Kitchen refurbishment Leicestershire

Creating an Innovative Kitchen with the latest on-demand Designs

When it comes to home refurbishment, the kitchen is one of the areas that require special attention. You can create a cutting-edge space with the latest kitchen fixtures and fittings. We want our homes to be standard, and kitchen is the best place to illustrate how standard you want your home to look. Personalising the design of the kitchen with contrasting cabinetry and surfaces with a more eclectic mix of materials has gained tremendous popularity. Creating designs with unusual materials and finishes is the latest look for kitchens, as such should be considered when thinking of giving your kitchen a new look.

Texture and colour create a perfect contrast, and both can be used in much the same way to bring balance to low-sheen lacquers, flat matt walls, and sharpen worktops. When talking about textures, doors are not left out; what will always remain a strong trend is a textured door finish. While this trend can take the form of an unfinished raw natural material and rough-hewn, however, foils, vinyl wraps, and lacquers that depict the look and feel of stone, cement, and wood are far more accessible. The admiration for the look of natural materials with the consistency and practicality of man-made, stone-effect worktops, cladding, door fronts and splashbacks continues to feature in modern kitchen refurbishment in Leicestershire design schemes.

Metal-wrapped doors and panels, and textured surfaces in the kitchen are an emerging trend, while over the past few years, bright metallic finishes have skyrocketed in popularity. Concrete and stone finishes and decors are now monolithically used together with matching panels and worktops, to achieve a homogenous appearance making the kitchen look as if it was cast in concrete. Metal coatings have texture and depth; they can be mixed with book-matched blanch, gloss lacquers, or a textured finish to establish a flaky effect. Also, metal sheets add to their beauty as they age because they acquire natural lustre during their ageing process.

In a switch from natural materials, there is now a trend to include luxurious and anarchistic surfaces in a kitchen. Rather than rely on expensive and sophisticated appliances to achieve a luxurious look, textures and materials can be used and as such, they have become an essential element, ranging from mirrored splash backs to stainless steel. Ceramic worktops that look like natural stone are also being used in open-plan living areas to give the design an opulent feel. They’re set to be the next big thing as they’re hugely practical and come in a wide variety of colours and finishes.

When the fittings and fixtures of your kitchen have been chosen, the flooring and walls should be the next point of call. Replica tiles and heritage paints create authenticity and can be a good point to start. Sticking to neutral colours with modernity such as grey is a good choice; however, blues and soft greens have gained tremendous popularity and can also be considered. No matter what you are looking to achieve with your design, whether you want a modern, minimalist, traditional or rustic look, there are many material options to choose from to accomplish your design goal.

Kitchen Remodeling

A whole kitchen remodeling can cost lots of money. In fact, a survey reveals that it can cost anything between $10,000 and $55,000 depending on what features you want.

Of course, this is not something necessary and we are going to give you few inexpensive ideas for kitchen makeover in this article.

Change handles and pulls

To start your makeover, we suggest you to change your handles and pulls with something that is either colorful or classical, such as the brushed nickel products.

2013-kitchen remodeling

Paint your cabinets

The easiest way to change the whole look of the kitchen is to paint the cabinets in a color you would love seeing every day. New cabinets are price, thus why this is an effective and inexpensive choice for your home.

Change doors

You can either remove the doors of your shelves or replace your current ones with glass-paneled ones. This will increase the light of the place and make it even more cozy.

Paint your walls

By painting your walls, you will change almost everything in the kitchen. The color makes the whole impression in almost everything and from there comes the difference.

Final Thoughts

You can also buy some small appliances that are colorful and won’t cost you much, but will make the difference. Remember that placing a rug will make the place more comfortable and maybe colorful.

We hope that this guide is going to help you make the needed and inexpensive changes for your home.

Style Quite Literally On Tap!

Be they in the kitchen or bathroom, our taps are used so frequently – we wash our hands and face and clean our teeth many times a day – and yet they are often overlooked as simply functional accessories and yet with a bit of digging and inspiration you might find a way to give your basins a lift by replacing your taps. Of course it is not only style that can justify a change in faucet; there are in fact many different types of tap with various pros and cons. As we are at the heart of home refurbishment Leicestershire we keep up with the latest developments.

In terms of functionality requirements are distinct in the bathroom and the kitchen. Your bathroom taps should be able to control the temperature to a more sensitive level as our skin will come in contact with the water from them more regularly, while a kitchen tap will benefit from swifter access to stronger water pressure and the two temperature extremes to satisfy washing up and pouring a nice cold glass of water.

This short article aims to shed some light on the much neglected tap and how despite our apathy towards it, it remains at the forefront of advancements in technology and design.

LED temperature sensitive bathroom taps
Ideal for running baths, these stylish taps are lined with LEDs that change colour in with the temperature of the water (blue=cold, pink=warm and red=hot). This is a nice detail which marries functionality with style and can add to that magical candle-lit bathroom ambience.

It doesn’t have to be chrome
Chrome looks great, which is why in terms of modern bathroom and kitchen design it is all pervasive and yet there are alternatives. Copper and bronze are both making a comeback, especially when contrasted with colours on the grey/silver spectrum and there are a range of copper sinks– especially the hand-hammered textured sinks – that come with gorgeous copper waterfall taps that can really look great in a well-designed bathroom.

Flexible faucets in the kitchen!
Have you ever found yourself with a mountain of washing up and a tap that just won’t move high enough to direct the water? Or perhaps you have a jug or that won’t fit under the tap to fill it? There are some great options that not only solve your problems but look amazing too. At the top end there are some truly gorgeous articulated kitchen taps that can offer around 46 cm clearance and are made of a unique combination of carbon and metal for consistency and durability. If you’re not feeling so flush, there are some excellent monobloc taps with flexible hoses that achieve the same objective.

Let there be Light in my Kitchen!

Whether yours is an open plan kitchen or a smaller room, we all have areas in our kitchen from islands to units to corner cupboards that suffer from poor lighting. Fortunately with the enormous range of solutions on the market there is an answer for every lighting issue.

A very clever and reasonably priced solution, especially for those kitchens whose dark spots change with the weather and time of day, is to introduce flexible spotlights. From spot lights with shades that rotate 90 degrees each side to clamp-on, moveable spotlights with long, flexible, scissor arms that can follow the darkness around, perhaps on a seasonal basis, such lighting options represent a great, flexible and inexpensive option.

As open plan kitchens have prevailed as our kitchen of choice, so the question has arisen as to what constitutes the best lighting for such a room. It may be that generalised ceiling spotlighting provides the main light to the room and other options fill in the gaps. Recessed halogen spotlights are unobtrusive and efficient and can be spread evenly across the ceiling giving good universal coverage. However there will likely still be areas that need augmenting.

In larger kitchens a centrepiece hanging light feature like a chandelier or pendant light for a more modern touch, above the island, breakfast bar or dining table can look great and provide character as well as a welcome mood-lighting option. In larger kitchens benefiting from a nice dresser against a wall, perhaps a gorgeous free standing period table lamp could be the answer – with a wall-mounted mirror above the dresser this can be a real coup.

For the more modern kitchen, LED is an option that cannot be ignored for its potential to add real panache. When incorporated below the kickboards of your kitchen units, waterproof, self-adhesive LED tape or strips can be a wonderful addition to a 21st century kitchen. Whether they are applied below the kickboards, in the recesses of handle-less kitchen drawer fascia or above large cabinets, these fun, low energy lights are a superb option. LED tape is also available with colour changing for the more adventurous among us.

What often infuriates me is searching around in the back of those hard to reach corner cupboards for the one thing that I need that has happened to fall down the back and it is impossible to see where. To avoid this frustration, for the gadget lovers amongst us, motion sensitive surface mounted lights can be placed inside the cupboard and only activate as we open it. What makes these nifty gadgets even cooler is that as they run out of battery you simply remove them and charge them via a USB cable with your laptop or PC!

Never has there been a better time to shed some light on the darker recesses of your kitchen spaces and the kitchen refurbishment Leicestershire team are more than happy to show you the way.

Which Kitchen Worktop?

Why go upmarket
Should I go for Granite, Corian, wood or quartz? It is one of the biggest dilemmas when designing your new kitchen, given that changing your worktop is not a habitual event and plenty of time will be spent using it for years to come. Increasingly people are setting aside a larger portion of their budget for surfaces once considered an extravagant outlay. One of the main attractions of higher end surfaces such as granite and quartz is that they are relatively indestructible and render that awful water-lifting that plagued laminate and scratching that affected stainless steel worktops a thing of the past.

Pricing
Using laminate (cheap), wood (medium) and granite (expensive) as an example, you might be able to make an instant decision according to budget. Laminate comes in at around £20 per metre, wood at around £70 per metre and granite anywhere in excess of £220 per metre. These are rough guide prices and there is plenty of variation on the market. For the purpose of this article laminate shall be treated as a budget choice and is recommended only if the other options are prohibitively expensive.

Wood
Wooden surfaces look the business and are a far cheaper option than quartz or granite, so what’s the catch? Well, given several coats of Danish Oil, months apart and care when it comes to leaving water marks then wooden surfaces can maintain their appearance, by and large, for many years. There is no getting away from the fact that more care is required than with quartz or granite, however.

Mineral/Acrylic blend Solid Surface Material
A synthetic material made up of a blend of minerals and acrylic of this ilk lends itself to kitchen worktops as it is seamless, stain resistant and can be moulded into the most awkward of shapes and spaces and there are over 100 colour choices. However, such surfaces are not as heat resistant as granite or quartz and more susceptible to scratching although marks can be simply sanded out. It is also a more expensive option.

Quartz
Quartz worktops are as strong as granite but also benefit from increased flexibility, which makes them easier to install, although they are even heavier than granite, so professional installation is mandatory. Quartz is not indestructible, but it is stain resistant and because of the colour choices available seams can be hidden well.

Granite
Quarried from the earth in large chunks, granite worktops are increasingly popular and will not discolour over time. They do need to be sealed year after year as they are naturally porous. The appearance of granite worktops is not uniform, as it is natural although they are immensely durable and should last several lifetimes! In terms of price granite is comparable to quartz although because it is not made to measure you will usually end up paying more and installation must be done by professionals such as kitchen refurbishment Leicester.

In summary, while granite remains the worktop du jour, quartz is gaining ground and the mineral/acrylic blend surface has its place when flexibility is a must. In reality either quartz or granite will, given that they are installed satisfactorily be winners – adding to the value of your house to boot – but should you not mind taking a little extra care, the aesthetics of a good wooden worktop could win you over, especially considering the potential savings.

Clever Storage Solutions for Smaller Kitchens

A lack of space
Not all of us are blessed with the modern day favourite: the large open plan kitchen. Most of us face the eternal dilemma of where to put everything! In fact, I hazard that even those endowed with large open plan kitchen diners that have been ineffectively designed bemoan a lack of STORAGE! Even if a kitchen has been designed relatively effectively, with plenty of storage space the nature of life is that we accumulate things and sound kitchen design necessitates storage that has the capacity to evolve alongside our lives. This is where experts involved in kitchen refurbishment Leicestershire really earn their salt.

Evolving space
Advancements in design and technology have yielded some superb new products and arrangements that enable kitchen designers to get around issues of storage space. The trend towards blurred lines between kitchen and living space need not necessarily be achieved by knocking down partition walls. In fact those with small kitchens can expand into their dining and living space through subtle integration of kitchen storage with stylish tables featuring hidden draws underneath their surfaces, for instance. With minimalism also high on the agendas of an increasing number of people, much can be learned from the emergence of ‘micro homes’ or ‘tiny houses’ which by necessity have involved some truly ingenious space saving ideas, such as fold away tables and benches with storage under the seats.

Larders etc
The life-changing qualities imbued in the magic kitchen larder cannot be overstated. Simply put, when you get a larder there’s no turning back. So if you are in the process of deciding on an extension or have a spare downstairs cupboard or toilet next to your kitchen, or even a corner of your kitchen that could be given a wall-mounted pantry it is an addition that you will never regret.

The words ‘larder’ and ‘pantry’ are so antiquated that they conjure visions of a grim dusty cupboard with a hard concrete floor and a thriving population of spiders and yet it can be über stylish. Imagine a whitewashed room of flexible shelving accessed by pocket glass fronted doors that provides all of the flexible space needed for those awkward but essential bottles of sake, soy sauce and the pots and pans and accessories that just don’t fit in the cupboards! Having all your food storage in the same part of the kitchen can also revolutionise your cooking time as well as making putting away your groceries a snap. Given the choice, a walk-in larder is the ideal solution and can even, given that it is cool, enable you to store your hard cheeses, eggs, potatoes and some fruit there freeing up precious space in the fridge!