Details from my Kitchen

The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things. (Plato)

I feel like that child today, as I see daylight in my completed kitchen.

The upper cabinets.


Lower cabinetry.


Enjoying the contrast between the E0 birch ply and the red hardwood.


I didn't know my builders were installing this metal edge. I've seen the tiles just stop in some kitchens, but mine have a punctuation mark.


Steel handles from Hafele -- comfortable, strong and recyclable.


Red timber, steel edging, speckled grey tiles, 'Nougat' Caesarstone: I am so pleased by the colour combinations.


The character marks in recycled timber -- nail holes:


A borer track through the recycled timber:


Light glows through the quartz on the bench edge.


The timber shelf between the kitchen and family room. I keep stroking it.


End grain on the timber shelf between kitchen and family room.

Transformations: The Kitchen

Here is much of my hideous, badly-organised, tiny kitchen. We had the enclosing arch pulled down before the shot was taken: the original kitchen was a room 11' wide and about 6' deep.

The original kitchen was, I suspect, far better designed than this cheap replacement. If you had a tiny kitchen, would you put in a double sink smack in the middle of your only run of bench space? Would you then put the stove in the middle of one short side? There was no elbow room! Moreover, there was nowhere to put the fresh fruit, or indeed anything that ought not to go in the fridge. You can see in the picture below how much room there was once we'd put in the microwave, toaster and electric jug. Add the crock for utensils and I had barely any room for food preparation. Not to mention the depressing colour!


In the dining room next to it, there were some projecting walls that made it impossible to use our rectangular table comfortably. We kept the table pushed in to the wall until we had guests, then had to weave our way around it to come in and out. We decided that all those walls would come down and we'd have one big room.


Isn't it a relief to chuck out cheap, nasty junk?

And because we were extending outwards from the kitchen wall, we left a big open space where a window had been removed. It's about chair-rail height.


Here's what it looked like after the plaster, balustrade, lights, Marmoleum and painting were finished. It already looks like a comfortable space.


Next thing was having the kitchen carcases installed. They are E0 birch ply. I counted thirteen layers of ply, but I might have been wrong.


It looks pretty nice without the bench top or doors!

Here's what Caesarstone looks like in 'Nougat':


And here is how it looked when the appliances and counter were added:


The last thing to happen was installation of the panels of Recycled Mixed Reds: Australian native timbers recycled from demolished structures. Species include Red Mahogany, Forest Red Gum, Blue Gum, Rose Gum, Bloodwood & Southern Mahogany. Jimmy the Joiner is pretty sure we have some Stringybark as well. As the timber is recycled, there are all kinds of 'character' marks from borers and nail holes. Greener Kitchens sourced the timber from Thor's Hammer.

Now let's just have that Before shot again:


And here's the kitchen complete:


Stay tuned for a follow-up post in which I point out its excellences in detail!

Lighting

Lighting is really difficult! Illumination is like sound; it has so many qualities that finding what you want is more luck on the part of the consumer than anything else. Lights can be more or less strong, more or less directional, and it simply isn't something you can work out in a lighting shop, surrounded by other light sources. Some spotlights, for example, are really for security lighting; others are less concentrated and will provide comfortable light for outdoor dining.

Lighting shops, in my experience, are usually filled with astonishingly ugly fittings. Some years ago we discovered Beacon Lighting. Their shops tend to be at least 60% attractive fittings, and even the unattractive ones aren't that bad, except maybe for this one:

How on earth could anyone think this was attractive? Let alone practical! But I digress.

We ended up with the following, all from Beacon Lighting:

Kitchen	Triple LED spotlights on bracket, LEDS for under wall cupboards
Family Room	LED downlights, stainless steel Typhoon fan
Study	Laconia pendant
Entry	Recycle a fitting
Kids' Playroom	Rocket light
Stairs	Project wall sconce
Patio	Sentinel spotlights

HTML Tables

And here are the problems we encountered along the way.

Choice: it's hard to know exactly what you want, and whether it will provide adequate illumination. In some areas, like exposed outdoor lighting, the range is very small. This can mean you choose very quickly, or that you go away thinking, "None of the above!" Even without the returns we made, several shopping trips would have been necessary just to decide on fittings. On the positive side, Beacon were always very accommodating with returns and so on, and their staff are friendly and helpful (if occasionally short on technical knowledge).

Vue from Beacon, for our kitchen, was an easy decision. Few of these rail-type fittings have such clean lines:


The second was supply: lots of things had to be ordered in for us as the Beacon stores don't hold very much stock. And the most convenient Beacon store is 20-30 minutes away, down the motorway. We had to come back for these Sentinel lights for our patio:


Thirdly, we had a problem due to inadequate technical information. The LED downlights were 62mm, not the standard 80mm. The fact that they had no user-replaceable parts wasn't mentioned either. Seriously -- once the LEDs failed we were supposed to pay an electrician to remove the fitting from the ceiling and throw it away. This sounds very wasteful to me even if the fitting is supposed to last 30 years -- for one thing, what if one light fails long before the others? Is anyone going to gamble against Murphy's Law?


Of course we didn't know about the size until after our electrician had drilled the 80mm holes in the ceiling. He replaced the downlights with standard-size, user-replaceable LED fittings, which were cheaper than the ones we had found. Light fittings are expensive and it's worth seeing what your electrician can get at trade prices, especially things like downlights, which all look the same and which nobody will actually be examining closely.

Next, the Laconia pendant's glass shade was broken when the electrician opened the box. Bad luck, I suppose, but it meant a trip back to Beacon for another one.


Then we looked at the light fitting we planned to recycle, and discovered that the rod kit for the old fitting had disappeared during the building process, leaving us with the bowl. Our electrician, understandably, won't fit the bowl to a fitting it wasn't designed for, so we are waiting to hear back about a rod kit that will fit.

The Domus lights, which we bought from OzLighting, have a transformer which must be set 60cm above soil level. For most applications, this is fine: you attach it to the house wall and run the cables where you want them. This won't work on an island bed, however. Guess where we want it? Our electrician is getting a suitable transformer for us.

This is one of the fittings that didn't cause any dramas. Of course, we haven't tried putting a globe in it yet!

Flooring Decided

We have finally made all our decisions on flooring.

I wanted polished concrete in the family room for a number of reasons:

• the slab is thermal mass for the house and covering it with another layer would insulate it from the sun
• polished concrete requires no maintenance
• it will link visually with the concrete patio just outside

My concrete will not be given a really high-gloss finish, lest the room feel like a shopping centre. I'll have a satin gloss. The concrete is coloured Honey Mustard and contains Nepean River Gravel, which includes white, yellow and red quartz. We've asked for the slab outside to be sprayed a similar colour.

Up the steps and into the kitchen and entrance we will have Marmoleum Real in 'Tan Pink':


As you can imagine, this is a related colour.

The study, bedrooms and hall will be given a woollen carpet: Channing in 'Tunic'. This wollen carpet is a textured cut-and-loop with tiny deep blue squares on a greyed caramel background. It looks good with all our paint chips, and the blue-grey element is picked up in the Marmoleum.

We're just having plain white tiles in the laundry/toilet, which will go well with the mint-green walls.

Of course, we'll have to move our boxes out for the carpet to go in. I'm not looking forward to that!

UPDATE: According to Green magazine's article in this month's edition, we have made good choices.

Soon I Will Have a Kitchen!

It's at least six weeks away, and it will be a while before we move back in, but still... Soon I will have a kitchen!

image courtesy Greener Kitchens

I love the fancy refrigerator that the computer program has given me! Mine is white and considerably more modest. (The splashback won't be those trendy tiles either.) Now, remember my old kitchen?


Just in case you've forgotten. See the spot where the builder's fridge and the four drawers are stacked up? That was my food preparation area, next to the stove. The equivalent area at the other end of the kitchen held the microwave, canisters and fruit platter.

It only occurred to me recently that when the kitchen (the room) was built, Aussies still had rationing, so the lack of room wouldn't have been so painful. I also believe that the original kitchen was considerably better planned than this, its replacement. It would only have had 45cm deep base cabinets, so there would have been a slightly longer (if shallower) run of bench.

The cabinet doors will be made of recycled timbers in reddish shades, with "character" -- that is, old nail holes and the like. And to think people artificially distress their furniture... The carcasses are going to be marine ply rather than the usual MDF-and-melamine. The standard new Australian kitchen these days costs $10,000 (without appliances) and is guaranteed for only 10 years. When the kitchen is removed, all the cabinetry goes to landfill. Now imagine my city, with its three million households, and the amount of landfill generated by three hundred thousand kitchens every year. What a waste! I am hoping my kitchen will last a fair bit longer. On top, we'll have Caesarstone 'Nougat'. Together, our counters and cabinets will look a bit like this picture.

Remember that I liked green tiles? We considered a green glass splashback, but it is an expensive proposition. Tiling is about a third of the price. I went back to the tile shop where we bought our bathroom tiles, and the lady there asked what other surfaces I was planning to use. As soon as I said "Caesarstone in 'Nougat'," she went straight to a white tile with a fine grey fleck, which will go with it beautifully. I had a look at plain white tiles, but they were too stark after that first 'perfect match'. But there is a green feature tile up my sleeve if we have room to use it.

The flooring will be Marmoleum. That's the trade name for linoleum, that lovely old-fashioned material made largely of natural materials like jute and cork and linseed oil. It's not as cold, hard or environmentally unfriendly as vinyl, nor does it outgas. It's antibacterial, biodegradeable, and lasts at least 30 years.

God willing, this kitchen and I will gently decay together!

Summary:
Timber cabinetry: recycled mixed reds
Benchtop: Caesarstone 'Nougat'
Splashback: 600x300mm 'Inca' (white with fine grey fleck) ceramic tiles
Painted walls: Dulux 'Clotted Cream'
Floor: Marmoleum (shade to be determined)
Appliances: TBA. We will lean heavily on Choice.


I've joined the Modern Country Style link party to show what I'd love in my kitchen in the future. And it's nearly here! The kitchen man was measuring up last Monday!

Paint Colours

A few hundred shades of off-white later...


Centre: Clotted Cream (living areas and above the picture rail in most rooms)

Clockwise from top: Cuddlepot (study); Diorite (bathroom and toilet); Mint Circle (laundry); Harbour Blue (boys' bedroom); Mallard Green (pergola); Spring Green (main bedroom); Sundaze (boys' playroom).

Ceiling and cornices in Ceiling White, as usual, and the architraves, picture rails and skirting boards will be in China White gloss. The woodwork was initially stained and varnished, and all the walls would have been painted cream, going by photos of similar houses on Picture Australia. The picture rails and skirting boards, however, are a bit narrow to be so dark. The previous owners painted them with the wall colour, but that looked odd. We're hoping white looks a bit less peculiar.

Outside, the windows, fascia and soffits will be painted in the original pale primrose colour, which for some reason was known as Ivory.

All colours from Dulux.

Thinking of Kitchens, Part 2: Layout

Somebody is bound to think that I have put style before substance in listing Style ahead of Layout when discussing my new kitchen. The reason is simple: my new kitchen layout has so many constraints, there's not a great deal of choice available to me.

Our kitchen is going to be eat-in, for a start. The effect will be something like a farmhouse kitchen. I've noticed that when you look up farmhouse kitchens, you tend to get anything but the kind of kitchen found in actual farmhouses, which is something like this:


Now this picture is not from a farmhouse either! But the layout is typical: a table in the middle, used for both meals and food preparation, and the perimeter of the room taken up with kitchen benches, appliances and storage. My kitchen will be like this, but there's room for benches on only two adjacent sides, if you look at the initial plan below.



As it's expensive to move plumbing and the like, we're sticking with the sink (and dish-washer! Hooray!) under the window, and putting the fridge in the corner. This is the short wall (3300mm, previously the long wall). The long wall (3600mm) will hold the stove and under-bench oven, and there will be a run of cupboards above the bench.

I'm planning to centre the stove on the long wall: I am right-handed, so I will be preparing food to the left of the stove. The one thing I've craved all my married life is room for cooking preparation, and I will have it!

Immediately, I hit an additional constraint. Did you know that your gas tap needs to be accessible via a cupboard, in case of emergencies? Bang goes my idea of under-bench pot drawers to fill the long wall. I need a 400mm cupboard to the left of the stove. Putting a 400mm set of pot drawers to the right will give us a symmetrical, if not brilliantly useable result. Further to the right, more pot drawers. I imagine I'll be using them for food storage rather than pots.

I was planning to have wall cupboards on the long wall only. The first kitchen designer suggests mirroring the widths of the under-bench cupboards in the wall cupboards. I suppose I could do something slightly different there, but I wouldn't want it to look odd.

Secondly, the builders tell me it will look strange to end the base cabinets at the dish-washer, and have suggested building around the fridge -- putting in a side panel and that inaccessible little cupboard on top (I'm not very tall). I think this will interfere with the window too much, but I haven't come up with any other ideas.

In the meantime, I pop in just to enjoy my less-ugly kitchen space!

Thinking of Kitchens, Part 1: Style

Well, it's kitchen time. Despite the fact that I hated my old kitchen's inconveniences for years (and the inconveniences of the previous two kitchens!), I've not had a really good picture in my mind of what I do want.

Klopf Architecture (I could live with this one!)

Following the advice of Modern Country Style, I pulled out my clippings file and narrowed it down. One advantage of having spent years thinking about redoing the kitchen is that I have a lot of clippings! Then I went through my Houzz kitchen file as well.

But it's turned out that I don't have a huge range of ideas when it comes to finishes, colours and the like. Having looked through my collection of kitchen images, there are two combinations I like. The first is white cabinetry with timber countertops. They make me swoon.

spaces design

But timber countertops are pretty high-maintenance. If not sealed properly, they can rot around the sink. Guess how you find out it's not sealed properly? When it starts rotting around the sink. And white cabinets? For a garden-to-pot cook with two boys?

That left my other option: timber doors with something more durable on top.

Soorikian Architecture

But this is my favourite colour combination so far: timber doors with a white countertop and green tiles. Pity that architecture firm is so far away.

Soorikian Architecture

So when it comes to thinking about elements of my kitchen, my list is:

• Ease of cleaning and maintenance
• Very simple door profiles
• Timber and other natural or natural-looking materials
• Solid colour, no patterns
• A leaning to green and blue colours
• Elbow room for cooking
• No glitz, no tizz!

Necessary

This is what you think it is.

It is the waste pipe for our second toilet. Our builders had to cut the concrete away to install the pipe and connect it to the sewer behind.

Below is something a bit less earthy. It's the framing for our future study, or as the Council call it, Bedroom 4, and the framing for the wall that will end the run of cupboards in the kitchen.

That's exciting too, but a necessary is necessary!

Good Riddance to the Kitchen!

When we bought our house, our kitchen was newish, but the silver colour was peeling from around the plastic cupboard handles. It was also an unpleasant grey-blue, with wall paint in the same shade, and a fluorescent tube to make it all just a little bit more depressing. Last of all, it was small. While it was 3.3m wide, it was only 1.8m deep. The sink and stove broke up what little bench space there was, leaving me only a tiny work space -- and I like to cook. An arch separated it from the dining room, which was painted the colour of a pumpkin's innards. The contrast between the pumpkin and the grey-blue was... unspeakable. And the dining room had a fluorescent tube too!

Some things changed quickly. One of our first actions was to sponge the walls of both rooms in Taubman's Candelabra, a warm cream. It calmed the pumpkin, warmed the blue, and united the rooms. Unfortunately, the spongeing is linked indelibly in my mind with listening to the Dragons choke on the Grand Final!

Our next adventure was when the dining room tube went. We discovered that we had had a Sword of Damocles over our heads... the fitting had only been held together with sticky tape! Out went the old fittings, and in came some new ones from Beacon Lighting. And really, that was how things stayed. We lost a few cupboard doors along the way, but here is a picture of the kitchen after removal of the stove and drawer unit at right. The fridge would have been on the left. The wall, which hemmed the kitchen in, has been removed.


We had a few other walls which jutted out into the dining room and made the space difficult to use. They've gone now too.


But best of all was to see the whole lot gone!


Good riddance, ugly, inconvenient, runty kitchen!