Shape Your Kitchen Around You

Here at Home Tales, we specialise in house renovations in London. When it comes to extensions, over half of our projects are ground floor extensions. All of these extensions result in a kitchen refurbishment, and almost all of our clients choose to install a new kitchen. The kitchen design is very exciting. For most homeowners, this is the first time they are designing a kitchen exactly how they want it. In addition to this, you are working with more space which you are gaining from the extension. More space means you have more options available, and it gives you a large white canvas to unleash your design within.

The kitchen is a very functional part of the home. For this reason, it’s important you find a balance between something which looks great, and that also works well when put into practice. All London properties come in different shapes and sizes. Whether your property is 4m wide or 7m wide, there are loads of options when it comes to designing your kitchen. There are four basic shapes which you can use as a guide. 

The L-shape kitchen

The L-shape kitchen works well when space is tight, and you want to incorporate a dining table within the general kitchen area. In this case, the l-shape kitchen cabinets typically wrap around two sides of the dining table, creating a defined kitchen and dining zone. Our client in North London did just this.

You don’t have to incorporate a dining table within this design. You can keep the space open and simply have lots of room to move around. Our client had loads of room on their ground floor, so they chose to keep this middle area clear. They then placed their dining area in a different room. 

The U-shape kitchen

The U-shape kitchen is fantastic for small spaces. It’s important you maximise light for this style of kitchen to give the area space to breath. We would also recommend open shelves for the top-level storage (instead of cabinets) to stop the area feeling too cramped. Alternatively, keep the cabinets to a minimum. You can add a breakfast bar to this design if you have room, which gives the illusion of a kitchen island without having to find space for one. 

Parallel Wall kitchen

This kitchen style works very well if you are short on space, as it works as a ‘walk through’ into another area (eg. dining and/or living). This option works well for more narrow rooms or houses. 

The kitchen island

If you have the space for it, you might want to consider a kitchen island. From a practical point of view, they maximise countertop space and storage. They also help to create a bridge between your oven, sink, hob and fridge. They are versatile and we often place hobs or sinks within them. From a design perspective, they make wonderful design features within the room. Large rooms can be tricky to get right, particularly in Victorian or Edwardian terraces where they aren’t naturally part of the architecture. Kitchen islands help to fill the room and draw the eye.

We installed this beautiful kitchen island in our South London project. The room is 6m long and 4.5m wide. This allowed for a wonderfully large island, which really takes centre stage in the room. The island houses the hob, which features an extractor fan within. This means you don’t need an extractor fan above the island. The fridge is opposite the island, which is great for practicality reasons and moving around while cooking. They chose not to add seating within their island, as they wanted a wine fridge instead. You can choose to recess the cabinets of your island on the far side, which allows the countertop to lap over the island. This enables comfortable bar seating to be allocated on the far side. This is purely personal preference. You can benefit from additional seating or additional seating – the choice is yours! 

Lots of kitchen companies offer 3D visuals and support in the early stages of your enquiry. For example, Wickes offer 3D visual with their quotes (free of charge). We would recommend going to look at some showrooms and sitting down with a couple of companies to get their guidance and advice. It’s very important that you have an idea of what you want from your kitchen while you are designing the shell of your extension. You might want to include a skylight over a particular function, eg. a dining area. For this reason, we include basic kitchen layouts within our floorplans as standard. We offer unlimited amendments so you can play around with lots of kitchen options on our floorplans. Call our team on 0207 043 2378 or email us at hello@hometales.co.uk to learn more. Alternatively you can book a site visit via our online booking system


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