The nights are drawing in, Christmas suddenly doesn’t seem that far away and we’re all starting to spend a bit more time at home.

And that’s often when you start looking around the kitchen and thinking: we really should do something about this.

If you’re hoping for a new kitchen in time for Christmas, now is a good time to start the conversation. Not because I want to create a mad rush towards Christmas, but because there’s quite a lot that happens before a new kitchen is actually fitted.

It starts with you, not the kitchen

When I first sit down with somebody, I’m not really thinking about door colours or handles. I want to know how they use the room.

Who does most of the cooking? Does everybody end up standing around the island? Do you eat in there? Entertain? Work from home? Is there a cupboard you can never get into properly? Or somewhere you can never find a place for the coffee machine?

And, importantly, what annoys you about the kitchen you’ve got now?

That conversation tells me far more than simply asking somebody what style of kitchen they like.

Then we can look at the room itself — the space we’ve got, the light, doors and windows, plumbing and electrics — and start working out what we can do with it.

Getting the design right

Then comes the enjoyable bit.

We start bringing together the layout, cabinetry, storage, appliances, worktops, colours, handles and lighting and gradually turn all those conversations into a kitchen.

I don’t like rushing this stage.

Sometimes the first idea works brilliantly. Other times, moving an island 20cm, changing a run of cupboards or putting the dishwasher somewhere else makes a surprisingly big difference.

It’s much easier to move something on a drawing than it is once your new kitchen is sitting in the room.

There’s an order to all of this

This is probably the part of a kitchen project that people don’t see until they actually have one done.

A new kitchen can involve quite a few different people. There may be a builder, electrician, plumber, plasterer, decorator, flooring people, kitchen fitter and somebody making and fitting the worktops.

They don’t all arrive on Monday morning and get on with it together.

There’s an order to making the whole thing work.

The old kitchen comes out. Any building work is dealt with. The plumber and electrician do what they need to do before walls are made good. Then the kitchen can start going in.

If you’re having stone worktops, for example, they’ll normally be measured and templated once the cabinets are actually in place. They go away to be made and then come back to be fitted. The plumber and electrician may come back too, this time to make the final connections.

So there can be moments when it looks as though nothing much is happening. There usually is — you’re simply waiting for the next part of the job to be ready.

The trick isn’t getting everybody there at once. It’s getting everybody there at the right time.

And that’s where a bit of planning at the beginning makes life much easier later on.

And that brings us back to Christmas

If Christmas is important to you, tell us.

Different kitchens have different lead times. Appliances can vary. Worktops can take time. And the trades involved need to be booked in the right order.

A fairly straightforward kitchen replacement is also very different from a project where we’re taking walls down, moving services or making bigger changes to the room.

So I’d much rather have an honest conversation about timings now than make promises later that we can’t comfortably keep.

And even if Christmas isn’t the deadline, I think autumn is a lovely time to start thinking about your home.

We spend more time inside. Kitchens start becoming gathering places again. And before you know it, somebody’s trying to cook Christmas dinner while everybody else is standing exactly where they shouldn’t be.

If that sounds familiar, feel free to get in touch.

Ewan Palmer
Qualified Interior Designer & Founder

Palmer & Palmer
Beautifully Designed. Perfectly Made. For You.