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Looking for one last nook or cranny for your dishes? Have you found yourself in your kitchen desperately needing more space for cooking? These are some typical signs that it may be time for a new kitchen. The Most Important Room in the House. Here is a list of signs that you may need to remodel your kitchen. 

Counter Top Space

Are you constantly looking for some space to do prep work in your kitchen? Has your kitchen island become the family’s mail room? Sometimes rearranging your appliances more efficiently can open up some counter-top space. However, if this is the case, you may want to consider removing walls to create a great room that contains your kitchen, living room, and dining room. Opening walls also gives you creative options to create a kitchen island.

Outdated Appliances

Are your appliances the same as they were when the house was first built? This could be a very noticeable sign that your kitchen is starting to show its age, but more importantly could be costing you more money than you might think. Recent advances in Green Technology have created a demand for energy efficient appliances that can save you time and money.

Kitchen Flow

You may be aware of the kitchen triangle (the distance between your stove, refrigerator, and sink). However, once again sometimes the minimum isn’t enough, especially if there is more than one cook in the house. To create multiple cooking stations you can easily add a prep sink to create another work station. A well laid out plan should separate the cooking areas from the gathering areas of the home where guests and family socialise.

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Winter is coming and that means daylight saving is done and dusted, and the days are getting shorter, and quickly. You get the genuine feeling of the length of a day and the onset of another season when early mornings in the kitchen are dark and the late afternoons when you get home from work the kitchen feels like early evening. It makes you think about natural daylight. Let There be Light!

Lighten up

Can the kitchen be changed around to compensate for this loss of light over the next 5 months? Here’s a few things you might try.

Do you believe that windows are a direct connection to spiritual well-being?

And, the bigger the window, the better.

Window Treatments

Whether you have curtains or venetian blinds, remove them completely to allow more natural light into your kitchen. Yes, remove even the valance at the top if you have one. It will make a marked difference. If you want some cover over the windows, select a sheer white fabric. You get better light reflection into the kitchen if you change any of the textured or brightly coloured fabric for white. It adds a clean spacious look to the room.

Declutter

One of the hardest but most satisfying jobs to do is a good, sensible declutter. A season change is as good a reason as any to work out what you need and what can be tossed. Pay close attention to bench tops and open shelving in the kitchen. The tip is to do one small section at a time, slowly, so you can see what items can be moved out of view, and what items can be completely removed.

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Kitchen Design

Do you know what is the most difficult feature of a newly designed kitchen? Apart from the clever and creative designing? The positioning of the The Microwave and the Shelf. This is an appliance that sometimes confounds those of us who never really had a place specifically designed for it.

One of the good things about a microwave when you compare it to other appliances, is that they come in a wide range of sizes. You have the choice then of building it into a cabinet or for a counter-top model, you just put it on a shelf.

Common sense tells you that you should put the microwave near the refrigerator as you usually take something from the fridge and place it into the microwave to defrost, or zap to eat.

Bench or Cabinet?

One bad thing about a microwave is the extra depth you need to install it, so positioning it at bench height for easy access is a bit of a pain. You can get some microwaves that have trim kits so they can be built into a cabinet, but many do not. Placing the microwave on the bench top takes up a lot of space and doesn’t look all that comfortable.

Oven type Microwaves

That you-beaut oven type microwave serves its purpose but there are some negatives to this model even though it is at least off the kitchen bench. The venting on these oven microwaves are somewhat ineffective and accessing them can be unsafe with food possibly cooking in pots below.

But, after considering all this, there is a solution!

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