Functional Design....or Not

I was visiting a friend out of town this weekend. And as is always my habit (good or bad) I was viewing her kitchen with an eagle eye. I can't help but always scrutinize people's kitchens and bathrooms. I'm always looking for new design ideas. I also look for installation ideas to pass along to the contractors I work with. More often than not though, I also discover bad design along the way - which I also learn from quite a bit. These design glitches are actually probably more memorable to me.

My friends live in a beautiful turn of the century house which has been fully remodeled. They were lucky enough to have bought the house after the remodel and therefore did not have to live through the dust. The countertops are Paperstone which I had never gotten to see installed as it is difficult to get around here. I then started looking at the cabinets. I couldn't quite determine what kind of wood they were. They were stained like cherry, but the grain wasn't quite a cherry wood. Alder? Not exactly. I opened one of the larger cabinet doors and found that the door was exceptionally light. Hmmmm... I decided to let this go.

I then looked around the kitchen in more detail. Then I saw it...one of my biggest pet peeves in kitchen design: a dishwasher in the corner. Now, aesthetically nobody would notice this as being a problem. Everything looked beautiful. However, I'm sure the homeowners have noticed more than once that when they open the dishwasher, they can no longer reach most of their cabinets to put the dishes away. Now I happen to know that "he" is 6'5" so perhaps when he puts the dishes away he doesn't even notice this. However, his wife is not 6'5" or anywhere close to it and I'm sure she notices. Being 5'2" myself I can barely reach the countertop, let alone the first shelf of a cabinet if I have to reach over a dishwasher.

Some other poor functional design I noticed included not utilizing a corner at all. Now I know, blind corners have always had a bad reputation in the past, but with new pull-out and swing-out accessories, every corner should be easily accessible. Therefore, this homeowner missed out on 13.5 cubic feet of storage in her kitchen.

The last design glitch in this kitchen I actually asked the homeowner about. The original owner had installed cabinets and left about 8" of space above the cabinets to the ceiling. Now I didn't measure anything, so I was just guessing in size, but the wall cabinets were probably 42" tall and the backsplash appeared to be the standard 18". So either they had odd height ceilings or some other measurement was not quite right. So I asked my friend what she thought of this space - as it was just empty. She said "I hate it. It's too short to put anything decorative there, but too tall to look right". She was right. If the wall cabinets are becoming too tall for a space to uphold the integrity of the cabinet, why not just stack cabinets. This can be done decoratively or functionally or both and makes for a great use of space.

Lastly, I finally asked about her cabinets as I was curious about the "wood". I found out that the previous owner has actually bought the cabinets at IKEA! Although I have researched and people seem to be very happy with their IKEA cabinets over the years. I can only guess that the front is not a solid wood. Time will tell how these cabinets hold up in terms of beauty and construction.

Many of these design blunders I have seen over and over again in different kitchens. Think of some of these things when thinking about designing your own kitchen. These are examples of more reasons to hire a professional designer. Your kitchen will turn out beautiful and functional.