From Tomato Magazine.
Catherine Zeta Jones has one. So does the wife Brit super chef Gordon Ramsay. But until recently few Aussies have discovered the joys of the flat pack kitchen, made famous by Ikea. UK design guru Terence Conran is a fan of Ikea, and who can blame him?
Thanks to the joys of global sourcing and Ikea (which has offered no inducement to write this article) we can now conjure a kitchen out of a flat pack fit for a packer.
We drew inspiration from John Pawson’s kitchen (pretentiously minimalist UK architect) and added a few non-minimalist fripperies of our own.
At the pinnacle of flat pack kitchen is Ikea because it features flash, Blum drawers – usually the preserve of only the rich and famous. The best thing about these drawers is that they are ‘damped’ so you can push them in without slamming. One cabinet maker wanted $5000 just to fit these drawers into our kitchen. At Ikea we spent less than that on
10 metres of cabinets. To give you an idea of costs: the top of the range white lacquered doors are $450 per 60cm wide cabinet featuring the Blum drawers (see inset picture).
Our idea was to mix the flat pack with posh accessories – the super efficient Qasair rangehood, Miele cooktop and oven, glass splash back and a donkey’s knob of an extendable Italian tap from Gessi, a really posh Jacob Jensen scale (far left on wall) and some flash designer lamps.
Working
Polished concrete has a whimsical beauty only enhanced by its imperfections. There are nearly 10 metres of it, half on the kitchen bench and half on a bench seat with storage underneath, in the Tomato kitchen
It doesn’t like onion or lemon juice, although they will wipe off. The cost for 10m of 60mm thick concrete (on the leading edge) is shy of $6000 excluding installation from Made in Concrete (annoying music). It came in four sections and took six hulking blokes to heave each section into place. Concrete is bloody heavy so we didn’t need to glue or screw it into place and thankfully Ikea units are solid enough to take the weight.
Cooking
For the oven and cooktop we chose Miele.
We could have bought cheaper and at a discount with Smeg but somehow the no discounting policy of Miele drew us into the plot.
The thing with stainless steel appliances is not to let a scouring pad in the same room as them. All it takes is a misplaced scrub from a well meaning visitor to leave it with the finish of a well worn skating rink. Use a specialist cleaner with a soft cloth.
Sucking
We had one requirement for our reno: to vent through the roof rather than into the ceiling void. After months of research we discovered the power of suck from Qasair, a local rangehood manufacturer which offers joined up thinking. Most companies allow the plumber to figure out the specifications to maximise air extraction. Qasair offers its specially trained team on installers – experts in fluid dynamics and air flow volumes. These guys custom design the piping – near 10m in our case – to ensure maximum suck. And we can report we are now griddling with abandon while our smoke alarms are enjoying a well earned break (as are the neighbours’ jangled nerves).