Kitchens for the Rest of Us: From the Kitchen You Have to the Kitchen You Love

by Peter Lemos

Book Overview

Kitchens for the Rest of Us emphasizes kitchens that place function, craft, and intelligent design over grandeur and extravagance. By showing you twenty newly remodeled and hard-working kitchens built... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1561589519
• ISBN13: 9781561589517
• Release Date: February 2009
• Publisher: Taunton Press
• Length: 186 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 9.0" x 10.5"

Customer Reviews

Not Only in Your Dreams

If you think your dream kitchen is beyond your reach, this book will help you find a way to do it without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Lovely book -- I have no gripes about the title

I love this book. I checked it out from the library and photocopied *many* pages when we were in the planning stages of our latest kitchen remodel. Now I'm buying a copy of my own, mostly so I can show better-quality images to our contractor as he finishes our breakfast nook benches, but also because I've gotten so much use out of it that I feel I owe it to the author to buy a copy. True, all of the photos and plans are of completed kitchens, but I'm not exactly sure why previous reviewers find that troubling. On that note: The "...for the rest of us" title seems realistic, to me. These are functional kitchens with plenty of personality but without six-figure pricetags, ultra-custom finishes, or massive footprint changes. They're not "design on a dime" kitchens, but the folks at IKEA or Home Depot would be happy to help you design one of those, if that's truly your aim. Reviewers who think a $30-50K kitchen remodel budget is "high-end" need to get in touch with reality. At least on the coasts, anything less than that falls into the "budget" or "economy" range, the sort of pricetag you might expect for an aesthetics-only remodel, or a small kitchen with IKEA cabinets and department store appliances. Don't even think about moving water, gas, or electric for that price ...and plan on doing the demo and cabinet-hanging yourself. Five years ago, we did our own kitchen remodel -- tackling much of the labor ourselves, serving as our own 'general contractor' for work we had to hire out, using IKEA cabinets and Sears appliances, buying our sink and faucet online, running all the new electrical ourselves -- and it still cost us $30K. You can't fault Taunton for economic reality: Most of the kitchens you see in magazines are easily in the $100K+ range, so a $30K-$50K kitchen really is "for the rest of us".

One of the best

This is my very first review and I was moved to type it because this is THE most enjoyable kitchen book I've read in a long, long time. It's informative, fact-filled, easy to read, has beautiful pictures, and one of my favorites - it shows before and after pictures and floor plans.

Kitchen remodelers best friend

As a designer I am asking all of my customers to read this book. It lays out everything they need to figure out before they start a kitchen project and shows all the various alternatives in an easy to follow way.

Are You Happy With Your Kitchen?

"For each of the kitchen redos, Lemos includes before-and-after photos, floor plans, and a description of the problem. It's a nice touch that lets the reader see how real-life homeowners solved their kitchen-design woes, from a couple looking to gut their tiny kitchen to newlyweds trying to blend their decorative tastes. The book has a nice mix of styles and budgets, with plenty of cost-saving tips." (review by Rebecca Swain Vadnie - Orlando Sentinel) Since remodeling a kitchen causes major upheaval in a home, be sure to get as many ideas as possible before planning your changes. Talk to other homeowners too. I always thought I wanted those fold-out shelves for canned goods, but found them to be awkward once I had them.