A renovated beachfront penthouse in Dominion Beach has everything you could want, but it was the secondary or ‘dirty’ kitchen that really caught my attention.
A dirty kitchen helps keep the open-concept kitchen immaculate.
I have always enjoyed cooking, and when I look around a property, I perhaps pay more attention to the kitchen than many people do.
I was looking at a recently renovated penthouse in Dominion Beach on the New Golden Mile in Estepona, and there is a lot to like about it. It has three bedrooms and three bathrooms, a large terrace with views directly down to the sea, and a separate rooftop solarium with plenty of space for relaxing, together with a Jacuzzi and sauna.
But strangely enough, none of those was the feature that particularly caught my attention.
It was the dirty kitchen.
Before anybody gets the wrong idea, I'm not talking about a kitchen that hasn't been cleaned. I'm talking about a second kitchen, tucked away behind the beautiful open-concept kitchen that forms part of the main living area.
Open-concept living has become almost the norm in renovated properties. In this apartment, it works particularly well because there is enough space for a proper sitting area, a proper dining area and a generously proportioned kitchen. The kitchen itself has an island and a full range of integrated Miele appliances, so visually it works very well as part of the living space.
But there is a problem with open kitchens if you enjoy cooking. You actually cook in them.
Preparing a proper meal invariably involves pots, pans, chopping boards, ingredients, utensils and all the other things that somehow seem to multiply while you're cooking. If you're entertaining friends, you then sit down to dinner with the evidence of everything you've just been doing sitting a few metres away.
That's where the dirty kitchen comes in.
Just behind the main kitchen in this penthouse is a secondary kitchen and laundry area. It gives you somewhere to do the messy bits, leave the things you don't need immediately, and generally keep everything that doesn't need to be on display out of sight.
You can then sit down with your friends and enjoy dinner while the beautiful open kitchen remains part of the living room rather than looking like somewhere that has just produced dinner for six people.
There is another kitchen feature here that I rather like too. It has a double dishwasher. I recently read about somebody who has two dishwashers and hardly ever puts the crockery away. They take the clean plates and glasses from one dishwasher, use them, and put them into the other one. When the second dishwasher is full, they run it and the process starts again in the opposite direction.
I'm not entirely sure that is how I would use them, but I thought it was brilliant. And, of course, if you regularly entertain, having two dishwashers suddenly doesn't seem extravagant at all.
Perhaps what I like most about this apartment is that somebody appears to have thought about how the kitchen will actually be used.
There are plenty of obvious things to admire in this renovated beachfront penthouse in Dominion Beach. This is an established gated beachfront community between Estepona and Marbella, with gardens, swimming pools and direct access to the beach. The apartment itself has three bedrooms, three bathrooms, terraces with sea views and the outside space you would hope to find in a home of this type. It is also available for sale, fully furnished and ready to move into.
But sometimes it is a relatively small detail that makes you stop and think, and for me, it was somewhere to hide the dirty saucepans.
Now I want a dirty kitchen!
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