This one we put in a dentist’s office. We do not claim responsibility for the hideous shade of wallpaper.

Cabs are high gloss green & white, single basin farm sink. Behold!

Reclaimed, weathered wood is perfect for the backside of an island or peninsula! It’s a surface that gets kicked a lot, so it’d stand up to it. It’s a natural & textured material that compliments smoother modern touches like slab doors & countertops.

I can’t wait to use this idea on a project!

Zero to 24 inches+

For our modular cabinet line, Besh, I’ve been playing with uniform wall cabinet heights – even above a sink.

This example shows all wall cabinets aligned at the bottom and top. There’s no staggered height with a bigger gap between the faucet & the bottom of the wall cabinet above it.

My guess is that this is a 30″ clearance, since the cooktop is gas & most hood manufacturers require that much over a gas cooking surface.

It works. It looks good. There are no clearance issues. I’m not a huge fan of soffits, but in this case, it really boosts the built in look.

The only thing I’d change in this one would be to shift the window framing to line up with the bottom &  top of the wall cabinets. I can’t help it. I’m a designer.

Also? Love the table, stools & tile. And the black pendant lights.

*without going insane or broke.

We get a LOT of calls from people who are excitedly planning to buy their kitchen from IKEA.  Fortunately, most of them contact us during the early stages and we’re able to guide them to the most painless solutions possible.

Too many times, we’ve seen the excitement give way to frustration, anxiety and anger. And you know what? Every bit of it can be avoided. Every. Single. Bit.

How do you know if you should design your own kitchen or not?

It’s very simple. If it feels like you are using the wrong scissors, get help. Do not continue to bludgeon your way through the exercise with equipment that doesn’t feel like it fits you. Because guess what? The discomfort will progressively increase the deeper you get into the project.

Do not become a frustrated, anxious and angry statistic. There are successful kitchens out there waiting to be born.

It’s not about the money.

If all you focus on is that tantalizing pricetag IKEA waves in your face, you are not prepared to undertake an IKEA kitchen project. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Cabinets (which don’t assemble & install themselves, by the way) are but a single ingredient that goes into a kitchen!  There’s also plumbing, lighting, drywall, tiling, flooring, countertops, appliances. And labor. Lots and lots of labor. And all of it costs money.

The trick is, how do you make it cost only the money it should cost, and not pile on extra costs incurred from things like dimensional and order errors?

It’s a valid question. And most people who manage their own money would like to know the answer.

It’s about the design.

Most people who manage their own money also value their time, which more than likely is consumed by normal life, like work and family.

IKEA wants you to design your own kitchen. On the surface, it’s fun to play with the planner tool & plop down cabinets & see it grow on the screen into your dream kitchen. & that’s great – if you have time., and are comfortable with it.

Sooner or later, though, the rubber meets the road, and making it all work in 3 dimensions is a very different animal from pushing it around on paper.

There’s a reason people design & install kitchens for other people: it’s a full time job!  The good news is, we’ve seen what works & what doesn’t in enough scenarios that we can quickly generate solutions that work.

Our design solutions avoid the pile on of extra costs.

We don’t know of too many people who wouldn’t agree that it’s very much worth spending $500 designing to prevent spending another $1500 (or more) during installation.

We are more than happy to let you guys handle the Software programming. And the prescription filling. And the history professing. And the lawyering. And the dentistry. And the technical writing. And the photography. And the teaching.

In exchange, let us handle the kitchening for you. From soup to nuts.

THAT is how to get an IKEA kitchen successfully!

Simple, clean, no frou frou

We’ve seen an uptick, thankfully, in the number of folks looking for modern, straight line, slab door kitchens. Not minimal to the point of stark. Minimal as in just enough to be the canvas for what happens in the space. And minimal as in maintenance.

Would you rather clean all the grooves & curves in a raised panel door, or get it done in one wipe across a single surface?

And would you rather focus on the details of the kitchen or the conversation & meal creation that goes on within it?

Are you judicious with your money, but not micromanagerial with it?

If you prefer the latter in those questions, we’re the right designers for you.

We’ll leave the turned legs & chair rails to someone else.

It works!

I’m working on a kitchen design now that will be a modern space inside of a house about 90 years old. We’re doing high gloss gray base cabinets, white quartz countertops with gray aggregate, and high gloss white wall cabinets.

The space gets fantastic natural daylighting, but when the sun goes down, we don’t want it to seem too cold or sterile, so we decided to add a subway tile backsplash that is mostly white, a bit of warm gray, & then a butter yellow in the mix.

A  non-kitchen area showing how nicely those colors work together:

And a kitchen space with the gray & yellow palette, though the gray is up on the wall & the white is on the base cabinets:

Home from Seattle!

Pictures say it all for this makeover for a young family that had returned from the Pacific Northwest to their roots in Chapel Hill NC. We opened up the kitchen & dining zones to the living area, not to mention bringing a few things up to date. Like landing space around the cooktop. And the red countertops.

Rundown of other changes:

• closed up the door to the laundry room,
• converted an existing window into a door to the back deck,
• removed a long portion of wall dividing the kitchen from the living room
• added an island both for traffic control and interaction
• storage storage storage.

Before	After

Detail shots & info

• cabinets: Ikea
• countertops: caesarstone quartz, “concrete”
• flooring: bamboo
• backsplash: modwalls subway glass, “pool”

Photos are by the always awesome Anita Normanly.

Keeping it real.

Fewer things make my day & let me know I’m good at what I do than notes from my clients. I just got this completely unsolicited email today from a great couple  up in Vermont:

How’s business? All’s well here – we love our kitchen more & more every day, so grateful to you for pushing for us to extend it instead of living with the tiny space we had before.

…we totally love it – we keep throwing parties & you wouldn’t believe the compliments we get on it. We’ll have to invite you guys to one when you finally make it up here ;)

Seriously – does it get any better than that? I think not!

Hi everyone! I’m Jessica from Arcadian Lighting, a blog and website where I get to write about the latest interior design trends and all the beautiful home and kitchen lighting fixtures that go with them. I’m delighted to be guest posting today on Eco Modernism because I’d like to share a few key ways to keep your kitchen well lit and stylish. If you want your kitchen to be particularly chic, why not try a brilliant shade of blue? From robin’s egg blue to dusty gray-blue, there’s something classically cool about blue kitchens. I hope you enjoy!

This modern kitchen features two sleek pendant lights and recessed lighting selectively placed throughout the room. The pale blue cupboards give the kitchen a cheerful atmosphere

Burlington VT

You read it right: Vermont.  4 hours one way to the Boston store, and in need of help designing their Ikea kitchen, these folks reached out to me about a year ago, & we were able to help them out from here in NC.

We went through several concepts & weighed the pros & cons of each.  Then we settled on one that stole some space from an oversized existing mudroom to make a livable, practical, beautiful kitchen.

Here’s the rough floor plan we ended up with from the last concept in the table. We converted the existing mudroom into the kitchen space, & stole space from the existing deck for the new, smaller mudroom. We included an option to expand the deck in the future.

Things that were important to them:

• maximize natural lighting via South & East windows
• mud room is a must-have in the NE winters
• minimal division between kitchen & dining
• European sized refrigerator – they grow their own, eat fresh & compost, so cool storage requirements were small
• maintaining look & feel of an older home in a historic area

Before	After