Have you ever entered a solarium full of plants and felt your body relax? Do you enjoy spending time outdoors? There is actually an innate human instinct to connect to nature — it’s called biophilia. Some people may feel it more strongly; many people may have been so cut off from nature by their manmade environment that they don’t realize the difference it would make to their physical and mental well-being to have natural elements present in their daily life.
As we’ve all had to make adjustments to our daily lives because of the pandemic, some people have been altering their home environments to be healthier for their physical well-being. The natural result is that such changes are also better for mental well-being.
Growing herbs in the kitchen has been gaining popularity with cooks who will use them.
A kitchen remodel is so much more than selecting a style and color for cabinetry. Because selecting those things is fun and inspiring, most homeowners begin there – saving pictures they like of styles and colors. The strong desire to make a change is important because it will take time to achieve the finished result. It’s also helpful for the designer to know your preferences, along with your budget, so they can guide you through the deeper choices that arise from there.
As an integrated part of a house, changes made – even if it is one separate room – impact the entire house in ways you may have not expected. Everything from building code requirements and permits, electrical capacity, and heating/cooling systems need to be addressed by experts. This is why a DIY remodel is not a wise idea. It is so important to work with an experienced designer who knows all about remodeling a home. Whole house style is important to consider, so the new kitchen will feel like it was always meant to be part of the whole. Unless of course you plan to start remodeling an entire house with the kitchen as the first part. Even then, you should have the whole house style in mind for the final outcome.
The Kitchen Views Design Team knows that true beauty goes deep below the surface. This featured kitchen is a beautiful place to entertain as well as prepare meals. The hidden beauty of a well-designed kitchen is found in functioning smoothly. Work smarter, not harder is the ideal. Daily tasks are made easier by strategic storage placement of the necessary items, and clever storage accessories increase ease of finding what is needed quickly and efficiently.
Cabinetry Storage Accessories
At first glance, it looks like decorative fluted millwork is installed on each side of the Viking oven shown (above left). Take a closer look and you’ll find a decorative knob at the top of the panel, where shown above (right) it is used to pull out a clever storage accessory to keep cutting boards and cookie sheets tucked away until needed. Close at hand, but hidden from sight. Not only does this design look nice, it stores these items for ease of use, so one doesn’t have to lean deep into a cabinet to retrieve anything.
Pull-outs are designed in many shapes and sizes to organize all kinds of items so they can be readily retrieved and stored when needed, ideal for storing all kinds of ingredients, with special accessories to hold spices, oils, and larger utensils. Large pull-outs provide easy access to small appliances and more. Not shown here, but seen in some of our showrooms, pantry cabinets have large roll-out shelves for storing everything from dry goods to seldom used small appliances.
Drawer accessories now go far beyond silverware holders and add more convenience to your kitchen while hiding below the surface — from inserts for popular coffee pods to electric charging stations —these clever ideas streamline both storage and easy access. This defines the luxury of a well-organized living space. Click here to see a video from Schrock about their tiered cutlery divider.
Island Storage for Specific Tasks
Baking has special needs, such as a large work area and a good quality mixer. An island provides all the countertop space needed and plenty of storage for bowls, baking pans, and a plethora of ingredients. A top quality mixer is a heavy appliance, but it doesn’t need to be a chore to bring out when needed.
Kitchen Views designer, Ed Nunes, shares his thoughtful approach: “No need to carry your 30lb KitchenAid® Stand Mixer around ever again, simply release the spring-loaded shelf and lift the appliance to counter height (show above). Baking accessories are easily stored in a pull-out shelf at the bottom of the same cabinet. An electrical outlet should be fitted inside the cabinet, so the mixer always remains plugged in.”
A large, well-appointed island serves multiple purposes. This kitchen has an under counter microwave oven drawer (shown open above right) that keeps this handy appliance out of sight while being easy to use. Preparations are made on the island countertop, lowered into the microwave oven drawer for cooking, then lifted out and placed on the countertop.
Drawers hold oven mitts and utensils. Heavy mixing bowls and other cooking accessories are stored next to the microwave oven on roll-out shelves (shown above left). A dishwasher can be placed within the island or directly behind it near the sink so it’s close at hand to place used dishes, mixing bowls, etc. inside for fast clean up. Imagine how that kind of workspace planning can make your kitchen tasks simpler.
Storage for Clean Up Work
Waste containers are essential but preferred to be out of sight. That makes this cabinet storage accessory one of the most popular. Whether holding one large container, or a pair for collecting waste and recyclable items, they are easily accessed when needed — typically installed near the sink or preparation area — then put quickly out of sight when the task is completed.
Pet Friendly Kitchen Storage
Pet lovers will enjoy this clever setup designed to store treats and food stylishly. Seen above, the drawer has a window to give a glimpse of the treats and the storage area below cleverly hides pet food and bowls until mealtimes.
For anyone who simply wants to improve the function of their existing kitchen, you’ll be happy to know that many new storage accessories can be installed in existing cabinets and are available in a variety of sizes. Have you ever before seen these solutions for a blind corner cabinet? Click here to see a video from Schrock to see how this pull-out works. You can make previously difficult to reach areas useful with modern accessories like these examples.
Cabinetry Storage for Every Need
These are just a handful of examples offered for today’s cabinetry. Many other options are readily available for just about any application, even bathroom vanities have special storage options available now. So, it is important for you to discuss your needs and wants during the design process.
An experienced designer will know the range of organizational accessories that can be placed inside cabinetry for every room in your home. You can rely on the Kitchen Views Design Team to exceed your expectations of how your new cabinetry will improve your everyday tasks.
Kitchen Views is committed to providing great customer service while protecting our clients and ourselves during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using teleconferencing by computer, our designers can meet with clients virtually and present kitchen designs to review together. If the designer is in one of our showrooms, rather than working from home, they also wear protective masks and gloves. When the time comes to select materials in our showroom, clients come by appointment to one of our thoroughly clean showrooms with proper social distancing.
Kitchen Views designer, Bob Russo, in our Newton showroom wears protective mask and gloves while having a teleconference with a client
Kitchen Views’ Designer Blog is dedicated to offering you the best advice on kitchen remodeling and additional cabinetry uses from our design experts here at Kitchen Views. From contemporary to traditional cabinetry, countertops, decorative hardware and more, our designers will even come to you. We serve the Greater Boston area and all of New England.
Kitchen Views is a kitchen & bath design company with eight unique design showrooms; located at five National Lumber locations in Massachusetts, at National Building Products in Warwick RI, National Building Products in East Hartford CT and at Oxford Lumber in Oxford CT.
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Visit a Kitchen Views showroom to see and feel the quality of the cabinetry you’re purchasing, an important aspect missing from an online shopping experience. What looks good in a picture can be disappointing when seen in person. Kitchen Views sells quality brands that will impress you when you experience them in our showrooms. The construction quality of cabinetry differs, and you want your investment in this foundational element to stand the test of time with solid construction.
As children go back to school, every parent knows it’s time to make school lunches and do homework again. Large kitchen islands have become a favorite gathering place for families to enjoy time together while doing these daily tasks.
Involving children in meal preparation gives them important time together as a family, which not only teaches them about good nutrition, but provides them with emotional connections to each other. In our highly technological society, family time is more valuable than ever.
Sharing time together while doing homework is more emotionally rewarding than just learning their school lessons. Especially for young children, being sent to another room to do homework can feel like punishment. Interacting with parents while establishing good study habits can help them develop a lifelong love of learning. As children get older, they may require more solitude while studying, but they’ll be more productive because they learned these early lessons as a family.
Kitchen islands with seating for casual meals are not just convenient. While it may make meals easier to prepare, eat and cleanup all in one place, this family gathering place is about building happy memories together.
Building confidence is an important aspect of life skill lessons and leads to healthy independence. When children are old enough to handle a knife safely, cooking lessons get more technical. As with most learning, hands-on experience is the best way to learn.
It’s important to consider how you want your family to interact daily when planning a kitchen remodel. As a major family gathering space, the importance of a kitchen should not be underestimated. The best kitchen design is much more than the style and color of cabinetry and whether to include an island. An experienced kitchen designer will listen and learn about what works for your family. That allows them to design a living space that works well for you. Your designer will expertly handle the storage issues, appliance placement, and space layout so that you’ll simply enjoy using your kitchen for years to come.
When you’re ready to get started with the planning stage of a kitchen design, or remodel, start your research in the “Getting Started” section of our website. Then contact a Kitchen Views showroom near you to get the personalized attention you deserve.
Our designers work hard to exceed your expectations.
Contact Kitchen Views at 508-DESIGNS [337-4467] or visit our website for more information.
While the current heat wave in New England has everyone either running into the air conditioning, or jumping in a pool, this extreme heat is not the norm for our area. Outdoor spring and summer days in New England are long awaited and usually beautiful.
If you enjoy entertaining in your backyard, you may already have a deck with a casual dining area and a grill to cook traditional summer meals like hamburgers and hot dogs.
As you’ve been enjoying your backyard this summer, have you been wishing you had a real outdoor kitchen for al fresco family meals and summer parties? Kitchen Views now sells Wolf Endurance cabinetry, specifically made for outdoor kitchens.
In this day of endless home improvement programs convincing homeowners that they can do it themselves from what they’ve learned on television, it’s important to know that designing a kitchen takes thorough planning. We all enjoy the inspiration of seeing what others have done to improve their homes. But that is not the same as having real life experience in planning and implementing an actual home renovation.
Kitchens are most commonly laid out in one of three floor plans, L-shaped, U-shaped, and galley. A less popular, but still functional design is the single-wall kitchen. Single-wall kitchens are designed with the elements of the typical work triangle along one wall. Typically seen in apartments or other small homes where maximizing space and efficiency is at the forefront of design, this style of kitchen is gaining popularity in larger homes with open concept floor plans.
These kitchens work well because they keep all appliances and cooking tools within reach. This design often has the sink set in between the range and the refrigerator, offering easy clean up and usually has counter space on either side of the range. With the kitchen viewed as a social hub within the home, the small kitchen footprint creates a feeling of openness and flows seamlessly with other rooms.
A common challenge in single-wall kitchens is the lack of work space with the range, sink, and refrigerator taking up valuable counter space. A solution to this in apartments or small homes is purchasing a counter height dining table that doubles as work space or a rollaway island. In larger homes, a permanent kitchen island is a popular addition to provide supplementary storage and work space while maintaining the open floor plan.
Maximizing storage space is one of the most desirable features in any kitchen. With the compact design of the single wall kitchen, it becomes even more important. Tall upper cabinets, bridge cabinets, and creative use of built in shelving will help to maximize storage. Additionally, the use of an island (both permanent and rollaway) will help to increase the amount of available storage.
No kitchen is too small for the talented designers at Kitchen Views. Visit one of the six Kitchen Views showrooms to meet with one of the designers and begin designing the perfect kitchen for your space.
With the growing popularity of “tiny houses” with their own television shows, many people are thinking about how downsizing can free them for enjoying activities other than cleaning a regular size home. Whether you have a small condo that needs better space planning to make the best use of every inch, or find that your regular size kitchen is in chaos, careful planning can improve your everyday life.
One of our favorite contributors to the Kitchen Views blog recently retired, but her wisdom regarding good kitchen design is timeless. So we are sharing again her perspective on making the most of limited space.
“Making the Case for a Tiny Kitchen” by Pam Kuliesis
Originally published on November 26, 2013
Tiny kitchen 2020 layout by Pam Kuliesis
After turning a corner in life, I find myself living with a teeny, tiny kitchen. It’s a U-shape space. The working triangle is about 9 feet total, no more than 3 feet between the sink and the range to the left and the sink and the refrigerator to the right and just about 3 feet between the range and refrigerator across from each other. I can stand in the center of the room and reach all three without moving my feet. I pretty much don’t even have to lean. Very tight.
At first I couldn’t imagine being able to create anything in this “Easy Bake” kitchen that would be worth serving. But, a girl’s gotta eat, and take-out gets old pretty quick.
Once I started putting stuff away I was amazed at just how much storage this little kitchen had. And then I started cooking. Everything I needed was within arm’s length. Prep time was so much faster, not having to schlep across the room for the pepper mill that, in my old kitchen, I would leave way over by the sink. Also, I’m much neater. I don’t have the luxury of moving around the kitchen leaving a messy trail behind me. I clean as I go, making the final clean up a breeze!
There are so many great kitchen storage options available from all of the quality cabinetry brands we sell. Stacked wall cabinets maximize every vertical inch. Carefully planned base cabinet configurations and storage accessories make the best use of every nook and cranny.
Kitchen Views designers have the knowledge and the tools to create great kitchens in any space, big and small. Our designers are pros and the views are yours
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