Calanc Mobile Kitchen On Wheels
L’amour
This is definitely one of the more intriguing designs I have yet seen for outdoor dining. It’s a kitchen on wheels with a wonderfully sleek design. It’s the sort of thing that has people oohing and aahing before you break out your favorite outdoor recipe and wow them all the more. But it also comes with a number of other items that make the party all the better. Because, really now, if you’re dining al fresco, and you’re not having a few drinks along with it, you really are missing a bet. Where we live we’re blessed with a western view that allows us to watch the sun set, and that and a glass of wine or beer is pretty much all the doctor ordered if it’s been a tough day. Of course, now, if it’s been a good day, then that sort of thing is the perfect end to that perfect day. But the other part of that backyard paradise, of course, is sharing it with others, which brings us back to the subject at hand.
One of the things we most like to do with our back yard, when the opportunity presents itself, is entertain, and with items like that this, the entertaining becomes all the easier. These designs are such that they could go in a large yard or a small one. They could even go along one part of the apron of a swimming pool, for those who are blessed with such an item.
Calanc Furniture is a French company that takes as its philosophy, “Let yourself be seduced,” and they go on to do just that with an unique design “that welcomes a choice of materials of the highest quality and a realization of a very high precision.” The Calanc Collection has some truly wonderful designs that they have formed from stainless steel which has been shaped into tubes and rounded throughout. They have then employed fine craftsmen to shape and insert high-quality wood with a satin finish. The final result is just a marvelous product that is both unique and practical.
The Christophe mobile kitchen we’ve featured at the top of this blog would be a welcome addition to just about anyone’s outdoor kitchen. Actually, this baby IS the outdoor kitchen! It has an automatic gas ignition to keep your meals hot and an integrated mini refrigerator to keep the drinks cold. And because it weighs in at some two hundred pounds, it is clear to me that Calanc has not scrimped on the materials.
But the other cool thing about the mobile kitchen is that it is just one of an entire line of products for one’s backyard paradise. And, trust me on this, if yours is just a backyard, you can upgrade it to paradise in a heck of a hurry with a couple of judicious purchases. But to return to Calanc, they also have a portable bar and even a separate champagne holder, both of which we’ve shown here. Actually, their site is a veritable market for one’s backyard paradise. They have vast array of outdoor furniture for eating and dining, all of which complement the design motifs shown here. They even have a love seat, but, hey, they’re French.
Joseph
Kitchen Remodeling
“Big Surprises”
Today’s blog is something of a departure from the norm in several ways. First, I always blog on something that can be obtained by our readers, and I say that even though lots of my blogs cover European products. But, hey, it’s a small world, and if you really want something made in Europe, it is not all that difficult to obtain it. Certainly, I expect to do so with some of the tile I have been writing about for so long.
But the other thing that is different, and the reason I am writing this blog, is just the subject matter itself, a remodeling of a kitchen smaller than my much maligned bathrooms inside a home about the size of my family room! I don’t begin to know how such a thing could be done, and especially so in view of the very real problems that faced the remodelers, a young German/American couple.
He is German, she is American, and they purchased an apartment in Berlin, Germany that is only 480 square feet. I mean, I’ve heard of small before, but yow! The kitchen itself was all of 36 square feet, and even after they remodeled it, the footprint was the same, although they did some really incredible things with that kitchen. The picture at the top of this blog is the kitchen as they first saw it. There were no drawers, counter spaces, dishwasher, or places to store anything. The previous tenants had kept a refrigerator and freezer in the living room with the dishes stacked on top of it. 
The first thing they did was bust out the wall that had kept the kitchen separate, and with the space thus created, they were eventually able to install a granite countertop. The cabinets presented even more of a challenge, as they were not able to find anything premade that would fit into such a tiny space. They ended up building their own cabinets, and since they had no place else to do the work, they used a 36 square foot space beside the kitchen! It meant that they had use the table saw to cut their material, then unplug it and use it for a work table. And the mess!
I’ve done some remodeling of my own, and I know how plaster dust flies when you tear out a wall, but our walls are typically three-quarter inch drywall over studs. In Germany they actually make their walls of solid drywall bricks that weigh some fifty pounds apiece. Man, think of the plaster dust that would be generated by ripping out a wall like that!
The design they eventually came up with is a crash course in getting the most out of the least. Because of my own space limitations, I cannot use all of their pictures, so I urge you to check out their site at Making This Home. But there are a few things I wanted to point out here.
Their cabinets extend all the way to the ceiling, thereby utilizing every inch of vertical space. Their stove has only two burners and the oven, which doubles as a microwave, is too small for a turkey. The dishwasher is half-sized and the refrigerator is the size of a small college dorm refrigerator. They keep their dishes in a drawer, as it enables them to stack them more efficiently than would have been the case with the traditional shelf. Their food is also kept in drawers because of space restraints.
What I found myself particularly applauding, though, is the wonderful look of the finished product. Small as this kitchen is, I have every confidence that I could cook up a storm in it. And it also adds immeasurably to the ambience of the home itself. All my life I have heard that big surprises come in small boxes. Now I know why.
Joseph
Kitchen Exhaust Hoods by Miele
“A Beautiful Miele”
I have read that high performing Miele exhaust hoods should be on the short list of everyone who can afford them, but when I read a statement like that I honestly find myself wondering about the priorities of those who are remodeling a kitchen. And, yes, I do understand a budget; I have one myself. But my contention is that if you are going to remodel a kitchen, it should be worth the bother. And by remodeling I mean the plan is to do more than just re-facing the cabinets or slapping on a coat of paint. I’m talking about tearing out everything that is in the kitchen and replacing it with new, a complete remodeling. So, on that basis, then, one needs a budget of, what? Well, quite a bit. I have heard of those who can do it for twenty or thirty thousand, but unless one is blessed with a cabinetmaker’s skills, I honestly don’t know how such a budget can be adhered to while still getting items that are worth the money and inconvenience of remodeling the kitchen.
There is a company that shall go nameless that has achieved quite a reputation as one where one can obtain cabinets that “are just as good” as anyone else’s while being much cheaper, but I am still of the old school. I believe you get what you pay for. But regardless of what one pays for the kitchen, I firmly believe that if the kitchen hood that is installed in the kitchen is simply one of those under-cabinet range hoods that are installed only because they can be obtained for a few hundred dollars, than an opportunity to do something dramatic with one’s kitchen shall have been lost. Because they require a six-to-eight inch vent pipe running up through the center, those cheap range hoods destroy the cabinet above for any meaningful storage space. That being the way of it, why not use that space for something glorious, a kitchen hood that is the focal point of the kitchen? And with that I can return this discussion to Miele, which is one of the finer manufacturers of kitchen appliances now going about.
The DA220-4 we’ve featured at the top of this blog is a large, curved island hood with unique double-sided blowers for extremely efficient air extraction, which is a large part of what anyone should be looking for in a hood, although my own experiences tell me that it’s pretty hard to go wrong with a hood, considered only from the air extraction standpoi
nt. Ours is both cheap and small (less than $200), but it does an adequate job. It’s pretty noisy, and it’s a lumpy-looking piece of, um, stuff that takes up all the space in the cabinet above it, but it performs its job well. Miele’s DA220-4, by way of decided contrast, is a 40″ island hood with a steel frame and sleek arched glass that instantly becomes the main attraction in your kitchen. Such exhaust hoods, as many experts put it, simply define the kitchen and the chef.
As it is with any design company worth its salt these days, but especially so with those based in Europe, Miele is far from content with a single item offered for sale. They have range hoods in every possible size and configuration and, most especially, in every kind of wonderful design imaginable. But, in the end, a hood that doesn’t do its job has no real reason for being, and these hoods certainly do theirs. Depending on the design, they have convenient front-mounted controls, delayed 5 and 15 minute shutdown programs, integrated 20-watt halogen lights, removable, dishwasher-safe metal filters and programmable filter saturation timers. Really, they have it all-brawn and beauty, a rare combination.
Joseph
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