Tips for Planning Your January Kitchen Refit

Is 2019 the year for planning your kitchen refit? Maybe you have the work booked and planned and are just counting down the days. Or perhaps it’s simply a target that you want to achieve at some point in the year to come. Whatever stage you’re at, it’s likely that you feel a little underprepared. Your kitchen is the busiest and most functional room in the home so it can be daunting to plan for having it out of action for any amount of time.

Winter Impact

A January kitchen refit is certainly a great way to start the year afresh. However, the cold and possibly wet, snowy, windy or all of the above conditions can present challenges. You’re less inclined or able to cook on the BBQ for the duration of your kitchen refit. So you need to ensure that you have either the budget and time to eat out for the duration of the work, or that you have a temporary worktop and nominal facilities located elsewhere in your home. On the plus side, reduced kitchen facilities will certainly help you to keep that new year’s resolution to stop picking food from the kitchen cupboards!

Budget Constraints 

Perhaps you feel that your dream kitchen is out of your budget. However, this is not an insurmountable challenge! At this crucial planning stage, you can make the savings that will mean that your dream marble worktop can become a reality. If you’re not changing the structure of the room, plan to keep internal cabinet structures that can be reused for your new kitchen. With a new granite worktop and updated cabinet doors, your existing kitchen structure will be unrecognisable.

Choosing Materials

When planning a budget for any home improvements, you need to identify those parts of your design on which you will not compromise. For kitchens, this often comes down to your choice of materials. So do the groundwork in this decision by looking at the whole range of materials that are out there. If you know that the benefits of stone make this material ideal for your worktop, check out all of the options. Where the natural graining of marble or granite is extremely striking, the consistent pattern of quartz or dekton display functionality. 

Suppliers

Research your suppliers, and choose reliable sources for your materials. Perhaps you will contract a firm to manage the process of planning your kitchen refit, or alternatively identify individual suppliers yourself. From electrics to worktops, ensure that you are happy with testimonials and recommendations. 

Ensuring your kitchen works. 

The real key to planning your kitchen as a space that will last is to be honest about your needs at the planning stage. Are you a busy family who will be using the kitchen for several hours a day? You must ensure that your surfaces are hard wearing enough to match. Are you a keen but fundamentally messy chef who will balance scalding hot pans on surfaces and spill sauces? Choose a durable worktop material such as quartz to accommodate. Or perhaps your new kitchen will be a statement. From worktop to the kitchen island, you seek to create a stylish haven. The cool lines of marble or granite will slide seamlessly into most design concepts here.

Finishing touches

When planning your kitchen refit, it may be tempting to start shopping for those finishing touches so that you feel organised. Avoid purchasing worktop accessories and appliances until we’re into January when prices will have come down. Being well planned does not mean that you need to have everything done well in advance, and those finishing touches really are best left to the end. Sometimes you need to see a space in its final stages before you can identify the design accents that will be perfect on your stone worktop.