Espresso madness

Dwell's kitchen blog is running a review of the new Jura Capresso ENA espresso makers and that's all well and good. Jura Capresso makes countertop, automatic espresso machines if you've never heard of them. There was a time in my life when I would have lopped off an arm gladly in exchange for a Capresso of my very own. If you've never seen one, just go into a Williams-Sonoma or a Sur la Table and ask to see the most expensive coffeemaker they have. The Jura Capresso automatic machines retail for anywhere from $2300 to $3400 dollars. That's a lot of dough for a cuppa joe. It's a lot of money and the machines are anything but compact --they eat up a lot of space on a counter top.

The new ENA line is meant to be a remedy for the size and price barriers their regular lines present for a lot of people. So the ENA line is only 9-1/2" wide, and its prices range from $899 to $1199. That's still a lot of money for something that will hog up my counters.

An alternative I used to see in a much better light is the built-in espresso systems made by companies like Miele and Gaggenau. It would be easy to think that as built-in machines, they would cost more than the Capresso countertop models. Well they don't surprisingly enough. They average around $2500 for the machine itself and then you have to figure in the added expense of building the thing into a wall or a line of cabinetry.

Either of those options is a huge amount of money. Now, I specify the Miele built-in systems all the time and I would love to see a study of the habits of people who buy them. I have a feeling that those machines don't get used very often, certainly not often enough to justify their expense. I'll admit that my theory might come from my being cheap, but I'm not so sure.

Now I love espresso with a passion that frightens me sometimes. Just give it to me plain, no contaminants. I drink it in the morning in lieu of brewed coffee, and I can no sooner envision a life without espresso than I can a life without sunshine or oxygen. So what do I do? I love espresso, but I like the idea of not spending three grand on a coffeemaker just as much.

The answer comes in humble form of the Bialetti stovetop espresso pot. The Bialetti Moka was invented in 1933 by Italian industrial designer Alfonso Bialetti. The design of the thing is iconic to say the least. It still made the same way, works the same way and looks the same way that it did in 1933. I paid $25 for my Bialetti and I use it every day. And with that I throw down the gauntlet and challenge any of these countertop or built-in machines to a duel. My $25 machine makes the best espresso on the planet. Don't believe me? Bring your $3000 coffee maker over to my place and we'll have a brew off.

Another shameless plug for SketchUp

I spent the better part of the morning designing a huge, open floor plan kitchen for a lovely couple from Dunedin. They want something interesting and contemporary, so I took their architect's renderings and shifted things around a bit as I am wont to do. Now, I want to show something interesting but in order to work in my industry, I'm compelled to use a truly inferior piece of software called 20/20. I've complained about 20/20 before, so I won't add to my list of public grievances. Not too much anyway.

My quest for an interesting kitchen started with an inspiration photograph. Here's my inspiration. I'm love the supports below this glass bar, and I really like the idea of sheathing a knee wall in bamboo veneer as has been done here.


Now a knee wall is usually a structural thing that adds support to an island or a peninsula. As a structural element, we usually hide them. But in this case, the designer drew attention to it, so much so that it's arguably the focal point of this peninsula. So for my interesting kitchen assignment, I want to take the idea of this exposed knee wall in a peninsula and apply it to an island. Two islands in this case. Easy right? Wrong.

I work with some very expensive professional software called 20/20. 20/20 bills itself as "the world's leading interior design software." You need to have a license to buy it and operate it is how exclusive a proposition this software is. You'd think that with all that exclusivity, I'd be able to render something resembling the back of this peninsula to show to my clients. So you'd think.

Here's the best 20/20 could do after about four hours.

20/20 can't draw a curve on something that's standing up, like my bar supports here. It can't apply a bamboo veneer texture to my wall or supports. I can't show the curved glass bar. Not only can it not do most of what I want it to do, my system crashed three times trying to get it as far as I have. PATHETIC. So now I get to tell a client during a presentation "Ignore those straight supports, let's pretend they're curved like in the picture I showed you. Now pay me $40,000."

That's clearly an unacceptable scenario. So my next option would be to hand draw the rendering above. However, that would take me the next two days to complete and I need to show my ideas to these people today.

So, I launched my FREE copy of Google's SketchUp and banged out this in about ten minutes. Now I ask you, how can software that cost three times as much as the laptop I run it on be trounced so soundly by software that's free for everybody? How does that happen?

I'm famous!

The kids over at Apartment Therapy are running a little sumpin' sumpin' I wrote about Bahamian getaways. The story's complete with the studliest photo ever taken of me in all my 43 years. Thank you JD! Check it out here!

Let me quote myself:

Here are some shots of a slice of heaven I'll be returning to in a week.The Out Islands of the Bahamas are for the most part an undeveloped Eden about an hour's flight east of south Florida. My friends and I rent the same cottage every couple of months on Cat Island at a resort called Fernandez Bay Village. I use the term resort loosely....

There are no hot stone massages or organic meals. Rather, there is a 40-mile long, virtually uninhabited island. There are beaches with no foot prints on them, reefs that aren't charted, nights illuminated by the stars, and a blissful quiet that turns my overworked brain into jelly...

Nothing to do but kayak, dive, swim and read. Ahhhhhh. Having no telephone, no internet acess, no television and zero contact with the outside world for a couple of days is the ultimate tonic; even if it's bitter at first. Having all of that plus daily maid and turn-down service is almost too much to bear!

Keep calm and carry on

I was reading through Apartment Therapy's weekend postings this morning and I came across this kitchen:


Austin-base graphic designer Alyson Fox opened her home to the editors of Apartment Therapy and I for one, am glad of it. It's an interesting room but what really caught my eye was the poster hanging to the left of the cooktop. What a great directive for life in general and today in particular.

It turns out that Keep calm and carry on was a British propaganda poster commissioned in 1939 by the Ministry of Information in the lead up to war with Germany. A couple of souls at Barter Books in London found an original and proceeded to reproduce it and sell it on their website. It's a pretty cool thing all around. A vintage feel, a way to touch history and a firm yet kind directive for every day living. It's a killer combo.

So as we gear up for today's arrival of Fay, let's remember to Keep calm and carry on.

Yes, yes, let's talk about the weather

Apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan.

All this talk about impending storms got me thinking about snow globes. Well not really, but it reminded me of these beauties I first came across on Apartment Therapy.

Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz are a Pennsylvania-based husband and wife team who gang up on the humble snow globe and drive a dagger into its heart. Precisely what art is supposed to do if you ask me. But check these things out. Who would think to take something so wholesome, so simple, so aw shucks American and turn it on its head? These things are brilliant. Beautiful to look at and painstakingly constructed.

Their art comes in two species; the globes themselves and then limited edition photographs of the globes. If you'd like to inquire about their art, you can contact the artists directly here. Or you can reach their representatives at the P.P.O.W. Gallery in Manhattan.

I'm going to start giving an award periodically: Kitchen and Residential Design Blog Award. Future generations will come to call it the KaRDB Award. I predict that in time, winning a KaRDBA will carry the kind of cachet that a Tony or Drama Desk award does today. So with that said, I hereby grant the first KaRDBA to Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz.