7 Smart Kitchen Solutions
Design your kitchen perfectly whether you have a small budget, a small space, or just need a small addition.
Design your kitchen perfectly whether you have a small budget, a small space, or just need a small addition. We’ll show you how to get the best lighting, layout, and functionality with 7 solutions to spruce up your kitchen space.
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Kitchen Islands — More Solutions, More Photos
A proper kitchen island balances a challenging list of requirements. It needs to provide the necessary functions, such as counter space for cleanup, food preparation, cooking, storage, seating, or all of the above. And the island has to fit the shape of the room and the personality of its cook. Here are three solutions to different sets of circumstances and requirements that strike that balance.
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When designing a kitchen, many people rely on the concept of a “work triangle” that orients task-specific areas so that the cook moves through the motions of food prep, cooking, and cleanup in a triangular pattern. The concept makes perfect sense, and certainly the result can be a kitchen that’s easy and enjoyable to work in.
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Remodeling a small kitchen without adding square footage can be frustrating: too many tasks to fit into a limited space. However, a small kitchen can function well and include interesting elements if you open the kitchen to larger spaces and keep the layout simple.
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Planning Your Kitchen: Five Tools for Layout
As you begin to make more detailed plans from your preliminary sketches, you want to be sure you will be making a highly functional kitchen, one that will be pleasant, efficient, and physically comfortable to work in. Finding good-quality and appropriate cabinets, appliances, doors, and other items is important. But putting them in just the right configuration, with just the right dimensions, is even more crucial.
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Thrifty Solutions for an Outdated Kitchen
Kitchen renovations can be among the most costly projects a homeowner can undertake. When Sarah Shideler and her contractor husband, Bill, decided to update the kitchen in their ranch house, they focused on five key factors to control costs: Add space and light without building an addition; don’t move the plumbing; keep the countertops uncluttered; buy ready-to-assemble cabinets; and consider a variety of countertop materials.
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For all the talk of the kitchen serving as the new family room, first and foremost the kitchen is where we store food, dishes, and utensils; prepare and cook meals; and clean up the mess when we’re done. With planning and some readily available cabinet accessories, recycling can be as easy as throwing out the garbage.
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A well-lit kitchen has a mix of direct and indirect lighting. Read on to find a shorthand guide to the four ways to light a kitchen (ambient, task, decorative, and accent lighting), and see examples of fixtures on the market today. (Online members only)
