Open Kitchen Concept Design - Part 2

As promised previously..

Here are some kitchen pictures and sites I really like. Enjoy!

I like the white beams and the lamps in this kitchen. And the chairs are just so cute..

Source

The natural lighting of this kitchen is great! I like the combination of country styled furnishings with pretty lights and designer chairs.

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This kitchen is so sleek and cool looking, it's hard to believe it's an Ikea kitchen. BTW, this picture comes from a really nice blog called Solid Frog - a blog with beautiful pictures of beautiful homes.

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Spacious and simple. Nothing to dislike about this kitchen, except I'd be scared to cook in it... for fear of messing it up!

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And lastly... for a whole lot more of kitchen pictures and ideas, see this and this. These pages are sources of inspiration.

Hello there!

Hello there, nice to see you on OKC's blog.

OKC apologises for not blogging much recently. She has been away on a business trip, you see - first to London, then to New York.

In fact, London was where she found me during a John Lewis sale. I am a lot more value-for-money compared to my Singapore cousins. Maybe that's why OKC was crazy enough to lug me halfway around the world from London, to New York and then home to Singapore.

She also bought a cute little plate from New York, with all the landmarks of The City printed along the skirting of the plate.

We are both happily resting in her kitchen now.

OKC sends her apologises and says she'd be blogging again soon.

Take care now,
Blue Cast Iron Pot

Open Kitchen Concept Design - Part 1

My kitchen ended up looking somewhat different from this.. but this was the initial drawing from our designer when he first drew up how our kitchen and dining area should look like after we told him what we wanted.

I wanted an island to separate the kitchen from the dining area. It would add table-top space to my small kitchen and provide me with additional storage place.

I also wanted a shelf by the side of the island to separate the kitchen wall from the huge mirror at the dining area.

I didn't want any hanging lights above the island table-top. Instead, I wanted a light above above the dining table.

He got a few other things wrong as well (The dining table, the decal on the mirror, the design of the cabinets).. but this was in essence how I wanted our open concept kitchen to be like - separated by an island and a shelf.

If I had a chance to redo my kitchen, I'd probably do it in a similar way.. never mind the small inconveniences of not being able to deep fry or cook strong smelling food in my kitchen.

Recently, I've been looking at some designs of kitchens that I like. In my next post(s), I'd share more.

Watch this space!

Open Kitchens and No Deep Frying

There is no deep frying allowed in our house.

Except when The Mother-in-law is here because she can do anything she likes in the kitchen since she is the chief cook. But apart from the few weeks when The Mother-in-law is in town, deep frying is disallowed in our house.

I love deep-fried food, don't be mistaken. But when I want them, I go out to eat. My favourite place for deep fried food is Tonkichi, of course.

But I digress.

So what does one do when one cannot deep fry, even shallow fry?

I've come to discover that many a great recipe can be done by baking in the oven instead.

This recipe of chicken wings with octo vinaigrette called for deep-fried chicken wings. I baked the wings instead and then coated the wings in the vinaigrette.

Ingredients for the octo vinaigrette (Recipe from here)
2 tbsp finely chopped garlic
2 tbsp chopped peeled fresh ginger
1 fresh bird's eye chilli, seeded and chopped
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup sweet light soy sauce
2 tbsp canola oil
1/4 tsp Asian sesame oil
1 1/2 tbsp sugar
Fresh ground black pepper

I didn't have any fresh chilli so I used Korean chilli powder instead. And because I was too lazy to chop the garlic and ginger, I grated everything with my MasterPlane grater. It worked fine and I thought the wings were pretty good but apparently, it'd be so much better if you take the time to finely chop everything.

Next time, I'd be good and stick to the recipe..

And I'd also want to try making this sticky balsamic chicken by baking the chicken first.

A Cute Kitchen

 A sneak peak into my kitchen...

I have a lovely kitchen that I really enjoy working in.. even though it is pretty messy most of the time.

But my kitchen is very me. It is very simple and practical - all the cabinets are white, with a splash of bluish glass here and there. Most of the electronics (fridge, microwave and oven) are silver or else grey. The floor is made up of large pieces of dark grey tiles and the walls are painted white. It is also small enough such that only 1 cook can work in the kitchen at one time.. which suits our household fine because in our home, we believe that too many cooks will spoil the broth. So either The Husband is working in the kitchen or else I am.. but never the two of us.

Having said that, I do think it'd be lovely to have a much bigger kitchen that leads into a garden.. or at least have a kitchen with huge windows so light can dance in.. And sometimes I wish my kitchen doesn't have an "open concept".. because the living room and rooms can kind of smell when we cook things like curry and fried fish.

Overall though, I'm still very pleased with my kitchen.

But when you chance upon a kitchen as cute as this.. it's easy to think that your kitchen has a long way more to go to be as pretty. I like this kitchen because it is cute.. yet simple, practical.. and messy! (Designs by Catherine Hammerton, from DesignSponge)

I love the lightness of the kitchen and the bold use 

of black, white and fire engine red!

All that mess.. and yet everything looks good!

A dream kitchen in black

I really enjoy going to furniture malls and home furnishings shops.

For someone who never thought about owning an apartment or a house for most parts of her life, I don't think I'd be moving to a new place anytime very soon...

Nevertheless, it's nice to have dreams. And in my dreams, one of my house (of course, in a dream, you are allowed as many houses as you like) has a kitchen in black.

This shiny black kitchen with a dash glossy green is really quite handsome. I like so many things about it:
1. The standalone aluminium and wooden kitchen island in the middle of the kitchen
2. The 2 beautiful wooden chopping boards on the kitchen island
3. The aluminium rack for hanging pots and miscelleneous kitchen utensils
4. The tile-like black glass feature wall
5. The glossy black cabinets with all the nifty organisation units and compartments inside. And the doors shut so nicely too.. Not with a bang, but oh-so-gently..
6. The kitchen sink where you can fit a drying rack on top of the small sink bowl

It is such a nice kitchen... I imagine cooking beautiful roasts, salads and all kinds of bakes in it. Yum Yum!

This kitchen has a stand-alone kitchen island in the middle

I like the plate rack that fits into the sink bowl.. and the kitchen cabinets

The wooden kitchen chopping board is so Rachel Rae!

It'd making cutting and chopping fun, I suppose..

The good and bad of an open kitchen

When we bought our apartment, the kitchen and living room was separated by a wall and a sliding glass door.

We decided to knock down the wall separating these 2 areas and remove the sliding door to make our place look brighter and more spacious.

Inspired by a showflat that we visited, we installed a kitchen island with cabinets where the wall used to be. This gives us more working and storage area for our kitchen.

To give the illusion of a bigger space than it actually is, we selected a glossy off-white laminate for the kitchen cabinets and a very white kitchen table top. Our kitchen floor is a dark grey stone. The intention was to give a contrast to all the white that we have.

When we first saw our finished kitchen, we were really pleased. The whole apartment looked a whole lot brighter and bigger.

The good thing about having an open kitchen is that it really makes the whole house look a lot more spacious. And because we have a bright wet area beyond the kitchen, knocking down the walls bring in a lot more light to the house. It is also nice to be able to cook and watch TV at the same time. And when we have guests over, I don't feel left out even if I'm cooking because I get to interact and talk with them whilst slaving in the kitchen.

The bad thing about having an open kitchen is that whenever I fry stuff or worse, deep fry stuff, I kind of have to do a mini "spring-cleaning" after that. The smell from the frying gets to almost everything. I've tried opening all the windows and doors when I cook.. turning on the fan, switching on the electrical kitchen hood (which unfortunately is not that powerful). So far, I find that cleaning up after cooking is still very essential.

Fortunately, I don't cook that very often.

Oh.. I don't regret having an open kitchen. If I get to choose again, I will definitely still choose to do my kitchen the way I've done it. Except, I would probably opt for a more powerful chimney-styled kitchen hood.