A few generations ago no-one paid much attention to the design of the kitchen. It was deliberately located away from life in the rest of the house and kept the cook out of the mainstream. How times have changed. The gradual shift of a woman’s place from boss of the kitchen to a key player in the work force has liberated the kitchen from drudgery and given it new focus. At last, the kitchen has come out of hiding and into the spotlight; it’s the heart and soul of the home where we are nourished both physically and emotionally. It’s no longer a basic utility area but a smart, stylish contemporary space zoned to meet the needs of family life.
Kitchen zones:
Kitchen is a room you spend a lot of time in and an awful lot of money renovating. Frankly, if kitchen functions well, then life is on track. If it’s difficult to work in, you’ll start and end day stressed. Today’s open-plan kitchen is where you entertain friends, supervise the children’s homework and basically run the house as ‘the family business’. Cooking and eating habits have changed and the design of the kitchen reflects this. With today’s emphasis on casual living, there is no longer such need for a formal dining room. To make the best use of your kitchen space, first identify all the activities that will take place there, both cooking and non-cooking, and then allocate the zones accordingly.
Food preparation
This is the centre of the action in the kitchen. Try to gear the design of this area to the type of food being prepared: fresh and fast warrants long, wide benchtops with easy access to the fridge and freezer. If you have a big family, then the bench should be able to take eight dinner plates laid out. Worth considering too, is how many cooks there will be in the kitchen. Plan the under-bench storage so it can take knives, chopping boards and utensils. Food storage should be only a step away.
Cooking
This zone depends entirely on your preferred cooking style. Today there’s more emphasis on grilling food, wok and stove-top cooking, and the consequent multi-burners and indoor barbecues have expanded the cooking zone. Singles and time-poor can get by with only a cooktop and microwave, but if you cater for more than five or like to entertain, then give space to at least one oven or heavy-duty range. Allow one metre of bench on the right –hand side of the cooktop (the reverse for left-handed cooks) as landing space for pts and pans.
Eating area
Open-plan blurs the boundaries between food preparation and eating areas, so you may want to give back a degree of privacy to the dining are. Consider locating the table away from the mainstream of kitchen activity or partially screening it from the view of people moving through the open space. Locate a cupboard for storing glasses, china and so on near the dining table. Of course, before you buy your dining table, measure it to make sure it actually fits in the room.
Cleaning up
Washing up becomes easier if you close a sink and dishwasher on the strength of the amount of actual cleaining up you have to do. Even with a dishwasher, you’;; still eed a deep sink for washing pots and large platters. To move and work comfortably, allocate up to one metre of space on the active side of the sink and above the dishwasher. If you install a smaller rinsing sink as well, this will extend the space further. The sink are itself demands under-bench storage for cleaning gear, perhaps a bin for food scarps and a container for recycling cans and glass
