Looking After the Heart of the Home
“Everything happens in the kitchen. Life happens in the kitchen.”
So said celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern, and to be honest, it is difficult to disagree. Most of our early family memories are located in the kitchen; helping mum cooking, washing up in the sink and handing pots to dad who was getting more than his fair share of food off with his tea towel. The point is this: You neglect the design of your kitchen at your own peril. If you get it wrong, the very heart of your house isn’t functioning as it should. If you get a kitchen renovation right, your entire life hums along nicely.
Here is how you get a kitchen renovation right.
First up, make sure you are hiring a builder who knows kitchens. You might see a whole array of sample pictures on their websites of stunning decks and living rooms. That’s great, but there is a lot of specific knowledge needed to make a truly seamless kitchen. Ask them about their previous experience. If they can supply testimonials and photographs, so much the better!
Secondly, don’t under budget. Kitchen renovations are tricky because they combine cabinetry, plumbing, electrical, tiling, flooring, gyprocking, and pretty much everything else that you could imagine. Ideally, you should leave yourself a contingency of 10% above so that you’ve got the means to put out those little spot fires as they emerge. Ideally, these spot fires are metaphorical, but if you hire a first time builder because they were cheap, you never know…
Thirdly, source your appliances before you begin making aesthetic choices. We can recall too many instances of someone loading in their new oven only to find that they hate the way it clashes with the cabinetry we have just finished installing. Either they pay for us to reinstall new doors and drawers, or they learn to live with the clash. Both options are a little soul destroying and entirely avoidable with a bit of preplanning.
Fourthly, listen to your builder. Presuming they are experienced, they will know a thing or two about work flow and usability. It is a good principle to consider the triangle of oven, kitchen and sink. If these things are too far apart, you end up getting your ten thousand steps every time you cook a meal. Too close, and your oven heats up your fridge so that the motor has to work harder to keep things cool. An experienced builder will have seen so many different possibilities that they can steer you towards options you had never considered.
At the end of the day, your kitchen is probably the most important room in your house to get right. The team at LPC have done hundreds of kitchen renovations, ranging from budget retrofits in apartment blocks to sprawling open plan kitchens of marble and cast iron. Whatever you have in mind, they’ve done it.
If life does indeed happen in the kitchen, you could live your best life by calling LPC Projects today.
