Kitchen worktop

King Solomon vs the Wife - are you kidding !

 

I'm pants at design - but not pants at opinions so for what it is worth I think it looks nice

Tangent: We've got Porcel Thin tiles on the floor. They are big (and thin=light), therefore reasonably quick to lay, and even allow a fair flex. Probably less "traction" than your wood if you have dogs. Very pleased with them, and they come in a range of "fake stone" appearances (marble lookalike and so on).

Doddle to clean. Steam Clean if the need arises.
Glasses don't bounce (probably true of most drops onto wood too)

The only wooden floor I would want is old, and distressed, otherwise (until it gets to that point) I think that every blemish catches the eye

Our kitchen units are all wood - no repainting / chips.

How many lighting circuits have you got in there? Individual twiddle-dimmers might be a nuisance, so you might want to splash out on some Control Gear instead. Easy for me to say, we put that in the whole house when we had it rewired. Monumentally expensive, and I took a huge amount of convincing that there was benefit. If you are married to a footballer's wife (actually, on reflection, and being in this forum, I guess that is a "no" ) and you want colour-changing moods and all that jazz, then I can definitely see the decision being easy, but "Once set I'll leave it like that" (that's my position) is much harder to justify.

I have zero regrets, with the benefit of hindsight. I'll bore you with a few of the benefits:

Decide how you want the lights to work (which switches control which lights, and "how") after you have moved in and used it for a while

Have some "scenes" rather than twiddly-knob dimmers. We have three scenes in the kitchen (and about 10 circuits ... including LED strips under the counters, and kicking strips and so on) - basically an All On for cooking, a lower light when not cooking, and a very subdued light when we are in the dinning bit and not wanting the kitchen lights off, but not wanting them blaring either.

"All off" button. We have two, one when leaving the main downstairs quarters, and one at the top of the stairs that kills everything downstairs. (Similarly all the upstairs lights go off at 10AM. I'm fed up with visiting kids thinking that when you get up in the morning you don't bother to open the curtains, turn on the lights, and then leave them on ...)

"Vacation mode" makes the place look lived in, when you are away.

"Pathways". Come in the back door after a really good summer's day when you have done the full alfresco summer thing, have armfulls of dirty plates and it is pitch black. Hit the button at the door as you come in and illuminate all the way to the kitchen sink. Similar at the top of the stairs. Similar each side of the bed that brings on the minimum to find your way to the loo without stubbing your toe, or disturbing you partner. And by Front/Side door - a timer that turns off the inside light, and the outside one too etc., a few minutes later (after you have gone ...). Mrs K leaves very early in the morning for work and greatly appreciates that in the Winter ... well she greatly appreciates me NOT nagging her that she left all the lights on AGAIN this morning ...)

And in that vein an "All on" bedside button for the teenagers, home alone, if they get spooked in the middle of the night. Or you Also hook that up to burglar and fire alarms

Beyond that the list gets more creative ... and I've wandered from "Kitchen lighting" to whole house systems.

We put CAT5 into every room, rather than having to rely on WiFi, and we put in much higher quality CAT5 (or 6 or whatever it is called) from the central hub to the places where we though we might want a TV.

Music? Speaker cables too maybe. Speaker in the Bathroom? That's like central-locking, I had no idea I needed that until I first had it Doorbell from perhaps more than one door? to perhaps more than one "sounder"?

I have other suggestions ... but only if you let me know they might be on interest.

 

I think I'd be inclined to change the 'mussel' door to a pale grey and tie both door colours in with a mid grey. I can't see you being able to contrast both those and the floor. This might work for both work tops and flooring? The darker grain in the wood will tie in with the darker door.

 

Interesting! Your recommendations are quite nice but I wonder how all of these fit in budget wise and the length of time/installation costs. Can you provide costs per square (tile etc) or item? That would be interesting to know

 

Don't disagree, but some of them need to go in at the outset or, at least, plan for them in the future and maybe run in some redundant cable for future proofing.

For example, you could route all lighting circuits (in a room) back to a central location, where there could be a hub in future, and separately wire the switches back there too (and, for now, connect the two) rather than each lighting circuit wired to the switch ... which you can never change in future. Might just be a wiring hub box in the wall where the switch is, to facilitate "improvements" later.

There are controllers you can get to replace the switches that can be automated, but all the ones I have seen people fit fall a long way short or what can be achieved with a centralised wiring system. And they typically all need batteries in each switch and lightbulb [and Eco-Me hates that sort of continuous parasitic "standby" power consumption ...] (that can probably be avoided if the circuit is Live, but typically in the UK we switch the Live so there is no power when off). Nonetheless might be worth looking at the "switch replacement automation" stuff to see what that offers.

Of all my rabbiting the bit I would commend to you is the ability to "reconfigure the lighting / switch setup after you've moved in and lived with it for a bit" and also avoiding a huge array of twiddly knobs for all the dimmer circuits

The Porcel Thin website starts at £55 per sq.m. (120cm x 60cm), £65 sq.m. for 100cm x 100cm and 140cm x 80cm and then £86 per sq.m. for 180cm x 90cm - might be some time saving laying for the bigger tiles? I don't know ... and maybe that size would only look right in a massive room like a Hotel Foyer I have no idea what the install cost is and how that would compare with, say, timber "floor boards", which I presume would take more time to fit as there are more "pieces" in that zigsaw puzzle.