Kitchen Remodel: Chapter 1

The design process; Part one. Goals and Influences. Thank you, in advance, for your patience.

Aesthetic Goals:

1. To honor the straight-forward, vintage Craftsman style of my 1920's bungalow.











2. To combine the above with a vintage industrial style.

3.  To make this Craftsman-Industrial kitchen stylish and fresh without succumbing to the trendy excesses of the current vintage-industrial style. I don't want this kitchen to look dated in 15 years. Except, really?--probably any kitchen will look dated after 15 years. The shelter of "timeless" finishes and materials are readily available to us all, but can be adventure-less and confining. The challenge lies in using restraint with any trendy elements, such as patinated zinc and chalk-board-painted surfaces, without becoming bland. The goal is to land deftly at the midpoint between classic and sexy.

4.  To have a lot of beautiful wood and other simple, lovely materials.

5.  To create focal point and increase symmetry over the current layout.

6.  To break a few rules...because that's a basic design principle, right up there with Unity, Harmony, Emphasis and Variety. As Katherine Hepburn said,

"If you obey all the rules, you'll miss all the fun."

Aesthetic Goal Posts:

This is the kitchen that first filled my dreams.... 

Natural Alder Cabinetry by Greenfield

Natural = Unstained.

Alder = a native hardwood which is often used in place of the more expensive cherry. It is soft, as hardwoods go, and light weight compared to birch, oak and cherry. Some people consider those fatal flaws. I don't. It's not as dark as cherry and, well, just look at it! It makes my mouth water. (Synesthesia = sensory cross-over, where a stimulus enters via one sensory system but is perceived in another. I often taste what wood looks like. In my case, blame rests entirely with Jim Nickel who infected me with this wood-loving disease. But he also taught me to use power tools. Decent trade-off!

Cabinetry = boxes with doors, usually made of wood or wood-products and used for storage.

Greenfield = manufacturer of lovely custom cabinetry whose products I cannot afford.

And then there was this one...

Industrial Mix kitchen in Attic Mag

This kitchen had me absolutely convinced that I needed to have a mix of natural and gray-painted cabinets in my kitchen. I remained convinced until I started actually drawing the new kitchen. It became obvious that my kitchen lacked any problem that would be solved by varying the finishes. It would look cool for ten days and then random and pointless forever. Remember color blocked fashions?

I think I know her.

And since I already had other wood species and finishes in the meta kitchen, the base kitchen ought to remain unified in finish. Oh, well! Unity won that game. But the season has only just begun.