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welcome to my kitchen follow me a lot of you have been asking about this kitchen and I wanted to make sure and show you all the wonderful details and share with you. some of my greatest secrets one of the important considerations in your kitchen is do you want to have a television or not depends on how your family lives and our family. we like to have it on Sundays for football or maybe sometimes when we're doing cooking shows and trying to emulate some of the best cooks in the world. now when we decided to do this kitchen the question was how we can incorporate a television and so that. It doesn't look too television if that makes any sense now luckily I had chosen a black lacquer cabinet color which really helped in camouflaging this television. So if you can see here I've got my TV and I sort of had it designed flush against the cabinet. we created a box right and what's great about this is that you can sort of twist it no matter where you are so if you're in the kitchen cooking by the stove you can look at the television if you're in the family room behind get the television you can certainly turn it around and watch from there even though. We have a television in the family room but you never know when two people want to watch different programs all we did was put a swivel arm behind the television really a not very difficult strategy and then camouflaged. It with all of its cables behind the television screen you ever you know Direct TV box here and we literally just pull it in and pull it out and swivel. It any which way we want when we're done with the TV we put it back in and we pretend like there's no TV in this kitchen is there.
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Another consideration in any kitchen is how you're wash your dishes obviously everyone wants and needs and loves a dishwasher but the question is do you need one or can you potentially. It too in this particular kitchen I definitely needed two dishwashers why because I don't like to see dishes in the sink ever so in order to avoid having to empty the dishwasher and put it back in and working really hard. All the time I can have the ability to hide the dirty dishes obviously while they're being filled in one and then if I already have a clean one and I don't feel like I'm paying it right away. I have a little bit more time here's a second dishwasher again it's right next to the sink for easy loading and unloading you open it up you've got all of your dials inside.
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so it's not a cluttered look you close it again minimal lead and you can always have a fresh lovely kitchen in case anybody pops over one of the biggest questions. I get in design is to marble or not to marble a kitchen and I can tell you that the answers are going to vary but the important thing is what is it that you like best and how again are you going to be living in your kitchen are you someone that's going to protect the counters. When you're cutting up lemon or are you just all over the place and ready to cook and make a mess so in this particular case I have to have marble 4b marble is one of the most beautiful materials in the world and I wanted to showcase. It in the kitchen and I knew that I was going to be careful I knew that I was going to have cutting tools that I was going to place on top of the marble to be careful with it and I honestly think that it makes a really beautiful statement. Now with that said in the last couple of years there really has been a very big shift in manmade materials and these materials coming slab formats which they didn't used to and they really look almost real. So you could have both really here's a trick that I have found if you don't want to get your marble too messed up and you're be having a busy day in the kitchen or maybe you're preparing for a dinner party just bring out your drawer liner.
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now this is my little secret I put this out onto the counter where I know there's be a lot of activity it's white it's sort of camouflages into the island and I can bring a bunch of groceries up here. I can have you know I can cut all my vegetables I can unload and reload the refrigerator clean the refrigerator this way my marble is protected and it actually doesn't look so bad one big consideration in any kitchen is how you're gonna do your ventilation. so as you know you're required to have a vent in every kitchen and in this particular kitchen I wanted to make sure and do something that wasn't so ubiquitous what did I want I wanted something that nobody had that nobody had done before I considered you know maybe putting one of those fancy hoods. But it looked too industrial for this kitchen I considered perhaps building a cabinet but it looked too stifling and so it occurred to me that if I want something area nice why don't I just go ahead and mirror it so I didn't want to put on a traditional mirror. I was too afraid that it would be very heavy and my fall break becomes some kind of hazard so what I decided to do was find some type of reflective surface that was mirror like without it being a mirror and luckily I found out that aircrafts actually don't use real mirrors for obvious reasons due to weight constrictions and use. what is called plexi light so this in fact is a mirror it's a reflective surface that mimics a mirror and it's extremely light one of my favorite things in this kitchen. Actually are these pendant lights the reason I love them is that I actually hand-drew them and have them made specifically for this kitchen I didn't like a lot of the chandeliers that have the strings that are hanging down.
• I wanted it to be clean I wanted to be a brass tube and I had actually found ones that were very similar to this but were extremely expensive cost prohibitive. so I decided that I could have a meet for a fraction of the what's also wonderful about this chandeliers is that you do not have to chain them the ones that I did see had glass everywhere and they were gorgeous but it does take a little bit of time to make sure that the dust is always off of them but in this case I have to admit that I do have a little bit of a India habit and the disease has gotten progressively worse. If you happen to have it trying to have it such as the one I have which great is you want to display them you want to display them not only for yourself but for your guests to see what beautiful India you've collected over the years so I built this specifically this cabinet with glass mirror so that it would feel light and then you could see through it and have displayed all of my India from all of the different moments in my life. These I actually got from France in the little town of dommage that sells them and I just love collecting them I find little things at estate sales that are complementary to the India and so I pair them together and as you can see I have different colors different shades. • I've got a burgundy moment here if I'm having you know more of a festive party with matching soup bowls or I have a wedding present India here which I got and they're actually Japanese plates that are really beautifully well-made by Noritake and I got these my wedding and I do like to again incorporate different things that I find over the years that would match these are they look great with my Japanese India I realize there's a lot of India here but do you think I should maybe get one more set of India it's so comment below again organizing your kitchen is really important want to have things at hand do built-ins are great you can pull this out grab whatever you need you're miel your rice your flour and you're ready to go on another segment we're going to talk more in depth about how to organize your cabinet. • Because that's of course another specialty of mine because I love organization but I did want to show you one last thing that I think is very interesting and actually very inexpensive to do so if you like to bake which I do right next to your stove you want to be able to mix your good so one of the greatest ways of doing that is to bring out your mixer without again breaking your back. so I have this wonderful ability to do that BAM right here in the kitchen you have to think about these things in advance these inserts are very easy to buy and install in any cabinetry. my absolute favorite item in this kitchen by far are these vintage barstools I found them at an estate sale had to have them wouldn't let go of them and what's amazing is that these were actually manufactured in the and they are solid brass if you pull them out you will notice they're extremely heavy and they're extremely comfortable as well the seat is lying in beautiful leather. And they have held up quite well over the years so not only do they look good but they are actually very comfortable.