Hunting For George

Renovating your kitchen can be quite overwhelming. There are so many decisions you need to make and so many options to choose from. Lucy Glade-Wright, interior stylist and founder of online home and design publication, Hunting for George, shares her DIY tips to help you create the kitchen of your dreams.

1. Plan ahead

If you need or want new appliances in your kitchen makeover then it’s important to plan ahead and select these first - before you make any other purchases. This is very important as knowing what size your new appliances are, will then help dictate your choice of cabinetry and layout. For our latest kitchen renovation in our home, we chose Electrolux appliances, including the 524L dark stainless steel French door fridge and 90cm electric freestanding cooker, and this helped determine the space we had to work with.

2. Create a functional layout

Layout is an equally important part of your kitchen as you want to make sure the floor plan is functional. Test out some options to work out the best solution and don’t forget to measure up your space!! It’s important for you to understand the size and scale in order to decide on the best layout for your kitchen.

3. Update don't change

If you’re renovating an older kitchen, you can save a lot of money and time by keeping the layout the same. Creating or moving existing services such as plumbing and electrical adds costs to your renovation, so by simply improving the cosmetic look of your kitchen rather than a complete overhaul can be very cost-effective. That way you might be able to splurge on other items in the kitchen such as appliances and decor.

4. Decide on a style

There are so many different style options out there and it's sometimes hard to know which style is right for you. The best thing to do when you are starting out is to collect samples, swatches of materials that you will be able to collect from kitchen suppliers and hardware stores. Then put all these different materials together to see what works best and use this as a style guide moving forward. Don’t be afraid to experiment here, this is the fun bit where you can get try out different ideas BEFORE you make your purchases.