Kitchen
One helpful way to prioritize your desires is to analyze the frequency and duration of a given task. Tasks you do frequently or spend more time on should get more weight as you consider what is worth investing in. For example, most people use the burners to cook 80 percent of the time, the oven 20 percent of the time. If this applies to you, I recommend prioritizing the cooktop as opposed to the wall oven, both in terms of placement in your kitchen and quality of product. You wouldn’t want to give up a great burner feature to get a fancier oven. On the other hand, if you are a frequent baker but rarely use the stovetop, you may prefer to invest in wall ovens rather than spend your budget on a fancy range. For you, it would be better to make sure that reaching into the oven is more ergonomic — done while standing upright, rather than bending over.
1. Daily Use vs. Special Events This area of consideration has to do with how many people your kitchen will serve. From refrigerator storage to seats at the dining table, the number of people you want to accommodate will affect your design choices. You’ll want to consider not only how many people live in the home now, but — if this is your forever home — how many will live in it 10 years from now. Also, how often do you entertain and for how many people? I had a client who was retired and cooked only for herself and her husband most days. She entertained just four times a year, on holidays. At first, I was a bit baffled by her choice of a 36-inch range, double ovens and a 48-inch-wide refrigerator. But for her, these choices made sense. As the matriarch of a large family, on those four holidays she cooked for 25 to 30 people and had at least two or three people helping her in the kitchen. It was important to her that we designed a flexible space that worked just as well when cooking for two as for 30. That approach is a good one: Whenever possible, I recommend that clients design with their maximum capacity needs in mind.What to Look for in a House if You Love to Entertain
5. Pantry with rollouts. For pantry cabinets wider than 15 inches, I prefer rollouts. That means you’re pulling out only the shelf you need, not the whole pantry.Also, consider the projection of the hardware of any cabinet next to the wall. Make the filler (a matching strip of wood that fills the gap between the cabinet and wall) at least 1½ inches wide to keep the hardware from hitting the wall and possibly restricting the usability of a cabinet with a rollout.
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