Ideas For Our Future Home – Kitchen & Dining Room

Last month I did my first post about decorative ideas for our 2020 house starting with the bedrooms and office. And now it’s the turn of the kitchen and dining room which is the space I’m most excited for. Even though we can be a bit lazy with food, we both enjoy cooking. So having the right space to create food and then entertain is very important to us. In my old flat, everything was new and I had no say in the kitchen layout or design. And for me, it wasn’t worth spending the money re-doing it. There was nothing really wrong with it.

But when we move into our forever home the kitchen and dining space is an area we’re going to invest in. We have assigned money from our renovations budget to completely re-do the kitchen. So I thought I’d run through some of our ideas. We would absolutely love to be able to open up the kitchen and dining space into one area. Partly because it means whoever is cooking can still be social, but also I feel we’ll use the dining table far more if it’s in this space. If it’s in a room all on its own I don’t think that we’d sit at it as much.

Dining area

Obviously, we know not all house layouts will allow for this, but it’s something we really want to look for. In terms of the dining area, we actually bought a dining table a few weeks ago in the Dwell sale. We had spent time going around stores and getting some ideas of tables we liked. I saved a whole load of them in my Shoptagr and then one day I got a notification that one we loved was on 50% off. It was too good of a deal to pass up so we ordered it.

It actually arrived last week, and after checking it, it now lives in our storage unit. I’m so happy we managed to get this one as not only is it beautiful but it extends up to 8-10 people which will be great when both our families come around.

We’ve also looked at a lot of chairs. And I think this is actually going to be more tricky than the table as they vary so much in price. In an ideal world, we’d love swivel chairs and have seen some lovely ones but they’re £150-200 each which is just too pricy. One design we’ve fallen in love with are these Oxblood Faux Leather chairs, but we want to go to the showroom and sit on them to make sure they’re comfortable.

In terms of other furniture in this area, I’d love a sideboard/ cabinet for storage. But I’ve not started looking at any as this will be hugely dependant on the shape and size of the room.

The kitchen area

We’ve settled on the fact that we’re going to go for basic Ikea cabinets. They’re good quality, affordable and have a huge range of customisable storage options. We’d love to have everything in drawers as they’re so much easier than shelves. And depending on how much space we have we’d like to just have bottom cabinets (other than a tall larder cabinet). We’ve not actually settled on the colour but we’re thinking a grey or mid coloured wood.

And then when it comes to kitchen worktops we’ve toyed with a few ideas but would love some quartz worktops in a lighter colour. These would then contrast against the slightly darker cabinets and I think would look really striking. Not only does quartz look really striking, but the Gemini Quartz from J Rotherham is stain resistant as it’s non-porous. In a kitchen with two slightly messy cooks, this would be a massive blessing.

We’ve already earmarked all of the appliances that we want after a trip around Curry’s. This will include a Samsung American style fridge freezer which is going to be the most extravagant purchase. But a great fridge is so important. This one opens with the double fridge on top and a double freezer on the bottom. So it will be great for larger items. It also has a water/ ice machine in and an integrated tablet. So with this, I can have shopping lists up to sync with my phone when I do the shop. And also have our calendar on display.

This will alongside a Samsung dishwasher, washing machine and tumble dryer. The great thing about the washing machine is it has an add wash feature. This is a small opening meaning you can add extra items to the wash even after it’s started. Perfect for when you find that rogue sock.

Then a Nef oven, induction hob and extractor. With the oven, we’re going for a slide and hide door so it will be great for when we have larger items and just want to move the door out of the way. We decided to stick to two brands for consistency and these two are the ones we’ve decided to go for. We have gone for slightly pricier appliances but we’re paying for good quality, so hopefully they last well.

Do you have anything on your kitchen wishlist?

Pin It