the karina

cabinets as stairs

A friend of mine recently bought her first home, a loft space in a converted school building. The only access up to the loft, though, was a ladder. Her poor kitty could not climb it and it was just not convenient for everyday use. She asked my opinion on a stair kit, something similar to a spiral stair. Honestly, I didn't like it and sent her a picture of a bookcase stair I had seen and said if she was interested, I could draw up something of more use and much better looking then the stair kit. This is what we came up with. Our friend Jeff Fernald constructed them and Michelle picked out the door handles and designer switch plate. Needless to say, Lou the cat is much happier with this design, as is Michelle. It's fun to do small projects like this. Much of design is just solving a problem in a creative, useful and pleasing way.

The Karina - update

To think, in one week this is going to be all cleaned up! So much is finishing up this week. Yesterday the glass shower enclosures where installed and the little upstairs bathroom counter. Also the concrete guy came to start on our path from the sidewalk to the porch and the front and back step. This morning I'm heading over to meet with a landscaper that hopefully can help us with our muddy mess of a yard.

I stopped by on my way to work yesterday morning, and the cabinet doors were partially installed, so we looked at the 2 door handles I had picked up at Lowes. I had spent some time in Builder's Hardware, but just couldn't find the right knob. The Lowes one isn't right either, but it was close. I ended up ordering one online based on this one. We need 19 knobs and 12 bar pulls. The knobs will go on the doors and the pulls on drawers...except in the bathrooms which will be all knobs.

our current home - the cabinet

We actually didn't have the TV before we designed the cabinet...but Neil wanted a large one. I must say, going HD at this size has been quite the viewing experience. Watching things like Planet Earth is just amazing. Living in such a small space with a TV of this size, it was critical for me to be able to hide it. When it's off, it still has a presence. So we designed a sliding door system that also hides or opens up the desk area. I don't have a picture, but there are 2 large panels back to back so both the desk and TV area can be closed off to the living room. We kept it low to allow the visual connection between the living room and bedroom so both feel larger than if there was a full height wall up to the ceiling. Under the TV, the panels open to the DVD player, cable box & audio box. To the right is miscellaneous storage.

If you look closely at the base of the TV you will notice that it is on a turn table. The TV cabinet was designed so that the TV can spin around and we can watch TV in bed. Perfect for those early 5 am Formula 1 races we watched this season. (Remember the photo in our bathroom?)

This is an earlier picture...it's good to see how much the plants have grown. This is the bedroom side. The drawers below are used for clothes and below the TV on this side hides the computer printer.
From my side of the bed, I see some of my books, then a nice long view into the kitchen and out the corner window. Long diagonal views in a small space, helps it to feel larger. This window faces East, so is the first view of daylight in the morning.

kitchen inspiration - ross chapin architects

For the cottage projects that I have worked on at Ross Chapin Architects, we have typically put in white painted cabinets with a granite 12x12 tile counter. The look is classic, clean and has always been received well. Fred Kimball of Kimball Woodworks in Port Townsend, has been our cabinet maker of choice. Thinking about it, I realize I've worked with Fred on 70 some homes...repeating plans of course, but still that's a lot of homes. When it came time to choose cabinets for the Karina, to me it was a no-brainer to use Fred. Neil did get 2 other bids just to be sure. One from a much larger company, that was cheaper, but was not a true custom cabinet maker, so we would have had to use standard sizes. Our kitchen doesn't have a lot of extra space, so I wanted to maximize cabinets. The other was a similar outfit and gave a similar price. We are going with the Shaker door style as shown in these photos of past RCA projects, but they will be maple cabinets and we still haven't decided on the countertops.

kitchen inspiration

Many of the open houses we go to tend to be more modern in their detailing. Style is a funny thing to define. I'm not much for labels and find it hard to describe my style. In simple terms, I say traditional with modern detailing or classic with a twist. That's the way we have designed and detailed the Karina as well as our current home. The form may be the classic gable, but some of the detailing and plan layout is modern. Anyway...the kitchens below are all pretty modern.
love this deep stainless steel sink!

kitchen inspiration

Neil and I go to many AIA and other architecturally interesting open houses. Most of the time I can take pictures. I'm not always good at getting the overall picture, due to lots of other people at these open houses and the lighting is not always best, so I tend to take more detail, close in shots. Things like counter edges and how 2 different materials are coming together. Good shots for the files, to see what looks good together. Here are some kitchen shots from the past year.
concrete counters with metal edge
polished granite tiles with metal edge - nice thin dark grout