Kitchen Design Concepts and Specifics

My wife and I spent a fair amount of time  deciding the approach to the kitchen design and layout. After weeks of discussion, of which some are less than cordial... here is what we agreed on.

Concepts:
1. Who has the Ultimate Say? My wife, being the primary user will have the ultimate say in the choice of layout for funationality and material/colour choice for outlook. For the new couples working on the renovation for your new home, it can be a lot of tension while making decisions along the way. My personal experience is always good to give and take.

2. Do we believe in FengShui? Yes! From my limited memory, our FS master dictated the Stove direction, refrigator facing direction, and insisting on avoiding clashes between the "hot" and "wet" elements are a few key parts. "Hot" elements are like stove and oven. "Wet" elements are prepresented by toilet door, sink and washing machine. We did some research work to check back. But if you want to take into consideration your GUA number, you may consider engaging a FengShui Master to help you early in the design stage. These FS guidelines will form part of the controlling parameters to guide your decision making.

3. Do we actually cook or bake regularly? Yes and quite a fair bit! Thus, to isolate the stir-fry and deep frying fumes from spreading to the living room, we decided to keep the kitchen "closed" aka non-open concept. From the above,
a. The choice of stove and oven was clearly important.
b. To reduce cleaning, we decided to choose a high performance hood.
c. We chose to introduce a glass door to isolate the kitchen from the living room while cooking. A glass door was chosen so we could keep an eye on our children in the living room.
d. Tabletop space needed to be increase for baking and food processing. These extra tabletop doubles up as a breakfast table.

4. What kind of theme do we want? We both wanted a neutral theme, but it has to look spacious. Thus we adopted a "white kitchen" concept. There are other themes like cottage or 2-tones. Some of our research references are here. Looking at photos helped us visualize and decide what we wanted. Communication with the ID is also easier with photos.

5. What is the Storage plan? After visualising how our movement would be like while cooking or baking, the wall mounted cabinets, tabletop cabinets where added around the stove, ovens, sink and refrigators. For more details, most of our ideas care from here. My wife wanted the following:
a. Sliding shelves for stir-fry sause beside the stove
b. Commonly used staff to be at middle level for ease of access
c. Staff that is seldom used a should be a at a low level, so the user will not need to squat or bend over too often.
d. Staff that is required once in a bluemoon is stored at the highest level. A stool may be required for access.

A glimpse of the completed kitchen layout as follows:

Also see
Glass Door and kitchen-living window
Does the Refrigerator need a Plinth?
Pre-renovation Preparation

Pre-renovation Preparation

Finally signed the OTP for our own flat! Seems like a high in the property market cycle though at that time. But that's another story.

Anyway, we decided to do some preparation while waiting for the 1st appointment.

1. Brought a Fengshui Master to see the place for peace of mind.
There are somethings that cannot be changed like the location of the kitchen, structural column and walls and general apartment shape.
For the things we have control over, the fengshui input will helps us lock a few important variables. So the ID has a basis to proceed on. According to my fengshui master, important things subject to your birthday are
a. Location of sofa in Living room
b. Direction and Location of Bed in Master bedroom
c. Direction facing of the Refrigerator
d. Direction of the stove
e. Layout of the Kitchen should avoid clashes between fire and water.
Don't think I am qualified to explain too much in detail. That's why we hired an expert. Anyway, if you are interested, we did some brief research here so we knew a few basic questions to ask.


2. Brought several contractors/ ID to view the flat.
This will give the contractor a fair chance to price the project correctly. This step will reduce the chances of contractors underpricing and subsequently cutting corners. Things they will look out for are whether the flat is on the lift floor and demolition works required, conditions of windows and door. Remember that you will probably get a fair market price if you have at least 3 independent quotations.

The other advantage is that you will get to tap the contractors' experience on how the renovation can be done. collect all the best ideas and fit them into the feng shui determined variables. Saves a lot of time and brain cells!


3. Do some research work on the theme you and your partner would like.
It can be retro, classic, cottage, Bali resort etc. We picked a Classic European style. One of our favourite design we liked very much was a similar long living room shaped apartment. It helped us conceptualize the colour tone and details that make our home look classic European.

Researched Long Living Room design

A white kitchen design

Spacious Hotel Concept Toilet

4. Start getting quotations early from at least 3 contractors/ ID.
If it does not work out, you can still get someone else to quote. For us, the first contractor was very "high end" (aka super expensive and no bargaining allowed). There are also a few "celebrity" contractors we researched form the forums. However we did not engage them as they were very difficult to book.

Like to share some photos of the place before the renovation.

The kitchen (before renovation)

Long Living Room

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Read about Demolition preparation

Read about Shopping for lights