3 Key Feng Shui Kitchen Design Principles

Irwin Weiner ASID - An open fire once cooked early man's food; now all of that meal prep is done in a modern kitchen. The hearthside or open fire may now be replaced by a modern oven and cooktop, but the principle of "fire for cooking" is the same. We still need air to prepare a meal - a well-ventilated place to cook our food is vital to avoid cooking fumes, smoke, and grease getting into other rooms of the house.

Feng shui has been applied to the kitchen - many times called "today's hearth" or "the heart of the home" - and we wanted to highlight 3 practical tips to help maintain this room as an inviting and comfortable place where people can gather, eat, and talk.

• Natural light - This is the best possible lighting for any kitchen. There is so much fire energy in the kitchen with the concentration of appliances that traditional feng shui advisors believe it's better to go with weaker fluorescent or natural light - as opposed to strong lights and particularly focused spots.

• Water and fire - Feng shui advises us to separate appliances that embody fire (stove, cooktop, extractor fan) and water (sink, dishwasher, washing machine, water purifier). If they can't be on opposite walls from one another, try putting them at right angles. As one feng shui book says, "The main principle to respect is never to put them side by side lest, like racing camels, they begin to fight." (from The Feng Shui Kitchen: The Philosopher's Guide to Cooking and Eating by Master Lam Kam Chuen with Lam Kai Sin)

• Calm atmosphere - Due to the strong concentration of opposing energies in a kitchen (think five versus water), feng shui experts advise that calm wall colors be used in a kitchen. Many consider white to be better than any other color; it's always a color that signals purity and cleanliness. Beige and pastels are fine, too. Earth tones work well in creating a good work atmosphere, e.g., light browns, beige, yellow. 

Perhaps your kitchen is A-OK, and you've gotten the feng shui in proper balance. What then? Design2Share's Feng Shui 101 columns provide monthly inspiration on the subject, along with easy-to-tackle "homework" projects. Check out March's new post from Franca Giuliani, our Feng Shui expert: 7 Ways to Better Feng Shui in Your Bathroom.

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Irwin's Kitchen Remodeling: the Demolish-and-Wait Phase

Irwin Weiner ASID - The ground has now frozen hard and is sometimes getting dusted with snow outside our country house in rural Pennsylvania. We're now approaching Week 6 on the project, and demolition has been completed on the walls and floors of our kitchen, back entry area (which has served as our laundry room and catch-all storage area with large old-fashioned potato bins), and a small powder room. Our contractor and his son and step-son banged and pried and pulled and hauled away at surfaces to take off the new and bring it down to the bare bones.

It's exciting to see the layers of old brick veneer taken off the kitchen wall, discover old boarded-up windows, and see the rough electrical and rough plumbing put into and through the walls. In these two videos, you'll see the progress we've made.

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Irwin's Kitchen Remodeling: Scope of Work

Irwin Weiner ASID - We're a bit behind in catching up our readers on the progress of our home remodeling project in rural Pennsylvania. We really miss our kitchen, and the novelty is fast wearing off of having to eat out all the time on the weekends when we're in our weekend house. Part of our Weekend Therapy is to plan a meal and cook something spur of the moment, so we'll be happy when it's all over. In this video, I'll take you through our emptied kitchen, laundry room, and powder room and describe the scope of work - and next week I'll show you two videos with substantial progress made on the project. Whenever homeowners begin an extensive remodeling or renovation project, however, always plan for the process to take longer than you expect. In our case, this is holding true and we expect to be without a kitchen through the months of January and February and sometime into March. It's the nature of the beast, even though every contractor we interviewed told us the job would take only 6 weeks. 

 

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Filtered Tap Water - Some Like It Hot

 

Irwin Weiner ASID - I work every day with clients who are continually adding this new gadget or that to their homes, and sometimes I don't realize that, particularly for homeowners who aren't professionally decorating their homes, many people may not be aware of some nifty appliances or time-saving devices that I take for granted. So here's one that you may or may not already know: the Franke Little Butler. It's been around for awhile, and I've used it a lot. It's a triflow water system, meaning that from your kitchen sink you can run regular tap water, cold filtered tap water, and boiling hot filtered tap water. Actually, you can regulate the hot filtered water to get anything from boiling hot for instant beverages to the lukewarm water called for in many recipes. It's an under-counter filter solution with taps that are integrated so you can get all three water flow options. With so many parts of the country impacted by environmental challenges to their local water supplies, a home water filtration system makes good sense. I was also excited to find the following video from the folks at BoilingWaterTap.org and they've put together a great overview of Franke (in the top photo) and other multi-flow tap systems that are on the market (like Quooker, in the second photo), to help you make an informed purchase.

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