How to transform your kitchen when the kids have gone
Invisible Kitchen Wear & Tear
Kitchens are the most used and abused family room in the home. Kids can really add to the wear and tear factor, but the knocks, dents and scratches gained over the years can become invisible to a family, just part of family history. Until one day, as family life changes, you notice your kitchen looking a little tired.
Kitchen Materiality
Often kitchen products and materials are specified to accommodate this tough treatment. Melamine is commonly used on doors and drawers in situations where resistance to wear and tear is required. However, these panels don’t always provide the look or colour a homeowner might want. As the nest empties out and traffic reduces - or is simply more user friendly within the kitchen area - then other products can be considered such as lacquer (paint) and timber veneer. Both these products still have good wear characteristics, although not as robust as a melamine, but the aesthetic advantages are massive.
Benchtops too can be reconsidered when lifestyle changes happen. Although engineered stones, porcelains and natural stones are all incredibly durable they come at a price. And that price can be off-putting when teenagers are happy to treat the entire bench like a chopping board.
A majority of benchtops that are 10-20 years old will be made from HPL (Formica). These tops don’t have the highest wear characteristics but are very economical. Swapping these out for a new solid surface can provide a much better aesthetic and a durable top that will outlive most of us.
Changing Kitchen Utilities
This is also time to consider what kitchen utilities you will need.
Now there’s just two of you, do you still need a whole dishwasher, or would it make more sense to have a dish-drawer? Or perhaps two dish drawers for when the family inevitably come back to visit?
Since your last kitchen was installed, design has moved on, so take advantage of pull-out shelves, ingredient drawers, slide-out bins or even pocket doors to hide away stuff you’d rather were not on permanent display.
And, if you’ve run with a huge fridge to cope with hungry teens for years, could you now downsize and install a wine cooler alongside?
Kitchens Designed for Post-Family Life
A good kitchen designer will take a brief prior to any design work. An important part of the brief is to understand what life-stage the users of the kitchen are at. The designer will use that information to design a kitchen specific to how the kitchen will be used as well as the way it looks: form AND function.
For example, a household that has five or six members will require large bench spaces between major task zones - hob and sink for example. This provides space for several people to work in those areas. They will also consider traffic flows as there needs to be a natural direction that food preparation will follow when multiple users are involved.
As family numbers decrease, and you are left with an emptier nest, the designer could shorten those walking distances for a single or two users, making the space more efficient. With fewer people in the home, flows are also not as important as a single user will not often get in the way of themselves.
There are a lot of other factors that will influence a design with changing life styles. With more time on people’s hands the more they may want to spend in the kitchen. Baking and more complex meals can become a hobby. These require special attention by a designer as often they require additional appliance consideration and additional storage for ingredients.
The social aspect of the kitchen is not as important as family leave the home so the direction the user faces when working is not a primary consideration any longer. This could give the designer more scope to design an efficient working kitchen. In a lot of cases a hobby chef will want something closer to a commercial kitchen that is hidden away as functionality becomes the priority.
When Should I Upgrade?
When kids fly the nest, attention can quickly turn to the home and how the new reality is going to work in a space designed for more people. This is really the best time to consider a kitchen upgrade. Your habits will now change, and the kitchen will be used in different ways.
It’s also the time to look forward to a new chapter in your home’s story. A chance to re-establish your lives, to design the home you may have desired for years but have never pursued because family rightly came first.
As one of the most important spaces in your home, a new kitchen will put a stamp on the way you want to live. A great designer will be able to translate your changing wants and needs into a space you’ll love for years to come. And with Kitchen Studio’s method, it can all be looked after for you.
