Design Details: How To Refresh Your Kitchen

How to bring the joy to your kitchen when you've gone off it a bit or you've moved into a new house and it's not what you want but can't justify changing it.

Cover photo credit: Laura Stephens x Bombay Sprout

If there is one question that I am asked most on my social media channels, it’s about updating kitchens. Kitchens are the biggest investment, pretty much, that you make in your home and getting it right is a minefield. I wrote at the weekend about following trends and how important it is not to be influenced when ploughing your funds into the ‘bones’ of your home - the kitchen is top of the list. But what about if you move into a home with a perfectly nice kitchen that you just don’t feel the love for? I’ve been viewing houses recently and there isn’t a single one that I’ve seen that has a kitchen to suit me. Although really, there’s nothing wrong with them - they’re clean, functional and do the job. And in fact, some of them have been recently updated by developers and have, gasp, brand new kitchens (although please, someone tell me WHY developers think that gloss grey and white kitchens with silver handles are de rigueur when it comes to the house buyers dream. It’s entirely beyond me).

Whipping out an old kitchen and installing a new one costs a LOT of hard cash. Throughout our many years of houses (a quite ridiculous ten moves in almost 25 years), I have never installed a kitchen. And, let me tell you, we’ve lived with some crackers. More of a Poundland cracker with a plastic puzzle and a hat that rips upon opening than a Fortnum & Mason gold embossed, but I’ve made the most of every one. When Ella and Max were tiny, we lived in a thirties semi in which the standard galley kitchen had been knocked into what would have been the dining space, or ‘back room’ (if you’re from Middlesex). There was a small glass lean to which let in the light - it was actually a great open plan space and the kitchen was made of solid wood, albeit at least ten years old. I changed the floor, painted the cupboards and the wall, made new blinds and swapped the ceiling lights, which were so dull that you were likely to do yourself a major injury when chopping onions due to lack of glare, replacing them with bright spotlights which had the dual benefit of saving you from a hospital visit whilst alerting you to every crumb.

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