Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire
Kitchen fitting in Newton Mearns
Most Newton Mearns kitchens we are asked about are not short of space. They are 1960s to 1980s detached and semi-detached family homes where the room is a decent size but is still laid out the way it was built, with a separate dining room next door that nobody has eaten in for fifteen years.
The dining room question
The single most common conversation we have here is whether to take down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. It is often the right move, but not always. If that wall is load-bearing you are into a structural opening with a steel and building warrant, and the cost of that can be better spent on the kitchen itself. We will tell you which one we think it is before you commission drawings.
Where the wall does come out, the thing people underestimate is the flooring and ceiling junction. Two rooms built separately rarely share a level, and making that read as one space is fussy work that is worth doing properly.
Islands: worth it when the room earns it
An island needs about a metre of clear walkway all the way round before it stops being an obstacle. Below that it is a peninsula, and a peninsula is not a compromise, it is often the better answer. If we think your room is not wide enough for an island, we will say so rather than sell you one that makes the kitchen harder to cook in.
Put the noisy things somewhere else
Houses of this size usually have somewhere a utility can go, and moving the washing machine and tumble dryer out of an open-plan kitchen is the upgrade people are most pleased with afterwards. We fit utility rooms as part of the same job, often with a second sink and the boiler housed in.