How Did We Get Here

I was on a family spring break trip a few weeks ago. We stayed at a cool vacation rental for part of the trip. It was an old adobe house from the 1940’s with a newer addition The house was big and had a lot of great art. It had built-ins and custom woodwork throughout.  It was not flashy it had a lot of character. I could just feel the person who’s home it was and tell we would be friends if we ever met. The kitchen was unconventional. While a lot of the details in the house and kitchen were not my personal taste, I was impressed with all the individuality and thoughtfulness that had been poured into the house. After living with and working in the kitchen for a few days, there were several things that were nice and incredibly functional. There were also a few things that did not work for me. But it got me thinking about kitchen design and how we got to the place we are in the industry.

Kitchens have gotten so expensive and so polished. I am surprised if the budget for a kitchen comes in below 60K these days and everything is constantly going up. When did our kitchens become about keeping up with the trends and creating magazine worthy spaces. When did we lose our souls to our resell value and neutral islands that are so large we can’t clean the centers.  Rows of matching cabinetry. Predictable layouts. Safe choices.

Beautiful, yes. But… interchangeable.

That kitchen wasn’t perfect or polished. But it had something many new kitchens are missing: a personality.

And maybe that’s the question worth asking; not how to make kitchens better, but how to make them feel like ours again.