Let Cabinets & Designs Incorporated design a custom kitchen that meets your family’s needs. Photo courtesy of Wood-Mode Fine Custom Cabinetry
DREAM KITCHENS Home is Where the Hearth Is By Susie Tommaney
T
he paths we took to get here — planning a new kitchen — are as unique and varied as our personal design styles. For some, flooding, fire or another type of disaster made the decision for us. Others ran the numbers between the “love it or list it” options and decided it was more economical to upgrade than move. For those embarking on new construction, the choices for customizing are enough to make the head spin, but what a wonderful problem to have. We checked in with local experts to find out what’s new in the industry, ways to personalize and maximize space, and tips and tricks for adding functionality without sacrificing design.
A FAMILY TRADITION Maria Frank, president of Cabinets & Designs Incorporated, helped more than 50 families recover from flood damage after Tropical Storm Harvey, and she counsels all new customers that cabinets are really the foundation of the kitchen. 20 house& home | January 2021 | www.houstonhouseandhome.net
“The one thing that affects everything else is the cabinets,” says Frank, who has seen people with one-of-a-kind granite countertops realize that granite breaks if it later needs to be removed. Frank suggests that high-end appliances can always be added later on, as budget permits. Cabinetry is in her blood. Her father, Dave Steffan, sold his first kitchen in 1949 and began selling the Wood-Mode Fine Custom Cabinetry line in Houston in 1966. “Over the years my dad sold many different kitchen products, and always repped more than one line, but he always repped Wood-Mode,” says Frank. The cabinets do seem to last forever. “We get people who come in, we did a new kitchen 30 years ago, and they [only] need a new hinge or a new drawer glide.” “Wood-Mode is a fully custom product,” adds Frank. “With Wood-Mode if somebody draws it they can make it.” Frank also is excited about new finishes just coming on the market, including back-painted glass doors and high pressure laminate with textured super matte or concrete looks, plus aluminum frame profiles and magnetic or resin finishes.
