Home Improvement Blog

Posts Tagged ‘kitchens’

It’s all very well having an ideal kitchen layout with every labour-saving appliance imaginable, but if the ventilation isn’t right the kitchen of your dreams could soon become one of your nightmares. So choose carefully to make sure you get the best system for your particular needs.

In its most basic from ventilation can be provided by opening a window, unless you have permanently fixed double-glazing, of course. Open-window ventilation is seldom if ever very effective and in bad weather just not practical; in winter you could also pay a fortune in lost heat. What you need is a mechanical method of ventilation.

The simplest mechanical ventilator is called a ’self-actuating’ fan. This is designed for mounting in a window pane and literally runs on air, the fan blades turning in either direction according to the difference in pressure between the inside and outside air. For the kitchen use, however, this type of fan is rarely suitable because you cannot always extract fumes and steam when you want to; if the pressure is higher outside than inside the fan will draw in fresh air and may, in fact, push the fumes, smells and steam further round the house.

A good kitchen ventilation system must provide you with positive control over fume, steam, and smell extraction, which means installing a system that incorporates an electrically-powered fan. There are two basic types: extractor fans and fan-operated cooker hoods. No kitchen, whatever its size, should be without one or the other. Read the rest of this entry »

To give a new look to the room in which the cook in the family may spend anything up to eight hours a day deserves more than a quick attempt to copy the neighbours or the latest kitchen brochure. It all comes down to a question of pre-planning rather then panic buying. There will always be discount offers and sales bargains in the kitchen field so don’t rush into buying an ill-assorted collection of units and appliances.

The aim is to minimize the amount of movement required between the three major work centres: sink, cooker and food preparation/ storage area. These centres should be position about 1200 – 1800mm (4-6ft) apart in the form of triangle, with the work centres at the three angle points, enclosed by lines of worktop surfaces and storage cupboards. If work centres are in one long line you will find yourself walking considerable distances to get from one to another. The total walking distance between sink, cooker and food preparation/storage areas should be no more than 6m (20ft). Try measuring out your existing layout and see how it mathces up to this ideal.

Safety is a point often overlooked in a favour of convenience. Your cooker should not be opposite your sink as the dangerous situation of carrying scalding liquids across the kitchen will arise several times a day. Cooker and sink should be along the same wall or at right-angles on adjacent ones. And even if your kitchen is spacious, the arrangement of units is largely dictated by the shape of the room, the position of windows and doors and to a degree the plumbing and other service points.

On a more modest scale moving a door, or even rehanging it to open outwards, can make a big difference to a kitchen layout. Try changing an internal door for a space-saving folding concertina type, a fold-aside or sliding door. A semi-open plan can be achieve quite easily by introducing a pair of saloon bar swinging louvre doors between living/dining room and existing kitchen, although these are not suitable where small children are running around.

Although you do not want too many windows in a kitchen as it cuts down on a storage space, you do need good light. It is often possible to enlarge a small window or make a new one facing a good view at the sink area to make wahing-up more of a pleasure. Picture windows should have opening top lights or louvres while small, self-actuating plastic ventilators can easily be fitted to any windows. Before making holes in the walls for a new windows, consider the problems of condensation and where extractor fans or hoods will be most needed. Read the rest of this entry »