housethingsgoing
A frog and a duck living in a 4rm resale flat

Our open-close kitchen: contemporary, functional and great for cooking

193
  • Minimalist
  • HDB (Resale)
  • ~900 sqft
  • 3 br
  • Couple Living
  • Welcome to our kitchen! This is mainly Duck speaking as the kitchen is her domain (Frogs not allowed!). Growing up, I didn't get many opportunities to cook while living with my parents, but I've always enjoyed cooking so having my own kitchen was like a dream come true. Our kitchen is mainly blue and white, in alignment to the ocean-themed colour palette had for our home. Choosing the blue was a bold and slightly unnerving move - most of our friends have Japandi/scandi wood-themed kitchens so we had no idea how a blue kitchen would even turn out. Luckily, it paid off - we're still in love with the colour even after a year :)
  • Our kitchen layout is galley style - we have the sink, stove and fridge in a single line along one side. We heard of the famous Triangle Rule for kitchen layouts, but were unfortunately unable to implement it as our gas, water and fridge points were already fixed (and would be too much to change). Our bomb shelter is at one end of the kitchen - the wall came already tiled, and we decided to keep the tiles as the colour as pretty inoffensive. A couple of IDs did ask whether we wanted to conceal the bomb shelter door with carpentry, but we decided not to go with it as it would further reduce our kitchen space and was pretty expensive as well. We did, however, get this perfectly sized clock that sits on the ventilation panel at the top - so I can take note of the time while she's cooking and avoid burning the food *laughs nervously*
  • This is what the left side of the kitchen looks like - everything is packed pretty tightly because of the limited length of the kitchen, as well as our reluctance to put the fridge outside in the dining area. Our dishwasher looks slim (not because of the 0.5x effect on the photo), but because at 45cm, it's indeed slimmer than the usual 60cm dishwasher. We desperately wanted a dishwasher so we hunted high and low for one that would work in our limited space - thank goodness we found this one from Bosch :) That said, despite the squeeze, we didn't compromise on any of the other appliances - we have a roomy 407L fridge, a standard 3-hob stove (and hood) as well as a 60cm sink (enough to fit a large pot)
  • Here's a picture of our sink when it was just installed! We took a HUGE risk with our sink by getting it from Taobao. We'd heard lots of Taobao sink horror stories - but we saw the exact same model sold by a local retailer for more than 3x the price of what we could get it for on Taobao. We were really drawn to the honeycomb texture of the sink, which apparently makes it scratch resistant so we decided to bite the bullet and get the Taobao one. Fast forward to a year later, the sink and tap are still working great. There're a couple of minor scratches on the tap (as with all gunmetal items T.T ) but they are purely cosmetic and probably a result of our own carelessness hahaha.
  • The other side of our galley-style layout is where the rest of our appliances are housed! We have an airfryer, a steam oven and a fancy Kody cooking robot (sort of like a thermomix, but Chinese-style). The robot was a gift from our friends and has been a handy helper in cooking Chinese dishes when we're lazy to smoke up the kitchen with heat and oil. Our oven is housed on this pull out shelf that was specifically to hold either the oven or the airfryer (which is taller, hence the gap on top of the oven) in case we ever want to move things around in future. And yes, we chose this oven because it was the only blue oven we could find at the appliance store. It was a superficial decision, but Duck is all for the aesthetics! There was also an extra bit of space below the oven so we converted it into a drawer where we hold all our random oven-related supplies, like baking paper, aluminium foil, etc.
  • One other feature we added for our kitchen was these LED lights below our top cabinets! Didn't think too much about it at first, but we realised it gives the kitchen a really pretty glow at night when we have the lights on in the background :) Also, if you're wondering why our laminate looks so shiny on the right, we added a plastic sheet to protect it from the oil and heat from the stove! Not the most glamourous - but that's the reality of wanting a pretty kitchen and being able to cook at the same time :') The plastic sheet is really good though - it sticks on via static so you don't need any glue/adhesive that could potentially damage your laminate.
  • And FINALLY, on to our favourite part (and also one of the most expensive things features of the house) - our bifold doors and windows! We've seen homes with bifold doors, and those with bifold windows so we decided to combine them and build this 'bifold' separation panel that allows us to have an open kitchen, AND a closed kitchen whenever we want to cook. We opted to have both the bifold windows and doors so we could really open up the kitchen, while also having the added counter space and storage from our peninsula. If we'd converted everything to just a bifold door, our counter would have ended where the airfryer is, and we would have a lot of homeless pots, pans and bowls :P
  • And this is what the kitchen looks like from the dining/pantry area when the doors and windows are closed! The doors and windows don't keep out sound 100% - Frog will definitely be able to hear me if I spill something and start screaming :) - but they're pretty useful at muffling the cooking noise and the sound of the hood ventilation when one person is cooking and the other person is watching TV/doing work/entertaining friends in the living room. That said, conveying this concept to our IDs was a journey as not many of them had experience executing something like this before - we had to literally do the 3D mockup for them and even then, we had some trouble during the reno with the hinges as well so... it has not been an easy journey, but we're glad we made this happen! We don't have lots of fancy, super high tech appliances in our kitchen, but it's been more than sufficient for Duck to conduct her cooking experiments so far. Here's to adding more dishes to our menu at the house of Frog & Duck! (and hopefully not blowing up the kitchen anytime soon :P)
  • 18 January
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