A random front door of a private residence. Nothing like a splash of red on gray. And a couple below from the Design Exchange, which was in the original stock exchange building, a great art deco specimen with a second life.
The multi-unit housing industry is suffering from Bad Kitchen Design Disease.
In older multi-unit residential developments especially. For those, I can understand small kitchens with tons of corners, dead-ends, and appliance & cabinet doors bashing into each other. 30 years ago, most folks in a condo or apartment ordered in or went out to eat. The kitchen was just a place to keep the beer cool & the pizza hot.
So if the kitchen is supposed to be the heart & social hub of the home, then
There is no excuse – particularly in new multi-unit design – for kitchens like these:
 |  |  |
|---|
These are [somewhat] better plans because they are straight runs and have open circulation as well as being open to the living area:
 |  |
|---|
You can neither reach nor see their contents. Therefore, you don’t utilize them. And they cost more to manufacture. Why pay for something that you can’t use?
Planwise, the cure for BKDD is simple: make the kitchen & living area one space. Forget the dining room. Even in single family homes, people want to merge the space. We routinely knock out plenty of walls between them.
If you want a formal dining event, go to a restaurant that provides it, & leave the linen washing & silver polishing for someone else.
What I want to know, is where are the condo & apartment developers that embrace the open plan concept?
We’re looking for collaboration project partners that get it. And if they get the open plan idea, they’ll also get our modular cabinet system with swappable doors.
Raleigh City FarmLast night I went to the open house event to view the proposed layout for an urban garden here in Raleigh. There’s a nice 1 acre vacant lot that gets great sun exposure, & is central to several residential neighborhoods. The goal is to transform it into a vibrant oasis of edible gardening in the middle of the city.
The best part about it: it’s managed. One of the hardest things to do with a volunteer community farm is maintaining it through growing seasons. People lose interest, they get busy – especially during summer months, & as with any volunteer effort, a handful of people end up doing all the work.
Having a management team handle the awareness & outreach as well as the inner workings & offerings takes a huge burden off the volunteer efforts. Kudos to the recognition that management is key.
Check out their FAQ page for all the deets on the awesome folks setting this thing up, including
I’m looking forward to seeing what this acre will look like in July!
One of our clients had a small nook adjacent to their kitchen. It became a kid zone so they could keep an eye on the little ones while they made dinner & cleaned up. We built a window seat that had 2 30″ wide drawers in the base cavity for storage, and a nice thick cushion on top for a reading niche for mom.
The other day they sent me this pic of said drawers in use.
How freaking cute is that?
When I first met with these folks, they said, “We don’t want our kitchen to look like it needs a wagon wheel table!” Understood. So we blew out the soffits, moved the fridge & shut down Miss Kitty’s saloon.
| Before | After |
|---|---|
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
Deets:
I’ll forego the 1000 words. Behold.
| Before | After |
|---|---|
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
And a few more detail shots:
Working with these folks was a total joy. They have now dethroned the previous favorite clients.
Right. But while you’re drinking yours - we’re going to make ours. Our own vanilla extract. For vanilla extract to be classified as pure, it must be a mixture of 35% alcohol and 13.35 ounces of vanilla bean per gallon. We don’t really need a gallon, though. But we also don’t want to spend $8 for two ounces of the stuff from Greedy Corporation Inc.
The Cheap Gardener and Cocktail Hacker each did some homework on it. Depending on how we crunch the numbers (and I do not love math, by the way), it comes to about 8 beans per cup of alcohol.
Slice vanilla beans length wise, & then into 2″ strips. Drop them in the bottle, let ‘em swim for about 8 weeks. Shake the bottle about once a week, and keep it in a cool dry place. In March we’ll have our first batch of our very own vanilla extract.
And we can top it off as we use it, & it becomes a never ending supply. One of our favorite crepe filling recipes is ricotta cheese flavored with
Or, we could sacrifice a couple of beans for a Vanilla Cloud cocktail.
Really. And 2011 has been our best year yet: 16 kitchens! By comparison, in a very informal survey of my kitchen design peers, the typical annual project load is roughly 6-8 kitchens – 10 in a very busy year.
No wonder I haven’t been posting regularly to the blog. Or tweeting. But I have been designing & installing kitchens for a lot of people. Hands on, direct service. Which takes time & focus. & my clients really appreciate it. In fact, here’s a note one of them sent us!
Our other milestones this year include:
Double bowl sinks should never have been invented. They’re a waste of material & useless for washing things like cookie sheets, roasting pans, & your longest, pointiest knives.
Steve Justrich points out that if you need a second bowl, use a tub! You can also use fitted strainers for air drying hand washed things, and a fitted cutting board across it for additional worksurface real estate.
A deeper than normal one (9″+) and an offset drain hole toward the back round out the perfect sink.
If this doesn’t belong on a kitchen wall, I don’t know what does. The Splendiferous Array of Culinary Tools. From Pop Chart Lab
© Copyright Eco-Modernism, LLC · IKEA is a registered trademark of Inter-IKEA Systems B.V. Eco-modernism is not affiliated with IKEA in any way.
