Cooking up a Kitchen

The volume of money spent on kitchens is truly frightening.

Needless to say we have a tight budget - given that the overall build cost is high due to the challenging site.

I do have one special think I want to get in to the kitchen and I think it will be a show stealer: acrylic worktops made with recycled glass and/or shells. See here for details of the Glasseco worktops. The new site shows the more garish versions but you can come up more subtle effects.

The kind of thing I have in mind is

Setting this is a "must have" produces a challenge as the cost of the worktops is high. The other thing I wanted to avoid is having alot of mdf/chipboard.

I stumbled on these cabinets - which look great: Solid Wood Kitchen Cabinets and the price is reasonable considering they are largely oak (oaks staves not solid panels).

Next step is to get a kitchen design worked out and see if these two elements can be combined within our budget. Taps, sinks, door handles etc shouldn't be too difficult to find a reasonable price.

We do want do install a built in "draw" fridge which will keep the lines of the kitchen clean (luckily there is a "AA" rated Hotpoint model which is just about affordable).

Cooking-wise we are probably restricted to electric (a) because I don't plan to have mains gas and (b) because we have been advised that using gas in an MVHR house could prove risky. A gas leak circulated by the MVHR could be very nasty!

Can we this all for 10k. Hmm, this could be interesting...