Kitchen Essentials

I promised I would be reporting on my trials and tribulations with our new home design. Here's the latest. Is it possible to design our entire kitchen around...

this...?

Cuisinart brick toaster oven with convection

Love it.

Absolutely love it.

I love the combination of modernity, yet retro feel. I am definitely not a modern/contemporary style guy- more traditional, neo-classical (think New England architecture, or easier still, old art museums or the White House). But in my opinion this appliance is the *cough* toast *cough* of the town .

Like I said in my previous post- the kitchen is the center of our family universe. So why not make the toaster the center of that center? As long as it's a piece as stylish as the Cuisinart Brick Toaster Oven with Convection, I say, yes! You could design almost any kitchen around it and in so many variations that your own personal style would easily push through any underpinnings of design this toaster has. My point is, it's a piece for inspiration, not the total package.

$199, cuisinart.com

See more inspiring pieces @ men.style.com's kitchen essentials

Tear Down the Walls

Part of the "joy" in owning a new home is making it your own. There is no better place to start to do that than in the kitchen. We spend A LOT of time in our kitchen- eating, socializing, working, eating, talking, eating (did I mention eating?).

A bonus to the new home we have is the kitchen overlooks the Family/Media Room and backs against the Dining Room. Here are a couple "Before" looks to get the idea.

Looking in from the Family Room. (Dining Room beyond.)

Looking from the Dining Room entry to the Media Room

Why is it a bonus these rooms are connected? Because all the things that happen in our kitchen actually span the range of a family of the 21st Century. We have the need to congregate for such a variety of activities that the lines of utilization have been blurred between dining, socializing, interacting, media, cooking, schoolwork, business, family time and so many not-yet-named activities (eating eating eating).

This dynamism has figuratively torn down the walls of a traditional home and made the need for separate rooms very- well- useless, at least for us. So we are gutting the kitchen and making it the center of our universe with the Family Room and Dining Room incorporated into the overall space. Here's a couple of template designs that we are using as inspiration (though not as literal translation) for our kitchen. But we will literally tear down the wall that separates the kitchen and Dining Room- a nice metaphor to the dynamic family life-style we are accustomed to versus the traditional nuclear family "dynamic".


The Dining Room will be nearly cut in half to extend the kitchen cabinetry and bar/island that will sit perpendicularly to the exterior wall, thus still creating some form of separation from Dining area to kitchen. A mere formality really. The backside of these pictures, where you cannot see is our eat-in-kitchen overlooking the Media Room. When all is said and done, you will be able to stand at the far wall in the Media Room and look all the way down the house to the other end wall in the Dining Room.

One big happy family in one big happy living space.

What 2 Watch 4

My posting has been sparse at best lately. Reason is I am tied up in negotiations on a new house. The good news? When this is all said and done I should have plenty to post about in way of home renovations and home decor as we will have a whole house to fill.

I am not saying it will all happen overnight once we close, after all, your home should be an evolution of your style over time- you truly cannot rush and throw every room together, hoping you find all the right pieces at once to complete the puzzle (despite what every HGTV or TLC show attempts to prove to you).

Anyway, stay tuned...