Refresh Your Kitchen
by Bronia Suszczenia

Description: Tips for giving your kitchen a fresh look by cleaning and accessorizing.

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Kitchens get heavy daily use in any house, and nowadays they often double up as kitchen, dining room, and family room. The combination of usage, water, cooking and dirt quickly make any kitchen soon look tired and distressed. Fortunately it is easy to breathe new life into a kitchen--cheaply and quickly. Just follow some or all of the following interior design tips to surprise your family and house guests.

Cleaning

Like bathrooms, kitchens need regular cleaning, but they need particular attention to ensure food hygiene. Kitchens also have special rules for handling cooked and uncooked meats for this reason. However, here we are only concerned with matters aesthetic.

From time to time kitchens need a thorough deep clean, all over. Good old fashioned scrubbing is necessary to remove build up of grease and dirt from floors, tiles, worktops and surrounds.

Use proprietary kitchen cleaners, although traditional cleaners such as vinegar and baking soda still work perfectly well. Just take care to avoid strong acids in lime-scale removers on any marble or limestone surfaces.

Also remember to clean the air vent or extractor fan. These are often overlooked despite being a magnet for grime and gunge. Cooker hoods usually have filters that rapidly get clogged, but if they are of the metal grill variety they can be cleaned in the automatic dishwasher.

Open the window regularly to get fresh air in. This will get rid of dank smells and also will reduce the humidity in the room, often a cause of mould or fungus.

Tidy

Often kitchen owners and designers like to fill the kitchen with overhead features and garnishes, to give a "farm house" look. Unfortunately the image quickly gets tarnished by dust and dirt that is difficult to remove except from smooth surfaces.

So although you can have a myriad of kitchen styles, look at commercial kitchens and you’ll quickly realize why surfaces are flat and smooth and mainly stainless steel, glass, granite or Corian. Even tiles that are hard-wearing have their limitations. Firstly, they quickly date the kitchen style; secondly, they are very difficult to remove or alter; and thirdly, the grout remains a dirt and germ trap.

Adding a Splash of Style and Colour

Kitchen walls and ceilings will benefit from fresh coats of paint more frequently than other rooms so you can experiment with colour – but make sure surfaces are cleaned with bicarbonate of soda or sugar soap before painting.

Two other ways of quickly changing colour in a kitchen are:

Change the doors of your kitchen units. This is a cheap shortcut to giving your kitchen a new look.

Install glass splash backs on walls behind the worktops. These are now available in an amazing myriad of colours and the glass can be machined to a perfect fit using industrial water jet cutting.

If your kitchen doubles up as a family room with a living area you have many more decor options with sofas and chairs. However, it is worth remembering that these sofas will be a magnet for TV dinners, so they will be prone to food staining. Bear this in mind and avoid pure white shag pile finishes! Dark leather is a good option as it is easy to clean and maintain.

Waterproofing and Dirt Proofing

It is important that all cracks and crevices are watertight around sinks and so on. If in any doubt remake silicone seals; however, with the right material and craftsmanship these should be good for 5-10 years. For a good seal it is vital that the surfaces are thoroughly clean and grease free. You can clean with general purpose kitchen cleaner but then finish off with a degreasing solvent like acetone.

Look for dirt traps, especially under and behind kick panels between kitchen cabinets and the floor. Regularly remove and thoroughly clean here. Another dirt trap often overlooked is the top surface of wall mounted cupboards and cabinets and other high level units.

Tiles usually are hard wearing and long lasting but the grout used between them rarely is. Use a knife to carefully scrape out old, flakey and dirty grout and then re-grout to give your tiled wall an instant makeover.

Accessorize

Kitchens can be accessorized, but care should be taken to avoid too much clutter unless you are willing to do the extra cleaning. The most useful accessories tend towards the functional, think of:

• Shelves or units to hold a library of cook books
• A lectern to hold an open cook-book visible whilst you are cooking
• A wall clock
• A stop watch or timer
• Some cozy lighting away from the work surfaces to give the room a softer edge
• A radio, TV or CD player to provide entertainment. These can now be disguised and concealed again to minimise clutter. Consider a radio that fits in the ceiling void, operated by remote control! Another possibility would be a flat screen TV built into a refrigerator or work unit.

Accessorizing a kitchen can be relatively cheap and it is fun to experiment. Your efforts will be appreciated every day by your family and friends when they are in this busy hub of the family home.

Bronia Suszczenia is co-founder and Creative Director of York interior design company Art from the Start Ltd based in England. She designs projects ranging from dressing a single window, designing interiors for new homes, right through to refurbishing whole hotels. Visit http://www.art-from-the-start.co.uk to see more FREE design tips, to see the design portfolio and to learn about the unique Room-in-a-Box interior design service.

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