Mastering Your Kitchen Makeover

Most kitchen makeovers start with flicking through Instagram, Pinterest and home decorating magazines looking for inspiration.

But mastering your kitchen makeover takes a little more work than creating vision boards.

While the visual appeal of an Insta-worthy kitchen might make your heart skip a beat, it takes functional consideration and technical knowledge to design a successful and practical kitchen.

As the heart of the home, the kitchen should accommodate your lifestyle and be able to adapt to the changing needs of your household over time.

But before jumping into the latest trends, consider the elements of timeless design to create a kitchen that will last the distance. Geostone decorative concrete can help you to achieve a beautiful finish for any kitchen makeover, is championed for its versatility and functionality and is suited to an array of applications from benchtops to polished concrete flooring.

We’ve compiled this list of some of the key focus areas to consider when planning your kitchen makeover.

Flooring

Thoughts of kitchen renovations probably conjure up images of sparkling new appliances, elaborate double ovens and high-tech refrigerators. But the first element to consider when renovating your kitchen should be the floor.

Whether you’re saying goodbye to ‘delightful’ 1960s vinyl, replacing chipped tiles or ripping up old floorboards, you’re probably ready to welcome a contemporary flooring surface that will last the test of time. Polished concrete floors provide a hard-wearing solution combining modern sophistication and timeless style with practical benefits for all lifestyles.

Not only are they easy to clean, but polished concrete floors can be a cost-effective flooring solution too, by reducing the need for maintenance over their lifespan. Geostone Polished Concrete is available in a range of colours and natural stone selections exclusive to your local region, allowing you to tailor the look to suit your home.

Bars and Benchtops

One of the practical concrete applications you might not have thought of is the ability to create custom kitchen benchtops. Geostone Polished Concrete can be shaped and styled to suit any kitchen design, and polished to reveal a stunning modern sheen.

The kitchen is often the most expensive room of any home renovation, and if you’re renovating on a budget, polished concrete can be an economical material choice. Professionally sealed polished concrete is suitable for wet areas ensuring long lasting longevity in the kitchen, and minimising repair and maintenance costs.

Outdoor Kitchens

While there can be too many cooks in a kitchen, there can never be too many kitchens for a great cook.

Homeowners are increasingly adding on outdoor kitchens for entertaining friends and family, and Geostone decorative concrete works just as effectively outside as it does indoors.

You can continue the indoor kitchen aesthetic by using the same or a similar mix outside, creating a seamless transition of indoor-outdoor flow. Designing your dream outdoor room could include polished concrete picnic tables, benchtops, pizza ovens and sinks.

As far as appliances are concerned, you will need to consider positioning of barbeques and outdoors ovens to ensure appropriate ventilation, and seek professional installation of electricals and plumbing.

Optimising the Space

Whether you’re planning a complete kitchen makeover or refurbishing an outdoor entertaining area, you’ll first want to consider how you plan to use the space.

Modern kitchens are more frequently combined with living and dining areas to create an open plan design, achieving a welcoming space that brings a sense of cohesion. Optimising space in your kitchen could mean incorporating more storage or bench space, removing non weight-bearing walls to increase the floor area, or rearranging key features of the kitchen to improve workability and accessibility.

Outdoor kitchens provide even more room to move, organically extending the indoor living and dining area when connected to the indoor kitchen with glass sliding doors. The polished concrete of the indoors can be organically extended outside with an honed or exposed aggregate finish, ideal for everything from patios and pool surrounds to driveways and paths.

Calling in the Professionals

The kitchen is one of the most common settings of DIY disasters. One recent report found Monday is the busiest day for Australian tradespeople, spent fixing up botched DIY jobs from the weekend.

By knowing when not to DIY, you can potentially save time and money by calling in the professionals and doing the job right the first time, everytime. It also means you can focus on the next area of the renovations, and get back to work sooner on other areas of the home.

If you need more support for mastering your kitchen makeover, contact the Geostone team for expert colour advice. For more information and inspiration about renovating and building with decorative concrete, visit our article archive.