Planning a new kitchen

My kitchen was remodelled when we first moved in, over 20 years ago. We took out the horrible 1970s orange and brown patterned tiles, the batwing doors, the broken wall oven, the brown and orange lino. This blogger has some pictures which remind me of what was here then, but hers is much cuter! 

Our kitchen has done us pretty well for 20 years, and I have enjoyed cooking in it, but lately we have been planning a revamp. Given that I have a goal of living simply, this is a big step which required much thought.

What is wrong with the kitchen? 

• There are very few drawers. As I am now in my early 60s, I am finding it harder to reach into the back of the bottom shelf and lift out a heavy casserole dish that I have stored there. The idea of having a drawer which can hold my dishes and which I can pull out to reach them is very attractive. This feature will help us to move into our senior years with confidence we can manage things here
• I sometimes run out of bench space. I do a lot of cooking and baking, and DH loves to preserve and make jam. This kitchen is a bit cramped sometimes. Some of my appliances -like the microwave and the stand mixer -have to be stored on the bench too. 
• It doesn't have a lot of natural light. I would like bigger windows to see out of and let light in.
• I can't store my baking trays in the kitchen -they are in the linen closet.
• I can only fit in a bottom mount fridge/freezer, but I would love a side by side fridge freezer so I can keep more in the freezer. Right now we have another fridge outside -mostly because we need the extra freeer space, but it is not always so convenient to go out there. In the summer it is a hot place for a fridge to be kept, so I guess the fridge motor is working hard out there. 
• I sometimes wish I had an extra oven -I have used my barbecue as an oven when things get busy. My current freestanding stove and oven is showing signs of age and the oven in particular has a small capacity because its heating source takes up quite a bit of room. 
• We have solar panels on the roof, so using electricity rather than gas would be a good thing for the planet and cheaper for us, especially now I am retired and can do more cooking during the daytime. I could replace the gas stove with an induction cooktop and electric oven. 
• The layout of the kitchen could be improved

This week we went out to check out some options for appliances, and DH made a preliminary sketch of the new layout using the IKEA software, so we have now got some idea of what we want to achieve. Presently my stove is in a funny spot between two windows. It only has bench space on one side. We want to move it to the other side of the room. We want a much bigger window and a bench running the whole length of the room.

Something like this plan above. The pantry is in the left hand bottom corner (not shown) and the fridge is the big grey rectangle in the middle. 

Underbench oven with induction cooktop because a small person like me needs to be able to reach over the door . 

I liked the handles and interior of this fridge freezer 

Two bowl sink -in white? not sure. 

The spiders now invading my kitchen are NOT a problem. I hope they visit my new kitchen too. 

This project is both exciting and daunting -there will be a lot of mess before it is done, and some disruption, but if we can get through it, we will have a kitchen to last us another 20 years.

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