The kitchen in our home isn’t terrible. In fact, I quite like it at the moment. It has a big American fridge freezer; we’ve put in new, lighter flooring; we’ve repainted the cupboards ourselves; and it has a double oven. Here’s what it looks like right now. But it’s not perfect for us. And considering we’re big kitchen people – we love cooking – we spend a lot of time in there.
For a long time, Ben and I have had a dream design in mind for a kitchen. When we were looking at houses, there was one that had a kitchen we completely fell in love with. Unfortunately, the rest of the house didn’t work for us – it was just a little too far from work for me, the house next door was completely dilapidated, and it just wasn’t quite right.
But the kitchen was. Oh, that kitchen! It was big, light and airy. It had sleek, new cupboards that were contemporary but didn’t look too modern; it opened out into a garden room; and it had a big window in the ceiling. I’ve literally just found out that these are actually called roof lanterns. Ever since then, we’ve wanted a kitchen just like it, and I think it’s something that would be a number one priority in any new house we bought. Basically, it’s the light from the roof lantern and big open windows that we love.
As such, big doors opening out onto the garden would be our next priority. Our kitchen currently has a window that sits between our garden room and garage, so it’s quite dark. There is a door with a window that would have once opened outside, but it now opens into the garden room, so again, the light is limited. Ideally we’d have big folding doors that look out onto a patio. I can imagine us pulling these wide open a lot of the time in summer to be able to have our barbecue easily accessible. We perfected a few barbecue recipes that aren’t just the traditional sausages and burgers last summer, so having the barbecue and kitchen so close would be amazing.
Ben’s told me that he has a vision of him cooking up a fancy meal for us, while I sit at an island or breakfast bar with a glass of wine in hand while we talk about our days. Although to be honest, I’d probably more likely be sat there with a glass of squash, but we can pretend I’m sophisticated for the purposes of this! So the next thing on our list would be a breakfast bar or island – one like the third image down here.
The final thing would be the kitchen equipment and storage. Like I said, we love cooking and we have a lot of kitchen gadgets – I like to joke that Ben collects them, but really, it’s not a joke any more! We had to clear out the space where the integrated fridge was (ours is now freestanding) and we use that kitchen gadget storage. And the cupboard under the stairs. And the garage. Not joking, we have way too many, even though we’ve got rid of some! The problem is that we actually use all of the gadgets. Even the ones like smoothie makers and grill machines.
So ideally our dream kitchen would have a large amount of storage so we wouldn’t have to go into the garage to dig out certain gadgets that don’t get as much use. But it would also have top of the range spec and equipment. Ben’s always wanted an induction hob so that would be pretty awesome, but I’m slightly resistant to that as it would mean all new pans. Then again, they’re also way more efficient (so saving money on the long run) and I’m far less likely to burn myself on them. Yes, I am that person that put my hand directly onto the hob one time to check if it was on…
What does your dream kitchen look like?
