Design Build Team Kitchen Designs
22 June 2010
“Song Sung Blue”
I want to be careful with this blog because I have come to know a fair number of people in the interior design field whose work I both admire and respect. But not everyone who goes into that field bothers to get a proper grounding in the many disciplines they will be required to coordinate if the finished product is to be both designed well and built well. Mistakes range from those who want to tear out a bearing wall without taking the proper steps to ensure that the house doesn’t fall down about one’s ears to simply not knowing the ins and outs of some of the simpler items like wood movement and what types of wood are, or are not, suitable for certain purposes. Of course, the joy for any cabinetmaker, I think, is teaming up with an interior designer who has learned all these things and more, who is as knowledgeable about what needs to happen as the cabinetmaker himself, lacking only that person’s particular set of skills.
But one sure way to get past this divergence between those who design the work and those who do the work is to have one company that 
does both. And with that we can introduce the subject of today’s blog, Design Build Team.
Design Build Team is located in Kansas and is quick to point out that they are not simply designers, nor simply builders. They bill themselves as creators of distinctive spaces, and looking at their output I have to agree with that assessment. They have registered architects driving the design and building process, and since they build what they design, it means everyone’s on the same page.
Another factor I found myself particularly liking about this company is a more subtle one, their employee turnover rate. Over the years I have been employed at quite a few companies, and every one of them had the same boast: they just loved their employees to pieces. And a few of them 
actually did. But, in the main, they were just another job. Design Build Team, by way of distinct contrast, must surely be a wonderful place to work, because the one statistic that always makes that point is the employee turnover rate. Theirs is very low, and especially so when one considers the type of work being done, because construction workers have this way of just moving on. It says something about those who are able to put together an atmosphere like that, but the other factor is what it does for prospective customers. What you’re getting with a company that is put together like that is employees who know which end is up. If you’ve ever had to endure the profuse apologies for the “new Kid,” invariably followed by half measures to slap a Band-Aid on the problem, as opposed to actually fixing it, then you know what I’m talking about.
I like what they have done with countertops and rounded cabinet ends in their kitchen designs, but I think what I most liked of their kitchen designs is the one that works to solve that old kitchen bugaboo, the blind corner cabinet. In this instance, they chose to install a oven stack where we would have normally expected to see cabinets that, far too often, are simply extended-end cabinets with storage space no one can access very well, at least no one my age! In this instance they did more then just pop the ovens in that corner. They have actually designed the space so it works quite nicely, as there is a landing space on either side of the ovens to place hot items coming out of the oven. Really, it’s a wonderful idea, because the thing about blind corner cabinets is that they’re like weeds; every garden grows one.
Joseph
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2 Responses to “Design Build Team Kitchen Designs”
June 22nd, 2010 at 8:07 PM
Joseph, thank you so much for your thoughtful comment on my blog today! And I love yours, I’m not a kitchen designer but I sure have a lot of opinions about how they should look! Great post!
June 23rd, 2010 at 8:58 AM
Wow – Joe & Joe – so awesome that you picked up on Design Build Team’s work – 35 years strong! It’s not easy in this economy but we plan to go on to the next generation!
CFO and Systems Manager, DBT