RichardS noaccess@invalid wrote:
wrote in message
...
Duncan Lees duncan-at-snsys-dot-com wrote:
wrote:
That wasn't the problem we had, they were (in general) just plain
incompetant. One position a dishwasher under a sink, that's simply
impossible, it won't fit.

I assume you mean he put the dishwasher under the bowl of the sink
itself? Not so good. You can put a dishwasher under the draining board
side of sink and use the space under the bowl as a normal cupboard.
Handy for all the water and waste plumbing.

Yes, it was under the bowl! Having the dishwasher near the sink makes
sense from the point of view of using it as well of course. You can
empty dregs etc. in the sink which, if nothing else, is usually less
messy than dribbling them into the dishwasher.


wow, that's pretty incompetent for a so-called designer... what height was
the worktop at - normal height plus 30 cm??!!!

I think it was Magnet did the 'design', it was also horribly
expensive.

From the kitchen designers that I've had dealings with, they appear to be
people who don't cook an awful lot. The old "work triangle" design with
sink, fridge and hob at each apex is an efficient kitchen (but I realise
this just isn't practical in many kitches - especially galley style ones).
You really need some worktop space at both sides of the hob, worktop space
on the non-drainer side of the sink and at least some other contiguous
worktop space for preparation.

Most of the ones we met just took our 'we thought something like this'
layout and built an (expensive) fitted kitchen around it. There was
no input from them from the usability point of view and, if they
couldn't understand what we wanted or their units couldn't do it, they
just didn't bother.

In the end we spent a *long* time with bits of squared paper
scribbling and throwing away ideas. Our problem is that we have a
large kitchen but with two access points, an ordinary doorway on one
long side and a wide archway into the adjacent breakfast room on the
other long side. Thus the useful workspace is in two L shaped parts.

The original infelicity of the kitchen as we found it was that the
dishwasher was tight in the corner of one of the Ls and thus, when it
was open made that corner and the adjacent cupboard completely
inaccessible. Moving the dishwasher to the end of the L, still
adjacent to the sink was the fundamental 'right move' but it meant a
lot of thinking about all the rest of the layout. Given the size of
the kitchen we were able to fit a full double bowl sink in as well
which is lovely compared with the old 1.5 bowl one, I never really saw
any use for the 'half' bowl.


I'd really not want a hob flush against any tall unit - for safety I'd want
to be able to remove a pan quickly from the hob in either direction.

That was one of our other contraints, we wanted to get a 90cm hob in,
with as you say, space for pans either side and that was quite
difficult.


But then, I'm fussy about these things....

You mean you actually use the kitchen to cook/work in, I think lots of
people don't. The long time we spent (several months of elapsed time)
in thinking about our kitchen has really paid off. It's now a real
pleasure to work in as just about everything is in the right place and
we managed to get appliances that are good functionally too.

--
Chris Green )