Designing the country kitchen

Press, 12 July 1984, Page 24

Designing the country kitchen

(By DAVID A. BASS, National Kitchen and Bathroom Association)

Like most subjects, that of the country kitchen has its own myths, the chief of which is, that to be successful, it must be big. Time and again, country homemakers commence their instructions to me as a designer with the words, “I must have a big kitchen.”

Let us examine the salient differences between the farm home kitchen and the urban one.

Firstly of course, the lifestyle is vastly different. Generally, farm homes have far more people dropping in and out. They tend to be the setting for more entertaining; city homemakers can more easily opt for entertaining out. Secondly, depending on distance from town, farm homemakers tend to store more food and food ingredients. They tend to have more vegetables and meat on hand, and because of frequent callers, tend to bake more often, and certainly roast meat more often.

Thirdly, the design needs to encompass the outlook over the farm from both practical and aesthetic reasons. Have you considered getting extra space in your kitchen and a better look over the farm by placing your sink bench in a greenhouse window? Never place such a window on a north-west to west frontage. S-E to N-W faces are perfect. You achieve a better outlook and more light and more space. Fourth: Generally speaking, especially in older farm homes, the room is itself larger and there is a strong temptation to use the whole room, simply, like the mountain, because it is there.

When you carefully analyse these factors, what becomes obvious is that the strongest difference between the town and the country kitchen is a social one. In other words the difference relates to entertainment, business and private, and the resultant extra work.

What the country homemaker must always remember is that she must insist on the same working triangle as her urban counterpart. The additional activity in the country kitchen is no reason why the coun-

try homemaker should waste her energy or work harder at any given task.

Much has been written about the working triangle in the kitchen, but it should never be regarded as an inflexible rule. Remember that the triangle on paper is in actual life you — your body and your movements.

There are much more rewarding ways to get exercise than by using unnecessary steps in the kitchen. So no matter what your particular problems, treat with extreme caution any kitchen plan in which the total distance A - B - C - A is more than 6.5 m. Unquestionably, the New Zealand farmer is noted for his hospitality. Most farms have people dropping in around lunch-time and morning and afternoon tea time; some once or twice a week, others almost every day. Your kitchen must take account of this factor. One thing you certainly do not need is numbers of people milling around your working area. Just as surely, you do not want to find yourself boxed into a small room while everyone is next door and you’re missing the fun. SOCIAL CENTRE The social centre for a country kitchen should ideally be handy to the back door: © It should not block normal household traffic flow. © It should have a fan heater handy, above it if possible (for the pre-dawn winter breakfasts). @ It should be designed so that people can sit around it, not in a long line side-by-side like bottles on a wall. © It should be suitable also as a servery for casual buffet-type entertaining, and .if a swimming pool-barbe-cue area is planned, locate it to act as a half-way house for salads, sauces, condiments. The telephone should be handy at one end or on an adjacent wall. Provide a drawer for the telephone directory and for pads and pencils. The family notice board should be handy too. Do not overlook this feature, it is useful, entertaining and a gathering point for family activity. BAKING CENTRE This is of much greater importance in the farm household than in most urban homes where both partners generally go out to work and where the demands of casual entertaining are less. In the larger and busier

country kitchens, it is generally beneficial to distinguish between stored food and that in current use.

One major disadvantage of large walk-in pantries where, maybe, both storage and working areas can be contained, is that their very size often isolates them from the sink and cooking areas, resulting in very much more walking. If this is indeed the result, the large combined pantry can be a serious disadvantage. A more practical answer is the separate store cupboard for bulk or basic stores including preserves and a baking centre in which all current baking needs are stored, with provision for working machinery such as the food processor, blender or mixer and if at all possible a small sink. This can be as small as a roller-door, cupboards 700 mm wide mounted on a standard bench with storage drawers beneath or as large as needs and space permit MICROWAVE OVENS This revolution in cooking is every bit as appropriate to the country kitchen as in suburbia. In fact, it can truly be said that nowhere is it more needed. The combination of microwave oven and the conventional fan-oven is almost perfect. Do not limit your microwave oven, as so many do, to an easy thawer of frozen foods and a quick coffee maker. It will not take the place of the oven for the larger roast but it cooks vegetables better, more cheaply and more speedily than anything else. It is the only effective way of re-heating food without loss of taste. It is the

Handy hints

Don’t wet concrete blocks before laying, or allow them to be exposed to rain while stored on the site. If wet when erected, block walls will contract on drying, leading to cracking at joints. Don’t leave masonry or brick walls unsupported during erection in situations where wind pressure may overturn the wall before the mortar joints have acquired adequate strength. A number of such unsupported walls have been blown over in quite moderate gales.

Don’t bed ceramic tiles until they have been well soaked and allowed to drain. Dry tiles will soak up moisture from the bedding mortar and so tend to become loose.

perfect machine for producing bacon and eggs in four minutes flat to be eaten off the cooking plate, or porridge for that matter. With so many pressures on farmers’ income in this post-Common Market era, the decision between the new tractor, extra tonnage of fertiliser, and a renovated kitchen is a difficult one. So often, the new bull gets precedence over the new kitchen, more especially as over the years the old one has certainly produced, with your skill, an endless succession of excellent meals. When the opportunity does come, do make absolutely sure that your plan is as perfect as possible. Do not rush it, visualise in detail how every regular job will be done in the proposed plan. Keep the working triangle between 5.5 m and 7.5 m. No specious argument should prevail. Settle for 6m if possible. Make sure the working area is exclusively yours — strangers and jay walkers should never be welcome in that area. Kibbitzing friends should be allowed in by invitation but they should be able to enjoy your company without getting under your feet So, make sure your adviser on kitchen design is properly qualified by experience of country kitchen layout Most of such advice is available free or for a small charge which is often refundable if an order is placed. Most National Kitchen and Bathroom Association members are fully qualified and one protection you have is to consult designers who have responsibility to the industry and to you.