kitchen

Chaos

I feel that things should be coming together around now. Instead, it feels as if the chaos is taking over, like in The Never Ending Story. We’re still busy chasing pipes into walls, making holes for plumbing, and so on — I think mostly because of lack of planning on my part — I’ve not been able to visualise the process properly, to make sure that things get done in order.

OK, some of this is due to plans changing on-the-fly, but still.

On the upside, Colin helped me out with the kitchen layout over the weekend. We sort-of decided that the counter tops can’t be postform, mainly because of the 400mm prep counter with the 600mm bump over the dishwasher, a constuct like that has to be something expensive like granite or Corian or something simple like Formica with wood edging. Provisional choice is cherry.

The ceiling in the living room is in, being cretestoned and corniced today. That at least counts for progress.

2008-05-19 by House 0

On stove extractor hoods

We never had extractor hoods in our kitchens (OK, I lie, there was one fitted at 15th Avenue, one of the recirculating ones, we didn’t use it much). But when one looks at showrooms or kitchen magazines, it seems an essential piece of kit.

I’ve been slowly convincing myself that we don’t need one (it’s not the cost, so much (R2000 for the Pierre Roblin Rubis 70) but the space that it takes up) but then Pieter cooked baby marrows followed by steaks in his griddle pan last night.

Proof that extractor hoods could be useful.

2008-05-09 by House 1

The view from the porch

Porch, through kitchen

In, towards the kitchen, that is.

Frank & co made a breakthrough (*coff*) yesterday, the result being an extremely open-plan kitchen.

They also started knocking out the false ceiling, which is going to be a major mission, but we believe the results will be worth it.

The false ceiling runs at a different slope than the roof, so we’ll gain more headroom at the bottom and less at the top. But it’s going to work (we hope…)

2008-04-29 by House 0

It’s not SMEG but it’ll do.

I grew up in a gas stove house. But I hate what gas does to your pot handles — in my opinion, electric plates work best for simmering. But of course electric plates take ages to heat up (spirals are not too bad, we have those at Amperbo at the moment, but they have a habit of trapping bits and needing disassembly to clean). At Tanya’s place we had a small solid plate electric, which worked well (but took ages to change gears) until the oven door hinge broke. We replaced it with a small all-gas unit, which is OK, but I discovered that gas ovens don’t work so well. Clearly, the oven should be electric.

But when it comes to choice of hob, the answer is clearly… both.

There are some really lekker combo hobs on the market, they’re also really lekker expensive. As an alternative, I’ve been eyeballing the “domino” hobs — small units you can fit together to build larger systems, with the option of gas or electric or “ceran” or you name it — from Defy at around R1000 for the least expensive (gas plate) to systems clocking R7k per domino.

So I hied myself off to Tafelberg Furnishers in Durban road, spoke to Werner a bit, and decided on the Whirlpool range. Same price as the Defy (i.e. bargain basement), nicer look. Bought two AKT301 gas dominos, one AKT315 “radiant” electric domino, and an AKP286 thermofan oven. Cost a little under R7k for the lot

It’s not SMEG but it’ll do.

2008-04-14 by House 2

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