A Buffet for Thanksgiving

In the midst of the holidays we are so pleased to see our design work in use.

This is a recently designed and crafted buffet created in our worship. 

It was put to good use over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Materials That Tell a Story

We talk about various materials choices a lot. There are some materials we are drawn to, and others we resist using, at least at first. Some we like, and some we don't like so much. There are several categories, or criteria, used to judge what materials are good for a kitchen project, or maybe for any building project:

Here's a few I see a lot:

·       innovative

·       in style

·       impervious to damage – stays new looking

·       expensive, on the idea that more expensive is better

·       green, non-toxic, low VOC

Though we're on board with the green category, we often lean in another direction.

·       local material, local source

·       natural materials

·       you can tell what the material is by looking at it

·       functional, not just for show

·       repairable

·       affordable

Jim in the kitchen with retro Formica counter

Close-up of the Formica counter

But it's hard to make rules for these things. These photo shows a kitchen, not quite done, where the counters are made of Formica, in a completely retro pattern, I think from the fifties. It even has that shiny metal edging. This was our customer, David Demnitz's idea. This stuff isn't particularly natural, or green, or repairable, and it certainly isn't local. But I really like it. I'm really glad David chose it. (That's Jim in the picture, not David).

Countertop with warm green tones

Here's another example. It's that material often referred to as quartz, but it really ground up quartz, mixed with polymers and pigments. It's sold in all sorts of patterns and colors. This particular one is a nice, sort of slatey, understated pattern, in a warm greenish color. Not a natural material by any means, but really lovely. As well as rugged and resistant to damage. I'd have been likely to select a soapstone or maybe slate materials, but I'm really glad our customer here, Carole Colsell, picked this.

So I'm revising, or expanding, my categories a little.

I do continue to like natural, local, materials, but also I like materials – and for that matter details – which tell a story. That's what's great about David's Formica. Twenty years from now, I'll be able to think about the person who picked it and what might have led to that choice, what they might have been thinking about at the time.

Wood drawer fronts with a story to tell

Wood is perhaps the material that does this best. The picture shows some bird's-eye and curly maple used as drawer fronts. I think Ian saved this group of boards out of a larger project – boards that had both light sapwood and dark heartwood, in these very elegant figured boards. Todd put them together very thoughtfully into the drawer fronts. Very lovely, but they also tell quite a complex story, that anyone later will be able to see. Obviously, somebody, (really two people here), went to a lot of trouble to make this; it wasn't just thrown together, it was thought about. A Vermonter could probably deduce that it was relatively local wood: southern birds-eye has a very different look. You could also know that somebody at a sawmill, or out in the woods, was on the lookout for this beautiful stuff and knew how to identify it in the rough log or board, and took very good care of it. There is a very good chance that over the years many people will look at this cabinet, remark on it, and maybe talked about it over a glass of wine, and ask what causes bird's-eye – which currently isn't really known for sure.

Patinable. I like materials that can take a bit of abuse with grace. With months and years of use, they don't look shabby or beat up exactly, but get a bit of patina. A lot of materials now popular are nearly impervious to the marks of work and life. You can't scratch them or stain them. That quartz stuff is like that, and so is a lot of granite. I prefer slate or soapstone precisely because it shows the abuse a little, without lessening its functionality. A soapstone counter fifty years old may have some dings in it, but put some oil on it, and it will look great. It shows that many people have used it and worked at it.

For me those people, even if I don't know who they are, are present with me a little bit when I use the counter or am near it. It's not just a counter but a tablet that records some history.

Of course, not all our clients are that happy when their new counter gets it's first dose of patina; A black ring or a knife scratch might to them look like a black ring or a knife scratch. Fortunately, many of these “patinable” materials are also reparable. Defects can be scraped or sanded out.

A wood counter may get some scratches, food stains, and maybe black marks from the carbon steel knife. When it gets annoying, you can scrub, scrape, or sand the surface, re-oil, and start again. It won't be new looking, but will look better, while a bit of the story stays behind on the surface.

Other materials, like many plastic laminates, are tough, but when they break down, or look shabby, there is nothing to be done, short of replacing them.

Rebekah's Kitchen

Big kitchens are in fashion these days. We build quite a few of them, with many drawers, miles of counter, and large appliances. These kitchens for sure have their pleasures, particularly for entertaining.

But we have customers who have only enough space for a very compact kitchen. Other clients might have enough room for a large setup, but prefer a kitchen just big enough to cook in, plus just a little more. Several of the professional cooks we have worked for are among this group. The reason is simple: A small kitchen saves time. If well thought out, it allows the cook to prepare meals without unnecessary running back and forth. The things most-used are right at hand. I personally find that a just-right, compact layout – optimum rather than maximum – is more fun, graceful, and physically pleasurable to work in.

Of course, a smaller kitchen requires more thorough, thoughtful planning. It has to be well-imagined. In a restaurant in Brattleboro – a tiny little place – we watched the chef cook for five tables at a counter no more than three feet wide, cleaning up each time an operation was completed. He worked calmly, with a beatific smile at times.

The kitchen pictured here is small by necessity; it's in a small basement flat near Harvard Square with very limited space. Though we certainly helped with the design, our client, Rebekah Bjork figured out most of it. It is so tiny, it's hard to photograph. Here's the Plan:

Here's the left side. The obvious necessity is to have small appliances. The stove is 20”, the sink I think is a double sink, about 23” wide. On the right that cutting board leaning up can be laid over the right-hand bowl to use as a chopping surface. So she really has two nice prep counters there.

 

On the right, the fridge also is small, only 24”. But this makes room for quite a lot of good storage, both up and down, and what still strikes me as a huge, wide, work area. We've build quite a lot of big kitchen where the prep counters are no more capacious than here. The units in the middle are trash and compost.

You can see that Rebekah has used every inch, up, down, and in between. This isn't a minimalist kitchen. She has lots of ingredients, lots of spices, lots of dishes, but she's found room for all of it. It's worth noting that the design makes thorough use of the “margin” - the space right above the counter which is often not used at all. Narrow small stuff can be stored there without interfering with the counter.

Though this is tiny, she does a lot of canning. Here's the proof.

Thinking about Faucets

Temperature Recall! Light touch for easy adjustment.

I've been thinking a lot recently about faucets. It's one of the most-used items in the kitchen. You might have a mediocre fridge, and it won't matter too much. We have an old, small, even rusty one, but it really doesn't create any problems except at Thanksgiving. I operate my faucet dozens of times a day, and if it's annoying or awkward, I'm annoyed dozens of times a day. Perhaps that's why I'm often so irritable.

When we started in this business, we didn't think much about this important topic, and had a good laugh when we heard that some people spent $500 on a faucet. Why would you do that?

Today, lots of our customers don't blanch at such a cost, even though the high-end models aren't necessarily better. It's partly a question of fashion, of what is in the magazines this year. So what makes a good faucet? It should look nice, for sure. But it also should be easy to control temperature and pressure.

Single Lever. We believe in the single lever faucet. If it's working right, it can be turned off (half of the uses) with a finger, a frying pan, or your fist if you are holding something. If it's working right, it can be turned on and set with one hand, hopefully very quickly, with a single motion. I can't think of any reason to use a two-handled faucet. Almost all of our projects use single lever faucets. But it has to be the right one.

It has to fit: There is often a bit of spatial congestion at the back of the sink, where the faucet usually goes. We often provide storage (photo) above the sink; a tall faucet can bang on the shelves. In the photo below, most of the nice, pullout-spray faucets banged on the drainer shelf. The Grohe shown had the pullout feature, but wasn't too tall.

A lot of faucets these days have the lever control on the side. This works OK in an island, but against a wall, the lever sometimes bangs on the backsplash. It can be quite discouraging to have purchased a nice expensive side handle faucet, and drilled a 1 3/8” hole in your new soapstone counters, only to find that the side lever hits the backsplash.

If you are considering a side-lever model, careful study is crucial. Sometimes we'll make a mockup of the faucet to make sure it will fit and operate.

I prefer the front lever anyway, because it's convenient for either hand, or from any position.

An ideal faucet: The ideal single lever faucet, in addition to every other virtue, would have this one: the motion that controls temperature (moving the lever left-right) would be clearly distinct from the motion that controls rate of flow (up-down). That way, you could be happily washing dishes, for example, push down to turn the water off, then lift up to resume, at the same temperature. As you lifted the lever, the pressure might increase, but the temp would hold about the same. The slow-flow would be the same as the full flow.

Years ago, I wrote an article for Fine Homebuilding, in the course of which I was complaining that the operation of single lever faucets was often vague. Every time you shut it off, you had to start over, searching, searching for the pressure and temperature you want; you might find yourself making many minute movements to get it set. Also, you might move the lever and not be sure what was going to happen.

Next month, there was a very stern letter from someone at Moen. This person explained that my complaint did not apply to their products. The Moen control separated pressure and temperature adjustment as described above. This function was called temperature recall. And in fact, this proved to be true, and since then, we have specified many Moen Faucets. Another interesting dimension of this, was that it was Al Moen who invented the single lever faucet.

In my experience, there are still many faucets out there, brand new ones from major brands, which are vague as I've described above. I find this very annoying, and wastes time to boot. But there are also several kinds that, like the Moen, give the user simple, intuitive control of flow and pressure. The Grohe in the photo above is one such. (Readers who know of other good ones, please let me know).

We've also noticed that lever shape can be an issue. A lot of front mounted faucets have a rather tall arching spout, which can require the lever to become almost vertical. The more vertical the lever, I find the operation more vague. Even the best faucets are a little harder to control with a highly angled lever. For that reason a lever closer to the horizontal has some advantages. Perhaps this is why many designs with the high arc spout have gone to the side lever. These have seemed to be easy to operate.

Deck Plates: The old two-handled double faucets were designed for two holes, 8” on center, which were bridged with something called a deck plate. When you replaced your double handle with a single, you only needed one hole in the center, but your old sink had those other holes. So many single levers come with a deck plate which serves no purpose but to cover those holes.

When building new, you can order a sink with a single hole. If you are undermounting the sink (we almost always do that) it's much tidier to get a faucet without deck plate. However, many faucets these days can be installed either way.

Make sure the handle doesn't interfere with shelving or backsplash. This a Moen Chateau. 

 It's one of Moen's less costly faucets but the mechanics inside are the same as in the expensive ones. 

This one has the deckplate because it replaces an older two-handled faucet.