The Boss's Kitchen: Part 8 (Appliances, Sink and Faucet)

This week will be the final post in "The Boss's Kitchen" series. We are down to the final parts! Let's take a look at the appliances we selected as well as our sink and faucet.

Counter Depth Fridge

We'll start with our refrigerator.  We knew we wanted a french door style fridge (double doors on the top and a drawer on the bottom for the freezer). I love how even with a 36" wide refrigerator the doors only take up 18" of the walkway since there are two of them. Our room is not very deep (hence the shallower island) so we needed to get a shallow, counter depth fridge. The one that caught our eye was this Electrolux counter depth. It is a nice size for a fridge and fits the room well.

Bosch 500 Series Dishwasher

The dishwasher was an easy selection for us. I have always been drawn to Bosch dishwashers because of how quiet they are. We selected the 500 Series Bosch because I loved the extra sound deadening in the bottom panel. It is stainless on the inside as well which eliminates staining and helps keep any odors to a minimum.

30" Wolf Dual Fuel Range

For a range, we went with a 30" wide Wolf dual fuel. It has gas burners and an electric oven. The beauty of this setup is that you get the control of gas for cooking on the stove-top and the precision of the electric oven (the oven has presets for cooking different dishes and knows when your food is cooked!). The amount of control on the stove-top is amazing. Chocolate can be melted easily, and with no need for a water bath, as the burners go low enough to melt but not burn. The burners also provide plenty of heat when you want to stir-fry or boil so you get the best of both worlds.

36" Best Exhaust Hood

To exhaust all the heat the burners produce, we selected a 36" wide Best chimney style hood. The 36" width is 6" wider than our range which gives the wall cabinets on either side 3" before they are even with the burners. The hood comes with a 600CFM blower which works great with our range. Best is known for having fantastic blowers and this one is no exception. It has plenty of suction and never needs to be turned on high.

23" Wide Dawn Single Bowl Sink with Blanco Hydra Faucet

Now onto our sink and faucet. For the sink, we went with a 23" wide Dawn single bowl sink. This sink is 2" wider than a standard single bowl which provides a little extra room inside for soaking bigger items (I'm looking at you, fry pans and baking sheets...). It is 10" deep so even large stock pots fit nicely inside of it without creating an issue with the faucet.

The faucet is a Blanco Hydra. All the faucets we supply come with ceramic disks (as opposed to plastic washers) where you control "hot and cold", and a brass interior so they hold up to the test of time. This particular faucet has a pull-out spray head which eliminates the need for a side spray. This is very convenient and practical is it keeps both items in one unit and gets rid of another piece to clean around on the counter.

This concludes "The Boss's Kitchen" series. Thanks a lot for reading. Stay tuned for more "Before and Afters", recipes and general kitchen posts in the future! As always, feel free to hit us up on our facebook page or shoot us an email if you have any questions.

All the best,
Bill Hecht
President & CEO
David Hecht Custom Kitchens

The Boss's Kitchen: Part 7 (Lighting)

This week's "Boss's Kitchen" will focus on what kind of lighting we use in our kitchen.

Recessed cans around our kitchen perimeter

Here is an overview of the lighting we used and why we used it. The goal, when deciding on how to light a kitchen, is to create the best task lighting you can without creating shadows. When I go into a lot of my customers' kitchens, most people have a central dome light in the center of their kitchen. While this type of fixture throws a lot of light, it always creates shadows as the person working in the kitchen is always in front of it.

To remedy this problem in our kitchen, we used "layered lighting". We start off the layers by strategically placing 5" recessed can lights around the perimeter of the kitchen. The lights are installed so that they shine down on the front edge of the counter. This keeps them in front of the person cooking so they won't create shadows. 

LED under-cabinet light bar

The next layer is task lighting for the counter under the wall cabinets. For these lights, we opted for some LED under-cabinet light bars. These throw a ton of light and use almost no electricity.

Pendants and directional lights hanging from monorail

The final light layer for our kitchen was the lighting above the island. This is a great place to use different kinds of light. We have a couple pendant lights that hang from a "monorail" light track. When using pendants, it is an excellent opportunity to bring in some different colors to help tie the room together. The monorail provides a great source for electricity for our pendants as well as directional lighting. The directional lights we use shine on our hood (was a darkish area due to no recessed can) and fridge. 

Next week will be our final post of this series and will focus on the appliances we selected for our kitchen as well as the sink and faucet. Thanks a lot for reading and as always hit us up on our facebook page or shoot us an email if you have any questions!

All the best,

Bill Hecht

President & CEO

David Hecht Custom Kitchens

The Boss's Kitchen: Part 6 (Counter Tops and Backsplash)

This week's "Boss's Kitchen" will focus on our counter tops and backsplash. 

To start off this post, let's tackle our counter selections.

On the perimeter of our kitchen we chose to use light colored Cambria Quartz counters. Quartz is a manufactured, non-porous product that consists of natural quartz, that is quarried from the ground, and a resin. The resin holds the quartz particles together and is what makes the product non-porous. Between its non-porous property and how hard it is, this counter can take a ton of abuse and not show it. The color pattern we chose is called Waverton.

For our island surface we selected soapstone. I just love the way soapstone looks and feels. It is very soft so it can chip and scratch if carelessly used but it has a wonderful feel because of its softness. We chose a black soapstone but it can come in various colors such as grey and green.

The last topic of this post will be the backsplash. We wanted something earthy looking to complement our soapstone island and our pendent lights (more on that in next week's post), so we chose multi-colored slate tiles with a tan grout. The slate has a slightly coarse feel to it and goes great with our brown maple cabinets. We elected to coat our tiles with a sealer and enhancer to both protect them from staining and to really bring out the various colors.

This concludes our post on counter tops and backsplash. If you have any questions, please ask us on our Facebook page or send us an email. Stay tuned for next week's post on our lighting!

All the best,

Bill Hecht

President & CEO

David Hecht Custom Kitchens

The Boss's Kitchen: Part 5 (Refrigerator Wall)

This week's "Boss's Kitchen" will focus on the refrigerator wall of the kitchen.

Here is the overall look of the fridge section. It is comprised of three parts: a shallow tall cabinet to the left of the fridge, the fridge and its enclosure, and the microwave section.

The shallow tall cabinet is simply a cabinet with adjustable shelving. I designed it to be 24" wide so that it would line up perfect with the front of our shallow refrigerator. We also kept it to 13" deep which is plenty deep to store most items but not deep enough where items will get lost in the back of the shelves. We store our nicer dishes and table linens in here as well as pitchers and vases.

Next we have the enclosure for the refrigerator. It is comprised of two long wooden panels down both sides, a 24" deep wall cabinet above, and a small wooden panel in-between the wall cabinet and fridge. All of this is used to fully enclose the sides of the refrigerator, so only the doors of the refrigerator are exposed, providing a custom, built-in look.   

Fridge and microwave section

Finally, we have the microwave section.  This section includes a wall cabinet that houses our microwave and a base cabinet with one drawer and two adjustable roll-outs.  The microwave cabinet has an opening that we sized perfectly for our microwave so we could get it off the counter top to free up space.  This counter is used for our coffee maker and the drawer in the base cabinet holds all of our various teas.  The cabinet with roll-outs is good storage for odds and ends that don't quite in a drawer (glass platters, placemats, etc.).  

This concludes the refrigerator wall of our kitchen. If you have any questions, please ask us on our Facebook page or send us an email. Stay tuned for next week's post on our counter tops and backsplash!

All the best,Bill Hecht

President & CEO

David Hecht Custom Kitchens