Remodeling the kitchen was the last project that we have done in our house in the Netherlands. The old kitchen still looked nice at a glance, but when you look closer, you would notice that the paint started to let loose from the doors and drawers.
But that wasn’t the biggest reason we wanted to remodel the kitchen. The layout of the kitchen was just not working for us. The refrigerator was just too small, we didn’t have a decent freezer and the kitchen just didn’t feel part of the house.
As you can see in the pictures below, which were taken when we bought the house, the refrigerator is sticking out in front of the wall opening. Behind the wall is the dining table, so the small opening just wasn’t working for us.
The kitchen is built in the extension of the house, but with the kitchen only located on the right side, the left side of the extension was just a completely empty area with only a cabinet. But it didn’t feel part of the kitchen.
The new Kitchen Plans
So in the new kitchen layout, we wanted to have at least a full-height refrigerator and a decent freezer. The old kitchen didn’t have any upper cabinets, which we really liked. It gives the kitchen a much more spacious feeling. We also want to integrate the other side of the extension into the kitchen.
The most obvious option was to place the refrigerator and freezer on the left side of the kitchen. Here we could easily place a full-height cabinet, and make a nice coffee bar next to it. We bought the bar table a couple of years ago, which we really liked, so we want to keep that in the center.
This lets us to the following floorplan for the kitchen:
Most people would argue that the refrigerator is too far away from the working area. It’s not within the kitchen triangle. But with the kitchen completed now for a couple of months, I can say, it worked out really well.
We did actually test this layout first, before making the final decision on it. Because we had to do some work to the walls behind the old refrigerator anyway, we moved the old refrigerator to the other side earlier on. This way we could test out if the new layout would work for us or not.
The old kitchen had a black tile floor, whereas the rest of the house had a laminated oak floor. This separated the kitchen from the rest of the house. With the oak floor still available on the market, we decided to place the same floor in the kitchen.
Remodeling the Kitchen
After removing the old kitchen and old floor tiles, we first needed to level out the floor. We also needed to add some extra sockets for the coffee bar and LED strips in the oak shelf.
All the cabinets of the new kitchen came pre-assembled, so we only needed to place them in the right location and level them out. Unfortunately, the countertop broke at the factory on the day of delivery, so we used a temporary countertop for the first couple of weeks.
The Result
As you can see in the final result, we placed handles drawers in every cabinet. This gave some challenges for the dishwasher because we needed to have room for the recessed space above the drawer. To solve this we placed an additional dummy door panel on the dishwasher front.
This meant that the dishwasher needed to be placed further to the back, but because we had chosen to go for the 65cm deep countertop, we had room for it.
We used the following materials and colors in the kitchen:
- Floor – Meister Laminated Oak floor (Bargello oak 6423)
- Wall color – Singing Sand (Sigma Clean matt paint)
- Cabinets – Matt black oak fineer
- Countertop – White Ceramic with a marble look (Evora Quartz helix)
- Appliances – AEG 8000 series
The coffee bar and refrigerator worked out great. We placed an outlet with USB ports above the countertop. This way you can charge your phone without the need for the adapter.
Above the sink, we placed an oak shelf of 2.20 meters long and 20cm deep. We integrate a Philips Hue LED strip into the shelf. In the evening this gives a nice warm light and when working in the kitchen we can turn the light up.
The adapter for the LED strip is hidden behind the cutting board at the end of the shelf.
