Self-designed Kitchen: how we make a small space work
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- Mid-Century Modern
- HDB (BTO)
- ~1,000 sqft
- 3 br
- Couple Living with Kids
Hi everyone welcome to my self-designed kitchen! This is honestly the hardest part to design out of the entire house myself without an ID. We decided to do 3 layers of cabinetry, with the top jutting out for more storage space and a recessed middle cabinet so we can cook without hitting our heads. We decided to go bold with the backsplash and chose these art porcelain tiles with some flowers. The green laminate is from Espalier Pro from Lamitak, chose this for the anti-fingerprint properties which is an ease to clean! I just wipe it off with my kitchen cloth and water and the grease disappears, no need for heavy cleaning and just simply wiping! We chose the white mist sintered stone for our kitchen countertop. 
We do not have the luxury of space to do a full galley style kitchen because of the layout. We do have a good layout for an L-shaped kitchen with open concept instead that can fit a 1.8m dining table. If we add an island or bar instead of doing the L-shaped, we can only fit a smaller table beside the WC2 wall near the corridor. We also decided against a dry pantry against this wall because it will make the space squeezy after entering from the foyer. There is a weird unhackable thick wall beside the door so we just have to make use of the space. Guess what? The gas pipe is protruding there as well so we have to do the top cabinetry to hide it. Else, people from my estate can only cut it short and do a top cabinet with more depth to cover it if they are only doing a long kitchen and not an L-shaped kitchen. They will be unable to do recessed top cabinets because the gas pipe is not near the corner but somewhere in between which my contractor told me it is not usually like that! So L-shaped kitchen it is! 
The amount of hard work I put into this drawing before I show my contractor is drafts after drafts haha! I want the LED light to run behind the hood and asked to leave space like 40mm behind, also included dimensions of the hood myself haha. The 3 curved niches in the drawing became 2 curved niche and 1 recessed cabinet in the final product below after discussion with my contractor and carpenter, which made more sense so my tall husband will not hit his head near that corner. The bottom left most cabinet is for the bar fridge or wine chiller. One electrical socket can be found inside. It is important to plan your electrical appliances beforehand and tell the electrician where you want the sockets to be. But my husband say the bar fridge is really hot because it is covered with a door, but removing the door is weird and not aesthetically pleasing to me. I don't really think it is that hot but you do feel a gust of warm air after opening it. Do you guys think I should shift the bar fridge elsewhere as the husband suggested or just let it remain here? We put extra drinks inside while we hosts guests because our double door fridge is not enough to put a lot of canned drinks especially for Chinese New Year. The niche on the right is my absolute favourite for my coffee and tea pantry area. We suggested to our contractor and carpenter to do a gap in the top drawer for the induction hob's heat to dissipate through it. 2 drawers to put our WMF/Meyer cooking pots/pans and other electrical appliances like the Toyomi cooking blender that I use for my son's juice/puree. We try to keep a maximum of 3 electrical appliances here at the L-shaped corner. This is a little bit hard to maneuver ngl. The pressure cooker is amazing for cooking soups for my husband and son and you don't have to boil it for a long time at the induction hob. Saves space and time while I can cook other dishes at the hob. Mainly for cooking soup but it can actually be a rice cooker as well haha.. it does have other functions too! The good thing about this pressure cooker is that it releases the pressure and smoke out slowly throughout and so we don't need to risk burning our fingers trying to release the pressure like other normal pressure cooker. This Panasonic 4-in-1 grill steam microwave oven is also something that I really recommend! It can steam, grill, oven and microwave. With so many functions, I only need one appliance to do a lot of things. I first saw this idea of a magic corner pull out rack from excel but bought another similar one from Taobao instead for a much cheaper price and asked my carpenter to install this. This part of the kitchen designing was a headache to me.. The L-shape design can cause a dead corner where it cannot be fully utilised. We are keeping the right side empty for now. Notice how we use a sliding door here instead of the normal open/close door flap? This is to prevent the door from hitting the big fridge that is jutting out on the right side of the kitchen! I catered space on the left side of the fridge just so my side-by-side fridge can open fully on the left and on the right!! Thus taking out the bottom 2 drawers of the fridge for washing is feasible! If the fridge is against the wall, this will not be possible. This is also another advantage of our L-shaped kitchen where we put the fridge in the middle, we 'integrated' the fridge into the kitchen seamlessly. The rice bucket and more stuffs can be stored on the left below the microwave oven is a win-win for me! 3 drawers here beside my sink for utensils, coasters, cups, plates and bowls. I need more space for my cups and mugs because we do have other design mugs not featured here but somewhere on top. The depth behind is actually not very deep as we catered space for the water inlet to run to the water dispenser on top. Notice how our switches are hidden behind the cabinet door? you can still off/on it without opening the door by just putting your hands in from below. This is the same for the L-shape corner where I put my 3 electrical appliances. There are also switches for the hob and hood and the LED light on that side. We chose Legrand Gallion Champagne switches and sockets throughout the house. We decided not to put a door over the dish rack for ease of access and the bowls and plates can dry more easily. We didn't opt for a dishwasher in the house as well due to restriction of space and we do not usually use that in our parents' place as well as more traditional asian family. We chose this Grohe Minta C-spout Kitchen tap so we can pull out the spout and wash the sink easily. Been really happy to use it. We chose a white sink to match our white sintered stone. This silgranit sink is not difficult to maintain and you can just wash the limescale away which caused the darkening and browning of the sink with this cif cleaning solution on the left top corner of the photo. :) Thank you for reading thus far and hope you enjoyed the tour of my kitchen!
- 21 August
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