I Gave My Kitchen a Green Makeover: A Case Study

Faced with a kitchen that was looking tired and jaded, Alison was looking through the usual round of fitted kitchen brochures and house magazines when she came across a feature on green kitchens.“Not actually green, because that is my most hated colour of all time,” laughs Alison.

The article was about how to design a kitchen based on sound Environmental Principles and that could help Reduce The Carbon Footprint of your cooking and living, and could help you to change your lifestyle to support the growing interest in conserving the Earth’s resources.

“I started reading out of boredom and because I was fed up with choosing an alternative to my tired old functional white 1980s kitchen, but the further I read, the more enthusiastic I became. When my husband came home later in the evening, I had become completely convinced that we needed to do a ‘green’ makeover, and not just have another boring mass produced kitchen out of a flat packed box!” says Alison.

‘Green’ Worktops

One of Alison’s major decisions was not to have a synthetic material for the worktops and to avoid something very expensive and hard to extract, like marble or granite. “We actually found a local carpenter who made up the worktops from a hard chipboard that is usually used to make false panelling on walls – the sort of stately home look. But we had them cut to shape, with lovely organic rounded curves on the front and around the island unit we decided to have and then dyed it to look a deep dark ebony wood colour,” describes Alison. Not only does it look beautiful in the finished kitchen, it is a very durable and sustainable material.

Recycling the Old Cupboard Shells

One major decision that also saved a great deal of money but enabled Alison to keep to her environmental principles was to recycle some of the kitchen that they already had. “We took the doors off and realised that the actual cupboard shells were in quite good condition. The same carpenter looked at them, too, and, apart from replacing a couple of panels, we managed to reuse all but one cupboard. Then he also reused some more shells from a kitchen that he was ripping out from someone else's kitchen!”

The doors came from a specialist supply company, again made from sustainable wood but produced in a family run workshop using eco-friendly techniques. The result looks like a completely new, bespoke designer kitchen. “You would never believe that we spent only a fraction of the price of a cheap veneered fitted kitchen – it really does look expensive,” says Alison.

Place for All the Bins!

One big change in the way that the kitchen was designed was to include more space for the bins necessary for sorting and recycling. “We also put in an environmentally sound waste disposal unit and three rinsing sinks so that we had everything in place to wash fruit and vegetables. As part of our new ‘kitchen life’ we have also committed to eating organic, whole food, to reduce the amount of packaging we generate for waste and also so that we can lose some weight and get healthier,” says Alison.

Natural Flooring

Once the main shape and design of the kitchen was finished and low energy and efficient appliances had been put in, the final finishing began. “With the new natural wood cupboard doors and dark ebony-like worktops, we decided on a some really bright handmade tiles in three different colours, put up in a random design,” says Alison. Having handmade tiles rather than manufactured tiles meant that less energy was used and fewer carbon emissions were produced when they were made.

“It’s crucial to make sure that the materials you are using for the kitchen have been produced in an environmentally kind way – it's not just about how you are going to use the kitchen,” points out Alison.

This was certainly behind the thinking that went into planning the new flooring for the kitchen – natural stone, which looks so traditional and is beautifully cool on hot summer days. Also easy to clean and virtually indestructible, the floor is a perfect foil to the bright ceramic tiles and the natural wood of the kitchen furniture.

“Our final touch was to have glass splash backs – these are fantastic and really look good with everything else. “We now have so much more fun in our kitchen – we have more people round, we have extended our range of cooking and its definitely one of the best room makeovers we’ve ever done in our home,” smiles Alison.