Name: Dave & Jenn
Location: Near Columbia U., NYC

Favorite Kitchen Stores

  • AF Supply
    22 West 21st Street (Flatiron Building)
    (make an appointment - seems to be mostly for designers. Best display
    of faucets, sinks and basins you can imagine. Be sure to check out the
    $5,000 japanese toilet in their public bathroom.)

  • Bridge Kitchenware
    (this place teems with character and quality. Feels like you are
    walking through cookware history)

Pitch:
Our kitchen does a good job of combining living space with effective food space.

Our computer sits at the breakfast counter, so we check scores, email, blogs as we drink our coffee. It controls all the music in the apartment, so it, along with the chalkboard above the stove, is the information center of our home. But all the wood and old furniture keeps it from feeling geeky.

Before making any changes, we lived in the space for about two years and continually discussed where everything should ultimately go, and that resulted in good design decisions....

davejenn_photo2.jpg

3 Compelling kitchen cooking/design tips:

  • 1.) Buy a copy of "Great Kitchens: At Home With America's Top Chefs" by Taunton Press. It has pictures of the home kitchens of professional
    chefs along with surprisingly interesting interviews about the design decisions that the chefs made when they chose the design for their home kitchens. Tom Douglas's kitchen is especially rocking.

    Pitch Cont'd

    ...All our kitchen tools hang ready to be grabbed - like a mechanic's shop. Magnetic strips behind the counter keep knives at hand. Hanging pots and pans to the top, left of the counter are easy to reach and cook with.

    We built a food pantry that slides out next to the fridge to gain storage space, and built a matching bookshelf above the fridge to keep cookbooks handy. The canvas "bag for bags" to the right of the cabinets holds Fairway grocery bags for our trash.

    Little design decisions that keep these things at hand without cluttering our space has meant more in day to day living than any big decisions we've made about what appliances to buy and such.

    Tips Cont'd

  • 2.) Live in your space for as long as you can before making major changes and keep a running dialog going about what should be where.

  • 3.) Download a copy of the cool, easy-to-use CAD program "SketchUp"
    from www.sketchup.com You'll be able to sketch out ideas for cabinets, counters, bookshelves, furniture arrangements and the like very quickly. The process helps you to communicate your ideas with others (your partner, your coop board...) and justify them to yourself.