The first challenge of our kitchen renovation was that the existing kitchen wasn’t in the right place in the house. It seemed to me the original designer created a 4-bedroom house and then realised he had forgotten to add a kitchen. To correct his oversight, he quickly added some cabinets to the first bedroom he saw and hoped no one would notice. It was hard not to notice a should-be bedroom with cabinets along one wall at the back of the house, when the rest of the living was at the front. We knew that the first step in designing this kitchen was moving it to the right room in the house.

The bedroom off the living space was the obvious new location for our kitchen but this decision wasn’t without complications. Though this space should have been the kitchen in the first place, it functioned as a bedroom. We were looking at designing a space that was 2.9m x 2.9m with two walls with large windows that sat too low for kitchen benches. With confidence in our design knowledge from our previous kitchen renovations, we thought we could decide on a new kitchen layout ourselves, but we found experience doesn’t always serve you well.

As we designed our kitchen our thoughts were to take all the wall space we had and wrap the whole room with cabinetry. We had a vision of a huge kitchen tucked away behind our lounge and lost sight of the simple fact - less is more. Our initial design actually compromised open plan living. Using all the walls meant we couldn’t fit a space to sit at a bench and we had a void in the middle of the room that would made the kitchen frustrating to use. I had a feeling I have never had before in renovation, the feeling we had made the wrong decision. So once the house arrived on site and the builders started preparing the space for the new kitchen, I knew we had to start again, this time calling on true kitchen expertise that we have relied on for our past kitchen renovations. 

The first step was getting Kitchen Mania on site for a consultation. I don’t believe in designing a kitchen from a floor plan - our initial design is the perfect example, it didn’t work! During our site assessment we talked through how to make the layout work - to make it open plan while still functioning well. In no time at all we decided on a kitchen layout that we knew would work perfectly with our house.

The next step was heading to the Kitchen Mania showroom to make some key decisions. We decided on Engineered Stone from Heritage Hardware for the benchtop. Engineered stone is unique - it’s natural and an ideal surface for high traffic and everyday use. We decided to upgrade our cabinetry to have both colour and soft closing doors. We settled on a striking selection of handles, tapware and sink from Heritage Hardware. What started as a kitchen design disaster may just result in our best kitchen yet!