If you want to radically alter the appearance of your kitchen but you don’t have a small fortune to spend, the good news is that it is possible.
It is equally possible to spend a small fortune – or some would even say a large fortune. £25,000 anybody? Very easy to do! Buy all new appliances and throw the old ones out. Install underfloor heating. Throw away all the cabinets and buy new. While you are installing underfloor heating, change all the plumbing and electrics by moving the sink and the position of the dishwasher and washing machine. Install marble tiles on the floors when you have done that. Indulge in exotic tiling for the walls. Buy some expensive lighting. Have gold-plated taps, and gold-plated handles on the newly installed cabinetry doors and drawers.
Bingo! Very easy to do. Did we say £25,000? And the rest!!
And that’s if you don’t extend a small kitchen by knocking down the wall between it and the dining room and turning it into one large cooking and eating area or adding an extension into your back garden. When you’ve done that, you will probably want to install an island in the centre of the room either for sitting and eating at, placing the oven and cooker in, or installing the sink there. Or possibly a combination of any two or three!
Oh, and you need a 55” wall TV. Can’t miss Corrie while you are sitting having dinner, can you?
We digress. We got carried away. We forgot that you only have a small amount of money to play with.
How about this? Change the worktops and the cupboard doors on the cabinets. And possibly the drawer fronts.
Yes, you can make a big difference to the look of your kitchen just by doing that alone. It won’t cost an arm and a leg, and it really will make your kitchen look like new.
Now there are obviously all sorts of materials that you can use for cabinets, drawer fronts, and worktops. You might want to use high end laminates for the cabinets and drawers, or possibly wood. Polished oak, pine, walnut, birch, alder, maple, and more, can all look absolutely great. If you don’t choose wood, you can really play around with all the different coloured laminates that are available.
When it comes to the worktops there is another consideration and that is that they are – worktops! So, they are going to get a lot more use and abuse than cabinet doors and drawer fronts. That means that they need to be tough.
Now some people still go for wooden worktops, but the problem is that they do need a lot of ongoing maintenance. But again, you can use laminates. You can use natural stones such as marble, granite, limestone, and so on. You could use polished cement. You could even use stainless steel, although many people think that it is hardly what you would call great, from the aesthetics point of view. However, from the point of view of cleanliness, it is as good as it gets and is the choice for almost all restaurant kitchens.
What about quartz worktops in London? Now quartz is a natural stone and is the second most abundant mineral in the earth’s crust, falling just behind feldspar. Some of the most common forms of quartz are amethyst, rose quartz, carnelian, onyx, jasper, smokey quartz, agate, tiger eye, and several more.
However, the quartz that is used for worktops is actually what is known as an engineered stone. It consists of natural quartz which has been ground into a powder and then mixed with resins and pigments on a basis of about 93% quartz aggregates and 7% resins and pigment.
What this does is produce a stone that can be in a wide choice of colours and has several benefits as a worktop. Not the least of these is that quartz worktops are totally non-porous. You can spill anything on them and leave it there for a week and it won’t harm or stain the worktop.
It is very easy to clean and is unlikely to suffer chips or scratches. However, you can damage it if you put hot pans on it, so in common with most worktops you need to use a trivet. Quartz is also a relatively inexpensive stone, so you can change the look of your kitchen without breaking the bank.
For further information about our quartz worktops, give us a call at Marble & Granite on 01992 535038 or email info@marbleandgranite.co.uk.
