Teeny Tiny House Renovation

Thank you to my clients-turned-friends Jim Brodsky and Huck Hirsch for sending me this fun video of Jim installing a flush girder along with their contractor Adam West.  Obviously Jim is a really hands on kind of guy on the job site as well as the kitchen (see my previous blog post).  

Architectural Lesson of the Day: Flush girders are structural members that are recessed into the ceiling above to conceal or minimize their visibility at the ceiling line below.  Dropped girders are structural members that sit below the joist at the ceiling.

Smitten Kitchen

Smitten Kitchen is the name of one of my favorite food blogs.  Deb Perelman has a beautiful site with delicious, inspiring recipes and stories about her adventures in her tiny NYC galley kitchen.  I love to cook, and I love to read about food, and I especially love to eat.  I'm an architect, however, and you didn't come here to read about food!  Here's the point of this post:  

I went to a friend's birthday party last weekend and met someone who told me that they are renovating their kitchen.  They asked me about contractors I have worked with and spoke of their design ideas.  Then they asked if I had ever worked with Ikea kitchens.  (I have once).  I learned that Ikea has a kitchen event every three years or so.  They auction off the display kitchens including appliances, hardware, inserts, countertops, plumbing fixtures and lighting to the highest bidder.  Well...these folks bid $3200 for an entire kitchen more cabinets than they could ever fit in their kitchen and they won.  What a deal!  Most kitchens cost at least $20,000 with appliances and countertops.  

The above photo is a custom kitchen that I designed for a sweet little cottage in Sag Harbor.   The photo below are squash blossoms that we stuffed with ricotta cheese filling.  After the photo was taken, we dipped the blossoms in a light batter and fried them to crunchy perfection.