So, you want to renovate your kitchen and design what you consider to be your dream. Most people want to start their kitchen renovation design with all of the pretty fixtures and fittings; don’t get me wrong, pretty is always great, but it is not necessarily the ideal way to start designing your dream kitchen. I’ve come up with a few key questions you need to ask yourself before looking at the design component.
1. What is the purpose of your kitchen renovation? Is it to make a profit on it, to design your dream kitchen, to make it more functional or to gain more storage space? Once you decide these key things it will help you to stay focussed on your purpose and design it in accordance with your purpose.
2. How long are you planning to stay living in your home? Or, are you renting it out? A kitchen you design for yourself will be totally different to the one you design for a rental property.
3. Would you be open to structural changes? Structural changes are mainly removing walls and. Some people get caught up in their current kitchen layout and thinking it needs to stay the same. They never really look at other possibilities, redesigning the configuration can potentially be more functional. Remember kitchens designed in the 1960’s and 70’s are totally different to the kitchen designs of today. It’s really important to decide upfront if you are open to big changes as it will impact on both the time it takes to complete the renovation and the money it will cost.
4. What do you really dislike about your kitchen and what doesn’t work for you? This can vary widely for different people and is very individualised. It helps if you stand back and respond to this question without being emotionally attached to your property. For example, you may not like the current layout; you may not like the functionality etc.
5. What are you hoping to get out of your kitchen renovation? Did you want an eating area, more space, an entertaining area, more storage or a better layout? Deciding this early will help keep you on track with what you actually want.
6. Come up with three adjectives to describe your new space. This will help you design your kitchen with creativity in mind. They could be things like happy, unique and modern. These words will generally be what are important to you and will then give you some direction in the design process.
7. How much are you willing to spend. This is the million-dollar question and basically this can make or break you kitchen renovation. It’s no use aiming for a high-end kitchen when you are on a low-end budget. This will also be influenced by whether your property renovation is for yourself or for a tenant.
These questions will help you design your dream kitchen and make the renovation process smooth and pain-free. A really great hint and tip I tell everyone looking to do any type of property renovation is make a file of your favourite pictures and clippings so you can refer to this when designing your kitchen renovation.