Question:

I am looking for a new kitchen and I would like a unit that will hide my toaster and kettle. I have looked around but haven't seen anything. Do you do such a unit?

Answer:

Of course! We call it a Tambour unit; this unit starts on the worktop and goes all the way up to the top of your wall units. It has a roller shutter door available in many finishes and is deep enough to house your toaster and kettle, etc. As an added bonus the unit comes complete with 3 electrical sockets built in, so you can plug in your toaster and kettle inside the Tambour.

Question:

My wife is 4' 11” tall and finds the worktop height of 36” in our current kitchen too high. Can we get a kitchen that is maybe couple of inches lower in height?

Answer:

Of course! Our kitchens are available with 4 different plinth heights from 70mm to 200mm. It sounds like 100mm would be right for you. This will give you an overall height to the top of our worktop of 804mm (34”), which is 2 inches lower than you current kitchen, as well as most ordinary kitchens.

Question:

We live in a 17th century farmhouse and the ceiling in our kitchen is only 6 foot 11.25 inches high. We would like to have a built in fridge freezer and one of those high pullout units, but so far we cannot find a kitchen company that has cabinets low enough to fit, can you help?

Answer:

Of course, but I will have to use our metric system to answer your question. Your ceiling is 2114 millimetres high. Our tall units are available heights of either 2080mm or 2333mm on a plinth height of 150mm. In your home the 2080mm height should fit, but please be careful to check your ceiling height in several areas of the kitchen, as a building of this age is likely to have uneven floors and ceilings, part of “the character” of the property.

If you find that the height is lower in some places we can offer the same units on a 100mm plinth, which should resolve the problem with room to spare. If you would prefer this option please be careful to check that your appliances will fit beneath the lower worktop height of 820mm (32.28 inches). There is further flexibility as all of our unit legs are adjustable in height. My design team at Kutchenhaus will be happy to advise you further on this.

Question:

We would like to have our washing machine behind a door in our new kitchen. Some kitchen shops have said that this would not be a problem but others say it cannot be done. Can you do it?

Answer:

Of course, but it may not be the best solution in the long term. In order to achieve an integrated look for your free standing washing machine there are several things that will need to be done. Firstly your worktops will have to be a much deeper than normal and the units beneath will have to be pulled forward far enough for the machine to sit well behind the plinth line of the units. You will also need to have two doors (700mm overall) fixed on either side of the space for the washing machine.

We would not recommend putting the machine behind just one 600mm door for following reasons:

A vertical post will need to be fitted either side of the space to allow hinges to be fixed and to have something for the door to close against. This means that the machine will effectively be blocked in and all of this will have to be dismantled should the machine ever require servicing.

Secondly, using a 600mm space means that the machine will be stood in contact with the units either side this could result in vibrations from the machine being transmitted through all of the units in the kitchen when it is in use, especially during the spin cycle.

I know that integrated washing machines are very expensive when compared to free standing ones. The reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, extra money is spent engineering the machine so that the vibrations are better suppressed. Secondly, they are not produced in the same volumes and therefore cost more to make. When you take into account the extra costs involved in hiding your washing machine you may find that the purpose built integrated option is the best one to take.

Question:

Please help, we have just moved into our new home and we need a new kitchen. The problem is that where the cooker must go the wall is only 1725mm before the door. By my calculation we cannot get the cooker in and have a unit either side before we get to the units on the next wall. So the only answer seems to be to have the cooker placed just before turning the corner. Do you have a better solution?

Answer:

Of course! If I understand you correctly, you have an L shaped kitchen with the short part of the L being the 1720mm measurement leading to a door. We produce an L shaped unit that is 800 x 800mm in size. If you were to place this unit in the corner, followed by your cooker (600mm) and then place a 300mm unit, by my calculation you will have used 1700mm of the wall, leaving 25mm before the door - perfect to allow for a small overhang on the worktop.

We offer our 800 x 800mm L shaped unit in two different formats. The first one is a simple cabinet with L shaped shelves, and the second one is a fully revolving carousel unit where even the doors revolve and are self closing. Our units are superbly engineered, as you might expect from a German manufacturer. We like to say about this kind of unit “It isn't necessary but it's beautiful”.