Yep. Every "feature" is just another thing to go wrong. I can't overstate how much it tells you that the highest-grade appliances strip all that nonsense away.
When I worked for This Old House, I can't tell you how many kitchens I went in, even in relatively modest homes, that seemed designed for Instagram/Pinterest and not for real life. I had to be polite about it, but I really wanted to ask who the homeowners were designing for? It didn't seem to be a comfortable place to actually live, but it looked impressive to visitors I guess.
I’m a big fan of House Hunters and one thing I’ve noticed a lot in the homes they are showing is kitchens without upper cabinets. The cabinets are usually replaced by narrow shelves. Shelves that probably aren’t anchored to support any significant weight, rendering them completely useless. Stark white cabinets would be better than no cabinets!
I’m surprised external kitchen ventilation isn’t required by code in your area. It definitely is in my community (Dallas suburb), though most vent hoods are too small and inefficient.
I have not seen this trend, but yeah. So all your stuff gets to sit and collect dust? It does feel as though all of this stuff is designed with the expectation that there are no children present.
Mar 21, 2023·edited Mar 21, 2023Liked by Addison Del Mastro
That essay of Clare's was actually on my list of saved ones to read. She always has intriguing thoughts. We have 3 boys 3 and under, so I'm thankful for the forgiving hardwood throughout our little 1940's house. And our kitchen also has mostly forgiving surfaces and appliances. I would go absolutely nuts in one of those shiny, pristine, white kitchens I see a lot of DINKs buying — considering the amount of dirt and food grime tiny boys naturally get on everything... combined with me being home caring for them throughout the day... that would be a maddening task to keep up with. haha
The "redone kitchen" was one of the drawbacks of the house we ended up getting. It's not *as* bad as some I've seen, and I had to make peace with the fact that it would never look clean, but I definitely would prefer a more traditional darker stained wood over all the white. It is easy to see what needs to be cleaned, but actually keeping up with it.......yeah, not gonna happen with a 5 year old running around, hah.
We have a cleaning lady in once every two weeks and she has told us that we’re her only clients that actually cook. I guess these impractical kitchens are fine if you’re using meal kits or buying takeout.
Incidentally, our kitchen has grey-green walls, a beige backsplash, wood cabinets and black granite countertops. We figured that we would use it up and think about renovations once we don’t have small children anymore.
One downside on the wood cabinets is that it’s hard to find anyone to restore or maintain the wood. They want to either paint the cabinets white or replace them with particleboard. Another factor pointing towards white. It’s just easier for contractors.
Kitchen to watch. Instead of a nice picture on the wall - a whole nice room to admire.
Well, we've landed in a strange culture fixated on appearance. The more people see this, the better chance we have of changing it.
Here where I live, white furniture and walls in the kitchen are in fashion, but the sinks, taps and vent hoods are now black. If you had a steel tap in your kitchen and it broke and you want to replace it, it's hard to find one. A black tap doesn't match, so... replace the whole kitchen right away!
Well, and in Europe there are standards, permits and inspections for everything in construction. It is impossible to have a kitchen with gas without ventilation.
Eh. I share the frustration with insufferable rich people building expensive kitchens they'll never use, but this grasps at a few too many straws. For example, one criticism I would never make of a kitchen is being too "sanitary" and "sterile"! Let's just say I will happily pay extra to have my food prepared in a sanitary kitchen. I also don't get the objection to wanting to combine commercial-grade functionality with design elements appropriate for a room that's part of our homes and daily lives as opposed to hidden in the back of a restaurant. And yes, our upgraded fridge and stove were worth every penny.
The source of the frustration, I suspect, is that kitchen fashion has evolved so fast it's given us whiplash, and is used for status signaling by the aforementioned insufferables. But that's true of all fashions. In this case, modern kitchen fashion is still preferable to the fashions prevailing when I was a kid, with formica and faux wood veneers everywhere and appliances that are no easier to clean than their modern counterparts.
Heh, I actually preferred our old Formica to our new quartz (came with the house.) I found it more forgiving to use and work on. I think the core of the original article was the gleaming white aesthetic - you get sick of scrubbing the backsplash every time you make tomato sauce, etc. There is a lot of preference here but I found her piece spot-on. (I bet your upgraded fridge doesn't have a screen in it, either!)
No screen in the fridge, but it casts a subtle blue-tinged light over our food. That way, it's not just cold, it also *looks* cold. The little blue light is one of my favorite features. There is no accounting for matters of the heart.
(It also has a lot more interior space and a water/ice dispenser.)
I hated spending $4,000 on the backsplash, but it's way easier to wipe the tomato sauce off the tile than it was with the regular painted walls that were there before. And it looks great, also important for a room we're in for so much of every day.
Addison, this is a little much. I love to cook and cook every day in our brand new "professional" kitchen. Who doesn't put in a venting hood? We did and it would have been absurd to build a new house without one.
Maybe most of the new ones do - but we saw probably 100 detached houses overall, and maybe 10 had external-venting hoods. (Many also had barely functional windows.) Perhaps this is just a symptom of how screwy the Northern Virginia housing market is.
And I'm not talking about "professional" - I'm talking about the aesthetic where the finishes and materials only look good when they're clean and new. A genuine professional kitchen is not like that.
I'm not sure if it's a function of local codes, but I can confirm that when we were house shopping I very rarely saw hoods that were connected to an external vent (that was one of my non-negotiables, especially for a gas stove). Many houses around me go the "range in an island in the middle" route, which you _can_ vent if you put in an overhead one and run that to the outside, but most seem to go with just the downdraft one that recirculates back into the house instead.
My anecdote to add is that our Kitchenaid "Professional" range has, though a few years of consistent-but-not-particularly-heavy use, worn most of the labels off the console becuase it's just a bit of black paint directly on the stainless which of course cannot actually stick. So I have to keep free-hand adding it back with a marker, so when we sell I'll inevitably be left trying to figure out how much effort I'm willing to put into sprucing up the appearance to meet market expectations....
Re the vents - maybe I'm missing something, but you combine a center-island stove, non-external hood, and open floorplan, a combination I've seen more than once, and don't you have a recipe (no pun intended) for filling the entire house with smoke?
Yep. There's a Kitchenaid (I think) electric kettle with this problem. It sells for about $100, one of the most expensive electric kettles on the market, and review after review says the lettering wears off the large number of buttons. So unless you know them all it becomes kind of useless.
I think on a real pro appliance you'll find embossed lettering, or something otherwise more durable.
The irony of course being the console on my range is filthy because the thing that destroys its legibility is cleaning it with *anything* so I just....don't clean it
We bought a house with an all-white kitchen and I hate it. It's not in the gleaming, ultra-modern style though; it's more like 90s "country" aesthetic. And now every little nook and cranny is dirty all the time. The stove touches the counter on either side, so it's impossible to clean unless you pull the whole thing out...
It's so much more of a hassle than our old kitchen with green/black Formica counters and wood cabinets - and room to move.
Don’t get me started on “Internet of Things” appliances! Just keep my milk cool, that’s your only job, fridge.
Yep. Every "feature" is just another thing to go wrong. I can't overstate how much it tells you that the highest-grade appliances strip all that nonsense away.
When I worked for This Old House, I can't tell you how many kitchens I went in, even in relatively modest homes, that seemed designed for Instagram/Pinterest and not for real life. I had to be polite about it, but I really wanted to ask who the homeowners were designing for? It didn't seem to be a comfortable place to actually live, but it looked impressive to visitors I guess.
I’m a big fan of House Hunters and one thing I’ve noticed a lot in the homes they are showing is kitchens without upper cabinets. The cabinets are usually replaced by narrow shelves. Shelves that probably aren’t anchored to support any significant weight, rendering them completely useless. Stark white cabinets would be better than no cabinets!
I’m surprised external kitchen ventilation isn’t required by code in your area. It definitely is in my community (Dallas suburb), though most vent hoods are too small and inefficient.
I have not seen this trend, but yeah. So all your stuff gets to sit and collect dust? It does feel as though all of this stuff is designed with the expectation that there are no children present.
Oh, definitely. Sippy cups don’t make for ideal decor!
That essay of Clare's was actually on my list of saved ones to read. She always has intriguing thoughts. We have 3 boys 3 and under, so I'm thankful for the forgiving hardwood throughout our little 1940's house. And our kitchen also has mostly forgiving surfaces and appliances. I would go absolutely nuts in one of those shiny, pristine, white kitchens I see a lot of DINKs buying — considering the amount of dirt and food grime tiny boys naturally get on everything... combined with me being home caring for them throughout the day... that would be a maddening task to keep up with. haha
The "redone kitchen" was one of the drawbacks of the house we ended up getting. It's not *as* bad as some I've seen, and I had to make peace with the fact that it would never look clean, but I definitely would prefer a more traditional darker stained wood over all the white. It is easy to see what needs to be cleaned, but actually keeping up with it.......yeah, not gonna happen with a 5 year old running around, hah.
We have a cleaning lady in once every two weeks and she has told us that we’re her only clients that actually cook. I guess these impractical kitchens are fine if you’re using meal kits or buying takeout.
Incidentally, our kitchen has grey-green walls, a beige backsplash, wood cabinets and black granite countertops. We figured that we would use it up and think about renovations once we don’t have small children anymore.
One downside on the wood cabinets is that it’s hard to find anyone to restore or maintain the wood. They want to either paint the cabinets white or replace them with particleboard. Another factor pointing towards white. It’s just easier for contractors.
Kitchen to watch. Instead of a nice picture on the wall - a whole nice room to admire.
Well, we've landed in a strange culture fixated on appearance. The more people see this, the better chance we have of changing it.
Here where I live, white furniture and walls in the kitchen are in fashion, but the sinks, taps and vent hoods are now black. If you had a steel tap in your kitchen and it broke and you want to replace it, it's hard to find one. A black tap doesn't match, so... replace the whole kitchen right away!
Well, and in Europe there are standards, permits and inspections for everything in construction. It is impossible to have a kitchen with gas without ventilation.
Eh. I share the frustration with insufferable rich people building expensive kitchens they'll never use, but this grasps at a few too many straws. For example, one criticism I would never make of a kitchen is being too "sanitary" and "sterile"! Let's just say I will happily pay extra to have my food prepared in a sanitary kitchen. I also don't get the objection to wanting to combine commercial-grade functionality with design elements appropriate for a room that's part of our homes and daily lives as opposed to hidden in the back of a restaurant. And yes, our upgraded fridge and stove were worth every penny.
The source of the frustration, I suspect, is that kitchen fashion has evolved so fast it's given us whiplash, and is used for status signaling by the aforementioned insufferables. But that's true of all fashions. In this case, modern kitchen fashion is still preferable to the fashions prevailing when I was a kid, with formica and faux wood veneers everywhere and appliances that are no easier to clean than their modern counterparts.
Heh, I actually preferred our old Formica to our new quartz (came with the house.) I found it more forgiving to use and work on. I think the core of the original article was the gleaming white aesthetic - you get sick of scrubbing the backsplash every time you make tomato sauce, etc. There is a lot of preference here but I found her piece spot-on. (I bet your upgraded fridge doesn't have a screen in it, either!)
No screen in the fridge, but it casts a subtle blue-tinged light over our food. That way, it's not just cold, it also *looks* cold. The little blue light is one of my favorite features. There is no accounting for matters of the heart.
(It also has a lot more interior space and a water/ice dispenser.)
I hated spending $4,000 on the backsplash, but it's way easier to wipe the tomato sauce off the tile than it was with the regular painted walls that were there before. And it looks great, also important for a room we're in for so much of every day.
Addison, this is a little much. I love to cook and cook every day in our brand new "professional" kitchen. Who doesn't put in a venting hood? We did and it would have been absurd to build a new house without one.
Maybe most of the new ones do - but we saw probably 100 detached houses overall, and maybe 10 had external-venting hoods. (Many also had barely functional windows.) Perhaps this is just a symptom of how screwy the Northern Virginia housing market is.
And I'm not talking about "professional" - I'm talking about the aesthetic where the finishes and materials only look good when they're clean and new. A genuine professional kitchen is not like that.
I'm not sure if it's a function of local codes, but I can confirm that when we were house shopping I very rarely saw hoods that were connected to an external vent (that was one of my non-negotiables, especially for a gas stove). Many houses around me go the "range in an island in the middle" route, which you _can_ vent if you put in an overhead one and run that to the outside, but most seem to go with just the downdraft one that recirculates back into the house instead.
My anecdote to add is that our Kitchenaid "Professional" range has, though a few years of consistent-but-not-particularly-heavy use, worn most of the labels off the console becuase it's just a bit of black paint directly on the stainless which of course cannot actually stick. So I have to keep free-hand adding it back with a marker, so when we sell I'll inevitably be left trying to figure out how much effort I'm willing to put into sprucing up the appearance to meet market expectations....
Re the vents - maybe I'm missing something, but you combine a center-island stove, non-external hood, and open floorplan, a combination I've seen more than once, and don't you have a recipe (no pun intended) for filling the entire house with smoke?
It....*cough cough*....builds character!
Yep. There's a Kitchenaid (I think) electric kettle with this problem. It sells for about $100, one of the most expensive electric kettles on the market, and review after review says the lettering wears off the large number of buttons. So unless you know them all it becomes kind of useless.
I think on a real pro appliance you'll find embossed lettering, or something otherwise more durable.
The irony of course being the console on my range is filthy because the thing that destroys its legibility is cleaning it with *anything* so I just....don't clean it
We bought a house with an all-white kitchen and I hate it. It's not in the gleaming, ultra-modern style though; it's more like 90s "country" aesthetic. And now every little nook and cranny is dirty all the time. The stove touches the counter on either side, so it's impossible to clean unless you pull the whole thing out...
It's so much more of a hassle than our old kitchen with green/black Formica counters and wood cabinets - and room to move.