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Show Utah Living frReal Estate. JanuaryFebruary 2002 - 5 How to choose a kitchen design that meets your needs By Katherine Salant Inman News Features 17 hen you look at kitchens in T model nouses, you'll find that it's easy to get seduced by a look great cabinets, gorgeous floor tiles, love that granite and hard to stay on terra firma and pay attention atten-tion to the practical details. In the end, though, function will matter much more than looks. If the kitchen in your new house is not well laid-out and there's not enough counterspace or cabinets, you will hate it every day you live there, even if everything looks terrific. ter-rific. The first step in getting the right kitchen for you is to make a detailed evaluation of the kitchen you use now. The more you can articulate about what you like and hate about it, the more you will know what to include or omit in your new one. For example, do you have enough counterspace? Is your food preparation area by the sink too small? Are you constantly crisscrossing criss-crossing your kitchen, going from the refrigerator to the sink and back again while preparing a meal or loading and unloading your dishwasher? dish-washer? Is your current kitchen overflowing with cooking equipment equip-ment because you outgrew its storage stor-age capacity long ago? As you go over everything, be honest in your assessment. If you cook on the run and dispense with a cutting board half the time, your plastic laminate counters may be badly scratched and a scratchproof countertop material for your new kitchen should be a priority. Now, with your what-I-love-and-hate-about-my-kitchen list in hand, make the same practicality-focused practicality-focused evaluations of the kitchens kitch-ens that you see in model houses. When you put on "aesthetic blinders" so you can zero in on function, you'll find the model home kitchens have pluses and minuses, mi-nuses, just like yours. Since most production builders are unwilling to modify a kitchen to suit a particular par-ticular buyer, you' II have to decide which minuses you can live with. The first thing to check is the counter surface area. Is the food-preparation food-preparation space adequate? If more than one person will be cooking cook-ing at the same time, is there enough room for two people to work together comfortably? If you hand wash some items and leave them out to air dry, is there room on the counter for a dish rack? Or, will you have to put away the rack every time before you can fix a meal? The best way to answer these questions is to act out in pantomime panto-mime how you will use the space. If you and your spouse pretend to prepare a meal and find that you keep bumping into each other, the kitchen is clearly too small. Though you may feel ridiculous as you go through this Marcel Marceau routine, the hands-on information you'll collect will be invaluable. As you field-test the kitchen, make sure your imagined meal preparation includes all the appliances. appli-ances. A kitchen that is awkwardly arranged can be just as irritating as one that's too small. The stove, sink, refrigerator, and adjacent work areas should be in reasonable proximity to one another so you don't have to spend a lot of time criss-crossing the room to get a meal together. A wall oven can be off to one side because you won't spend much time at it, but a microwave should be convenient to the work area because the cook may be heating, defrosting, or otherwise using it for preparing the meal. The dishwasher should be close to the cabinet where dishes and glasses are kept, which should, in turn, be close to the daily eating area. The refrigerator should be close to both the food-prep area and the cabinet where dishes and glasses are kept Because of its size, the refrigerator is frequently put in a far corner, causing endless unnecessary trips back and forth across the kitchen. Storage needs vary with lifestyle, but this will be another sore point if there isn't enough. From study of your current kitchen you should have an idea of how much you need. If the base cabinet storage in the model kitchen appears ap-pears to be inadequate, can you hang some pots and pans on the wall? If there isn't enough wall cabinet storage for dishes and plates, can you store the special occasion plates in a dining room buffet? Adequate food storage depends de-pends on both your shopping and eating habits. Do you go food shopping shop-ping once a week or every few days? Are your food preferences simple or do you prepare meals ,with many pantry ingredients? If , the kitchen has a pantry closet the shelves must be at least 1 2 inches deep and 1 2 inches high to accommodate accom-modate cereal boxes, but 24-inch depth will be more useful. If you buy cereal in bulk quantities the shelf height should be 18 inches. Kitchen lighting is often overlooked over-looked because most buyers visit the model during broad daylight, when windows can flood the room with light At night, however, you still need to see what you're doing. Even if there is adequate general lighting, the counter areas can be dark and hard to work in. Under-cabinet Under-cabinet lighting will eliminate this problem. 7s 38 EVANS MORTGAGE 768-2232 1 5-year fixed 6.54 APR $1 20,000 122801 J Tfflnfinnk im Why buy a used home when you can have a beautiful, brand new home for a competitive price? It's the only way to get everything you want. The Adrian The Brentwood raenruxm iaigj , JtfcjJ I ' I j IK1MIUMI Jk. A 'IS' Sff 4 ( V I Il 1 - L' 4 ' wear' V' 5 "(t The Andover total mt t . UJ i 4 mmruMtt MRm BJfc fl . ,. Uj -Mil sm97 j PLf i -II f I HMW...II .J wctMbrim Many more exciting pbns available including award-winning ramblers. For information call Rodger Hardy, 360-9133 or Jayson Haskell, 898-5513. Visit our decorated model in Pilgrim's Landing and our new model in Saratoga Springs. Marketed by Haskell Realty, 96 N. 500 West, Suite 1 50, Bountiful, Utah 84010 HASKELL 11 VlUW.AU.Vi |