Is the granite/stainless steel kitchen a fad? - Page 6

"I"ll take Mediocre Kitchens with Silly Cluttered Trinkets for $300, Alex."

I am not very close to being able to design my own kitchen but someday I hope to have a wall of floor to ceiling wardrobe-style cabinets for things and built-in appliances, and then everything but the range and the sink will be stainless roll-out tables on casters. Stainless backsplash on the range. I will just keep the pots and pans and appliances below the counters. I want to be able to clean everything thoroughly, to where I can roll the tables outside and just degrease and hose them down periodically and clean all the way to the wall.

Just spent too many years in my mother's typically American kitchen full of ineffiecient custom cabinets and tons of nooks and crannies that were too hard to get to with the vacuum or broom.

i'm not disagreeing with most of it. but you really might want to reconsider the whole shelf thing. cabinet doors, unsightly as they may be, do serve a purpose. i've cooked in kitchens like you describe and inevitably, everything that isn't locked away becomes covered with a thin film of grease. that's just what happens when kitchens get cooked in. my favorite set up is all drawers, provided you get the ones that pull out to maximum extension. very clean-looking and you can easily find whatever you want in them. (obviously this is not something i have put into practice in my own kitchen).

Those 'old-school' vikings look cool to me.

That's true too - and one of the things I also have to contend with (maybe you guys in California do too) is minding the plates and crystal against earthquakes. If I had the open spaces under counters I'd probably covers for the appliances and teatowels covering the pots and pans too; i just feel attracted to the idea of a kitchen made like a pro kitchen where you can pull everything out and mop it all down, corner to corner, degrease the walls and stuff easily - maybe I'd make the walls in stainless too. Possibly allow for reconfigurations, etc. Definitely a kitchen for cooking, not really hanging out it - that's what I'd want for me and my future family anyway. Kitchens can be dangerous.

I like that idea, especially if it is enclosed. I think it would be a bit odd in the open floor plans you see alot of today. In my opinion I've always found the idea of hanging out in the kitchen to be really strange, especially when for-going much more comfortable spaces dedicated to hanging out.

90% of all kitchens sold in europe are white and have been for the last 10+ years and I doubt it will change anytime soon.


So American.


+100


Marble countertops suck, as they suck collar, granite doesn't.

I prefer all integrated with steel a close second.

A well designed kitchen/dining room can be just as comfortable as a living room.

Doesn't answer the question of why.

Well designed dinningchairs can be as good as a lounge chair to sit in and you are closer to the food and drink.

To each there own I suppose, I see no place for dining chairs in a kitchen. Every kitchen table I've seen has been at least counter height, if not bar height.

Most modern apartment around here, are designed so the dining table has go in the kitchen, as hey are open plan, so move over to the lounge furniture doesn't make sense, in the middle of a dinner party etc.

LOL @ SFthink. Everything has to be balls to the wall, pro-style or bust. Nobody drives new Bimmers because they've become to sluggish and luxury oriented. GIVE ME A RACE CAR!

Open plan kitchens are a response to the way people live. You can ask "why" all you want, but people congregate in the kitchen. I don't know why. Maybe it's the smell of the food. Maybe people are interested in what's for dinner. Maybe they want to spend time with the host. But that's just how it is - open plans and open kitchens are a reaction to the way people live. People didn't start congregating in kitchens because the kitchens were made that way. They weren't.

I just moved out of a house that did not have an open kitchen. There was a separate living room and a separate dining room. Where was everybody when I was preparing dinner? Up in my g*ddamned grill when I was making a mess and trying to plate dinner. Our kitchen wasn't made for it, and yet there everybody was.

These days it's not uncommon for two parents to be working. Nobody's been home all day in the pro kitchen whipping up a meal to serve in the formal dining room. Cooking and cleanup have to merge with homework and family time. Even dinner parties have morphed into something less formal than a sit-down dinner. Hence the open plan, where you can actually kill two birds with one stone.

We just renovated a historic home with an isolated butler's kitchen, and we had the option to maintain the floorplan exactly as-is. It would have meant tens of thousands of dollars in tax credits to preserve it perfectly. But I turned down that money to be able to integrate the cooking (most of which I do) and the cleaning (most of which my wife does) with our family time, and to be able to be a part of the dinner party, and to keep an eye on the tube or whatever while doing these tasks. It was a no-brainer to want to spend more time with my 3-year-old, which is why some of the "family" comments (from people with no families yet, go figure) are particularly puzzling.

Sure, there are drawbacks. Perhaps you sacrifice some of the ability to clean up properly after dressing and butchering the whole lambs you have been raising in your backyard. And it's true that it exposes some of the mess (hence the recent proliferation of butler's pantry/kitchens where much of the cleanup is obscured). But the tradeoffs and accommodations for modern living are obvious and desirable for all but a select few who, for whatever reasons, must maintain monastic devotion to their craft.

No idea what this means - is that a technical term? In any case, I much prefer the look of marble countertops and have had no problem at all with their practicality.

And, yes, I know that you sell billions of dollars of kitchens - which doesn't void personal preferences. I find granite to be far less aesthetically pleasing than marble.