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TV? Who needs a TV? :-)

Eggplant Napoleon:

Stuffed Portobello:

Fresh tomatoes marinating w/ red onion, garlic, EVOO, and salt and pepper

Add fresh basil:

next add DH's pasta and cheese...ready to MANGE ! So wonderful on a HOT Alabama night by the pool....

DaveInOrlando – Thanks for you input. My DH will be building ours so any insight really helps. :-)

Here are a few more pictures of these. The first is from RMKitchen’s beautiful kitchen and the next 2 belong to JustMeJulie.

There was a picture I liked in a thread that I unfortunately can't find (and can't remember the name of.) The GWer had a pull out that organized her cooling racks, boards and some other things. Mine are currently in a lower cabinet, just leaning against each other.

The link below is what I'm hoping to add to mine.

Here is a link that might be useful: organizer for cooling racks, tins, etc.

And my INVENTORY suggestion was very much what Lasca said about planning. My inventory wasn't a detailed list of items (yuck!), but rather a summary-level list of 'spaces full of stuff'. It only took about an hour to pull together and looked like this:

- 1 30" shelf for dishes used every day (Hutch?)
- 2 24" shelves for casual dishes used weekly-monthly
- 1 36" shelf for dishes used 2-6x/year
- 18" every day glass ware (hutch?)
- 18" ugly plastic glasses & cups (Hide!)
- 18 coffee mugs (TOO MANY - cut to 9!)
- 2 36" pots & pans drawers for frequent-use (by range)
- 2 24" utensil drawers (by range)
- 2 30" shelves/drawers - bakeware (infrequent use)
- 2 24" shelves measuring cups, prep bowls (keep handy)
- 1 24" shelf cookbooks
- Knife block - move to drawer?

I have the space and so planned for the above upper cupboard. We really love it set up this way. Mixing bowls, PC, stockpots, DO etc are in a drawer under the cooktop.

Can hear the ring and messages even though cabinet is closed.

Painting of walls not done at the time of these photos

I love my wall cab knife pullout. It's behind a filler strip and keeps the knives away from the kids, but off my counters.

My next kitchen will also have some of the great hidden things I've seen here like toe-kick drawers, or that great paper towel cubby.

Good luck.

Tina

On the back side of our angled peninsula, we have a large decorative panel that looks like the cabinet doors. Rather than just nailing or screwing the panel to the back of the peninsula cabinet, I attached it with accuride cabinet slides so that it can slide to the side exposing the triangular gap between the cabinets along the wall and the peninsula cabinet, which can be used as additional "secret" storage.

Also because there was no room for a broom closet in the new kitchen, I made one just around the corner from the kitchen in the living room.
However having a normal door there would have looked really out of place. So this is the solution I came up with:

forestfire..please help me with my lists (most recent)

List of stuff in kitchens?

What should go within easy reach of the cooktop?

What goes where?

Reloading the new kitchen, any tips where things should go?

Only one lower cabinet...would you do it?

A couple of months ago, I started taking things bit by bit out of the kitchen that I thought I was not using. Last month, I boxed up 2/3 of the utensils in my main utensil (not silverware) drawer and put them in the attic. Since that time, I have crawled up there one time to get one thing. I think one other time I pawed through my drawer to find something else that must be up there. Other than that, I haven't missed any of it, and have been able to find everything else more easily with all the remaining space. Now I know how many utensils I need to plan for as we start in the next week or two.

Inventory is great, and not a tremendous effort. I googled something like "kitchen inventory", maybe a couple of other searches, and found a few comprehensive lists. I copied them into a document and deleted everything I didn't have except for things I'd like to have (not many of those). There's not much that I have that wasn't on the list I ended up with. I've discovered that I can live with much less storage in the kitchen itself than I originally thought.

Can we at least link this thread in the Read me if new thread? I will try to remember to do that next time I bump that one up, unless someone else gets to it first.

Also, it would be great to have a separate thread of people's kitchen inventories. Anyone care to start one? I have a different question I'm working on with my layout and don't want to start too many new ones. Or maybe there's already one. I haven't searched yet but I will.

One: Go through what you have now and give away or throw out the stuff you never use. How many coffee mugs do you have that you never use? How many cheapo spatulas that you'd only use if pigs flew? How many freebie koozies in the back of the drawer? How many mismatched plastic cups and plates you'd never use? How much lidless Tupperware? How many grody pots & pans leftover from your college days or Hubby's bachelor pad? Get that junk out of your soon-to-be-beautiful space! Use the 'Would I buy it at a garage sale?" test if you're not sure.

Two: Once you've thrown out the junk, inventory the stuff you have, and classify it by function and frequency of use. For example:
- One 36" drawer of daily use pots & pans,
- One 36" drawer of weekly/monthly use cookware,
- Two 24" shelves of every day china dishes,
- One 24" shelf of every day glassware,
- Two 36" shelves of fancy (Holiday) china and glassware.

Having this inventory is invaluable for planning your new space. Without it, you just won't know how much of what type of space you need, and you could end up with too little storage, or else sacrificing something you'd really like for storage space you didn't need. The security of knowing that 40% of your storage could actually go into a back room pantry (turkey roaster, lobster pot, espresso maker...) with hardly any loss of functionality gives you a huge amount of design flexibility.

Three: Prioritize lifestyle choices and preferences. Things like:
- One seat near the prep area so I can help Sonny with his homework while I cook dinner,
- Buffet zone for casual entertaining,
- Cozy seating area for two for morning coffee with Hubby,
- Open sight lines to the TV-watching area or PC so I can supervise the kids,
- Closed sight lines to the dining area so I don't have to see the mess while I eat!

This may sound crazy, but make a list of how your ideal kitchen will function, then rate the items on that list for how important they are to you. Which are deal-killers and which are 'nice to haves'? Also include what activities are daily and what are annual. There's an old adage in real estate: "Don't build the church for Easter Sunday." Apply that to your kitchen plan; plan for your maximum regular use, not for your maximum ever use.

You may not be able to get everything on your list (who can?), but at least you'll be able to choose wisely. By having my inventory and lifestyle choices, I was able to confidently choose the design that met 95% of my lifestyle wants and all of my storage needs over a design that offered much more storage and counter-top space but only 80% of my lifestyle list. Knowing that I didn't need more storage space got me a much better kitchen!

Verde butterfly is another dark green granite that you may like. In the samples and slabs that we were shown, it seemed to have less blue in it than verde peacock and was not as dark as uba tuba.

Sarah

Emerald Pearl, Ubatuba, Verde Peacock granites do not need sealing.

Dark granites have problems like stains from oil, white rings from hard water, rust stains, stains from acidic things like cranberry juice, fingerprints, and glare.

If you get the right quartz product you won't have stains, fingerprints, or glare.

If a fireplace is not an issue, then a separate feed to the furnace is possible in some circumstances to avoid backdrafting. I am aware that oil furnaces, for example, have such kits available.

If the weather will support having windows open, then that may be sufficient. At the 300 cfm level, most houses leak enough air to allow ignoring the problem. Otherwise, a source of exterior make-up air (MUA) is needed. Opening a window is considered a passive source of MUA and may suffice. It certainly is the economical solution where feasible.

If it is too cold to open a window, then it is too cold to use unheated MUA. This means that a rather large roof or side fixture is needed to let in air without rain and without significant static pressure loss, a fixture mounted or in-line fan is required, a heat exchanger is required, a source of heat for the heat exchanger is needed (one could use an extension to a hydronic system or use electric elements, or one of several other possibilities), and a diffuser and ducting are required to transport and dump the air into a room. The intake fan may need to be on a pressure sensing control loop.

The basic picture is similar to a kitchen hood operating in reverse but with the complication of air heating. (Use of an air conditioning system to distribute the air can be considered if the heated air stays warm during transport. This may be the case where heat pump sytems are used for heating and cooling.)

In order to not disturb the airflow into the exhaust hood so it collects all the cooking effluent it can, the MUA should enter the house volume well away from the hood. Ideally, the flow from MUA to hood should be over a large area at low velocity.

My setup uses a large Wolf island hood (actually made by Independent) with 1500 cfm (at zero static pressure) Wolf (made by Broan) exhaust fan. The flow around the hood seems gentle at full fan power. However, my MUA system is not yet installed. If I move from the hood to a doorway in the path to where there are open windows, I can feel a considerable breeze flowing toward the hood.

Calculate your kitchen volume (in cubic feet) and divide by the cfm you intend to use, and you will see that the kitchen volume is moved out of the house in a very short time, hence the need for MUA. However, a better (but crude) assumption is to use 2/3 of your rated cfm, because the exhaust fan will not be operating at zero static pressure.

I guess the lesson is that if one wants semi-pro cooking capability, one needs semi-pro ventilation and MUA capability.

kas

Yes the mouth of the duct is under the wall cabinets and I'm building a slideout there.

--
These wall cabinets block the air from rising. So they are in a sense a part of the "hood". Or, seen another way, they hold the almost-invisible glass under them, and that glass is the hood.

In your drawings, I guess teh green shading is structural stuff you cannot move.

From your drawings, it's clear the wall where you need a hood is currently designed as your open wall. On the other (sink) wall you have six wall cabinets, 15" high (or three 30"h cabintes). Since you drew the doors horizontally, I'll guess they are the 15"h ones, since that is how Ikea sells them. It makes sense you would put wall cabinets between the two columns.

Consider adding two more of these cabinets to your design. (Or reducing the six to three and moving two to the open wall). Two side by side, with a spacer and finishing panels, will give you a width of 61.5". Adding fluorescent light shelves as their structural floor panels, you will have solved some of the key requirements: 1 block air from rising away from the cooking surface; 2 light the area.

If you install these on the open wall, and put a big rectangular conduit (duct) inside the wall stud cavity (going straight up to meet the duct path you already have planned out), then you will have an opening for your duct to suck air away, a path for cooking air to leave the room instead of floating upwards. This meets another major requirement. Building a slideout is next, since the cabinets are not going to protrude forward enough to cover the whole surface you want covered. The last major requirement is to build more around it all because these lighting shelves are not designed to be 100% fireproof, although they are made of tempered glass, aluminum extrusions and some plastic. You probably want as I do to meet the level of fireproofing standards that we can be proud of, or that we would like it to.

Disclaimer: don't anyone else try this at home if this appears daunting to you.

Transition the duct to whatever size you want for your RNB 36. Do not think of a 6" duct simply because I am using that size. My mentioning a 6" duct was not a recommendation. Disregard the sizing I have used. Your needs are different. For your information, I had to use a 6" duct because that is the size already installed in my building, where I have a condo. Now you can safely forget I ever mentioned my sizing. Use the duct size you want to use.

I don't know if you are in a condo or a house you own. A remote blower (exterior or inline) can be far away. If it has to be inline and inside the kitchen space, you can put it inside a drywalled box you build at ceiling height, or inside another layer of wall cabinets.

If you do consider swapping the locations for the sink and the cooktop, you will have to let one of the six cabinets be taken up by the inline blower. Or have one row only, and a bigger header overhead.

h.t.h.

Consider capturing air.

And doing so in a way that increases your impression of space.

We also have low ceilings (94.5 inches) in a galley kitchen and wanted a wall hood that would not feel massive / use a lot of the visual space. I'll use your thread to introduce my solution, and at some other time I'll put it all into a new thread.

It's a small space, landlocked. We figured we'd make it feel big and open by not having any upper cabinets above one of the two counters --- just backsplash and open space above it, using a horizontal mirror on the wall to increase light from the adjacent space and that window about eight feet away. We removed most of the dividing wall between the kitchen and the adjoining windowed area.

Above the cooking surface we felt we needed a structure that could hold the slide-out hood we would design. Reading arbordomus' thread from last January gave us both this idea and the other idea described so far, i.e. increasing visual effect by having something attractive over that other counter. Both a technically valid hood solution that took the space it needed, and an over-the-sink solution, light and airy.

For the hood wall, a basic low-cost customizable solution was a wall of three 30.375" high Ikea Akurum boxes, with frosted glass doors and fluorescent light bars inside. Light comes from the horizontal base plate on the bottom: you replace each cabinet's OSB floor with a shelf designed for this purpose. The shelf has lighting in it.

Then I did the same with each cabinet's top panel, and got more light. Then I added extra fluorescent bars with warm light bulbs to counteract the cold sameness of the IKEA fluorescent light shelving; I put these behind the cabinets, after first pushing the cabinets out from the wall (using spacers) and removing the cabinets' false backing. It's great to have two kinds of fluorescent lighting: a linear sum of white lights. The impact of this white light is WAY more appealing than either one all by itself. It's white light with increased "complexity".

The fan is an inline FG6 from fantech.net. It's suspended from the ceiling. Neoprene rings prevents the fan's normal hum or vibration from going straight into the wall of the duct and traveling down the duct. (It's so quiet it probably wouldn't need the neoprene.) The fan is eleven inches in diameter. Eleven inches is available when I install the wall cabinets at 53" height -- and that happens to be pretty much at the "industry" norm of 54" height. In your case you could go with the 15" Akurum wall cabinet and save a lot of money.

The fan has a six inch duct. I had the duct turn down and change shape to fit into my wall's stud cavity. A standard duct adaptor / transition piece, readily available in a large hardware store, turns the duct ninety degrees downwards and changes the 6" round duct into a 3.25" deep by X" wide rectangular duct. Here is where I had a guttermaking shop make another adaptor to turn the corner and transform into a wide wide rectangle for me since my wall studs are 24" O. C. apart. This big rectangular duct comes out of the wall at a 45 degree angle under the wall cabinets, at 47.5"- 53" above floor level. I cut this last angle myself since I had the metal shop just make a long straight rectangle and I didn't know yet what distance it would travel; also, I didn't know the precise height it would be installed at, near the ceiling. The filter fits in here.

A wall switch gives me three speeds. I tried a few variable speed controls but they cannot match power factor so they create a little hum at low speed, which is not acceptable to me since low speed operation has to be silent for me to accept it.

Summary:
Blower motor : invisible since it is in an 11" header box above the wall cabinets.
Duct: invisible since it's inside the wall. This increases your options for space / visual effects in your wall cabinets.
Filter: under the wall cabinets at the mouth of the in-wall duct.
Glass pullout: under the wall cabinets.

Remember the goal: to increase the visual impact and the impression of space. A header box overhead holds three recessed 50W 12VDC 12.5 degree spotlights shining onto the counter. I removed the magnetic transformer from these recessed halogen cans, and installed a single electronic transformer instead, because I couldn't stand the hum from the magnetic transformers. Each bulb shines onto the counter while also highlighting the wood frame around the frosted glass panels of the wall cabinets.

These glass panels are lifted to open, not pivoted out. The lift mechanism is Blum Aventos HF with 104 degree angle stop. The advantage is space and visual effect (again). The wall cabinet doors slide up and fold up. No opening sideways. If you get 15"h Akurum boxes WITH a lift up hinge, you'll save a lot of money and hassle time compared to my 30"h box.

The overhead halogens are in a piece of the header that extends far enough out overhead to put the halogens directly above the front edge of the counter. A portion of the header 7"h extends 11" out from the plane of the wall cabinets. This portion was built in a gently curved shape; again to increase the visual impact. When the door panels are lifted up, the halogen light shines through the frosted glass to the counter below.

-
So far so good. Next step is to finish making the filter (baffle or mesh) and the official sneeze-guard / canopy / grease surface.  I got this far by taking my time, so stay tuned and read my next post about this, in six months from now.

The filter could be baffle or mesh or both combined. I have stainless steel that I can cut to any shape, and take to have welded together.

As sneeze-guard / canopy / grease surface, I have a clear, not frosted, tempered glass plate that I intend to slide out and tilt down on a slight angle. The underside of the wall cabinets will hold the supports for the slider mechanism. Note that this is already made of tempered glass -- but in addition to this I intend to use more glass to make the whole air capture area even more fireproof, cleanable and clean looking. On the wall, I'll cover the drywall with perhaps one entire piece of glass, or epoxy grouted glass tiles, perhaps with some mirror pieces in there.

53" above floor is below-eye level. A glass pullout slider puts the airstopping canopy's front piece at a sneezeguard height and angle. Making it be able to tilt downwards too, solves a number of air flow problems common to ALL the kitchen exhaust fans we see in the market today. Consider how to stop your grease-speck laden air from rising and escaping the capture area. Solving this problem with a high-space visual effect will give you both what you want and what you need.

h.t.h.

-dr

What do I have in shallow drawers?

• 36" under cooktop: Cooking utensils, knives, prep tools, & can openers


• 33" near sink: Linens (dish cloths/towels & microfiber cloths)


• 30" in Baking Center: Baking tools, foil, & parchment paper


• 27" next to ovens: Serving-type utensils (pizza cutters, bottle openers, corkscrew, ice cream scoops, etc.) and oven tools (meat thermometers, basters, temperature probe)


• 27" in Pet Center & facing outside the Kitchen: Flashlights, batteries, spare night-light bulbs, & small screwdrivers


• 24" in Baking Center b/w the cooktop & ovens: Pot holders


• 24" on peninsula near DR & MW (the 4-drawer stack): flatware in the top drawer; wax paper, wraps, & plastic bags (food storage) in the second drawer; extension cords in the third drawer


• 18" over trash pullout: Junk drawer (most of us end up having one, so I planned for one to control the location!)

Here is a link that might be useful: Buehl's Drawer Insides

My cabs are custom but the pullout is "activated" with a drawer kicker from Lee Valley Hardware. When closed it looks like part of the cabinet but you just push it in and the board pops out

Here is a link that might be useful: Lee Valley Drawer Kicker

Here is a link that might be useful: Taylor Oven Thermometer #5921N

I normally wouldn't go there with a no-name knockoff. Except I'm tempted because there is an incredible price difference.

Here is a link that might be useful: GTS Geyser Faucets

They range from 20" to 40" wide, all have full extension Blum guides with 50# ratings per drawer.

Our cabinet maker did charge extra for them because of construction. I think they were worth every penny

Butler's Pantry during install so please excuse the dust

Open to show front:

With the draw removed to show base molding:

Closed and we opted NOT to put handles on the toe drawers in the pantry - they are more "hidden" that way

Can storage:

The jog out in the front is really awkward for storing anything on unless you put a piece of wood up against it creating a very narrow space. I've been asking dh to do this for me under the oven so I can store my rolling pins in there. In the can draw it's fine because the other draw fronts sit on top of it IFYWIM

I had 90 degree cabinets in my old kitchen and hated them for the small amount of usable space and the difficulty accessing it. Stuff always got lost in the back, and the lazy susan in the other one was too small to be useful. Never again