Burning Question – What Would You Have in your Dream Kitchen?

It both amuses me and frustrates me that I’ve blogged this very question before, 3 years before!

Yes, it was three years ago that we first spoke to an architect and took the first, very tentative, steps towards our renovation. If I knew then that we would still not be even close to finished three years later I probably would have given up then and there. It seems life has a way of putting even the best laid plans off course… and it’s not like we’ve done nothing in the last three years. We’ve dealt with a new baby, flooded foundations (three times), and a heart attack, and none of these things have been very conducive to building our own house. So with only a little begrudging I have accepted the delays and the long drawn out processes… and here we are.

We are finally at the point where I need to make some concrete decisions about a kitchen. In the next three weeks I need to have decided on all the appliances, finalised the kitchen design and ordered it. Ok so it might not go in exactly on schedule but I don’t want to be the one holding up procedures on the off chance that we really are ready when we hope we’ll be ready!

Help!

I am not great at making decisions at the best of times, and these are no small decisions. These are big expensive decisions. Decisions I will have to use, look at and live with every day for a long time.

First on my list is appliances.
Oven? Cook Top? Range hood?

In the beginning we had plans for a beautiful wood fired oven, but things have changed a little. In the end the oven wasn’t going to heat our living area in the way we’d hoped and spending $1500 on something that wasn’t exactly perfect seemed a little excessive. So in the end we’ve decided the money is better spent on getting a new wall mounted oven and a new cook top. So now I’m waving goodbye to my blue Rayburn and trying to decide whether we need one really big oven or perhaps a double oven, one big one small?

I know I want a big cook top because I hate that I can’t fit four decent sized pots on our current one. I also know that it has to be electric and can’t be induction, so hopefully those limitations will make that decision a little easier. I also want a range hood that is big enough to really cover the cook top.

I think I want all of these appliances in that fancy, new, non-marking stainless steel…. except that we’ll keep our current dishwasher and that is white and we currently have a white fridge. Will that look funny?

We also need to look at a new fridge, and a new microwave too. I can see my budget being eaten before my very eyes!

If I can actually decide and purchase appliances then I have to move on to ordering the actual kitchen.

We are going with Ikea. For affordability, quality and range, they win hands down for us. So now I am up late every night dragging and dropping various kitchen cabinets around our ‘virtual kitchen’ and trying to figure out how to fit in every cool Ikea storage idea ever made. I’ve not even come close to making a decision about door fronts or bench tops, though I bet I’ll go with my safe fall back of white and wood, cause I’m boring like that. And what about handles? or maybe no handles?

Now lets move on to splash backs. Oh how I want glass, and if I don’t go too overboard on everything else then perhaps we can even afford it, but what colour???

Oh it’s all so darn hard, and The Father Figure is no help. He may think that saying ‘whatever you think is fine by me’ is helpful, but really it’s infuriating! Have an opinion damn you!

So tell me oh wise and wonderful blog readers…
If you were buying all new kitchen appliances what would you get?
If you were ordering your dream Ikea kitchen what would you design?
And, most importantly, what would you not do if you were building your dream kitchen?

{image: from 2012 Ikea kitchen catalogue}