G. Haege

With Cooking in Mind, Kitchen Revolutionary has Designs on Your Home - Glenn Haege

Don Silvers is a dangerous man. He thinks your kitchen is laid out wrong; the counters are too narrow; there aren't enough sinks; and you do entirely too much walking around making a meal.

He also has very definite ideas about where you put your appliances; why you can't duplicate the taste of most chefs' cooking; where you put supplies; and what you stand on.

Donald E. Silvers has a kitchen design consultancy in Los Angeles. He also teaches kitchen and bath design at UCLA. He has the audacity to voice these opinions because he is both a Certified Kitchen Designer and a chef. CNN credits him with being "the only certified kitchen designer and chef in the industry today."

During his career, Silvers designed more than 1,000 kitchens — he not only knows how to talk the talk, he actually walks the walk.

Every year my office receives magnificent, lavishly illustrated books on kitchens and kitchen design. The majority show beautiful kitchens for beautiful people. You get the idea that these rooms are for folks more interested in the kitchen as an art form than a place to cook a meal.

In his book, Kitchen Design With Cooking in Mind, Silvers shows how to create a kitchen that cooks beautifully and looks good. His thesis is that if your kitchen is strategically laid out and designed to cut meal preparation time and effort in half, you'll want to cook more.

When Silvers designs a kitchen some of his questions to clients are:

What is the maximum number of people you will prepare a meal for?
What type of food do you like to prepare for a formal meal?
What are your favorite informal meals?

His final kitchen plan will make meal preparation a joyful experience. He does this by throwing out the Kitchen Triangle and concentrating on workflow. The Kitchen Triangle is a concept introduced in a study by the University of Illinois in the 1950s. It based design on three major kitchen appliances: the stove, refrigerator and sink; then squished everything else around them.

There are three problems with this concept: Many important appliances and cooking gear that should be in daily use are stored out of view in difficult-to-reach places. Adding one or two cooks means you have to work on top of one another and get in each other's way. When you try to prepare an elaborate meal you usually wind up trying to use a sink for food prep that is already filled with dirty pots and pans.

Techniques Silvers uses to combat these problems are "furring out" the cabinets six inches from the wall; adding a cleaning sink; and laying out the kitchen using a sub system approach.

"Furring out" is the technical term for placing standard 24-inch-deep base cabinets 6 inches from the wall. This provides 30-inch-deep kitchen counters rather than the standard 24-inch depth. The additional 6 inches permits you to store all your major appliances on the counter top, while still providing a 2-foot-deep work area. Silvers says this little trick doubles the available work area in most kitchens and simplifies food preparation by having most small appliances already set up and ready to use.

When a second sink is added, one sink is designated for food preparation, the other for cleaning. The cleaning sink and dishwasher are located away from the food preparation area.

Using a sub system approach to kitchen design means laying out the kitchen for specific tasks in such a way that they complement, not interfere with one another. Cold and dry storage is convenient to food preparation and cooking. Clean up is easy, out of the way and does not interfere with food prep.

Sound impossible? Not when you understand the fundamentals. They are all laid out in less than 100 pages in Silvers' book. Kitchen Design With Cooking in Mind is available for $24.95 from Amazon.com. or direct from the author at (800) 900-4761, or on his web site at http://donsilvers.com.

The book includes in-depth explanations on how to improve kitchen design, the pros and cons of different style cabinets, counter tops, sinks, all major appliances, flooring and lighting. At the end of the book is a copy of the questionnaire Silvers gives his clients, which will help you find out about yourself and your kitchen needs.

Silvers has many interesting insights. Among them:

The reason most of us can't duplicate chef's recipes is that commercial cook top burners put out twice the BTU's as residential burners.
Vinyl flooring is the least expensive, most comfortable to stand on and easiest to care for.
Movable islands make putting away supplies, food preparation and serving much easier.

We have many good local kitchen designers, but if you read the book and want to move to California so Silvers can design your kitchen, you can save the trip. He consults by phone and does 40 or 50 out-of-state designs every year. If this sounds interesting, Silvers returns from vacation in mid-August.

Read Glenn Haege's question-and-answer column Thursday in Features, and his regular Saturday column in Homestyle. Have a question? Write Handyman, Box 1498, Royal Oak, MI 48068-1498, or e-mail askglenn@masterhandyman.com. Include your name, city and phone number. Call (800) 65-HANDY from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday and Sunday to have a question answered during his radio show on WXYT-AM (1270), or search the Master Handyman Help Site at www.masterhandyman.com.