Kitchen Essential

Sinks and Taps

Essentials like sinks and taps are such an integral part of the kitchen that it’s easy to forget what a variety there is to choose from.

Old-fashioned porcelain butler’s sinks (the deep rectangular tanks that have been turned into so many container gardens over the years!) are still very appealing for country-style kitchens. The disadvantage with traditional installations was that the join between sink and adjacent wooden draining board was difficult to seal, allowing water and waste to get into the gap. If you’re buying a new butler’s sink, look for a design with an edge that overlaps the worktop, to avoid this problem. Continue Reading »

At its most basic, the kitchen is the engine room that drives the long food processing chain. This stretches from the farmlands and oceans that produce our food to the landfills, rivers, and seas that take the eventual wastes and rubbish. But the chain does not start with the food growers and processors — it starts with you. For it is what each individual consumer decides to buy that ultimately determines the produce — and the price — from the growers and the food industry. The purse is very influential and we, as consumers, have both power and responsibility for making choices. Continue Reading »

The kitchen is the heart of the house, the centre of consumption, the hub of daily life. It is the place where family and friends gather to eat, drink, and chat, share their joys, or solve their problems. It is the base of all domestic operations and the one place where we can “act locally”, and play an active part in protecting the health of ourselves and that of the wider environment.

The kitchen of childhood dreams is a place full of appetizing and tantalizing smells, a farmhouse kitchen, perhaps, hung with polished copper pots and pans and warmed by a glowing fire. However, behind that dream lay the reality for the housewife of long hours of tiring work stoking fires, heating water, hand-washing and ironing, scrubbing and polishing, and cooking. Continue Reading »

Sharp or squared off corners and edges on worktops

Adults can sustain bruises, grazes or scrapes and small children more serious knocks to the heads and eyes from sharp corners. Laminated work- tops can be obtained ready-made with smoothly rounded edges. Always ask for radius edges or post-formed worktops.

Unhygienic work surfaces

Hazards of food poisoning can be reduced by thoroughly scrubbing any wooden or tiled work surfaces after each use. Danger can lurk in the grouting. Likewise, joins in laminated worktops must be butted up tightly and evenly to minimise places where bacteria can accumulate.

Kitchen step stools should be well maintained and used rarely. If they are in constant use, consider rearranging cupboard contents to make things more accessible. Continue Reading »

These examples will show you some different ways in which efficient planning of kitchen zones can be put into practice.

This L-shaped kitchen (left) illustrates the way the work triangle of sink/cooker/refrigerator has been adapted to the needs of the family as well asthe constraints of the room itself. The workflow sequence is not perfect, but it does make sense. Perfection would have demanded costly major structural work not essential to safety and efficiency.

The U-shaped kitchen/living room (below) illustrates the way in which the utility, eating and working kitchen areas have been created. Within the working kitchen are the six zones: food storage, preparation, cooking, serving, dishwashing, crockery storage. In this case, as the fridge is close to both the working kitchen and the eating area, the food store is not in the ideal position. However, the needs of the whole family have to be balanced against the needs of the cook, and this is an acceptable compromise. Continue Reading »

Fitting the units

If it is necessary to adjust the height of the work- tops, the simplest way is to alter the plinths of the base units. Many units come with adjustable legs, concealed on completion by the plinths, which can be raised or lowered a few millimetres.

If you are taller than average, the legs can be raised on blocks to the required height. The plinths may cover the blocks, but you may need to conceal a wider gap and this can be successfully achieved by continuing the vinyl flooring up the face of the plinths. Continue Reading »

To ensure you have a basic understanding of what is involved in creating a new kitchen — whether you are doing it yourself or handing it over to a team of contractors. You should have an idea whether you are going to extend, knock down walls or make structural alterations of any kind.

First, obtain some graph paper, pencil, rubber and a steel rule. Carefully measure your kitchen area and mark the dimensions to scale on the graph paper. Mark in the heights and positions of doors, windows and any items that cannot be moved, such as pipes or a central-heating boiler.

Divide the room into zones — working kitchen, utility and eating. On a separate sheet draw and then cut out scale outlines of your appliances, or even make models, and move them around the plan to see how it would work. Continue Reading »

Work surfaces

A good cook will insist on an efficient kitchen that saves unnecessary work. Careful planning must go into the kitchen layout. The most satisfactory plan often links, in a triangular path, the three basic elements — cooker, sink, and food storage — to the preparation centres. They should be located in a compact sequence and not too far apart in order to save unnecessary movements. But personal preferences and styles and methods of working are also important, and you may want to have cookware and utensils within easy reach, as well as such ingredients as oils and condiments. If you spend much time cooking and baking, you may decide to have mini work centres conveniently located around the kitchen for such activities as chopping vegetables, mixing ingredients, baking, and other space-demanding tasks, such as bottling and making preserves, beer, and wines. Continue Reading »

When you change from processed to fresh and whole foods you will need less room for packaged, canned, and frozen produce, but at the same time more space for fresh leaf and root vegetables, fruit, dry staples, such as pulses, rice, pasta, dried fruit, and home preserves. Modern kitchens are rarely designed for storing bulky items and hardly ever have access to the old, efficient larder or pantry, or to a cellar or basement. A healthier diet, with raw or lightly cooked vegetables and less meat, will cut down on cooking but requires more varied preparation space. You will also need extra bins for sorting waste for recycling and composting.

A simpler lifestyle requires fewer gadgets and less equipment, necessitating fewer built-in cupboards. Ideally, you will have a larder, but if this is not possible, you will need a food cupboard sited against a cool external wall with several vents to the outside. Continue Reading »

Serving

As long as there is sufficient work surface beside the hob, the oven or the free-standing cooker on which to put plates and serving dishes, there should be few problems.

Within the serving area there should be convenient storage for oven gloves, serving spoons, plates and serving dishes.

Dishwashing

This is often a part of the preparation area. However, if the kitchen is large enough, it may be worth considering a separate dishwashing zone, close to the eating area. This zone will accommodate the waste disposal unit or a rubbish bin and, ideally, a dishwasher. Twin sinks should be large enough to hold a grill pan.

The hob should be linked by a worktop to the sink. It should also have ample work surfaces on both sides of it. Kettle, tea, coffee, cups and saucers are best kept close to the sink. Toasters should be on a work surface or shelf near to the bread. Deep drawers for bread storage are preferable to bins on the work surface. Continue Reading »

The working kitchen divides into six sections:

1. Storage of food

2. Preparation

3. Cooking

4. Serving

5. Dishwashing

6. Storage of crockery.

For efficiency and comfort of operation, it is not only necessary to ensure the layout is right; utensils, gadgets, saucepans must be in the right places.

Storage of food

Just because the larder has always traditionally held all the food, condiments and spices, there is no reason why things should not be changed around to give greater convenience.

What is the point of crossing to the other side of the kitchen to find the stock cubes or sugar when they are required at the cooker or the table? The larder can then be used for longer-term storage of cans, packets and bottles. Continue Reading »

Everyone has their own pet ideas on storing items that no standard kitchen unit could accommodate. For example, units don’t provide little hooks for all those rubber bands we can’t bear to throw away! So full marks to those British kitchen unit manufacturers who do look beyond merely what their Continental rivals provide, and actually try to see what the housewife really needs.

Recipes and recipe books are never provided for. Recipe cards or small notes are not easy to handle whilst making a new cake for the first time. A bulldog clip and a cup-hook attached to the underside of the wall unit solves this problem. Attach the recipe to the bulldog clip and simply hang it on the hook! Winchmore Kitchens have produced a recipe book holder which looks, when closed, like part of the pelmet concealing the strip light under the wall cupboard. When it is pulled out it holds the book — just like a mini-lectern. Continue Reading »

When someone is busy cooking in the kitchen, the instinctive urge for visitors or bystanders is to want to have a taste. Eating food where it is prepared is a traditional, and very comforting thing to do. In prehistoric times it was the norm. There was no special room for eating, nor was there co-ordinated linens, crockery and cutlery! Raw materials were simply hunted, harvested or gathered, then roughly skinned, chopped or ground with simple implements. Cooking, where applicable, was over an open fire and eating was a communal process vital to survival.

Historically, cooking and eating habits have refined and continually changed over generations and according to the structure of the social system. Formal dining rooms were associated with privileged sectors of the community — those who had servants to scrub, clean and polish their homes and possessions. Continue Reading »

This young couple have one child and the possibility of more to come. In this first home, with a limited budget, they wished to spend it as wisely as possible. First priority is the working kitchen, which must be efficient, safe and as timeless as possible. They could not afford it to look old fashioned within a few years.

Sensibly, the washing machine and a sink were plumbed in the garage where the central-heating boiler had already been installed to allow more space in the kitchen. The fridge/freezer, fronted by decor panels to match the units, was placed next to the garden door. Adjoining this is the gas double oven. Base and wall units link up to the double-bowl, round red enamel sinks under the window. Continuing round the kitchen, units link up to the matching red gas hob with an extractor fan above. Base units continue fromthe hob up to the peninsular breakfast bar — also a useful extra work surface. To make use of the end of the wall unit (see picture left) a midway unit, normally wall mounted between worktop and cupboard above, was fitted to hold cruet, jam, sugar and so on in handy reach of those using the breakfast bar. Continue Reading »

There were no children in this household and the owner enjoys entertaining a constant stream of visitors.

Laundry equipment and the central-heating boiler were moved to a nearby utility room. The boiler left a chimney breast and recess which had been used for a flue and the question was whether to demolish it or leave it as a focal point. It was allowed to remain and the built-under oven and hob unit were inset here in an alcove of rustic tiles. The chimney breast surround was faced off with bricks and the whole cooker area was reminiscent of an old kitchen range.

Between the kitchen and the front of the house was a small breakfast room/study. Although the kitchen was an ample sized room, the wall between the two rooms was demolished and an archway formed in its place. Continue Reading »

Shape solutions

Small, awkward-shaped kitchens can present special problems. These examples show how these virtually unworkable kitchens were transformed into labour saving dreams.

Five walls

A tiny kitchen in an old end-of-terrace house in a garden suburb presented a challenge with three windows and five walls, none of which was of equal length.

The new owner was a busy professional woman who lived with her teenage daughter. Breakfast and evening meals were to be eaten in the kitchen. Maximising on the microwave and the freezer, they entertained friends about once a month. The budget for this kitchen was moderate.

The previous occupants had fitted some units which had suffered from misuse. The double- drainer sink unit was against an inside wall which complicated the plumbing to the drains. A free-standing cooker stood in one corner near the door which led to the tiny utility room and toilet. Continue Reading »

Complete kitchens should never come ‘off the peg’. Every kitchen is different because every household is different — small or large families, a single person, a group of adults and children — almost any combination, in fact, with almost any lifestyle. Added to this, the family or household group will have different needs in, say, ten years’ time, and different budgets available for the work to be done.

Of the hundreds of kitchens that Roma Jay has planned, we have taken eighteen examples to illustrate the variety of family sizes and needs, and the range of budgets available.

The size of the kitchen is not necessarily the crucial factor. A spacious kitchen can be just as inconvenient as a very small kitchen if the layout is bad and if it does not meet the needs of the people who use it. All the case histories described here are actual living, working kitchens, but you should not assume that any of them will perfectly match your unique requirements. The intention is to help you to analyse your own requirements and see the tremendous range of possibilities open to you. Continue Reading »

Probably one of the greatest needs when improving kitchens is to create more space by repositioning walls, doors, windows and demolishing cupboards. The objective is to achieve more usable space without going to the expense of building an extension. These examples illustrate ways of achieving this end.

Window into doors

When this young couple wrote to Ideal Home magazine for advice on their kitchen, their first child was expected. The house, built in the 1920s, had a very large kitchen with windows overlooking the garden; a large walk-in larder and a big utility room. In fact the house was featured in the magazine during the 1930s.

An interior designer herself, the owner only needed a kitchen planning expert to provide the key to spark off her own creative ideas to revamp the kitchen. In this case, the key was to convert an existing window overlooking the garden into French doors, in order to give easy and safe access into the garden for the future family. Continue Reading »

Two large walk-in store cupboards dominated one end of this kitchen. The wife of the family is a sculptor and spends very little time cooking. But after many years of making-do she felt a complete change was necessary.

The family consisted of parents and two grown up children and a cat. Their dining room was used as a study, so they wanted to eat and entertain in the kitchen. With good natural light from the window overlooking a garden full of sculptures, the potential was great.

At the opposite end of the kitchen to the walk- in store cupboards, another two cupboards housed the washing machine and central-heating boiler. Continue Reading »

When this family of four moved into their new house in a fashionable part of London, they had no idea of how difficult it would be to fit the kitchen.

The room had a window, a deep recess and five doors which left no walls for fixing base and wall units. One of the doors led to a pantry, broom store, box room and WC. It was decided that the only way they could have an efficient kitchen and informal dining area was to demolish this cluster of small rooms, revealing a long narrow area — ideal for an efficient workflow. The family consisted of parents, two children, an au pair and a dog. The cellar housed their laundry equipment and boiler.

Space is put to far better use when the run of units is unbroken by doors and windows. Efficiency and a good workflow are easier to achieve: this new kitchen is a perfect example of a U-shaped arrangement . Continue Reading »