( RCM-ers.... skip down to the alum. plate section)
(RW peeple -- stop whining..... yeah, I know, it's not wood, it's anti-wood,
deal with it)

Awl --

Since ahm fixin up m'shop, The Wife is REALLY bitching about her kitchen....
tit for tat, I spose.... no pun intended.... but an excellent pun, eh??
LOL

With a hypocrisy worthy of the basest politician, I'm going thru the HD
kitchen design route (or at least the motions), mostly to get familiar with
the "process" of "new kitchening", not necessarily to actually let them do
it. My fillings are already hurting....

Inyway, sumpn is not right in KitchenDee-zineLand...... 'sall beautiful,
'sall archy-tecky, but sumpn is just not right.

Stunning as all this HGTV stuff is (more like culinary dick-waving), I'll
bet that only 1 out of a 100 of these McMansion kitchens are actually used
to do any real cooking. I'm betting that with alladat 1.25" granite all
over the place, the ****ty li'l brats run in and toaster-up their PopTarts,
and everyone else is re-microwaving yesterday's KFC and pizza.....

Oh, and old news: alladis**** is SUPER expensive..... *gratuitously*
expensive (and complicated), in my deezine opinion.

This notion solidified when I happened on, iirc, a NYTimes-ish profile of a
big-dick chef and his SoHo-ish home/loft kitchen, where I was struck by just
how non-archy-tecky it was, yet a thoroughly functional and very
funky-attractive kitchen.... a REAL kitchen??
Nothing matched in it, none of this bull**** HGTV ""design"", altho he was
blessed with very high ceilings (*at least* 12 ft, it seemed), and a goodly
large space.

Dats when my inkling that HGTV was 99% fulla**** changed to 100% fulla****.
A conjob, actually, like pretty much everything else on TV.

The Q at hand is how to juggle wall space, ito cabinetry vs. open shelving.
Attractive as all these kitch cabinets are, I just never found them to be
all that practical, except for mebbe dust protection.

Recently I discovered these
http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/prod...3572526&RN=204 (or google
Oggi, flip-lid canisters), which are really very attractive, and *visually
useful* ito of retrieving foods, assessing quantities, etc.
These further make the case for more open shelving In addition, many
kitchen appliances are attractive in their own right, as can be the
dinnerware itself, utensils, etc. Ceiling pot racks, imo, are Da Bomb.

So the Q is, How to apportion trad'l cabinetry, with open shelving?

I am in a semi-unique position in that I have a design for, and have
actually built, shelving out of 1/4" alum plate, super-elegant, minimalist,
functional, versatile, and strong. The soon-to-arrive Haas GR510 gantry
mill will make this plate work much more do-able, as well.
This style shelving (wall mounted or freestanding) also lends itself to
being very elegantly enclosed, with hingeless doors that pivot on pins.
These g-d European hinges drive me crazy.... just how complicated can ****
get????

So I can actually make a "themed" kitchen of open/enclosed storage, in a
variety of textures, from anodized to brushed to polished (SS-like) alum..

Has anyone grappled with this aspect of design, closed vs. open storage?
Any web sites that deal with this, and the notion of "strategy"?

The problem with (traditional) kitchen design is that there are no
do-overs -- you are essentially stuck with the whole shebang.
One thing I learnt with all this granite bull**** is that what looks good
in a showroom or sample book may not fare so well over time, when yer eyes
are just SATURATED with these visually complex granite patterns, which
actually become otically numbing after a while, and do a good job of HIDING
dirt, spills, grease, etc.

I learned this by raiding the dumpster of my local granite guy, who allowed
me to take substantial pieces of granite, silestone, marble, which I spread
throughout the existing kitchen as trial countertops. We realized that you
had to be *really* careful in your choices, and that most choices would be
regretted. We realized that if going the granite et al route, a single
color/pattern would become visually oppressive.

Thusly, I have also come up with a design of anodized alum plate
countertops, covered by simple 1/4" beveled glass. Or, for that matter,
butcherblock-type motif, covered by 1/4" glass. If the glass ever breaks,
cracks, no biggie, go to the glass store. Really a lot of design potential
there. And economy.
**** Granite.

Lastly, ito enclosures (cabinets), there is the notion of see-through or
translucence of the doors. The leaded-glass effect is very nice, and can
also be facilitated in a gantry mill, in wood or in 1/4" alum plate.

The Q is how to sift thru all of this.
Oh, yeah, a bit of a hard sell to the Wife.... LOL
Thoughts, idears, experiences?
--
EA