Manolo for the Home

This past weekend, I attended a party at the condo of one of The Beard’s work colleagues. Said condo was utterly fantastic — the owner bought the building with her downstairs neighbor and between the two of them, a lot of work was done. So much work, in fact, that her mortgage consultant did not even recognize the building when she drove past.

The condo itself is spacious even if the individual rooms are a tad small, and it’s painted in lovely bright colors that (along with some big windows) keep everything beautifully bright. The highlight of the entire pre-party mini-tour was the kitchen, which The Beard’s colleague designed with functionality (sweet stove, lots of prep space) and looks (rad tile backsplash, chic steel island) in mind. She is an accomplished chef — seriously, in addition to 10+ dishes, she whipped up homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream with mint from her own garden — with a keen eye for design, so I wouldn’t have expected anything less.

That’s not a photo of the actual kitchen, but it does give you an idea of how fabulous it was. I was later inspired to look up kitchens in general to see what I could learn. What I did learn was that kitchens can be the most important room in the house if you happen to be selling yours. According to Kansas City Realtor Sarah Snodgrass, a good kitchen can redeem an otherwise not-so-good home.

People will by a house based on the kitchen – even if the rest of the house is painfully outdated.

I think I understand why. Besides the fact that a quality kitchen will add value to your home, people just plain congregate in the kitchen! I know from personal experience that guests end up spending a lot more time sitting around my cheap-o Ikea Jokkmokk than they do sitting on the living room couch or the loveseat in the den, even if I’m not cooking and necessity forces some people to stand.

If we’re all going to spend so much time in there, it better darned well look cute…and if you can cook in it, all the better!

This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 3:31 pm by Never teh Bride and is filed under Decorating, Remodeling, The kitchen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.