Stage 1: A Meeting
This is the first point of discovery. We look at what you already have, what and who you love to live with, what you may feel you’re missing, what you dislike, and where you are heading. We start to build a picture of your priorities together, as we itemise the details that make a difference to how you live and as we consider your routines and rituals, what you know, what you’d like to learn, what you value, who and what you trust, …
There’s a lot of ground to cover, but it will be a guided conversation with the potential for some homework.
Stage 2: A Report
I create and present a brief with accompanying range of choices, and some notes to give those choices context, and to reflect and respond to the priorities identified by the work we did together at Stage 1.
The brief is designed to work alongside, and in support of, the work of your design professionals.
From here, I will hand over the design work to those who can work up all of your choices and decisions into a coherent and fully realised design that is tailored to you.
Stage 3: A Home Visit
Once your kitchen is installed and ready to use, manuals, maintenance and care guidance will be delivered alongside a home visit as an additional service to refresh your minds about what you have chosen, why you have chosen it, and how it works in practice. Should you need a more advanced refresher once you’ve got used to the basics and want to know more, this can also be arranged.
the service is designed to work alongside your design process, and can work with or without a dedicated kitchen design company.
If working with a kitchen design company, I will be mindful of the brand suppliers and partners that form part of their design service.
My work with you starts ideally at the beginning of a project – as it is being outlined, and while the budgets are being looked at.
(NB: on budgets: the cost of designing and supplying a kitchen will usually not include its install costs, which can be significant, and are significantly important to a finished result – make sure you are aware of how the budget will need to be split across the whole project as you embark – good kitchens can be turned bad with a badly planned or executed installation, and prices start to head north, timescales to expand, and tempers to fray with an all too predictable momentum if the planning is not precise!).
The type of appliances that you are eventually drawn to may affect the layout plans for your kitchen – it’s not only the dimensions of the appliance that matter to layout, it’s also how the appliances allow you to ‘perform’ within the kitchen – it’s why it’s important to identify early the kind of ovens, hobs, chiller units etc that you are looking to choose, because these will have an impact on: the spatial plan, the look of your finished kitchen, your ability to use it as a social and sociable space, and the allocations of your budget.
You may have ideas for what you do or don’t like, or what is or isn’t going to be useful – my job includes helping you to move beyond the limits of any existing understanding, practice, or prejudice – as is useful to you. I help you to understand the principles so that you can be open minded to making decisions about things you might not already have experienced, encountered, or even known existed. The pace of change in kitchen tech can be slowed down by resistance that comes from us not yet knowing what we don’t yet know.