Do I have awful taste in kitchens.

I hate anything Grey in a house especially the new craze for grey front doors. Yuck

I live in a rented 1960’s bungalow and I don’t think the kitchen has ever been updated. It’s a museum piece but I quite like it. There is a pine ceiling and fake cork Lino floor. I have added a book case where I store beans, lentils etc in jars. There is a square IKEA table in the middle where I make bread etc. It has a very peasant like feel, but it is a proper working kitchen and I would feel a bit intimidated by some of these showroom kitchens.

Now, dogs are a real problem in an open plan kitchen Alioop. From grubby paws scratching cupboards and worktops, to charging round like lunatics and shedding fur. My breakfast bar works a treat because I barricade the puppy the other side of the preparation and cooking area, then I pass the serving dishes across the counter to people the other side.
I like the sound of larder cupboards housing eye level ovens, but what do you do to incorporate the fridge if it is a different colour?

Oh, oh...I think many of you would hate my kitchen. I've knocked through into an unused bedroom, it's a bungalow, so I can have french doors to the garden. The kitchen units are white and I have large larders down one side with eye level ovens built in, but I have painted teal around them to add a bit of colour. The worktops are grey and I've added a teal sofa, rug, etc down at the French doors beside the dining table. I'm sure a lot of you are hating the sound of it, but it suits me. I've had the country kitchens, etc as I moved every couple of years, I'm loving the clean lines of this one. Oh, I never did the island thing, it would be in the way for the dog who loves to charge from one end to the other so why stop her fun lol.

Sink not a problem Josiann as everything goes straight in to the dishwasher. Works for us.

No table in my kitchen. Table in the dining room where we dine and sofas in the sitting room.
We do spend lots of time at our island, often perched with laptop or a board game. The grandchildren love it and call it grans bar.
Not for everyone obviously.
As long as we’re all happy with what we’ve got then it’s okay.

Paperbackwriter

I don't understand the obsession with kitchen islands. And why have a kind-of breakfast bar with high stools when there's nearly always a perfectly good table close by as well? I'd far rather have a huge table in the middle of my kitchen than a bulky great immovable island.

I have an island with a breakfast bar at one end. I use it as a perch to sip my morning coffee and to eat a croissant while skimming GN on my phone or reading headlines on my tablet. I also check the post, write out recipes, pay bills and make calls while at the breakfast bar so I guess it kind of becomes a little paperwork station. It feels like a trendy coffee shop!
My hob is also cut into the island so I can watch the pots bubbling away while I sit there. I once had an island with the sink cut in it, but it was annoying to have the dirty dishes near my papers. I prefer to eat my meal at the proper dining table.

noni123 yes, my type of kitchen! I especially like the French doors on to the garden.

having moved a lot and lived abroad I have had all sorts of kitchen in my time .In portugal I had marble floors and parquet , 2 different doors in and out of the kitchen. Very useful when I had a pancake party for about 20 people and they could come in one door and out the other as you tossed their pancakes and they choose their fillings. In damascus on a ground floor had metal cupboards to ensure no creatures could get into the food and a whole range in between. I have lived with whatever there was and organised it to suit me and only once had a kitchen with little or nothing in it . There I was able to kit it out with lovely wooden cupboard doors etc and bought it from some one who was "upgrading " their kitchen. It saved me a whole load of money, recycled perfectly good units and lasted for 20 years until I moved. The only time a kitchen made a difference was when we looked at a house and the bathroom was totally dark blue and the kitchen filled with bright orange cupboard doors. Couldnt face living with them , but they were perfectly serviceable and did not buy the house! I have cooked in earthquake areas where you had bottled gas (which would run out without in those days a warning whistle) provided meals for visitors when I had to have enough to feed 8 people with the equivalent of a baby belling cooker with bottled gas and at one time had to cook for a short time on a camping stove to provide all food for a family, and sailed quite a lot when the pressure cooker provided invaluable and safe cooking while at sea. Each to their own but I preferred to save my money for experiences and activities and not spend it on just the actual furniture of a kitchen. The thought of the landfill amounts with kitchen and bathroom changes every time a house changes hands is very sad to me. Set your kitchen up to provide you with the best working area you can and ignore what other people do. Your place , your choice.

I don't understand the obsession with kitchen islands. And why have a kind-of breakfast bar with high stools when there's nearly always a perfectly good table close by as well? I'd far rather have a huge table in the middle of my kitchen than a bulky great immovable island.

These ultra modern kitchens are probably bought by the people that have their own website, full of photos of food that they probably didn't even cook but were downloaded from somewhere like Pixabay. I'm sure no actual cooking takes place in these kitchens. The kitchens like the one the OP speaks of, I would imagine, is very cosy. A place where the kids play or draw picture whilst sitting at a huge country style table. If I had a huge kitchen, I'd like it to be homely.

Zoejory

*noni123*, your kitchen is my kind of kitchen!

Thank you x
For anyone that is interested we had the 'Kitchen Sprayer' when we had the units repainted. This was quite inexpensive & we didn't even have to empty the cupboards or scrub them beforehand. We could have had any colour we liked. They were in and out in a day & we had a new kitchen!

Your kitchen should be your choice and what works for you.
You have to live and work in it.
However if you decorate with resale in mind then it's fashion dictates

Josieann

I'm more of a lounge and bedrooms soft furnishings type person, so kitchens do not usually excite me. My favourite kitchen is probably shaker style. Colour is all important to me, so these dark greys that are currently in fashion would not be my choice though they do look smart if accessorised with copper for example. We are having a new kitchen this year and I am currently battling with my husband as I have chosen a pink art deco style. He prefers a toilet green colour!

He’s more of a ‘pee green’ man then??
Go for the pink! Although I don’t like grey as a rule, it would actually go rather well with pink.

noni123, your kitchen is my kind of kitchen!

Surely a kitchen should suit the main person who makes use of it's facilities?

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202201/medium-455110-20220113-133630.jpg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202201/medium-558498-20220113-133613.jpg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202201/medium-744746-20220113-133330.jpg

I love my kitchen -definitely not sleek & modern & currently needing a bit of a sort out! We were building an extension 12 years ago & I found a guy on ebay making freestanding cupboards & got him to make this for a fraction of a showroom kitchen-apart from the dresser which was purchased later-another ebay bargain! Had the whole kitchen re sprayed by a company 3 years ago & lasting really very well. We have an edwardian house so it suits it & us! Really lived in but I accept not to everyone's taste

I agree with many on here, preferring something welcoming rather than sterile.
When we bought this house the kitchen had just been revamped, probably to help sell it ( since people are so ‘kitchen fussy’ these days.)
It’s nice, matt cream shaker style and very well cupboarded but I missed my previous kitchen which was all country style oak.

Galaxy

I am getting a new kitchen fitted in a few weeks. I cant really remember what I have chosen as its dragged on due to Covid. I am not going to show you lot photos

Spoilsport!

I’m painfully aware of how woefully outdated and unappealing our kitchen’s appearance is, and simultaneously how desperately I DON’T want a whole new one with all the hellish upheaval and (post-Brexit) supply-related complications that could bring.

Ideally I’d like a couple of inspired hardworkers to come in for two or three days to give it a considerable visual uplift, ie redecoration job. But my hub doesn’t want that, and has his eye on the likeliest ease of being able to sell our home eventually. He’s probably right. But still, I’m the one who works in it every day and it is a very comfortable convenient space indeed.

I hate modern kitchens, I want loved and lived in, not sterile.

Oh I love an all white house. Lived in a rented one 30 years ago and have decorated mine that way ever since, I loved it so much.

But I definitely didn't want open plan. My current house has a knocked through living / dining room. I specifically wanted the two rooms separate so I had a dedicated teaching/tutoring room. But the house had other features that were not negotiable so I accepted it.

Unfortunately, it also had a beyond grim kitchen which I'm still living with as I gave DD my kitchen money for a house deposit.

My kitchen is forty years old. All wooden cupboards and thankfully only one high up. I have shrunk with old age. I have a very useful cool larder. Most neighbours have taken theirs out.
A lot of young people have posh new kitchen and rely on take a ways.

I am somewhere in the middle.

We have a combined kitchen and living room and as two windows face due west we do have curtains - for the first time since the days when I lived in a flat without a bathroom and needed to be able to draw a curtain whilst washing myself at the kitchen sink.

To me curtains, carpets and soft furnishings do not belong in a kitchen, which should be easy to clean and keep clean.

If I could afford it, I would definitley have marble work tops, Nothing better for rolling pastry out on, or standing hot pans on.

I would not choose to have books in the kitchen, but DH wants his cookery books there. Being a bibliophile, I don't think books should be anywhere near steam, cooking smells or damp fingers.

Compromise has resulted in books and a fair amount of other non-culinary articles in our kitchen-living room. We haven't died of food poisoning yet on their account either.

We love our Neptune shaker style kitchen made of wood that can be painted over if scratched, (they leave a pot of paint for this purpose) complete with lamps and shelves and china sink. After 8 years of use, it has stood up brilliantly and is very cosy but so smooth to use.