Friday, December 24, 2010

Kitchen Design And Lighting

By Owen Jones


If you have just moved into a new, old house, one of the first things that you will probably want to do is refurbish or remodel the kitchen, especially if you like cooking or spending a lot of time in the kitchen. If you use a kitchen a great deal, you will probably already have a good idea of what you would like the kitchen to look like in the end.

One of the first choices to make is whether you are going to do it yourself or supervise it yourself. There is a lot of work in a kitchen refurb and I have seen amateurs spend years, literally years, doing what a builder could have completed in weeks. This always leads to family tensions. Once that I know of, it even led to divorce. It seems that everybody wants to brag that they are having refurbishments done, but no one actually wants to go through the hassle of having it actually done.

If you are not completely sure what you want your kitchen to look like, it is a good suggestion to visit show kitchens at home improvement stores and even pick up brochures there to study at home. You could also buy a few magazines and surf the Internet for ideas.

Once you see a few examples that you like, be sure to cut out the pages and print off the image files after downloading them. This way you can build up a dossier of the things that you would like to integrate into your new kitchen..

Once you are pleased that you have all the components you like, you have to collate them. This does not have to be to scale or exact, but just as good as you can do with what you have. Take a large sheet of paper, say A3, and draw in your kitchen's windows and doors.

Then cut out the pictures of the items you want from the magazines and brochures and stick them in place. If you think that this is not feasible, draw them in and label them unmistakably so that you can refer back to your picture file.

You need not stop at one design, you can play about with it. If you cut the pictures out, but do not stick them down, you can move them around until you are happy. You may also want to get the opinions of other members of the family and have a brain storming session

When you have finished, decide how you are going to illuminate the kitchen. Do you want a pendant light over the table? Do you want spots pointing at the cooker and the sink? Do you want hidden down-lighting to shine on the work surface? How are you going to see what you are doing? It is a very important question. Wall lights are good for ambient lighting.

In conclusion, you have to choose a colour scheme and you are almost ready to start, unless you are using a contractor and then you will have to select one first, but that will make up the contents of another article.




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