Project Casserole Design Development

Sorry for the massive delay in posting, guys. Since I last got a chance to update you, it's snowed quite a lot here in London and my family was here visiting. So I was a bit, shall we say, preoccupied! But now the snow is gone and so are the familials, so let's talk kitchen design. Specifically, IKEA kitchens and trying to figure out an aesthetic for our open-planned ground floor.

Photo courtesy of Design Crisis

I'm finding that the problem with an open plan kitchen / living room is that setting the "look" for our kitchen is actually about setting the look for the entire floor, as the kitchen will spill into the living room and vice versa. So it's made me slightly adverse to do something wild like this nautical blue and white kitchen, because how do you synch that with sofas?!

Photo courtesy of Apartment Therapy

And my aesthetic for kitchens tends towards industrial chic, which is all well and good in a warehouse conversion but not our little contemporary mews house. First of all we don't have any exposed brick, and secondly it just doesn't feel homey enough. Our house feels like a home. This kitchen felt like it was a step in the right direction but still too cold – all that steel! I hear it's a bitch to keep clean.

Our other option is to go for a modern or contemporary kitchen. We could definitely do it; it wouldn't feel like an anomaly in the house and our current furnishings could definitely work with a more modern aesthetic. But when you touch these kitchens, there is something off about them... a bit soulless or something. I don't know.

Photo courtesy of Apartment Therapy

Plus, it's not just me. I have strong aesthetic ideas and as a visual person, I see what I want in my head. Sometimes I have a hard time describing it, though, and The Irishman gets a bit frustrated by my lack of verbal clarity. So both of us have been Pinning our ideas for kitchen looks separately, and sharing big finds. Surprise surprise, we actually have pretty much the same thing in mind: traditional style cabinets, minimalist color, oh-so-trendy (but so cool!) railway tile, and industrial steel appliances. Our prayers were answered when The Kitchn posted this amazing and classic kitchen renovation a few weeks ago:

Photos courtesy of The Kitchn

Basically, this is what we want. We're going for a galley style, and want dark cabinets but a sense of lightness. There's a ceramic sink, stainless appliances, and that iconic tiling. And the homeowners even have big French doors like us! You can totally see a nice big sofa leading out from this view.

We'd already started designing our kitchen via the IKEA Kitchen Planner, but these photos really helped us solidify our layout and look. We are going for the Lidingo (or Lidi) style of cabinets, shown here all in grey but depending on the actual color of the white versions we might try the white on top to give the room a sense of lightness.

Sorry, this is a screenshot. But hey, IKEA, I'm giving you free advertising. So, you know.

Here are a few images of our initial room layout. We're not tiling EVERYTHING, but it's just easier to leave it all tiled that separate out the areas where we want tiles (though there will be some full walls with tiles above the sink and around the window.

Now that we're pretty confident on the layout and the style, we're just waiting on a few quotes from contractors so that we can decide how fast we can do the work. A lot of structural stuff has to happen first, as well as pricing the floor (so expensive!) but then we can go and actually buy the kitchen itself. So exciting! For the next installment of Project Casserole, let's talk fun design things: lighting! Taps! Appliances! It's home renovation galore!