Planning for the New Kitchen

The best kitchens can accommodate several things that include your personal tastes as well as your lifestyle and your physical characteristics like your height. The best way to get ready to remodel your kitchen is by taking some time to imagine yourself standing in it after it’s all done—that’s a perfect way to get all the rough details down in your head before you start. Ask yourself a few questions as well, about what you need from the new space. Do you want a sunny space where you can go and drink coffee, read the paper, or just generally wake up? Does the furniture in the new kitchen need to serve any double purposes?

Here’s another helpful hint that will give you a good idea of what you’ll need. Get a notebook and jot down what goes on in the existing kitchen that you live in now. Write down who does what and when and where as well as a list for what you’d like to see changed. Many of the things that you enter should be specifically about cooking and the amount of space you will need or would like to have for the storage of pots and other utensils as well. The professionals have been designing kitchens for years and as such, they’ve come up with a set of guidelines that most homeowners will find helpful in determining what will work and what won’t in the new kitchen.

While there are a set of expert calculations and dimensions that are available to use as a guide, there are also a series of more ‘hands on’ suggestions that the average homeowners will find helpful. As an example, a counter is the right height if you can place your palms flat on it with a light bend in your elbows. Knowing this kind if little trick will allow you to demonstrate or even measure what the right dimensions are.

Clearances so that you can move freely about in a kitchen are equally important—unfortunately these are the things that homeowners often overlook when they are designing a new kitchen. It’s important here that you leave enough room to be able to open the cabinet doors fully and still be able to walk around them. You need to consider the high traffic lanes as well as to make sure that they are safe. Remember that all too often the cook needs to turn around with something hot in their hands and the general rule is these spaces need to have 60 inches minimal clearance if you expect that the chef will need to turn around and /or walk with hot things in their hands.

Finally, in the ideal remodel there will be separate counter space allocated for washing, cutting, and mixing the food. The plans should include the most space for the counters to be near the sinks.

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