If there’s one stage of renovating a kitchen that cannot be rushed, it’s the planning process – as I have learnt, the hard way. Only fools rush in and, trust me, impatience will always result in disaster. Or at least some minor annoyance that drives you insane on the regs, like a too-small bin that requires endless emptying or sockets in the wrong place.
I’ve now renovated four kitchens with lots of hard, and often expensive, lessons learnt along the way. Kitchens and bathrooms are my specialist subject as an interiors journalist, having begun my career working for the kitchen and bathroom trade press and fallen (in quite a nerdy way) for the technical side of planning these complex spaces. Oh, and my husband designs and makes kitchens for a living, too, so I really don’t have an excuse for being so lax with this vital planning stage over the years.
