May 2007 eKBDC.com Newsletter

Ways to Make a Small Kitchen Sizzle

Face it, in a small space you can’t have a kitchen that is a jack-of-all-trades—accommodating schoolwork, mail, laundry, recipe hunting and cooking duties. Unless you don’t cook at all (in which case, feel free to store your out-of-season clothes in the kitchen cabinets!), the small kitchen’s main chore is meal prep. So focus first on function, making sure you have the appliances and work areas you need. You may be able to save a bit of space by using scaled-down or innovative appliances, including refrigerator and freezer drawers and pint-sized microwaves, stoves and single sinks
Tiny kitchens can feel claustrophobic when overhead cabinets are towering over your head in tight spaces. Many cooks can’t reach what’s in them, and the overall feeling is boxy and closed in. If you can get organized enough, trade the top cupboards for open storage
You may not have wide-open spaces in your pint-sized kitchen, but you do have lots of choices. In fact, these choices loom larger in a small space than in today’s basic Taj Mahal-sized kitchen. In a big area you can more easily hide flaws or separate competing styles; in a small space everything really has to work, including the mix of wood and metals and other surface materials. And because your petite kitchen may be short on interesting architectural details, it’s up to you to add the all-important style in compelling countertop surfaces, cabinetry, fixtures, flooring, lighting and color
One of the simplest ways of "expanding" a kitchen is incorporating glass, which lets you see through the objects, thereby enhancing the feeling of spaciousness or what designers call "negative space." Try a glass counter or tabletop, or glass door cabinets. Glass kitchen doors, to the outside world or to the next room, can also visually expand the space. There is even highly reflective glass tile that can give your kitchen sparkle. Mirrors, in a backsplash or strategically placed around the room, also lighten up the look
Like any other room, your small kitchen needs a combination of task and atmospheric lighting. Fluorescent lighting, which casts a bluish light impacting the colorization of objects in the room, including the food, is frequently found in kitchens. To counteract it, consider hanging pendant lights that bathe your eating area in a more appetizing color
Where does our eye go when we walk into a room? Often it goes down—right to that dust bunny or scuffed floor. That’s why the flooring in a petite kitchen is so important. It can make up for a lack of detail and size, and provide a great first impression. Linoleum—that old favorite of kitchen floors everywhere—can be really eye-catching in checkerboard black and white in a small space. It’s a relatively inexpensive choice

Fast Driving

Two men were driving down a city street, as they approach a red stop light, the man driving speeds up and drives through a red light.

Shocked, the passenger yells, "What are you doing!"
The driver just responds in a casual tone, "That's the way my brother drives."

As they continue down the street, they again came upon another red stop light and again the drive speeds through the intersection.

Again the passenger yells, "What are you doing!"
The driver says, "That's the way my brother drives".
Not too long after that, they came upon a green light.
The driver quickly slams on his breaks and comes to a complete stop just before the intersection.

The angry passenger screams, "It's a green light!"
The driver says, "Yes, but my brother might be coming the other way!"

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