If you are going to alter your kitchen in Ruislip, there are many things to take into consideration. First and foremost is your budget. It may well be that you would love to rip everything out and start over again from scratch, and of course, you can do that if you have about £25,000 to spend! The kitchen, believe it or not is the most expensive room in most homes.

Of course, many people today entertain family and friends to dinner, and in this day and age, the kitchen is where it happens. The dining room seems to have gone the way of the dinosaur. Indeed, many people who have wanted to enlarge their kitchen have pulled down the wall between it and the dining room, making it into one very large area which is ideal for entertaining.

If you are going to start from scratch, you have to consider many different things. For instance, you might want to change the position of the sink, and that means that you need to take up the floor and change all the plumbing around. If you are going to do that, you might well consider installing underfloor heating at the same time, especially if you are going to have a tiled floor. Underfloor heating can be cheap to run if you use a water-based system, and it is perfect for use in conjunction with tile or stone flooring.

Then there is the question of your appliances and the cabinetry. You can actually change the appearance of your cabinets very easily just by changing the doors and the drawer fronts. Why spend money on the rest of the cabinets when nobody is going to see them?

Hiding The Appliances

What some people are doing today is hiding all the appliances behind cabinet doors. So, the fridge, freezer, washing machine, and so on are hidden out of sight. When you want something from the fridge, for instance, you just have to open two doors instead of one, but it gives you carte blanche with your colour scheme because you have all the white goods hidden away, and all the cabinet doors match each other. Not a bad idea if you can afford to do that.

If you have the space, you might want to install an island. You can use the island as a table, which many people do. But you could also install the cooker and/or the sink in an island if you wish. Again, you would have to alter the plumbing and the electrics.

Then, of course, you have the worktops to consider. There is a host of different materials that you can use for your worktops, but a couple of things that you need to consider. In most kitchens, the worktops get quite a lot of use because the food is prepared on them, although in most cases not directly on the worktop itself but on chopping boards and plates and so on. They also have plates and cutlery plonked down on them along with pots and pans. The upshot of this is that your worktop material needs to be able to stand up to it.

The second thing about worktops is the appearance. That, of course, is going to be a matter of personal choice, in conjunction with the functionality. There are many different materials that you can use such as natural stones, laminates, wood, stainless steel, concrete, and more.

Many people today who are changing their worktops are opting for natural stone because it is, well, natural. So, you can use marble, granite, quartzite, limestone, and so on, and there are also worktop materials that simulate natural stone such as laminates, sintered stone, quartz, and more.

A popular choice is marble worktops in Ruislip because of the iridescent sheen that marble has. Many people think that marble is just white, but in fact it is available in a wide choice of different colours and patterns. There is a lot of marble which has masses of veining in it which depends on the conditions under which it was formed millions of years ago. The veining is caused by layers of clay that were swirled around as the marble was formed under the seabed, and the result of this is that every single piece of marble is unique. So, if you choose marble for your worktops, nobody else will have the same pattern/colour that you do.