Island Bench Length/Depth

Hi I posted in the building forum but now I've found the kitchen forum this is probably a better place.

We are currently designing the kitchen for our new house and I'm trying to figure out the most cost effective size for our island bench.

I wanted a deep bench but a sales rep told me not to go past 900mm in depth unless you're going to 1450ish, because you would be "wasting" the rest of the slab. I didnt understand what he meant at the time, but now I've read that stone cuts are 3060x1500 so I assume this is so it leaves the balance of the slab (600mm) for the wall bench. Would that be right?

He also said if you go past 900mm you would need to have a waterfall edge? Does anyone know if that would be still be true if you had 900mm of cupboards underneath (600 on kitchen side, 300 on lounge side and then 300 overhang)? What depth can you go before requiring a waterfall edge?

Also, we may decide to stick with the basic laminex depending how our budget goes. Does anyone know what size sheets laminex comes in? So what would be the width and depth you can go in laminate before you have joins or wastage?

TIa

If the overhang is over 300mm then you need extra support. I think 900mm is actually a bit narrow for an island in a big kitchen.

1100-1200mm is a great depth for an island top. It allows you to have a 300mm overhang and cabinets on the back side. You can have it with or without waterfalls.

Ah, so is 200-250mm about the overhang you can have without requiring extra support?

No 300mm is the maximum

We have 1200 x 4000 which allows for 600mm deep cabinets on kitchen side, 300mm deep cabinets and 300mm overhang on living area side.

For a little bit of light-hearted discussion on kitchen bench size: http://housebythewater.wordpress.com/20 ... hen-bench/
We are going wide (115cm x 3m) so we can have 5 sets of legs under one side of the bench and cupboards, drawers, sink, etc on the other.

I'm going to check our overhang because I'm sure it's more then 30cm!!

CEK is there standards about this? We're already in an argument with the builder because they didnt buff the underside of the bench top and so it says the colour etc in bold black type! They argue its standard we argue we paid the same as a top end build for the stone so it should put be there!

The underside of the overhang should be polished no question!

It depends on the thickness of your bench top. Caesarstone says that support is required for overhangs greater than 200mm on a 20mm thick top!

Have a look on page 20 of the following link.

http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j ... NVEmRGkHoA

Thanks! The underside is something we are willing to take them to the building commission over, just waiting for them to fix a few other things before we return to the issue.

We have essastone thats 20mm thick and the overhang is 350mm, the island is 2.6m long. The bench was originally 800mm wide (they provided one sheet of stone as standard so 600mm for back of the kitchen leaving 800 wide on the island) but when we paid for a second piece to extended it out to 1000 wide I'm thinking they left the base cabinets exactly the same.

Will do some reading! Thanks again

Our island bench is 2300 long and 1400 wide. We have a stone top and no waterfall, instead we have placed a wine rack at one end and shelves at the other end.

Our Island bench is 4000mm x 900mm. have the 300mm over hang as half with push cupboards and have rest for seating (mainly use it to store all our glasses).

Ours is 3332 x 1080 with 600mm of cupboards under it and about 480mm of overhang. I can't speak for how it is all supported, other than to say the overhang is unobstructed.

The extra overhang is very handy for stools and provides much needed extra working space compared to the 850mm standard bench.


HD

I've often wondered with these 'breakfast bar' overhangs being too small for real use.

A 300mm overhang to me seems to be way too little to comfortably sit on a stool to eat a meal, even if it is just coco pops! Your 480mm of overhang would seem like a good option to me. Even a 400mm overhang would make it a lot easier to sit at, and in your case it does get the stools out of the way.

300mm is actually more than enough to be comfortable!

The other thing to consider is that an overhang over 300mm will need extra support or you will have no warranty!

At 400mm you would need support at either end and in the middle. The end support could be in the form of waterfalls but the middle support is normally ugly!

I tend to agree bpratt.
I've lived in a few places where 300-320mm was the standard bench overhang and I was always banging my knees on the back of the island. Whenever I ate a meal at the breakfast bar I had to lean over the plate a lot further. I'm not overly tall either at just under 6'. People who are taller or who have long legs would obviously be worse off. We are aiming for our bench overhang to be around 400-420mm.

Stewie

I've never actually measured the ones that I have seen which were uncomfortable, so perhaps if you say 300mm is more than enough, perhaps these other ones were just 200mm or 250mm.

I can see that a middle support would look ugly, but what if the back of the cupboards were 400mm in, and there was a 40mm timber supporting frame that only left a 250mm unsupported benchtop ? I realise that it would make the underside of the bench with 40mm less clearance above the seated leg, but would give you that 400mm to get you closer to the bench without knocking your knees on the back of he cupboards.

As I said in my earlier post, surely I am not the only one who has this issue, and there must be many others who tend not to use the 'breakfast bar' anymore as it just isn't comfortable to sit at. Therefore if everyone just stands there instead of sitting, then why bother with an overhang, as the stools are still going to stick out from it.

We had a 300mm overhang in our last house and found it uncomfortable, thus the upgrade.

Ours has no visible supports, so doesn't suffer from any of the visual concerns you have listed - it is simply a longer overhang than standard.


HD

Simple; we went with 30mm stone for a larger overhang. Doesn't cost that much more.