Remodeling your home has never been an easy project, especially if you are planning on doing it on your own. Redesigning your cooking area might be the trickiest part of your house, since you will have to find the right balance between functionality and aesthetics, unless you use your kitchen only occasionally, for heating takeaway food, then it can stay just beautiful, without being practical. Thus, if you would like to find out what mistakes and pitfalls to avoid when remodeling your kitchen, stay with us in the lines below.
Parallel, L or U-Shaped Kitchen Layout
No matter if you are living in a small apartment or a big house, you should always try to use your kitchen space to its full potential. If your kitchen is small, then an L-shaped layout might be the right answer to your wanderings, but be careful with those corners. They are highly unreachable, so the best solution might be to use them for storing something you do not need every day, like some small household appliances, or an even better solution would be to put your sink or your dish drying rack at the same spot. The same can be applied to the U-shaped layouts, but if you do have enough space and go for this form, then you can also think about a kitchen island.
Kitchen Islands, Yes, or NO?
If you plan it well, then it is a yes. Kitchen islands can be a great helper in the kitchen, to save up your tired legs if you organize your dishes and spices and appliances well, but they can also be an obstacle you will have to go around or even sometimes hit your toes at if you are not careful enough. Jokes aside, they can look great, but your kitchen is not all about the looks, right?
There should be about 35 to 40 inches of free space around a kitchen island for an unobstructed workflow, you do not need more than that, because you do want to save your legs, and you shouldn’t be going for a distance lower than 30 inches. As far as the dimensions go, for the width, you would want it to be practical so you can store some groceries there, so you would need the minimum of 35 inches, but you should go for at least 40, if not 50, for the best results. If you want to place a cooker or a sink on your island, then 50 inches will do the job just fine. If you are having trouble trying to figure this out by yourself, you should always consult the pros, and the guys from kitchen remodel San Diego at creativedesignandbuildinc.com might have the right solution just for you.
Faulty Workflow
If you do not plan the work path in your kitchen before remodeling, then you will probably end up with an impractical workflow, which would result in your running left or right or back and forth through cooking or washing. It would save you up a lot of time in your future kitchen if you would work out the details of doing things before beginning any of the real work. For example, you would want your cutlery and dishes to be as close to your sink and dishwasher machine as possible. You can also put your spices and oils near your stove, keep your oven gloves close as well. Also, you would need some free workspace near your refrigerator and your cooker, and of course, do not put those two next to each other.
Circulation Space
Usually, a kitchen is used by more than one individual at a time, so you would need a clear circulation space in this area of your house. You can acquire this by separating the actions – groceries, preparation space, dishes, cooking, eating. Also, you need to make all of these zones accessible and reachable, so you would need at least 35 inches distance between parallel countertops, so two individuals can pass by one another easily, but do not go higher than 47, because you do want to spare your feet.
Poor Lighting
Here, too you will need to be thinking about functionality, as well as aesthetics. No matter how pretty pendant lights might look, hanging over your countertops, you might want to check their luminosity, since you also need to see what you are doing in the kitchen, what you are cooking and chopping. If pendant lights are your cup of tea, do not neglect them, but put them on a separate circuit, alongside the main lights that would come from the ceiling. Also, try not to put the light source directly above your head, but a little bit in front of you, so you do not cast a shadow over your food. You can put some integrated lights below your upper cabinets as part of ambient lighting as well.
Inadequately Positioned Cabinets
As far as upper cabinets are concerned, a pitfall to avoid here is putting them up too high or too low on the wall. If you are not that much tall of a person, you can make your life a little bit more complicated if you put your cabinets too high, because you would then need to design a space in your kitchen for a portable chair as well. You can also put your upper cabinets too low, and then have too much free space between them and the ceiling. An ideal, and somewhat recommended height for the bottom side would be about 60 inches from the floor.
Another mistake concerning cabinets can also be the positioning of drawers and cabinets. If designed poorly, they might block your doorways, cabinet doors, or walk paths, so, think about where and how will your refrigerator, cooker, dishwasher, and drawers and cabinets open if they are positioned as you planed them.
Hopefully, the aforementioned pieces of information have brought you closer to a solution to your kitchen remodeling and warned you what not to do when planning. If you find this too difficult to process, you can always consult an interior designer and watch things unfold before your eyes, but wouldn’t it be interesting to try it out yourself? Thus, read the tips once again, and sharpen your pencils, and your mind. You can find more renovation tips in this article from Hardie Boys.
