Kitchen remodel or buying a new kitchen?

Written by Marta
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Kitchen remodel – from shabby to a luxury bespoke kitchen in Amsterdam

Bespoke kitchen? Remodelling an existing kitchen is the better expression. Just before Covid our expat clients moved to their new house in a majestic street near the concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Beautiful ground floor apartment wit loads of potential. The kitchen did not fit their wishes and was made in some kind of shabby beach style not fitting their apartment nor their style or architecture.

Remodel or new kitchen?

Our first idea as bespoke kitchen designers here in Amsterdam was to convince the client to take everything out and design a new and custom made kitchen. After a few meetings the client persuaded us that we could also use the current base and make only a new island and a custom made side cabinet. This way we would remodel the shabby kitchen into a luxurious and custom made kitchen that fits the style and grandeur of the old house.

We did the calculations and the remodel of the kitchen would still bring a saving of 20% in comparison with delivering a total new kitchen. Worth the game.

Let’s start with a photo of the result and then describe the process and path to a successful kitchen remodel in Amsterdam.

Kitchen Amsterdam 1

The start of the kitchen remodel

Here we show the old kitchen model and shape. The fronts and doors of the old kitchen were made in some beach style to give a summer feeling to the dark and rainy autumn nights, that was our guess. The style did not fit the house at all. The use of the whole length with a freestanding oven and cooker was a good lay-out though. Wide and spacious drawers created loads of storage. Besides drawer systems are expensive in itself. We decided to just strip the fronts and use the lay-out and structure as a basis for the new kitchen. To work with an existing structure of the kitchen solved a lot of initial design questions that made us focus on other design questions like color and use of open spaces.

How did we achieve a successful kitchen design?

Now our task was to design the bespoke kitchen this way that it would fit a classic but contemporary apartment that resembled style and luxury in the same time. In this phase of the process we have started with realistic color 3D vsiuals as shown after this paragraph. In this part of the process the 3D render is the only thing that can inspire and convince the client in their design choices for a bespoke kitchen.

So the base of the kitchen was the long backwall and a free standing cooking range. We added nice storage space on the left side with nice open spaces. Left and right of the range hood we also designed open spaces.

We decided to replace the total island though, that would give way more potential in this kitchen. On the right side on the end towards the garden we have added extra storage space in the niche. Here was just enough space for a big American fridge and cabinets above. This was a key to our successful design as otherwise we could not use the backwall structure.

The old situation:

Before 3

Kitchen designer details

We chose nice dark blue kitchen fronts in combination with crispy white kitchen fronts. It would give this fresh and contemporary look to the interior. The open parts of the cabinets we have designed in oak with a visible wood structure. This to give a nice hint to the natural material usage in the house, like the floor. This also breaks and nuances the modernity of the kitchen design. Wood and open shelving always bring a nice counterweight and some playfulness to the outlook.

The kitchen top was chosen in Silestone Calacatta, it is crispy white and has small natural lines in the stone. Also here it gives a bright and nice fresh outlook.

The 3D kitchen designs:

3D kitchen design remodel 2

3D kitchen design remodel 1

3D kitchen design remodel 3

Other elements in the kitchen design

Other elements in the kitchen remodel and kitchen design that brought luxury are of course the new designed and modern lights above the island and a nice wine fridge in the island on the living room side. It is always a combination of the fixed architectural elements like doors, floors and windows together with the built in furniture like kitchen and cabinets that need to combine with loose interior elements like couches, lights. It is nice to make a combination with modern and classic.

The result was beautiful bespoke kitchen

So we started with a shabby not pretty kitchen. We could use the base of the long wall and then designed an entire new bespoke kitchen within a reasonable budget. The installation was done in three steps. Step one was carefully removing the fronts from the old kitchen so we could still use the base. In this phase also the kitchen island was removed. Now the whole kitchen could be measured. Step  two was building up the new corner cabinet and a new island. Then we fitted all the kitchen fronts. Only at this moment we could measure in the templates of the new kitchen top. So the kitchen top was the last element that would top off this successful project.

Result of remodel kitchen:

Kitchen Amsterdam 5

Kitchen Amsterdam 7

Kitchen Amsterdam 4


Advice: should you remodel the old kitchen or buy a new custom made kitchen?

It really depends… The problem with replacing elements and kitchen fronts is that you also need to replace side lists and structural elements. In particular in this kitchen that was easy as there were only big drawers. Here replacement made sense also because there were little lists and structural elements to replace. Next to this we also made new elements like the island and corner cabinets in this way designing and creating new and nice elements.

Want an advice or somebody to visit free of charge in Amsterdam.

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