What Do You like About Your KITCHEN ?

I would stay away from granite unless you absolutely love it for some reason. Granite is very expensive and overrated. A lot of it is actually pretty ugly. We've been looking at houses, and I've seen so many homes where they put in $10 grand worth of granite and did nothing else interesting to the house and thought that somehow this was a major improvement. There are dozens of other options for countertops other than granite or quartz.

But if you love granite or quartz, go for it.

We just moved into a house that was remodeled within the past 5 years. The two things I like most-the huge stainless steel sink and the large pull out drawers for my pots & pans. Good luck!

Cabinets that go all the way up to the ceiling. 42" Crown molding at the top of the cabinets gives a really finished look.

I have a cook top and separate double oven and love it!!

Under cabinet lighting.

I did a "facelift" on my kitchen. I removed the planning desk (never sat there) and added a standard height cabinet, but with two huge drawers. One is still my "junk drawer" but the other has two rows of files. Really handy.

I added panels to the unfinished sides of my cabinets and back of my island. I also added some fluting to the island and new cabinet. This was a reasonable redo and added a lot of pizazz.

We added granite at the same time. Love it!! I already had nice maple cabinets, so I just swapped out the handles for an updated look.

Sounds like fun!

When we custom built our home, I had a 2 1/2yr old and was expecting. So, I wanted my kitchen to be very durable and tough. I knew by watching my brother and sister-in-law that I wanted our kitchen floor to be dark. Their light tile and light grout got destroyed by their two children and became impossible to clean after a couple years. So, our ceramic tile and grout is the shade of the clay/dirt in our town! LOL You literally never know if my floor is dirty which I LOVE!! It's a beautiful dark grout and the tile is all different shades of deep browns/reds/blacks almost. I get so many compliments on that tile! Same for my countertops. I knew I didn't want every stain to be noticeable, so we went with a very similar color pattern as the ceramic tile. If there is a stain on my counter, I sure don't know it!!! =0) I also love my stainless extra deep sink. In our last home, it drove me nuts that some of my pots were too big to fit in my sink to wash. So, my sink is extra deep and the faucet is extra tall. I can comfortably and easliy fit a large stockpot in my sink and under my faucet. =0) All our appliances are stainless steel. My fav is my fridge. It has a stainless finish that repells fingerprints. So my kids can go nuts and they don't leave fingerprints. It's wonderful!!! LOL I also love my oven. It has no range at the bottom. It's a flat bottom oven and the heating element is under the surface, so I can wipe anything right off the smooth bottom, which is wonderful! I hated having to scrape things off of that heating element so that my oven wouldnt' smoke us out if something dripped. It's so nice to be able to just wipe up any spills super easily. Hmmmm........what else...........??? OH! We had a special cabinet made for our trash cans. Only b/c our daughter, who was a toddler at the time, was obsessed with the trash can in our old house and it really bothered me! So, when we built this home, I knew I wanted to do something about that since I was going to have another baby who might be trashcan obsessed. LOL So, we had an end cabinet built that looked like our other cabinet doors, but it's really a pull out drawer that fits TWO tall kitchen trashcans. I of course child locked it when my kids were little. It's wonderful!!! You can use one as your recycle bin and one as trash. And it's totally camoflauged. I also love our under the cabinet lighting. It's perfect for night time. Enjoy planning your new space!!! =0)

We just did a facelift to our kitchen - new cabinets (antique white 42" to the ceiling with gorgeous moulding and oil rubbed bronzed hardware) LOVE them!

I went with black appliances to save money since I already had a black fridge and the black/antique white combo is so classy!

I would be careful about counter tops - I LOVE granite - but I don't love MY granite!! It is GORGEOUS - Santa Ceceila Gold - but it stains even when properly sealed!! So I am so worried about it all the time!!

I wish I had a big kitchen with a center island - but I don't - so I make do with what I have - one of my favorite cabinets we put in was a double plate rack over the sink - it holds 20+ dinner plates in a decorative way!!

Good luck!

We moved into a new house a year ago and were able to customize as we saw fit. Here's what I love:

-Nice big island that has room for prep work, buffet style parties, etc. While it does collect junk (not a great thing), it is the first thing everyone notices about our home.
-Granite counter tops...I would also look at cement because they are similar to granite, but supposedly last longer. I love my granite for the beauty and warmth it adds (plus it is much more practical than laminate).
-My 42" cabinets...so much space to store so many things!
-My backsplash...it is a luxery and not a necessity, but it really does make my kitchen stand a part from the others in the neighborhood.
-Whirlpool black appliances...our house came with the range, microwave and dishwasher. They were all Kenmore and every single one has had over $300 worth of items that needed to be replaced (thank God for the warranty). Our Whirlpool fridge has been perfect from day one and hasn't needed a penny put into it. My hubby sold appliances for awhile and swears by them. Also, I like black more than stainless steel because it little hand prints don't show up. (We have friends with stainless and their appliances are either constantly dirty or they are constantly cleaning them...not me!)
-I also love my double sink that is under the granite. It is SO much easier to clean than a sink that is mounted on top.

Things I hate:

-My Kenmore appliances

Good luck and have fun! :)

large area countertop that has cabinetry from both sides. great for baking and serving cafeteria style. I love my double ovens and the corner is a lazy susan underneath in one corner and opens in the other on the outside. Make sure all cabinetry is pull out. What I don't have and wish I had thought of.......a stainless steel countertop on one side of the stove top.

I'm updating my kitchen right now with the Frigidaire Gallery Stainless collection of appliances from Lowes. I LOVE them. They are fingerprint resistant too so if they DO get a smudge, all I have to do is wipe with a soft cloth and it's gone. I love my new ceramic cook top on my oven and the oven has a couple of cool features that I've gotten used to now and couldn't live without.

Anyways, that's all I can offer. I'm doing my updating really slowly, so I haven't gotten past appliances yet! :)

In my last kitchen, I put in granite. I loved it. In my next kitchen I'll probably put in quartz because I like to change it up. Things I LOVED about my former kitchen: my large, deep sink, my smaller prep sink, my instant hot and cold filtered water dispenser, MY TRASH COMPACTOR (omg I miss that bad boy!), I kept everything in drawers (no reaching to the waaay back of cabinets), had separate base cabs for cutting boards and cooking sheets (they can be super narrow and still fit a lot of those flat items). Now that I'm in a kitchen that DOESN'T have those things, I realize how spoiled I was. I can't wait to get out of this rental house and remodel another home!!!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I put in stainless apps in my last kitchen. At the time I loved them, but they were a pain to keep clean and I can't stand black or white apps, so in my next kitchen, I'll put matching cabinet fronts on every possible appliance (fridge, compactor, dishwasher). My ovens and cooktop will have to be stainless, but at least I'm not wiping down the huge fridge every couple of days to get rid of sticky fingerprints. THAT was so not fun!

I just bought a Bosch dishwasher which is awesome. It cleans well, but most importantly, since our kitchen is open to the family room, it is super quiet. With the old machine I wasn't able to have it running at night and watch TV in the family room because it was just way too noisy. Now it's no problem.

I love the color- Appalachian Green!!! Found it at Home Depot. Bringing black into a kitchen, in my opinion, modernizes it. Black towels, black candles., Etc.

I also love my larger deep sink!!! It's all ceramic with a stainless steel faucet. And it's not a two sided bowl, just one big one.

Love my dual fuel convection oven/range from GE-Profile. I am not so happy with the french door fridge from GE- it is just akward to me, but functional-though some people may love it, the food we eat just seemed to fit in our over/under better. Love the GE profile dishwasher, and the microwave is just OK. It looks nice to have them all match.

We like the granite look, but considered quarts too.

I love the quiet close feature on my drawers, and the big pot drawers are really nice. We have hidden drawer inside the top pot drawer, and it holds all my cooking untensils nicely. Make room for a pantry if you can, it is so nice. The only thing I don't have that I wish I did is a mop closet.

How exciting! That is what we did last summer too! Hope it goes fast.

M.

I have black appliances and i love the way they look but very very hard to keep clean shows everything while i love the look will never do that again..

wish i would have had a little spot in my pantry just for my trash can I would love to have aplace for it were it is not seen..that drives me crazy

is your baywindow a sit?

if not you could make it a bench sitting for your talbe would be good when you have guest over...my mothers is like that and we use it alot..

Mistakes: Don't tile your floor. Every single plate or glass you drop shatters into a million pieces, and your knees start to hurt as you stand when cooking or washing dishes. If you don't like linoleum or vinyl (I don't blame you) then do wood floors. Also, I know they're so much nicer and add value to a house, etc., but I hate stainless-steel appliances. Keeping them clean even without little-kid fingerprints was SUCH a pain.

I love having a pantry closet, and if you are going to put in high cabinets, make them pull-out so that you don't have to get out a step-stool every time you want to reach something up high. Have fun!

1) I wish I'd made my cabinets go all the way up to the ceiling (less dust).
2) I LOVE having plenty of drawers. One "section" is just drawers all the way to the floor, not just right below the counter with cabinets underneath. Make them deep too, so you can put lunch boxes, water bottles, etc in them.
3) I also have a pull down spout on my faucet which I LOVE. (The neck is arched and the sprayer looks like a bell and just pulls straight down).
4) If you can squeeze in a pantry, they are worth it.
5) If I had it to do over again, I would have sacrificed part of a countertop and made that "section" a shallow cabinet top to bottom (like a flat pantry). It would be a better way to store canned goods, so that I could SEE everything.
p.s.
6) my single bowl kitchen sink. It is a huge one, but it is SOO much easier to manage large pots/casserole dishes/the turkey roaster, etc... even the mop bucket! I had several people try to dissuade me and get a sink with 2 bowls... but I am SO glad I didn't listen to them! It is undermounted, too, which is something that I will never do without again....

I LOVE my kitchen. We built our home 10 yrs ago. My kitchen is HUGE and is in the same area with family room, therefore it is central station of our home, my office etc.

My island is corian and I've never had an issue. The island is HUGE with the cooktop KITCHEN AID (MY favorite) . I keep large wooden cutting boards along side the cooktop for anything that needs to be removed from the cooktop, or cutting/slicing.

We have 5 smaller sized swivel bar stools at the island we LOVE and love so much we bought 4 more taller ones to have in game room upstairs.

My appliances started as GE Profile and in the beginning were ok but not my favorite. In the end (3 yrs) they SUCKED. I have Kitchen Aid everything and I LOVE it.

My breakfast table is 84" long, beautiful, custom homemade in the Amish country. I work here daily, we have our family meals here. This table along with formal dining will be heirlooms someday for our daughter.

My cabinets are lighter oak, lots of detail. My floor is tile and I would have it no other way. I love wood, it is in my formal dining and formal area and beautiful but for everday, I like my 16 x 16 tiles. Easy to clean. YES, things will break if you drop them. I can count on 1 hand how many times we broke something in 10 yrs. It is not that big of a deal to me, certainly not a deal breaker. My dishes are simple all white and I have about 24 each of plates, bowls, salad plates, rim soup bowls, fingertip bowls and dessert plates. Of course for formal occasions, I bring out the Waterford crystal, china and silver and we eat in the formal area with wood floors and a handmade to order cherrywood 84" dining table from the Amish.

My pantry is how my husband convinced me to build again. It is HUGE. I have seen baby nurseries the size of my pantry. I keep it well stocked. A repairman once told me that he would send his wife to my house to grocery shop because everything is in order, organized and easy access. I love my pantry. Our first home we built had a small pantry and I hated it. I am still in heaven with my pantry!!

Hope that helps and enjoy your new kitchen!!

Hi J.~
My husband and I bought a custom home, so we were able to design our kitchen how we wanted, and it was so worth it! My likes about my kitchen are all cosmetic, but I'll share anyways!
The 4 things about my kitchen that I LOVE are:
1-I have dark cherry cabinets, and the upper cabinets are taller, which is great for extra room & storage
2-We have granite counter tops. They look beautiful, and are surprisingly very, very easy to keep clean and maintain!
3-My kitchen island!! I don't know what I'd do without it!
4-We have all black appliances. We have 3 kids, and friends of mine, and even the interior designer we worked with, all said to stay away from the stainless steel with kids. I couldn't be happier with our choice to do the black! However, if we didn't have kids, or if they were older, we'd do the stainless (we may still upgrade after our kids are older because we like the way it looks!)

Well, like I said, my reasons are all for looks, but thought I'd share anyways! Good luck & have fun remodeling your kitchen! I have to admit, the kitchen was my favorite room to customize in my house! There's really so much you can do!

J.

A suggestion not yet mentioned (I think):

Lots and lots of outlets so you can use a mixer, food processor, crock pot, toaster, coffee pot, etc. wherever you want on your counters.

You may also wish to consider under-cabinet lighting (puck lighting).

I love my granite and would never even consider another material. I also love my stainless appliances - they're like jewelry for the kitchen!

Granite countertops! absolutely gorgeous I loved the ones we had in our first home and miss having granite, it just looks so elegant.

These are important to me:
1. lots of storage
2. that I can reach everything _ ie) nothing too high for me to reach
3. fire extinguisher near the stove (3rd degree burns all over my right hand with a new baby to boot!!! learned that the hard way
4. storage for pots, pans and spatulas near the stove
5. sink in the middle - always have to get there
6. nice pantry close by

-- Cabinets that go to the ceiling (a lot of people end up puting items up there to store anyway, like me, and I would MUCH rather then be hidden in a cabinet on the top shelf then on the top of the cabinet, also agree about the less dusty part too).

-- We do not have a pantry, lack of room, BUT if you have room for one I would so do it great place to store food items.

--LOTS of storage with shelves and drawers (we cut back on drawers and now we wish we had not)

-- Love our pull down faucet, comes in real handy when filling a big pot or even clean the sink and try to get in the corners of it.

-- We did not think about stoarge for pots & pans, well we have tons and NO WHERE to put them so now we are hanging a pot rack since we do not have cabniet/shelf space for them. (Bad planing on our part but we will make it work with the pot rack).

-- I love having a dishwasher and now swear I will only live in a house that has one.

-- I have always wanted a in wall stove with a seperate cook top, but I am a huge cooker so would use everything a lot... if you are not then forgo that. I also like cooking with a gas/flame stove but right now do not have the means to do so (some day in the 'new' house I want it).

abt is great. be sure not to pay their list price on their appliances. even though their prices are good, they can still go lower. excellent service there, too! enjoy!

I like the window above my sink that has a nice big window sill that I have some knick knacks with fun sayings on.
I like my pantry although I would like a bigger walk in pantry with our next house.

My dislike is my counter space. I love to cook and bake and am always needing more counter space!
I would also suggest not going with white cabinets as EVERYTHING shows up on them, fingerprints, stains, food, everything.

Congrats on getting the kitchen remodeled! :-)

We did not replace our cabinets, as it would have been very expensive to replace them all, so we cut out some of the cabinet inserts, and replaced them with glass. I do love the granite, but it always seems to get cloudy, and water stains, so I need to seal them again. We did a glass tile back splash that I love. Stainless steel appliances are nice, but always show fingerprints.