Installing New Kitchen

[TomBrown]

Hi,

Well I've put it off for too long now, no change in exchange rate and the absence of a proper kitchen is becoming a pain. I need to get a new kitchen installed soon.

Would really appreciate your thoughts on my kitchen design. Underneath where the hob is are cupboards, but actually I want an oven there now.

Some details;

Concrete for the base units with wooden doors, tiled inside.

To include; hob, hood, oven, 2 basin sink.

Regarding the hood, I've been told that I should go for the larger ones and not the compact ones as the larger ones have better fans / bigger engine?

The hob will be gas, the gas bottle will be outside where the window is. I'd want a valve tap or the like to switch off the gas to stop my toddler causing harm. Any recommendation about this?

Appliances; lots of known names from the Home Works / Pro / and others, any to avoid? I was possibly thinking of Teka, not too expensive, really just needs to be practical. Home Work was pushing the Smeg stuff, but not sure.

Any particular regulations to follow, what about height of electrical sockets / switches above the work top?

Work top to be granite, India Black I think it was called. Presumably the shop can cut the wholes and shapes as requested?

Anything else I should know?

Thanks very much,

Tom.

[Artisi]

The concept looks ok to me, the only thing I would add is to replace some if not all of the under bench cupboards with drawers and look at the corner, corners are just waste waste space to me or a cupboard for collecting junk in which you can't access.

Have attached a pic. of the kitchen I just completed in my Sydney unit where I put the stove top in the corner with draws under - some space was lost but the usable space made up for it.

[teacup]

For a compact kitchen like this, you need to have more counterspace as much as possible for preparation.

I would…..

-hang a microwave underneath the top cabinet/ or insert into the wall cabinet

- put a sink at the corner, since a sinkbase cabinet works well for this dead space, this will free more space for countertop for preparation and less awkwardness interaction between yourself and a stove.

[Rimmer]

Agree with Artisi, draws under the counter tops and cupboards at eye level. The configeration of Two big draws under the work top are so very handy for big pots and un opened boxes and the like.

A good kitchen design is triangle of. Hob, Sink. Fridge your fridge looks a little way off the triangle.

At the risk of being boring have a look at my twin indoor outdoor kitchens at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/banjopicker/

You can see the BIG useful draws.

[TomBrown]

I had the engineer here today to measure the place and he will do his own design based on what we discussed this morning. Already since my first post there are some minor adjustments which I will post about soon.

What is your opinion regarding the extractor hood for the cooker. My own thoughts were that has the kitchen isn't that big, so a compact extractor without the chimney might be more suited, but at the risk of being under-powered for the job. If I get a bigger extractor with chimney, it might be over powering to the eye.

Should I include some venting for the hob and oven if they are to sit vertically to each other?

[BillyBobThai]

As a former cabinet maker in the states for 11 years, I would put a 12 to 14 inch tall cabinet full width above the windows. It is not very useful, but it make the kitchen look much better. Corner sinks are great but more expensive. My thought would be to put a lazy susan style cabinet in the corner and leave the sink under the window.

One of my neighbors here in Pattaya recently installed new cabinets because termites had eaten up his his bottom cabinets. What I have done is to put concrete on the bottom, and the upper cabinets have drawers on the bottom with doors above.

Hope this helps.

[fremmel]

I did a couple of non-standard things in our kitchen that worked out well. My wife is short (148 cm) so we made the counter tops 80 cm tall. It's a only a little low for me (180 cm) and it keeps her arms and shoulders from getting so tired. And we made the counter tops 70 cm deep instead of the standard 60. This gives us room to keep a few kitchen tools and other junk easy to reach and still have work space on the counter.

As mentioned before, it looks like your refrigerator is too far from the sink and counters. There's usually a lot of trips to the fridge when cooking. Also it's nice to have somewhere right next to the fridge to set things when you're putting stuff in or getting it out.

For your gas hob, consider getting one with one electric burner. Even the lowest setting on the smallest gas burner is too hot sometimes. We use ours a lot for simmering and slow cooking. One of our burners is a triple, singe-your-eyebrows, one and we use that a lot too. Our hob is a Smeg and we're generally happy with it but one thing I don't like is that although the gas burner controls have about 180 degrees of rotation but there's only about 20 degrees of rotation from lowest to highest gas setting. So making fine changes in the amount of heat is hard.

And lastly, be sure to put electrical outlets at 2 or 3 places above the counters.

[torrenova]

I second getting as much surface area as possible. I have a microwave, rice cooker, electric kettle, toaster all out permanently and some other things at other times. You cannot have too much room.

I'd also go for double sinks. Depth as well is important.

I'd build of concrete etc. and put hardwood doors on. Cabinets up top can store all manner of things but you should have large drawers below.

As for cost, then you can spend what you can afford. Some kitchens at places like HomePro cost the earth.

[TomBrown]

Got the kitchen installed. The work done wasn't particularly great, but its okay, though there is still a problem I need help with.

As suggested, the counter tops are 70cm deep, really good idea, 80cm tall as well.

Fridge would be on the left of the kitchen now.

By the way, the hob in the showroom had silver coloured metal knobs, but was delivered with black plastic ones instead. The reason apparently being cutting costs during this hard financial time.

Among the minor problems throughout this project (which I might comment on later), I have a concern about the oven installation. As you can see from the other photos, electric cabling that feeds the oven is directly above the oven / directly underneath the gas hob, as too is the tube that feeds the gas to the hob. So straight away I have a worry that the electric cables will melt with the heat from the oven (presume it get hot in that space) and potentially interfere with the gas and cause a much larger problem. Any thoughts on what I could do here? Oh, won't be asking the workers who installed the kitchen, was glad to see the back of them.

[Artisi]

Got the kitchen installed. The work done wasn't particularly great, but its okay, though there is still a problem I need help with.

As suggested, the counter tops are 70cm deep, really good idea, 80cm tall as well.

Fridge would be on the left of the kitchen now.

By the way, the hob in the showroom had silver coloured metal knobs, but was delivered with black plastic ones instead. The reason apparently being cutting costs during this hard financial time.

Among the minor problems throughout this project (which I might comment on later), I have a concern about the oven installation. As you can see from the other photos, electric cabling that feeds the oven is directly above the oven / directly underneath the gas hob, as too is the tube that feeds the gas to the hob. So straight away I have a worry that the electric cables will melt with the heat from the oven (presume it get hot in that space) and potentially interfere with the gas and cause a much larger problem. Any thoughts on what I could do here? Oh, won't be asking the workers who installed the kitchen, was glad to see the back of them.

The wiring and gas supply look very untidy and could certainly be arranged in a better fashion.

It's hard to tell from the photo, but the oven wiring looks to be too small - you should check the cable size and the oven power demand - if you are not sure if you have the correct cable size - post the detail here and we can check for you.

Suggestion for the cable route - bring it into the cavity as you have now, run it down the corner to floor level holding it in place with clips and then to the oven terminal box.

The gas connection for the cook top shown in the upper corner I would have external to the oven cavity - put in in the cupboard space where you can get to it easily so you can check for leaks and can be disconnected without having to remove the oven.

[fremmel]

A nice looking kitchen. I glad the countertop dimensions are working well for you. Looks like you used the same cabinets as we did - Smart Verona Oak. After 9 months we're still really pleased with ours.

Our oven enclosure looks a lot like yours - fully enclosed in a concrete base with no ventilation and the plastic gas hose inside. We took delivery on our oven a couple of months before we could install it because it was on sale. And we got impatient to finally have an oven so I set it on the floor and wired it up and we used it until the counter was ready. The oven never got particularly hot on the outside so I didn't worry too much about the installation. But since there's no ventilation in the counter base, after I installed it I pulled the oven out after baking some bread at 230°. I could touch the case but it was hotter than I wanted to leave my hand on. My gas hose runs up the back corner and when I checked that it was only a little warm. Not as hot as it would get sitting out in the sun. So I think that's OK but I'm still thinking about switching to a metal gas connection If I can find one. You may want to reroute yours so that it's not right on top of your oven. Or maybe put some fiberglass insulation between it and the oven if you can't get the hose to go anywhere else.

For the wiring, we used a connection block instead of wire nuts so it's easier to remove if we need to. Our oven is 3,000 watts so I used a 20 amp circuit with 2.5 mm wire. Your oven is probably around the same. It's hard to tell but from the picture it looks like your supply wire is larger than the wire going to the oven so if that's the only thing on the ciruit you should be OK.

Nice to see they did hook up the ground. Hope it leads to somewhere. I lived in a rental house one time where the water heater ground was hooked to a wire that went up through the ceiling - for about 6 inches.