Home Inspiration With Margot Guralnick
Hipster Tokyo real estate company R-Real Estate specializes in "old but attractive edgy spaces." After consulting in the design of countless remodels, the team founded R-Toolbox, an offshoot business designed to make the move-in process easy by supplying urban denizens with exactly what might they need, whether that's a hand-forged brass bracket or an entire stainless steel kitchen. Run by a team of eight, including an architect, designer, and craftsman, R-Toolbox offers DIY workshops on shelf-building and other basics in its just-opened Shibuya-ku showroom, and will send over a work crew on request.
"In the mainstream market in Japan, home design solutions tend to be very packaged and homogeneous. But recently there's a desire for original spaces and craftsmanship," says company spokesperson Atsumi. "That's why we provide the 'toolbox' for people to edit their own spaces." Here's a small sampling from the R-Toolbox arsenal. American real estate firms, we hope you're taking notes.
Sinks
Above: The Minimalist Stainless Steel Sink and Cooktop—"well suited to the rental property"—can be ordered in a range of lengths.
Above: The skinny, stainless steel Mini Kitchen "omits extra things" and is recommended for offices and studio apartments.
Storage
Above: R-Toolbox's Larch Plywood Hanging Cupboard has sliding doors available in six colors and is fitted on the inside with a center shelf. It comes in three sizes, starting at ¥32,000 ($265.78).
Hardware
Above: The Square Bar cabinet pull, ¥4,968 ($41.26), comes with or without a base plate.
Above: Made by a small factory in Osaka for R-Toolbox, Shelf Brackets are available in two sizes in brass, iron, and three types of stainless steel. These large brass brackets are ¥3,300 ($27.41).
Above: The same Osaka team produces these hand-forged Greedy Towel Racks in two thicknesses and a range of metals; length made to order.
Flooring
Above: The R-Toolbox offerings extend to wood flooring and tiles. We especially like the salvaged American Gym Flooring with its original colored lines "woven randomly for a fun look."
Complete Kitchens
Above: A Minimalist Stainless Steel Kitchen. The kitchen is produced by a small metalworks factory. "Our team designed it," says Atsumi, "and to minimize price, this product is just folded and brushed stainless plates."
Above: So far, R-Toolbox sells its designs in Japan only, but international shipments are available for certain products, and the company hopes to extend its reach.
Above: A more elaborate Stainless Steel Frame Kitchen is also available to order, details are customizable. Go to R-Toolbox to see more, including a Black Frame Kitchen.
For Japanese lighting that we have our eyes on, take a look at Flame by Kenichi Kandatsu, in our post A Japanese Lighting Company Embraces the Dark Side.
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Kitchens With Alexa Hotz
There are times when I'll set out on a half-hour-long pilgrimage for a single loaf of my favorite bread (no errand in New York is ever easy). The investment of time and money (it's an artisanal loaf) is so much that every bit should be savored. I wrap the unsliced portion in a linen towel but recently I've noticed the crust goes soft so I've been taking note of appealing bread bins. It turns out, a bin with a wood component allows for just the right amount of breathability; here are five I've noticed lately.
Above: Cape Town's Pedersen + Lennard wood and powder-coated-steel Breadbin has a recipe stand when flipped open; $54 directly from Pedersen + Lennard.
Above: From one of our most trusted cultivators of utility goods, Iris Hantverk, comes the Large Birch Bread Box. The simple, slatted box is £60 ($90) at Tea and Kate in the UK, who will gladly ship abroad.
Above: From Berghoff in Belgium, the Cubo Deluxe Bread Box has a rubber wood bottom, a stainless steel cover, and can store two loaves of bread; $110 at Berghoff.
Above: The John Lewis Round Bread Bin is perfect for that sort of rounded country loaf. It's made in beech and is £35 ($53 USD) at John Lewis.
Above: The Plain Wood Bread Bin is made of sustainable birch ply and according to the designers, it can hold several loaves, even misshapen ones. Pair it with a slatted wood Breadboard to better allow the bread to breathe in the bin. The bin is £85 ($128) at Ella's Kitchen Company.
For more kitchen accoutrements, see our posts:
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Kitchens With Josh Quittner
There's an Arthur C. Clark quote that gets used way too often about how the best technology is indistinguishable from magic. I will not quote the quote because it's quoted all the time in Silicon Valley, where I work. But you get the idea: Great technology fills us with unbridled, slack-jawed, how'd-they-do-that awe.
That's pretty much how I feel about my dishwasher.
The Miele is the best piece of technology in my home. It is as fast, silent, and discreet as a ninja assassin, if ninjas killed dishes. Also, I love how it's so endlessly adjustable, detachable, customizable and economic in its lines and power consumption. Oh, and the Miele's top rack for silverware? Jesus wept.
My wife and teenage daughter, however, don't see the Miele as great technology. They think it really is magic.
How else is one to explain the quasi-mystical way they load the thing? They think the normal rules of physics go out the window when the dishwasher door is open: Water can suddenly penetrate glazed dishes and glassware as if these solid objects were riddled with intergalactic wormholes. Anything can be put anywhere in the Magic Dishwasher! Martini glasses can be jammed in the silverware tray, god help us. And, why not pile up plates on bowls, glasses on pots, and pots on roasting pans, all of it on each other, like so many clowns in the circus. The dishes will come out, sparkling clean. Like, magic!
Why do my wife and teenage daughter, who are so much smarter, more logical and math-y than me, think they can put a large cooking pot on top of three filthy bowls that recently held stew? Why doesn't my wife get that the stew bowls will be just as grotty at the end of the wash cycle as they were when I finally pried them from her freeloading friends' hands, after they "dropped by on a lark" at dinnertime?
When I woke up this morning, I did not set out to mansplain the rudiments of dishwasher loading, to them or anyone else. But, on behalf of husbands and fathers everywhere—to whom dishwasher duty inevitably falls—it's time to tell the loved ones with whom we cohabitate that the dishwasher is not a Hogswarts Sorting Hat. It is a beautifully engineered machine that works only as well as the people tending it.
So here are some simple rules. Go ahead and print them out. Or tell your husband to.
1. Keep your apples with your apples and your oranges with your oranges. All other rules about Dishwasker Stacking stem from this simple concept. It starts in the drying rack, where all your forks go with all the other forks—right down to salad forks going with salad forks and dinner forks spooning against dinner forks. Put all your spoons in a separate area and the knives in their own ghetto, too. This will not only allow for proper spacing, it'll make it easier to put cleaned items away later. Similar sized bowls are clustered on the ground floor, as are dinner plates and salad plates. (For similar tableware, consider the Hand-Pressed Jadeite Plates from Kaufmann Mercantile; prices start at $19 for the smallest size.)
2. The juice cups, which we use for all beverages, go on the top right. That's because they are short, and you can fold down that clever secondary shelf, where you can stack six demitasses side by side.
3. The big dinner plates go on the main level, either in the center (American style) or on the right center side (a la mode). I am OK with either so long as you put one plate in each rack slot; do not stuff two into one slot because NO WATER WILL GET THROUGH.
4. Sorry for yelling.
5. The sandwich plates go on the same level as the dinner plates, but in the rack space in the front that runs perpendicular to the dinner plate racks. Please, please, please: Do not waste the big rack space on little items like salad plates.
6. Do not put your favorite outsized serving plate that you got at a yard sale in the main rack. It is too high and will prevent the dishwasher's arm thing-y from rotating, and water will just drip from it, forlornly and nothing will get clean. I mean, honestly, you could run it like that from now until Trump gets elected pope and NOTHING WILL GET CLEAN.
7. Sorry for yelling.
8. Yes, it is a dishwasher, and yes, there is a drought in the west, but some things, such as filthy stew bowls, need a quick rinsing before being dishwashed. I don't care what the salesman told you.
9. Heavy-duty stuff, such as Thanksgiving Day roasting pans, and my precious bone-handled knives need to be cleaned by hand.
10. Ignore the different mode settings; they are not for you.
11. That said, if you put a fully shuffled deck of cards in the silverware rack and run the machine in Express mode, the cards will reshuffle themselves by suit, in ascending numeric order. No clue how this works, but it blows my mind every time.
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Kitchens With Alexa Hotz
When it comes to rental appliances, we're partial to the European style of installing your own kitchen gear—investing in a good oven and refrigerator and taking it with you from one rental to the next. By that logic why not bring your own sink, cooktop, and counters with you too? Here are 10 recent finds in the area of modular kitchen workstations.
Above: Danish company Vipp makes an Island Module that can be assembled with various front cabinets, a sink, and gas burners in the worktop; $34,300 at Vipp.
Above: The March Work Table is built of white oak and steel and can be customized with leather accessory boxes, a wine rack, or an ash basket. The worktable is $15,180 with accompanying components starting at $900.
Above: German industrial designer Dirk Biotto's ChopChop is a well-thought-out storage kitchen worktop. Contact Dirk Biotto for more information.
Above: Boffi's Mini Kitchen Cart has a built-in mini refrigerator, storage compartments, and sockets for electical cords. Contact Boffi for retailer information.
Above: The Barnstaple Oak Kitchen Dresser is a mix of lacquer and oiled wood with three drawers and a cubby system for small items; £1,200 ($1,818) at Habitat.
Above: A kitchen island from Alpes Inox features a five-burner gas cooktop, a sink, and drawers. Read more about it and more modular kitchen pieces at Race-Car-Style Appliances for Compact Kitchens.
Above: Katrin Arens, a German in Italy, designed a wooden kitchen workbench. Contact Katrin Arens directly for more information.
Above: Danish company CPH Square's Travel Kitchen in a range of colors and customizable styles. The workstation is on wheels but has all the necessary hookups. For pricing and information, contact CPH Square.
Above: The In-Vitto 120 Stainless Steel Kitchen by Metalco in Italy is a powder-coated kitchen trolley with a stainless steel sink and double burner cooktop. For pricing and shipping information, contact Metalco.
Above: From German kitchen design house Bulthaup, the b2 Workbench, a modular kitchen island with the option of including a cooktop, one of three widths of sinks, and a worktop. For more information, visit Bulthaup.
Above: Designed by Michelle Villa for Lgtek Outdoor, the Steel and Wood Outdoor Kitchen is best for in-between indoor/outdoor spaces or kitchens that open onto patios. For more information, visit Archiproducts.
For more modular kitchen ideas, see our posts:
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Super designs and they also occupies very less space and very impressed with is design thanks for sharing it.
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Evaluate how and when you cook, where you serve meals to whom and how often you entertain and how you entertain. Inventory your dishes, silverware, serving pieces, cookware, linens, and your typical grocery storage requirements so that you can be sure that the new design accommodates everything.
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