356style's Profile

Love those black floor tiles, it's a little hard but are they ceramic? And do you know if they're easy to do yourself?

Just to clear up the mis-impression--I have a hand forged Japanese knife (<$200) and the sharpening stone ($30). Best knife ever... Have had it for 2 years, used daily and have not had to sharpen it once. The blade is sharpened to 16 deg vs 22 for most european which keeps the blade sharp for a really long time. Does require minimal maintenance (washing quickly and oiling to prevent rust) but the value of the knife and the ease of cutting (mild arthritis) more than make up for it. I bought mine new, because my brother took my Dad's > 30 year old (hand forged Japanese) knife--consider it a heritable, practical splurge!

OMG so beautiful and inspiring.

Thanks especially for the floor plan, always feel like i need the plans to understand the flow of a house.

I love these wacky cakes, especially since we have egg/soy allergies in the family and the commercial no egg/vegan cakes tend to have soy. Plus, the ingredients pretty much are on hand. The NY Times new cookbook has an "amazon cake" recipe which is chocolate cake, yummy and kind of low fat since the whole cake has 5Tb of oil (little over 1/4c oil); this by far is my favorite. Moist and does have lift. The vegan cupcake winner chloe has hers for a white cake, not as good because it's really oily (coconut milk + oil) and the oil taste comes through. this looks great and orange zest + orange juice sound amazing, I will try it, may spike it with Grand Marnier, just because I have a hard time not adding to recipes.

Fantastic job! Love the colors you use and the advice on painting lower cabinets darker was spot on. Wish we had seen this before painting our own wood 1960's cabinets, might have considered a 2 tone look as well.

@db51

this old house's website has a great painting cabinets link. They sell rollers at home depot and other hardware stores to minimize brush marks which have an "ultra smooth" finish. It does take some work,TSP cleaning (they sell it in a spray bottle @ HD so spray on and wipe off with a paper towel) removal of all doors and hinges, filling in dings with wood filler (can do these while you're waiting for coffee in am over several days before removing doors), sanding everything, one coat of primer, sanding again and then 2 coats of paint. there are some lovely colors in no voc paints (benamin moore natura and HD freshaire brands are 2) so you don't have to deal with odor and toxins in your kitchen, then rehang doors with new hardware and knobs. It took us about a week of work, but we only did outside of doors, since I'm not that into open cabinets (I like to hide my mess and am not motivated ever to keep it tidy--that's why we have doors :>. You need to leave 3hrs drying time between coats and 5 days before re-hanging since things are a little sticky before then. Not impossible--we too have a 3 year old running around, but I was wondering why we didn't do it all before a trip somewhere so we wouldn't have to deal with doors on our garage floor and then dining room.

I also look into making things healthier and have realized cutting down and subsituting can work ok with recipes that aren't as fussy like macarons. 1/2 olive oil and 1/2 butter works in most bar cookies and cakes. You can put as much as a quarter whole wheat flour into choc chip cookies or brownies with little change in texture. On the sugar note I've had success with decreasing it by a little bit in cookie recipes like 1 1/4 cups vs 1 1/2, or in quick breads but not too much with cake. I would like to know if these subsitutions could be made with tarts and pies and other types of desserts.
Also you had the awesome black bean brownies and one ingredient ice cream-- healthy and delicious! Any more like that?

Wow one of my favorites! Love all the white and scale of it. I'm honestly so tired of all the humongous kitchens with the giant center islands and the massive Viking stoves and ginormous fridges. This is beautiful, calming despite the size and what a great job with the lighting. An inspiration to all of us who don't want to tear walls down and supersize our kitchens!

#1 if it had more color. I agree with everyone in that everything else looks way too cluttered. Plus they're not organized by use, ie teapot on one end of the shelf, a cup on the table, and 2 at the other end of the shelf, books under some ugly lump of pottery so that you can't access them to read, not to mention they're all flipped backwards so you can't even identify which one you'd want, would choose most of the AT readers homes over this for inspiration anyday.

Ohhh....can't believe you've thrown out your old one when it probably had the gasket I need to fix mine which is now taking up precious cabinet real estate because my husband swears he's going to find one and fix it and the memory of fresh chocolate bread and sun dried tomato and parmesan rolls and pizza dough and nan and chapati is holding me hostage

Rice cooker for everything. Short grain rice just use the included measuring cup and water goes up to the markings. Or if you've lost it then water up to the first joint of your thumb when it's resting on the rice. Basmati uses 2 c water for 1 cup rice. Can't get any simpler. Can even sauté rice with garlic, onions butter or olive oil in a frying pan then throw it in the rice cooker with water or stock and a little white wine or sake for easy pilaf.