POLL: Apart from cooking, how else do you use the kitchen?
HouzzAU Polls
4 years ago
Baking
Doing work/homework
Entertaining
Watching TV
Reading
Eating/dining
Other (let us know below!)
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Comments (12)
Barbara Dunstan
4 years agoRelated Discussions
POLL: Do you have a home bar?
Comments (21)We love our bar and so do our neighbours with many Friday night fizzies. It opens up to our entertaining area, and doubles as a kids area during the day. For parties and impromptu gatherings we push the lounge back against the wall and open the folding doors and when its getting late the doors get closed and it is quite sound proof so the music can be cranked. It suits our busy lifestyle with most of our entertaining done at home and it is seperate but still part off the house....See MoreHow often do you cook at home?
Comments (21)If you are at all fussy about what you eat, you must cook. It's as simple as that. But if your kitchen isn't well designed, and far too many aren't, cooking becomes more difficult or dangerous. I see a lot of stories on sites like Houzz about kitchen design that are all over how a kitchen looks, but not so hot on how they work. A kitchen isn't a room, it's a tool. Yes, the individual components should work, but they should work together, too. Cupboards should be structured so that you never have to kneel to get something, you never have to push jars aside to get the one you want, and you never have to lift heavy things from above your head. You should never bang your head on a cupboard door handle reaching to the back of the bench, either. And of course they should make it easy, almost inevitable, to put your floury or greasy hand on exactly what you need within two seconds - the time it takes a sauce to curdle - of you deciding that you need it. Designers pay lip service to ergonomics, but as a rule haven't a clue what it means. A kitchen sink, for instance, should be sited so that the person who does most of the washing up, even if that is only rinsing stuff on its way to the dishwasher, doesn't have to stoop (bad for the back) or reach (carrying your arms ahead of your body is tiring) to use it. Surfaces. Every kitchen where anybody at all is ever likely to make pastry NEEDS a stone slab. It stops the butter layers from melting into the paste layers because it's cool. This, people, is why granite benches are a thing. You just can't do the same job on wood. Or stainless steel, for that matter. The stone slab needn't be any bigger than 600mm square, but it really should be there. Speaking of wood, any kitchen surface you can't put a cake fresh out of the oven or a pan straight off the hotplate on is a bit useless. It looks nice? Sweet. You've got frilly curtains in your machine shop, right? My core expertise is in garden design rather than kitchen design, but I've been cooking in good and bad kitchens for fifty years, and in any case, bad design is bad design, wherever it rears its ugly head!...See MorePOLL: How important is using sustainable materials to you?
Comments (15)As an architect, I have previously been taught that creating a sustainable home is about designing it so that living in it lowers energy and water use. This is achieved through designing for orientation, using thermal mass and specifying fixtures and finishes that are low impact, reuse water on site, etc. However, the latest research is showing that this is not enough to impact the rate of climate change. And that what we build from needs to be considered in order to make a dent. This is because the timeframe required to see the benefits of sustainable living in a home, is a longer play than the upfront construction from low tox, low energy, minimal footprint materials and methodologies. It has to be a two-pronged approach. Choose materials and products, and constructing efficiently with low energy and low waste. Having carbon neutral homes. And designing homes that over the long term, are low in energy and water consumption, and support the health and well-being of the occupants. A project was established in mid 2017, called “The Building Code Energy Performance Trajectory Project”. It involved the Sustainable Built Environment Council and ClimateWorks Australia, and is described as an industry-led initiative seeking improvements to energy requirements in the National Construction Code. The report was released recently, and what was amazing in this report was to read that 58% of Australia’s buildings in 2050, will be built after 2019 … which means that there’s huge potential to impact their performance and the environment through better energy requirements. And these energy requirements have not been rigorously updated since 2010, despite electricity prices having doubled over that time. Detached housing will comprise 64% of the new construction between 2019 and 2050. So every homeowner has the opportunity to seriously change the landscape of energy use and efficiency in our country. There’s some sectors of the industry really pushing back against this … largely because they believe it will dramatically dent their profit margins to have to build houses with higher star ratings. Australian homes, on average, perform very poorly, and our expectations are super low. Steve Baczek, an American architect, said something about American houses that I think sums it up for Australia as well ... “It’s not that High-Performance Houses cost too much; it’s that our idea of a fairly priced home is based on a history of building houses to meet embarrassingly low performance benchmarks. Clients don’t realise the difference between built to code vs built to last”....See MorePOLL: How much do your interiors influence your mood?
Comments (26)I live with a beautiful sea view which I love, but which presents its own set of challenges. When we moved in the interior was painted grey but on an overcast day, all I see out the window is grey - grey sky, grey sea and when I turned around there were grey walls as well. It was quite oppressive. We’ve repainted a lovely soft white which isn’t too dazzling on a bright day, but definitely lifts the gloom on a dull day. I’ve added punches of bright colour here and there and now I love my space (and my view in all weathers)...See Moreniki_bruce_st
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