I’ve written a lot about interiors recently as we are making changes to our home. Here’s a question for you, “can you get away with installing cheap kitchens in your home without having to pay through the nose down the road”? Yes, you can! When I say cheap kitchens I mean high-quality kitchens that comes with all the fixtures and fittings and yet are affordable. These are the type of kitchens you might find at Kitchen Warehouse.

When Cheap Kitchens Go Bad

The type of cheap kitchen that you won’t find at a reputable kitchen store is the type of kitchen that Roy and I had in our first home. It was a rental that we took on quickly as the house we were moving into fell through and we were packed up and ready to go. We should have been tipped off by the fact that the wallpaper border in the living room was sellotaped on, or the fact that there was no heating or gas installed, but hey, we were young, in love and absolutely blinkered. The kitchen though, that was something else.

When I refer to this kind of cheap kitchen I mean poorly fitted doors, very shallow cupboards, one door hung upside down, cheap hinges and a poor arrangement which meant the kitchen offered no decent storage and workspace was limited. On the upside, it was laid out in such a way that you could wash your hands in the sink and warm your bottom by the grill at the same time…..

Curiously I’ve seen this property recently (on Rightmove) and it has been completely renovated. No sellotape on the walls, radiators have been installed and there is a decent kitchen. Even from the pictures, you can tell the difference. The quality, the layout, the practical aspects. I was quite put out at first. I know that the person who owns it now wouldn’t have paid a fortune on the new kitchen which just goes to show the difference between cheap kitchens and cheap kitchen that are of a high quality.

Affordable Kitchens and What They Offer

There are certain things that I require from a new kitchen:

• It won’t break my budget
• I have choices so that I may customise the layout of my kitchen how I want it to be
• The kitchen comes from a reputable company
• There is scope for some design elements (kitchens don’t need to be ugly and boring)
• Plenty of storage (clever storage is always a pro-point)
• Enough worktop space

What about you? What are your kitchen must-haves? Clearly these days you don’t need to throw ridiculous amounts of money at a new kitchen in order to receive something that works for you, your lifestyle, your space and your family, so even with a budget in mind, what would you like to see in your kitchen?

Written in collaboration with Kitchen Warehouse