5 kitchen design ideas

kitchen renovation might be the thing
the project that you are working on
right now please welcome Karen steely
our designer is going to walk us through
some of the tips that you need to think
about and you know what it's not stuff
that is necessarily that obvious but it
is very important it's so important
because as your plenti or kitchen people
who live in their kitchen yeah so it's
really important to get it right if you
don't and you spend all that money it's
heartbreaking so I'm just gonna walk you
through like five really simple tips
just to kind of keep in mind as you're
starting to plan your kitchen and some
of them as I say they may be like oh my
gosh of course
so we'll start really simple and we're
gonna look at this picture this is quite
a lovely kitchen it's not huge but what
you can see right here is the doorway
and though so well therefore the traffic
actually walks away outside of the
working triangle so I'm going to show
you a floor plan so you can see what I
mean okay so if you look what they've
done well in this kitchen is they
redirected or upside down we've
redirected the traffic so that when you
walk in the kitchen you want to go to
the backyard you can see you're not
walking through the working triangle
which is wonderful so the working
triangle is all of this we're doing all
the cooking and the putting away of the
dishes and all of that stuff right so
when the idea where we're trying to read
you back where you can imagine it the
doorway outside was over here people
would be tempted to walk behind the
island which we don't want them to do
right so in the ideal world we want that
space clear a lot of people ask me if
they can get seating at their island so
if you want seating there in the ideal
world if you've got kind of a hallway or
in our cases kind of traffic and you
want stools minimum clearances about
five feet a little more is even better
if you want to cooks in your kitchen
it's nice to have at least four feet
because then you can actually walk by
each other okay look in my house we only
need one it's not going to be me my feet
yeah we're gonna get in there another
important tip is that when you're
thinking about placement of your
appliances it's important to think about
some working space around your
appliances so every just for example you
don't to stick your stove against a wall
because then how would you ever turn
your handles away so they're not in the
hoe and the hallway here or you might
have a fire hazard if you have the stove
right against the wall so make sure you
have Landing space on either side and in
the example of our fridge you
if you have a beautiful the French door
fridges are really popular right now
which means both doors open the great
thing about that is that the door swing
doesn't take up as much of this kind of
hallway area so people can walk by more
easily the thing that does happen though
you can imagine that when you open both
doors you don't necessarily want to put
something down beside the fridge at this
point you may want to turn around and
put it on another surface like an island
so this is a wonderful situation here
where you'd open up the French doors and
you can put something on the island and
if you don't have a surface to put
things on you're in trouble yeah because
I'm holding it you're trying to close it
with your own you're walking all the way
over to the counter to put it down and
then coming back it's just function
exactly and sometimes people for example
might have a really deep fridge which is
great if you're in a small space for
example and you don't have a lot of room
for cabinetry yeah so you might have
things that are buried the back your
fridge so that you might have to pull
something out to get to the next item so
it is nice to be able to put something
down of course counter that fridges are
really popular right now and then they
get a little bit wider so there's lots
of options okay if this door of the
fridge swung this way then you could
actually put some items down right
beside it but a lot of times we see
pantries on either side of our fridges
to make them look more built in in which
case again that landing space behind the
fridge like an island surface or
peninsula is a perfect spot okay good
yeah another tip is we want to make our
appliances feel built in a particularly
fridges so if you think about it a lot
of times when you walk into somebody's
kitchen and I'm going to flip back to
the photo now we walk into the kitchen
you can see that people who have those
older kitchens may not have their fridge
built in properly so what ends up
happening is this upper cabinet is only
12 inches deep so they can't actually
use it and then they don't have the
gables building in the kitchen here or
building in the fridge here so if you
build this a little bit deeper and put
some Gables the fridge will look much
more built in okay so we've got a fridge
that looks built in and a lot of folks
are doing that and it really does look
absolutely beautiful like you planned
everything when everything looks built
in exactly now let's talk a little bit
more specifically about the fridge these
are the French doors you were talking
yes so this is the French tres you can
imagine it's nice again to have that
island right behind you when you have a
French door and the fries at the bottom
is really popular as well yeah more more
people getting that and there's so many
sizes and fridges this one's considered
kind of a mid-sized bit large for mid
sized okay so be thinking about your
family and thinking about your needs and
how much space you need do you need
water do you need
ice maker you know the smudge free
stainless finish is really handy when
you have a family and then of course the
function of the fridge and how you store
things away and this one's really fun
because it's got so many ways to
organize and everybody knows I love to
organize it so one of things I love
about this Ridge is we can actually do
stackable crispers so normally you have
your crisper over here which if you want
to you can configure your crisper over
here but you can put it up here instead
so there's lots of options so the fridge
can actually be a little bit more
Universal and design meaning it can grow
as your needs change right so this is a
Frigidaire fridge that we're looking at
right now but what's great about this as
well as I bet these go up and down well
you can you can actually slide these out
these actually can move this is a really
fun features to this if say for example
I came home with a big bottle of pop or
a pineapple because it's date night
yeah then I can slide this underneath
that's important or and you get the big
I need to do something really tall
sitting here but you don't have to give
up that space all the time
mm-hm or for example say you're coming
home you having a party you have a bunch
of Mia Prosecco
you know does Jeanette showed earlier
then you can actually flip this open oh
and you can put all your bottles there
so you know when you're having parties
you have different requirements than
when it's everyday living and this
fridge can change with all your
requirements yeah no that's very cool
and they really thought ahead there when
it comes to all of that stuff because
you find that you get stuck when you get
a whole bunch of things better a certain
size and then they're all stuck on one
shelf and that shelf gets packed and
then you don't know where to put them
yeah and I love the counter-depth fridge
because we aren't stacking stuff all the
way the back of a fridge and ready to
pull them out so this this is a really
nice configuration the French door looks
great as I was talking about you can
imagine when we get to a 36-inch fridge
if this was a single door that's taking
up a lot of this traffic zone so the
nice thing about the French door is you
only have you know these half sized
doors so that somebody can still wander
by yes beautifully organized