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Get your FREE Kitchen
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Contractor and Reliable
Remodeler
services to get the best quote for your home improvement project. Both services
are FREE.
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Kitchen
Secret #14
The difference between an integrated appliance
& a hidden kitchen appliance:
As
if deciding upon your kitchen style and design doesn’t give you a big
headache, you will also have to decide on the pros and cons of either
keeping your existing appliances, buying new ‘stand alone’ kitchen appliances
or buying integrated ones. Many
customers don’t take time in analysing which appliance will be right.
Many
factors need to be taken into consideration. On this occasion, we’ll
be looking at appliances that typically are situated close to a water
supply – appliances such as washing machines, dryers and dishwashers.
Figure 8 shows
a typical example of a customer wanting to integrate a non-integrated
appliance. In this situation the appliance is a washing machine, but
it could
have just as easily have been something else. To ‘hide’ a non-integrated
kitchen appliance in
such a scenario, it’s necessary to use a slightly deeper worktop. A
washing machine needs
some ‘breathing space’ at the back. In order to have the doors flush
with the finish of the worktop at the front and an adequate gap
at the rear, the depth of the worktop needs to be extended by at lease
50mm. This means that if encountering a situation where the wall for
this particular part of the kitchen only allows for a 600mm depth, then
the whole row of cupboards and appliances will have to ‘stick out’ very
slightly. This can again be seen in figure 8.
As most machines
are very nearly 600mm wide, when enclosing such an appliance kitchen
companies will generally allow for a 700mm space – 50mm clear at either
side. When attaching the doors, a 300 and 400mm door is used – not the
most symmetrical look, but more importantly taking up an additional
100mm of space in the ‘kitchen run’ without good reason.
When space is
at a premium, a 100mm waste in the ‘run’ might just well have a significant
impact upon the design.
 Figure
9 shows another alternative for the same part of the kitchen. This
time, we are using a fully integrated washer.
Integrated kitchen appliances are completely different to non-integrated
ones.
As a generalisation,
one of the main differences is the ventilation supply.
For non-integrated
appliances, the cooling ventilation can be found at the rear, whilst
with the integrated version it can be found behind a vent in the kitchen
plinth.
This significant
appliance design alteration allows both cupboards in the kitchen as
well as worktop to be positioned right next to it. The alternative in
figure 9 enables yet another amendment to the overall kitchen
design. As can be seen in figure 8, there is only room for a
400mm base unit to the right hand size of the appliance.
Many kitchen companies
don’t make drawers in a 400mm width – they only have a 500mm option.
Therefore, if there’s going to be a hidden non-integrated kitchen appliance
in this particular run, then there won’t be enough room to have a handy
set of drawers nearby to the sink. The important thing to remember is
that one small seemingly insignificant change in the kitchen design
could result in a vast change in the efficiency of the overall final
package.
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