The Village - Coffee Fix

This behemoth is the automatic, built-in coffee centre at the Paradigm Kitchen Design showroom.  It grinds the beans and makes coffee, espresso and numerous other coffee drinks.  It is the first thing we turn on when we open in the morning.  When you come to see us for a design consultation, this is where your coffee will come from.
However, if you'd like a place to sit and relax with a coffee before or after you meet with us, we'd like to offer a list of our favorite coffee spots in the area.  Some specialize in coffee, others offer lunch or breakfast options as well:

Blenz
#108 - 3297 Cambie St (@ 17th)

Trixi's Crepe & Coffeehaus
3306 Cambie (@ 17th)

Caffè Artigiano
525 West Broadway (@ Cambie)

Elysian Coffee Broadway
590 West Broadway (@ Ash)

Choices - Kitchen Sinks - Part 2

Today we'll continue with Part 2 of our first installement of Choices on Kitchen Sinks.

Part 1 can be found HERE.

Green Mountain Soaptone
Stone - Stone sinks often come with an apron front. Some of the most popular stones used are granite, soapstone, marble, travertine and onyx.

Pros: Heavy and durable. Resistant to heat and cold. Quiet and retain heat well. Will not fade in colour or corrode.

Cons: Susceptible to chips and scratches, which are difficult to repair.

Tip: Stone is porous. To protect it regular oiling or sealing is required

Fact: Porosity of the stone varies depending on the type of stone and finish. Granite can contain pits or fissures. Marble is the most porous and requires careful maintenance. Soapstone is the least porous; however it is quite soft and will develop a scratched patina with time.

www.raichlecopper.com
Copper - Highly lustrous, copper sinks are becoming increasingly popular. They are available in a multitude of finishes to suit a variety of needs.

Pros: Low maintenance. 100% copper will not corrode or rust. Bacteria cannot survive on copper so it is extremely sanitary.

Cons: Made of soft metal, so it is susceptible to dents. Can be very costly because copper sinks are typically hand-made. Patinas over time.

Tip: Look for soldered joints as opposed to welded ones as the latter can corrode and turn black. Beware of recycled copper as it is not pure and can rust.

Fact: Waxing will prevent oxidization of copper. A thicker gauge of copper well reduce the risk of denting.

Wood - Used for hundreds of years, wood sinks can be sculpted into any form.

Pros: Can withstand the rigors of daily use. Material maintains richness.

Cons: Naturally organic product, so more conducive to the growth of bacteria and spread of germs. Tends to darken with time.

Tip: Certain organic oils can be applied to alter the colour and sheen of the wood.

Fact: Make waterproof with wax or oil. However some woods, such as teak, have inherent anti-bacterial and waterproofing properties.

Glass - Although more commonly used in bathrooms and low-usage areas, glass vessel sinks have found a niche among the adventurous and in high design.

Pros: Available in a variety of shapes, colours and finishes, including frosted, etched, textured or polished.

Cons: Can chip or scratch when it comes into contact with metal or glass objects. Cannot be repaired if chipped, cracked or broken.

Tip: Don not install where waste overflow is required as glass sinks typically do not offer this features.

Fact: Tempered glass is stronger and more shatter-resistant than non-tempered. However, it can still crack. Laminated glass contains an inner layers of resin or plastic that acts like a bond, making it sturdier and particularly resistant to shattering.

This article first appeared in Design Quarterly - Fall 2008 Issue, and was written by Justin Horn CKD and Tröe Collier

Choices - Kitchen Sinks - Part 1

Welcome to Choices, a feature on our blog that will (hopefully) dispel some of the confusion around the almost infinite choices you have to make when designing your kitchen. We'll feature a type of product, outline the choices, and tell you some of the pros and cons of each. In the end it's up to you, but an informed decision is the best way to go.

Today, we're featuring the first of a 2 part series on kitchen sinks. When it comes to kitchen sinks there are many configurations to choose from, including top-mount, under-mount, apron-front, and many others. There are similarly a wide variety of materials available, all of which come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colours.

Stainless Steel - Most popular amongst consumers for its clean contemporary look, stainless steel sinks are fabricated by drawing a sheet of stainless steel over a die.

Pros: Available in a wide variety of styles, sizes and finishes. Virtually care-free, easy to maintain and affordable. Resistant to staining and will not rust or corrode unless exposed to harsh chemicals such as chlorine bleach.

Cons: Scratches easily. However, the scratches become less apparent over time as they blend in with other fine scratches. Thinner stainless steel sinks can be quite noisy.

Tip: To help reduce the clattering of dishes against the sink, look for a sink with a sound deadener applied to the bottom.

Fact: Premium sinks are made from higher quality steel (18/8 or 18/10 grade). The thicker gauge steel prevents water spotting and provides heat retention.

From www.corian.com
Solid Surface - Solid surface sinks are made from a man-made material and typically combine two main ingredients: a natural mineral (the “filler”) and a resin (the “binder”),

Pros: Durable and adaptable. Excellent insulation properties. Heat, cold and sound resistant

Cons: Can scratch or chip, however, because the colour runs all the way through the material, surface scratches can be easily buffed out and scratches filled.

Tip: Custom made drain-boards or inlay designs can be built directly into the sink or adjacent countertop.

Fact: The only product that can be colour matched and integrated with countertops, creating a “seamless” look.

Porcelain or Enamel - Offering a more traditional look, porcelain or enamel sinks are made by applying a glass coated finish to metal or cast iron

Pros: Very durable and resistant to hot and cold objects.

Cons: Susceptible to scratching and chipping. Extended exposure to certain items such as tea bags will cause staining, and aggressive cleaning can dull the surface. Surface damage that exposes the metal substrate can lead to metal corrosion.

Tip: Look for a lifetime warranty against chipping.

Fact: This sink material is quite heavy, so under counter cabinetry and braces must be sturdy enough to support the sink. These sinks often come with a front apron (often called “farmhouse” style).

This article first appeared in Design Quarterly - Fall 2008 Issue, and was written by Justin Horn CKD and Tröe Collier

Design Tips - Doors & Entries

Designing a kitchen or bathroom is one of the most complicated projects you will undertake in your home.  And even before you get around to selecting countertops for the kitchen or choosing tile for your shower, you need to decide where everything will go; the function of the room. 

The decision process for even the simplest room can be quite staggering.  The best way to tackle your project design is to come and meet with one of the design professionals at Paradigm Kitchen Design, but before you book that appointment we'd like to offer up some "Design Tips."   In this series of posts we'll be focussing on some of tricks of the trade we've learned over the years and offering insight into the excellent guidleines set out by the NKBA.

Today we'll start at the beginning ... or rather NKBA Kitchen Guideline #1.


For a minimum standard, the clear opening of a doorway into the kitchen should be at least 32’’ wide. This would require a minimum 2’-10’’ door.
However, the desired clear opening of a doorway would be at least 34’’. This would require a minimum 3’-0’’ door since we're measuring the actual opening with door open to 90 degrees (door to frame). 

If the passage into the kitchen is deeper than 24" (for example, you have cabinetry on either side of the opening) that doorway increases to 36".

Now that we have all the doorways handled, we still have one more thing to consider;  interference.  Nothing is quite as annoying as having a kitchen door open, only to have it block access to the wall oven, or if the dishwasher is open and you cannot open the oven door.  In addition, we should also consider what's going around an open door.  If the dishwaser is open for example, it's important to allow space to stand, move and put away the dishes!


The important thing to remember with any of the guidelines is that they have been designed for optimal situations.  Proper access into the kitchen just makes life better, preventing doorway collisions with others and helping you enjoy your new space.  However, in some kitchens it's just not possible to achieve a 36" opening.  Don't panic.  Your design professional will help you decide what's best for your particular project. 

Illustrations (C) NKBA.org

Maximum Suck

This is an article I published in another blog a while back, and it deals with one of the most understood parts of the kitchen. Ventilation.


A number of years ago, a friend of mine wrote a terrific article on ventilation for the food website egullet.org. Dave Scantland's article was so thorough I asked him if I could use it to help my clients understand the importance of the subject.


(I've edited the original article slightly for brevity.)

Your home is full of holes.

Buildings must breathe; occupants need fresh air; combustion in furnaces and appliances requires oxygen. Since most of us don't live in pressurized capsules, we take it for granted that the air pressure outside the home will equal the pressure inside. And this is the job of holes. When air is expelled via one hole, new air rushes in through another to replace it. So your home is full of them.

Since the energy shocks of the '70s and '80s, buildings have been constructed with tighter joints, more insulation, more efficient insulation, and greater attention to weather-stripping and air-tight glazing. All of this means fewer holes.

An increasing affinity for high-output ranges, downdraft cooktops, and the idea that the way kitchens look is as important as how well they work, have led to an increase in home ventilating power.

In the US, at least, there is no standard for how much ventilation should be applied for a given size or output of range (Paradigm's note: same applies for Canada). In a way this is understandable. Ventilation fans should remove smoke and odor, but the size of your stove, the BTUs it generates, and the amount of smoke and odor you create when using it are not necessarily related. Even if you're a serious cook, the relationship is tenuous. You can simmer a stock all day and not have a problem. But neglect three measly bacon strips -- whether the pan is on a five-inch electrical coil or a multi-ring 18K BTU burner -- for just a moment, and you can fill the house with the airborne effluent of carbonized fat and flesh that will linger for days.

Like many suburban houses, ours came with a built-in exhaust fan over the stove. It is white; its 30-inch width is the same as the width of the range. The fan is 5 inches in diameter and is mounted behind a removable, metal mesh filter. The filter and fan are in a 10-inch square casing set in the center of the hood. A label inside the hood says that the fan moves 160 cubic feet per minute (CFM).

The range is 25-3/4 inches deep, but the front edge is about 27 inches out from the wall. The edge of the largest burner is 24 inches out, and the hood is 17 inches deep. Is it reasonable to assume that the fan can remove smoke from that far away? How strong a pull is 160 CFM?

According to the NuTone Group the world's largest manufacturer of residential ventilation products:
For conventional electric and gas ranges or cook tops, we offer a complete line of hoods that can fit your cooking needs with features you desire. For high output gas ranges or cooktops, the minimum rate of 1 CFM of ventilation per 100 BTU is recommended.
The first part of this statement is not very helpful. The second part, however, provides some sort of guideline. Find out the BTUs, divide by 100, and you have a starting point.

The range is electric and, like the vent hood, it came with the house. My first stop is the owner's manual. Unfortunately there is no list of specifications. Looking the model up on the manufacturer's Web site, I find no mention of BTUs. Instead the burners are rated in watts.

Can watts be converted to BTUs? Since they are both units of energy, yes (we'll skip over the explanation that energy output ought to be expressed as watt-hours or BTUs per hour, but never is). One kilowatt-hour is equal to 3,412 BTUs per hour. So the 2,500 watts of my nine-inch burner is equal to 8,500 BTUs; the 1,500-watt burners are 5,118 BTUs; and the 2,000-watt, eight-incher is 6,824. All told, it comes to 25,560 BTUs. If I want to plan for a worst case, I need 256 CFM. Or do I?

I rarely, if ever, have all the burners cranked all the way up at the same time. If I had the two larger burners running at full blast, the 160 CFM supplied by the present fan should be sufficient. But the fact is that I can fill the house with smoke using only one burner turned up maybe 75%. The output of the burner is not really the issue; the issue is smoke and odor.

Let's look at it another way. My kitchen is 11 feet wide and about 14 feet long, and the ceiling is nine feet, making the volume of my kitchen 1,386 cubic feet. At 160 CFM, the air in my kitchen should be completely replaced in a little over eight and one-half minutes -- actually somewhat less, since a lot of volume is consumed by cabinetry and appliances. So what gives?

I assume that the manufacturer's label isn't lying. But maybe the rating is for the fan alone, without regard for the filter between the fan and the smoke, and the resistance of several feet of ductwork between the fan and the outside. Maybe the answer is to crank up the CFMs. Lots of people do -- it goes along with the fad for commercial-style ranges. Given the popularity of commercial-style cooktops featuring six or more burners rated at 15,000 to 18,000 BTUs, you might assume that these ranges require heavy duty ventilation -- up to 1,200 CFM. Indeed people do install such systems. Downdraft fans for small island cooktops start at a minimum of 600 CFM (partly because they have to fight convection). If a measly 160 CFM won't do the job, multiplying it by five or six ought to and probably will.

Imagine what happens to a 2000 square-foot room when you turn on a 1200 CFM ventilation fan. With eight-foot ceilings, the room would have a volume of 16,000 cubic feet, and the fan will revitalize the room’s air in 13 minutes. Where is the clean air going to come from? Answer: through the holes -- gaps in the floor, walls and windows.

If the doors and windows are open, air movement is easy. But if it's recently built or remodeled housing, it has openings that are well weather-stripped, and a heating/ventilating/air-conditioning (HVAC) system that gets its air directly from the outside. In this case, air comes in through places where it isn't supposed to.

Air comes in through holes where it ought to be going out such as the fireplace, the furnace flue, and the water heater vents. This is air laden with exactly the sort of things you don't want in your house: carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen, and smoke particles. You might even spot a wisp or two of dryer lint along with anything that might be stuck to the inside of your furnace filters. A few pieces of lint are fine, but the rest is potentially very dangerous. It's called backdraft, and people die from it.

Home kitchens aren't subject to the same regulations as commercial kitchens, and there are good reasons for this. A commercial kitchen must vent everything, including aerosolized grease, or risk creating significant fire hazards (or a stampede of patrons). One of the first things commercial kitchen novices remark upon is how noisy the lines are, and it's no surprise, given the 1 CFM/1K BTU guideline. Twelve 20K BTU burners means 2,400 CFM ventilation (and the required make-up air). It's like working in a wind tunnel.

Although change appears to be coming, few residential rules are included in the government regulations, and most are vague guidelines. One of the few specific directives available is from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers. The applicable document is Standard 62-1989: Ventilation for Acceptable Indoor Air Quality. It prescribes an absolute minimum of 100 CFM, or 40 CFM per linear foot of cooking area. On that basis, a 30-inch range needs the minimum. OK, it's specific. But in the end it's not helpful, since my 160 CFM unit, at 60% above the requirement, is not doing the job.

The problem is that neither Broan nor ASHRAE address the real problem: you've got a source of smoke sitting in a specific spot, and you simply want to direct the smoke out of the house. So it's not an issue of power, it's an issue of control. One way to exert control is to make sure that the vent hood covers the entire cooking area, and take advantage of convection. Smoke, along with the hot air, will rise naturally to the fan intake. Island hoods do this job very well, since they usually match or exceed the cooktop in size. This coverage means that they can sit higher than the standard under-cabinet vent hood, which is usually 27 to 30 inches above the cooking surface or 63 to 66 inches above the floor. If the perimeter of an under-cabinet hood matched the cooking surface, anyone of average or above size would be banging their head against it with painful and annoying frequency.

The fact that a typical under-cabinet fan does not cover the entire cooking surface may not be significant for most cooks. It works for my Mom. A colleague of mine was surprised that I used one at all -- hers seems to be most useful as a microwave platform. But if you're still reading this, you are not most cooks. You stir-fry at extreme temperatures. You blacken fish in cast-iron skillets -- on purpose. You sear the edge fat on 2-inch-thick New York strips. But because you sometimes play with vacuum cleaners and shoeboxes, you have also learned that to remove smoke, brute force alone will not avail. The only avenue left is finesse. You have to make the smoke want to go where you want it to go. And as with children, spouses and co-workers, sometimes gentle pressure is most effective. (Paradigm's note: There is another option: increase the depth of the hoodfan canopy. Most manufacturers offer "commercial depth" fans.)

We can also infer the corollary: positive pressure pushes things away (imagine reversing the motor on your vacuum cleaner while it's still attached to the shoebox). So if we could create an area of positive pressure between the housing of the fan and the outer edge of the cooking surface, we could nudge the rising smoke into the negative pressure area, and it would go up the chimney. Luckily, we have a way to create a high-pressure area: we have a fan right there in our vent hood. With a little duct-work engineering, we can push air out on one side and suck it in at the other. As it turns out, Broan actually makes such a contraption -- the Allure. (Paradigm's note: Gagganeu and Miele also make such a fan, as do others.)

And so we come to my original plan for this article. I am no Norm Abrams. I am not Handy Andy or Ty Pennington. I'm not even Tim Allen. My first attempt at appliance upgrade left us without a working toilet for three and a half days. That was twenty years ago, and I haven't improved much, except to recognize -- sometimes -- when it would be advisable to call for professional assistance. However, in fulfillment of my manly duties (and so I could go one up on the Magic Board), I set out to install a new vent hood. I expected the installation to be a disaster, but anything that involves power tools, hot air, and a legitimate chance to use duct tape for its intended purpose is too grand to pass up. At the least I would have a great farce for the Webzine. But much to my surprise (and probably that of the rest of the household, though I am too proud to inquire), it works, and I accomplished the feat in less than a day.

I admit that I wasn't confident enough in my own grasp of physics to resist springing for the top-end, 400 CFM boost unit. But we don't use it. Score one for science.

Dave Scantland is an Atlanta-based writer and graphic designer.
Photos and illustrations by the author.