards, of that they were sure. We produced several drafts for the design of the kitchen & finishes. As there was no wall unit storage, it became obvious that a bank of tall units would offer plenty of storage space, inc. an integrated oven & fridge freezer.

Kitchen complete;

Upon my advice the cleints agreed the tall units should be in a white matt laminate finish - this would bounce the maximum amount of light around the room. The floor was to be maple, so we agreed the base units should also be in matching maple. The plinth was alumnium, with matching alumnium oven & unit handles. The worktop chosen was a grey laminate, to match in with the aluminium. A pale grey mosaic tiled splashback finished the look. The walls were painted white.

Even though the clients didn't want conventional wall units, they did go along with a wall cupboard in the corner of the tall units. This was made as a special, handleless & painted white emulsion like the walls, so it visually isn't noticed. The window behind the sink looked over another house, so the galss was changed to white etched glass; this gives privacy, lets the light in & matched the wall. The 2 industrial ceiling lights were alos in etched white glass (to match the window) & pale grey.

The kitchen included integrated oven, hob, fridge freezer & dishwasher. The middle unit includes a large pull-out wire basket storage unit. It was on the cards to include an island in the room; however we agreed this would cut the light down too much. Besides, they wanted to have a large maple dining table in the room.

Before & after;

These 2 photos really show what clients go through when they undertake a major kitchen revamp. Both shots show the same view; the LH photo was taken just after the wall was removed & the new steel rsj about to go in. RH shows the finished result. Always worth the work involved.

Kitchen details;