Easy Ways to Spruce up your Kitchen without Spending the Earth

When you’re on a budget, it can seem as if the interiors magazines are trying to taunt you with their beautiful kitchens and top of the range gadgets.

The kitchen can get a little neglected at times, even though it’s arguably one of the most important rooms in the house. It’s easily damaged,  tables, work tops and appliances are used on a daily basis and there’s always a kitchen designer or TV makeover show expert telling you that what’s ‘in’ at the moment most certainly isn’t your kitchen.

Don’t worry about all that – even if you can’t afford a complete redesign, there are ways to save money on revamping your kitchen. Even on a budget, you can find ways to make your kitchen look good again, and you won’t have to spend huge amounts of cash on the project.

It really doesn’t matter if the kitchen you have at the moment is retro or simply old-fashioned, modern and minimalist, rustic or just tired and bland looking. The first thing you can do to give it its pep back is give it a lick of paint.

Depending on the size of your kitchen, you can really go to town with the colour palette. If you’re feeling a little hesitant, why not try painting a coloured splash back? If you find a colour you absolutely fall in love with, paint wooden cabinets with it and give the room a completely new personality!

If you get a lot of natural light in your kitchen, you can get away with a bold, vibrant colour in a way that smaller, darker kitchens might not, so experiment away. If you have a small space, you can play with using bright white on cabinets to reflect the available light around the room and make it look bigger.

Changing the cabinets can be expensive if you have a lot of them – why not hunt around for new doors instead? You can revamp them, sand them down and/or paint them so that they look like a new kitchen! Alternatively, look for a retailer that’s having a sale, who might be getting rid of old stock, and see if you can bag yourself a bargain. As luck would have it, Paul James Kitchen Design are having a cabinet and appliance sale at the moment, so why not contact us or drop in and we’ll see if we can help you spruce up your kitchen for less?

Choosing Kitchen Appliances

While features and performance are the main thing you’ll be thinking about when you’re choosing the appliances for a kitchen, you naturally also care about how they are going to look, and might be led by current trends, too.

The old style white appliance never really dates, and stainless steel is also a classic. There are some amazing patterned fridges and freezers on offer that will give your kitchen a splash of pizazz, but you might find that simple black is all you need for your cooker.

Most cabinet manufacturers offer coordinated cabinet fronts and storage options to help camouflage appliances if you need to and with the amazing range of options available from professional kitchen designers nowadays, you can let your imagination run riot and find the appliance that suits your style, your budget and your needs.

Cooking appliances

The traditional range or stove comes in a single unit with a hob above and an oven below. These are coveted and fashionable with people who have larger kitchens, and they can be useful as space-savers too. Another way of making the most of your space is to look into modular hobs that you can add extras to like griddles, deep-fry and steamer units, grills and more. If you’re a consummate entertainer and like to be able to do everything, this approach might well work for you.

Modular is definitely popular with a lot of home owners these days, with wall-mounted ovens which are separate from hobs, double wall ovens which stack two ovens and even two-oven stoves, with one oven below the hob and the other at cabinet height.
If you’re stuck for room, built in ovens are another way forward, and easy to accommodate in most modern kitchens.

Fridges

When you’re choosing a fridge, the first question you need to answer is - how big do you need it to be? Some experts say that you should allow 12 cubic feet for two people and two more cubic feet for each additional person, but that’s not the only thing you’ll need to think about.

If you like buying BOGOFs or love to cook for family and friends, you should go even bigger, if you have the room. Side by side fridge freezers are popular but you can lose out on freezer space. It sounds obvious but you need to make sure that it can fit the kind of food you like to buy; will your Friday treat pizza fit in there?

Dishwashers

Dishwashers are made to be hidden away or at least unobtrusive; and if you can find one that helps you cut your energy costs, that’s even better. Look for a dishwasher that has internal water heating to save energy and your home’s hot water.

You can still find standalone dishwashers but these days most models are designed to be built-in. If you’re feeling indulgent, opt for a top of the range stainless steel model with electronic touch-pad, and a choice of washing programmes. Cheaper versions come usually offer three cycles: light, normal, and heavy.
If you need advice about the best appliances for your kitchen, talk to the experts kitchen designers at Paul James Kitchen Design.