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Kitchen Triangle-Edgewood Cabinetry

Kitchen space design: Three major problems you may need to fix

With the holiday season comes a flood of magazine articles and blog posts on cooking meals for large numbers of guests and trying out new recipes for winter treats. It’s also a good time of year to step back and take a hard look at your kitchen. What needs improvement? What plans should you make for the fast-approaching new year to optimize your kitchen space design for cooking and spending time with loved ones?

The following are three important problems to consider:

1) Your kitchen triangle is suboptimal.

Kitchens are generally designed around the idea of the “kitchen triangle,” which involves three key points in your kitchen: fridge, sink, and cooking area (basically, the stove and oven). You should be able to move between these locations easily, without worrying about crossing too long a distance or stumbling against cabinetry when you have a delicate jar or full boiling pot in hand.
Another problem is when people use one of the paths in your kitchen triangle to just walk across the kitchen, possibly blocking you in the middle of cooking; anyone just cutting across the kitchen should be able to go through an alternate route, and not through the area where you’re working.

2) You don’t have enough counter space

For many people, this is a major problem. Lack of counter space impedes food preparation and other aspects of cooking. You may also have trouble washing dishes at the sink or using your stove if there isn’t enough adjacent space to place pots, pans and other dishes.

3) You don’t have sufficient or efficient cabinet space

Either you don’t have enough cabinetry or your cabinetry isn’t efficient, resulting in wasted space. Cabinetry is an essential part of the kitchen, both for practical and aesthetic purposes.
You need to evaluate your cabinets to see if you’re making good use of their interiors and if they’re designed in such a way that you’re maximizing the amount of space in your kitchen. You can also use cabinets creatively – for example, installing some your appliances behind cabinets where they don’t have to take up space when they’re not in use. Well-designed cabinetry results in a kitchen that’s more beautiful, less cluttered, and better organized.
To discuss optimal kitchen space design, please contact us. The solutions you come up with need to be tailored to the space you’re working with and to your needs and tastes. We can help you come up with a beautifully designed kitchen that you’ll love.

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Less is More in Modern Kitchen Designs

You’ve probably seen those ads on television, with the table that gets smaller when the man pushes on it, or the car weaving its way through the legs of dinosaurs. It seems that American companies are finally catching on to the fact that Americans are no longer focused on “bigger is better” like we used to be. There are a number of reasons for this trend, ranging from our still-struggling economy to concerns for the environment and sustainability. Regardless of the reasons, there is no question that today, less is more.
For example, statistics show that, after decades of building ever-larger homes, Americans are now saying that they prefer their homes to be a little smaller. Not tiny, of course, but it seems that the cost of building, maintaining, heating and cooling “McMansions” is finally getting the American homeowner’s attention. This does not, however, mean that the home of the future will shrink to the homes of 100 years ago. What we are recognizing, as a culture, and in the building industry, is that we now have the tools and awareness to be much more efficient with what we design, craft and build.
This is certainly true when it comes to kitchen cabinets. In recent years we’ve begun installing just about everything inside of those cabinets, from pull-out trash cans and spice racks to complicated shift and slide systems that allow every inch of cabinet space in the deep back corner of a kitchen to be totally filled and completely accessible. This means that cabinets are capable of holding much more than they used to, while still being strong, beautiful and a pleasing focal point to any kitchen.
Counter space has also been transformed by these efforts. Many of the appliances and dry goods storage bins that used to live on kitchen counters now fit into specifically designed spaces within cabinets and cupboards. With sufficient counter space now available for use in food preparation and cooking, kitchens do not need to grow any larger, and can sometimes even shrink slightly in size.
To learn about the “more” we are putting into our custom kitchen cabinets, contact us today.

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