Think Outside the Box

Made with Xara

Ask the Kitchen Lady

It's my nature to resist arbitrary and tired old rules, boundaries, shapes, patterns, trends, textures and colors. The mission to "think outside the box" wells up in me as I approach a new project. So if you see me at work, rapping on walls and columns with my knuckles, craning my neck to check out beams and ceilings, opening adjacent closets, and sourcing drains and gas pipes, you can bet that the wheels are turning. And if I am prodding the contractor to make pilot holes here and there, and handing him a flashlight, then I am likely "onto something." TRUE STORY: When I was in the second grade, the teacher handed out white paper with an orderly series of ruled boxes printed on it. She said we should draw on the page and gave us crayons. After awhile we turned in our work. She held them up one at a time, and one thing they all had in common was a series of tiny pictures of varying skill and subject matter each contained inside a ruled box. Then the final sheet in the group was held up. Horrible! Someone had not "kept inside the lines" and had in fact ignored the lines entirely. But why was the teacher smiling and nodding so approvingly? Did that student grow up to become a world- famous architect? Who knows? But it was my first experience in thinking outside the box. Think of your residence as a box. Not much interest in these straight, expected lines. How can you rearrange the space to make it more exciting, or more functional, or more bright, or more storage efficient? Let every space you consider open up its possibilities in your mind. Architects are often compelled to seek cost-effective construction solutions. So if a pipe from above is descending into the corner of your room, chances are that the whole ceiling was dropped to hide it. (This is especially true of bathrooms where the waste line from the toilet descends and the whole ceiling is mysteriously lower than the rest of the residence.) Back up the ceiling goes! Knock out the frame of that narrow doorway and expand that entry! Take that opening up to the ceiling! No pipes in the wall? How about a pass-though for light, view, and a snack counter? Space too confining? Spill it out into the next room! Commandeer an adjacent closet! Fight for every inch! Break out of the box! And if you just can't come up with ideas...well, keep trying, because I know you can.

Tip: Fight for Every Inch

The name of the game is space! Fight for it. Seek it. Claim it. Don’t assume a structure is there to stay or can’t be trimmed back. I was the third kitchen designer to work around a column in the corner of a kitchen. Then I thought “Who ever heard of a column in an apartment that didn’t go to the ceiling?” What could that be for? A hammer to the side and the column collapsed--empty! We swept it away. I was proud.

>Think Outside the Box

Ask the Kitchen Lady

It's my nature to resist arbitrary and tired old rules, boundaries, shapes, patterns, trends, textures and colors. The mission to "think outside the box" wells up in me as I approach a new project. So if you see me at work, rapping on walls and columns with my knuckles, craning my neck to check out beams and ceilings, opening adjacent closets, and sourcing drains and gas pipes, you can bet that the wheels are turning. And if I am prodding the contractor to make pilot holes here and there, and handing him a flashlight, then I am likely "onto something." TRUE STORY: When I was in the second grade, the teacher handed out white paper with an orderly series of ruled boxes printed on it. She said we should draw on the page and gave us crayons. After awhile we turned in our work. She held them up one at a time, and one thing they all had in common was a series of tiny pictures of varying skill and subject matter each contained inside a ruled box. Then the final sheet in the group was held up. Horrible! Someone had not "kept inside the lines" and had in fact ignored the lines entirely. But why was the teacher smiling and nodding so approvingly? Did that student grow up to become a world-famous architect? Who knows? But it was my first experience in thinking outside the box. Think of your residence as a box. Not much interest in these straight, expected lines. How can you rearrange the space to make it more exciting, or more functional, or more bright, or more storage efficient? Let every space you consider open up its possibilities in your mind. Architects are often compelled to seek cost-effective construction solutions. So if a pipe from above is descending into the corner of your room, chances are that the whole ceiling was dropped to hide it. (This is especially true of bathrooms where the waste line from the toilet descends and the whole ceiling is mysteriously lower than the rest of the residence.) Back up the ceiling goes! Knock out the frame of that narrow doorway and expand that entry! Take that opening up to the ceiling! No pipes in the wall? How about a pass- though for light, view, and a snack counter? Space too confining? Spill it out into the next room! Commandeer an adjacent closet! Fight for every inch! Break out of the box! And if you just can't come up with ideas...well, keep trying, because I know you can.