Your dream kitchen.....

[Madi]

What would you have in your perfect kitchen? And don't say a chef! :2lol

I'm in the throes of planning my new kitchen, and there are some things that I've been dreaming of for years that I just have to have :hyper

[Phoenix]

I would have a dishwasher, a pull out cupboard, everything labeled (thanks to my new label maker), an industrial oven, a double sink and lots of space. DP is a cabinet maker and he has been designing his dream kitchen for many more yrs then I so I am not sure how much of the design I would have input on. LOL.
What are you going to get Madi??

[Hailstorm]

Pretty much the same as Phoenix :2lol oh and a TMX ;)

ALong with a ceasar stone bench top (which if we ever start building our house we will have :2lol) and a red glass tiled splashback (lucky for me I know a really HOT tiler :rofl) I love Island benches (I'm gonna have one of those too) oh and must have a tap for my fridge, we bought it about five years ago and it has one of those inbuilt water dispenser things and an iceman (not a technical term :laugh) we have to buy a bag of ice and put it into iceman and we've never used the water dispenser thingo :rofl

SIL and BIL have recently renovated their place (it was a HUGE job, they pretty much turned the whole house backwards) and her kitchen has those big drawers instead of cupboards on one side and cupboards on the other side it's soooo practical

[Anju]

Im desiging a new kitchen too! The big deep drawers are on my list with out a doubt. As is a double sink and a dishwasher.

[mama_bel]

I'd love to have again a huge walk-in (or walk-through) pantry like at my old place. It had 4 generous shelves on each wall, room for the vacuum, broom, mop, etc, appliances on the shelves, bulk food bins under the bottom shelves, all the cannisters, preserves, tins and more. LOVED it!

Other than that - double sink, maybe a dishwasher, big drawers, a designated TMX centre for it to be on the benchtop with all the accessories and cookbooks at hand.

No chance in my current house as the kitchen is narrow, but I love island benches too. And breakfast bars. In fact if we could just turn our whole living area into an eat-in kitchen I'd be rapt! :)

[lizlea]

well we did build a new kitchen about 2 years ago as part of a big renovation. Things we have that we love are:

- an island bench/breakfast bar (kitchen is galley style), that is a metre wide. And 4 metres long. So kids can be on the stools on the "other" side playing with playdough, art, homework, etc etc while still leaving plenty of room for cooking.
- dishdrawer dishwasher - wouldn't be without it!
- plumbing is there for a fridge with water/ice dispenser but our current fridge doesn't have the ability.
- have the double sink - one big/one small bowl.
- lots of big drawers and less cupboards
- quantum quartz benchtops
- power point inside the appliance cupboard so things like the toaster can be plugged in and put on bench right where you are.
- power point on the outside of the island for laptops etc
- glass splashbacks - soooo easy to keep clean

We don't have a walk in pantry and that is the only thing I would like to have but we just couldn't fit it into the design.

[lizlea]

Middle left picture here is our kitchen! I didn't need to do all that describing hey!


http://www.gandcbuilding.com.au/index.html

[Hailstorm]

- power point inside the appliance cupboard so things like the toaster can be plugged in and put on bench right where you are.
- power point on the outside of the island for laptops etc


.



LOVE these ideas!!!

[michelle_j_r]

nice kitchen, Liz!

if you get an island bench then make sure the electrician runs power through so you can have a power point on one end etc. People often end up with a huge island bar but no power for anything!

Don't go too deep with the drawers. Much better off with banks of wide drawers that are three or four drawers high, rather than just two deeper drawers. You can actually fit a full stack of plates and even glasses etc high-wise in a bank of four drawers.

[Hailstorm]

Our island bench will contain our kitchen sink, as well as the dishwasher...not sure if I have plans on this puter or not...

[mama_bel]

Gorgeous Liz! A TMX would look so good in that kitchen. :p

[michelle_j_r]

tandembox drawers are also good. (Or Innotech is the name used by Hettich, not sure what brand of hardware your supplier uses).
had a quick google, can't remember all the links (how soon we forget!!) but this might be helpful, dynamicspace (http://www.dynamicspace.com/dynamicspace/en/02/01/index.html) i think this is the home user section that shows how the different combinations of internal fitouts work.

Works out a bit exxy to have tandembox throughout but even if you just did the cutlery and main crockery drawers with the soft close option then that makes them nice to use. Go the regular metal sides for the rest of them.

[mrs fox]

my old kitchen....cause i designed it myself.....it had dishwasher, timber (hardwood) island bench 1.30 m wide, walloven so fingers could get burned and u can see how the baking is going...panty, powerpionts EVERYWHERE. asy to wipe down laminate bench tops....drawers,drawers,drawers,drawers!

[Bron]

the sink and splashback as one complete item so you don't have to worry about the gaps between sink and wall where all the silicone goes black from mould. the cupboard under the sink to have the wall right next to the pipes so all that space isn't wasted!

[mama_bel]

Oh, I'd love a wide oven because now that I quadruple most recipes, LOL, cooking takes aaages.

[michelle_j_r]

the people that owned this house before me had only renovated the kitchen a year ago and cos the house is an old 1940's home it has an old bricked fireplace in the kitchen, and instead of putting in a nice wide oven within the brick surrounds they left that and put baskets in there (which looks ok i guess (and then just put in a cheaper freestanding range. so so so so sad for me! LOL! I would have loved to have had that wider oven.

Same in the loungeroom which backs onto the kitchen. The old fireplace is there and looks lovely but it takes up a diagonal corner of the small loungeroom. So when whoever put in a new combustion stove thing instead of building it within the old fireplace they put it in the other corner. So now i have two big wedges cut out of the little loungeroom. Seems crazy to me.

[emd]

When we were last house-shopping, I walked into this house and looked at the kitchen, then I looked at the bathroom, then I sat my big fat pregnant arse down in the lounge room armchair and said to the Minister for Household Finance, "make an offer, I want this one!". And we got it, even if I did sign the settlement papers in the delivery suite under peth and have no recollection of it.

And this is the kitchen:
340
Love the glass splashback, deep drawers, water filter tap on the kitchen sink for drinking water, and fancy-pants recycling bin.

This is pretty much what we had in the previous house, except we didn't have hot water (not kidding, we didn't have hot water), the wood-burning stove wasn't as nice, and the floor was carpet from 1947 (you can imagine how putrid it was).
http://www.allhomes.com.au/ah/act/sale-residential/20-paterson-street-ainslie-canberra-kitchen/14139215895011?lid=167448090

[jodiemiller]

Nice pictures. There are piccies of our kitchen on the net somewhere, I'm sure but I wouldn't know where to look.

We have a butler's pantry, it's a food and appliance pantry in one. It also houses the monitoring system for our solar array and other things so we would have needed a BIG cupboard somewhere in the house anyhow. If I ever get a TMX (big if), I'll keep it inside the pantry, not on the bench. The pantry works well for us, but we're about to add even more shelves and a rack for hanging pots and pans, and if there one thing I would change about it (but can't) it's the outward-swinging door, which broaches our kitchen space. I think I would have preferred it opened inward, and so could be left open during busy cooking times.

Other things to consider: a dedicated cupboard for large oven trays, baking stuff etc, if it can't be accommodated under your oven.

A drawer or cupboard next to the cooktop for oils and vinegars, spices, cornflour, gravy mix and other things, including utensils, that you tend to grab in a hurry with things on the boil. Ours is in the pantry and not at all convenient.

I really like a kitchen to engage with the dining area. Our table is right beside the central kitchen bench (it doesn't qualify as an island, but it does have power points). Another thing we never considered at the design stage was where we would store the detachable extensions for our table. No issue if you have an extendable table that folds neatly away, but ours is chunky, and even though I love our dining table to bits, we have to store the extensions under our bed! Wish we had designed it into our pantry somehow.

Um, what else? A servery to your outdoor/bbq area, if you have one?

Oh, and go generic when it comes to the alcove for your fridge. Our current fridge fits the alcove snugly, but it's a dinosaur and we're about to upgrade it - and we'll be limited by what will fit the alcove. If you forsee yourself needing a bigger fridge or a pigeon pair in the future, don't get an alcove built at all. There's nothing wrong with a free standing fridge, I reckon.

[Savannah]

We have a large pantry, which was the laundry once upon a time. It's a wonderful space with shelves floor to ceiling and powerpoints so I can keep the breadmaker, etc in there. It's just as well we have the pantry, because our kitchen in tiny!

We plan on keeping it the same general shape, but widening the benchtops (and cupboards underneath) and putting in cupboards and shelves up top. We also will carry the kitchen further out because we need much more bench space.

I would like a sink that had a disposal system underneath that your compost goes straight into. And perhaps somehow make it so a bokashi bucket can sit in there.

[marmee]

I want a new kitchen!

I want Liz's kitchen!

Now.

[michelle_j_r]

i know! Liz's place looks like a great space to be in!

[lizlea]

lol Marmee. If its any consolation it NEVER looks that tidy!

[changeable fate]

I have always wanted a section of bench top that can be used as a chopping board and has a large hole in it that goes down to a bin in a cupboard underneath, so you just chop and sweep everything down the hole.

Also, dish drawers - those dishwashers that are a drawer. In my dream kitchen I'd have a whole heap of these so that all the crockery and glasses are stored in them - you never have to put things away 'cos they'd just live in the dishwasher.

[Hailstorm]

I'm pretty sure Jamie Oliver had one of those holes in his bench during one of his shows, good idea I reckon

[changeable fate]

Yes, he did. That's where I got the idea from. Funny to find this thread now, since we just put in a new kitchen in our unit when we were fixing it up to sell.

[emd]

Our double kitchen sink has a chopping board designed to fit perfectly over two thirds of the smaller sink, with a plastic "bowl" (kind of a colander without handles) that fits over the remaining third of the sink. So I can chop things, and sweep them into the plastic bowl.

Having an eat-in kitchen is a must for me. Both houses we've owned have had eat-in kitchens.

[marmee]

Liz wrote "If its any consolation it NEVER looks that tidy! "

Nope - no consolation

:rofl