A holiday home out of your vacant house, Part 3: Decorating the Kitchen

Now that your living room and bedrooms are furnished, let us move to the one area of you house which is the most neglected: your kitchen. While providing your house as a holiday home, it needs to be remembered that the concept is vastly different from that of a hotel room rental. You guests in most cases will be families or tourist groups who may like to avail all the comforts of their home life at an entirely new location. So it is important that the kitchen too be availed to the guests, cleaned and redecorated to suit their culinary needs, however limited. While redecorating your kitchen, the following points need to be addressed.

Make sure your floors, whether tiled, linoleum or mosaic are waxed clean. All your shelves should be given a proper enclosure, wooden or glass. The kitchen should be well lighted, ventilated and clutter free.

There should be ample storage space available and in case you do not have a store room, there are certain tricks-of-the-trade you may adapt. Not much needs to be invested into storage; use old containers painted new to hold your kitchen linen and use pot racks to hold those pans and tavas. Don’t forget to leave behind some basic cooking utensils, spoons and knife cleaned for use. Also ensure that there is an electric or gas stove present in the kitchen in working condition.

A small jelly cupboard can be arranged to hold not just the china and cutlery for the guests, but also liquors and wine. This will save you the trouble of building a mini-bar. For starters, you can leave behind a complimentary bottle of wine in the jelly cupboard, for your guests to enjoy.

If you have some empty space on the walls, hang a pin board to cover some of the space. You can then print and laminate some easy to make recipes and pin them on the board, so your guests can fix themselves a nice snack, just in case.

If your kitchen is large enough, make sure a 2 or 3 chairs and a small coffee table are arranged in a corner, facing the window. If the kitchen is too small, try accommodating a couple of barstools are provided by a slab where your guests can seat themselves and enjoy a mug of coffee.

Make sure that your kitchen is clean and well ventilated. If you don’t plan to leave your fridge behind, you can instead provide your guests a mini fridge which they can use to store cold water and drinks on a hot summer day.

Exclusives

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