Posts

Lights

Lights In The Kitchen Guide

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Lights in the Kitchen can be tricky with the different types of lighting out there as an option but with the help from our designers, we can help point you into the right direction.

Every kitchen deserves its own personal complimentary aspect to highlight what a breath-taking project it is, whether you have just done a few renovations/DIY upgrades to what is current or even having a newly built kitchen – this is why lighting in the kitchen is a great opportunity to take on.

Having the kitchen complete and fresh is like you are floating on cloud 9, you come to realize all the effort, time and money gone into achieving this so why not somehow emphasize all that hard thinking and decision making, the cost of material and also the hard work gone in to getting the job done? Lighting in the kitchen is the answer and not only is it stylish – it’s also very practical.

Having a lighting plan in your kitchen can make the chef’s life an absolute breeze with the bright task lighting, for guests to socialize with a lovely calming and elegant ambient lighting, lastly, we can’t forget lighting for the well-thought-out architecture of your kitchen to really shine with accent lighting.
Together, these lighting layers will show off all your kitchen has to offer.

Ambient lighting:
This is like no other lighting that can come from such a pure, organic source that is free: the sunshine! Early mornings usually greet you with a slap in the face of sunshine (a good slap in the face) this is always enough to fill each room everyday apart from when the sun says goodbye for the day and the darkness creeps in.
The right ceiling lighting can be utilized to give off just the right amount of illumination needed. The specific types of artificial ambient kitchen lighting include (but are not limited to) chandeliers, pendant lights, recessed lighting and flush mounts.

While ambient lighting is used to make it easier for you to navigate throughout the kitchen, it often leaves shadows in areas that require more focus. With the help of task lighting, work surfaces and cabinetry are properly illuminated so you can safely prepare meals, read recipes, and easily spot ingredients on a shelf.

What is Accent lighting?
Accent lighting focuses light on a particular area of the room or an object. It is often used to highlight art or other important displays. Common types of accent lights include wall sconces, floodlights, recessed lights, torchère lamps, or track lighting. The brighter light from the accent lamp creates a statement to any room.

We recommend puck lights to really emphasize nicely those glass front cabinets, much like in a china cabinet or your end cabinets.

– Toe-kick lights to gain attention on flooring that have some sort of texture or design. They are also very helpful to those who like a midnight snack but don’t want bright overhead lighting waking them up.
– A table lamp on the bench-top adds a lovely glow to give that illusion to soften the hard surfaces of a kitchen. This looks great in the more quieter areas of your kitchen, keeping it away from the prep stations and kitchen sink.

Task lighting:
Task lighting is exactly what it sounds like: lighting to help you accomplish the tasks you set out to do in your kitchen. Whether it’s preparing meals, washing dishes, paying bills, or helping kids with homework, all of these jobs would be difficult to complete with poor lighting. Task lighting sources include:
– Recessed or “can” lights – We strongly advise placing one over the sink, one for every four feet of bench-top space (at a minimum but is not limited too), and also over the island, if not using pendant lights.
– Pendant lights over the kitchen island serves three purposes, they allow the practicality to be at a high level for task lighting, they make a perfect design statement, and also they compliment areas that need to be distinctive (your smaller spaces) without going over the top.
– Under-cabinet lighting, in the form of compact fluorescent lights, is another great option for task lighting in the food preparation areas.

When I asked our Kitchen Designer her input on how important lighting is, she gave us an awesome explanation: “Lighting completely changes the look & feel of a space. It is one of those design elements which often goes unnoticed when it is good but is glaringly obvious when done poorly! When choosing the correct lighting it is really important to consider the space is used – where in the kitchen will you be working the most? Will shadows be created if lighting is positioned behind you?

Strip lighting is a great option for under upper cupboards whilst LED down-lights are the best option for overhead lighting. Don’t forget about pendant lights & wall sconces which will add key lighting to high use areas- not to mention adding style & interest to the overall kitchen design.”

Common kitchen task lighting options include:

– Strip Lights: Versatile and great for illuminating a cabinets interior, especially low cabinets that hardly receive any ambient lighting. LED strip lights are also used under the cabinet to fully illuminate counter spaces.

– Puck Lights: Round and oval, puck lights are great mood lights and can be used to illuminate countertops in the form of a scallop, spot or pool of light.
If your kitchen is particularly well-designed the right placement of accent lights can be really complimentary and help really highlight your favorite elements.

Common kitchens accent lights will include:
– Dimmers: Having a dimmer switch allows you to progressively transition between the levels of lighting which would range depending on the different tasks in the kitchen. This option is energy efficient and very versatile.

– Motion Sensors: This option can come across as very intriguing and a great idea for the pantry and smaller areas, how many times have you turned on a pantry light and forgotten about it? This option is very versatile and stylish at that.

All-in-all, the kitchen is the magnet for socializing, cooking, and entertainment; all activities that thrive with a generous level of lighting to accommodate each activity. By following the guidelines of light layering, finding the right fixtures and controlling them properly, your kitchen is sure to always wow you and your guests.

Design

High Quality Material Is The Best Way To Go

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Do you want to invest in a new kitchen or update your current kitchen that will stand the test of time and keep looking brand spanking new? In our blog today, we are going to go through why using high quality material is the best way to go – this ensures optimal, long lasting performance with style.

Have you ever stepped foot in your friends or families house and felt immediately mesmerized? Chances are that it had something to do with the detail and style of the area. Details are so very important and really tie the knot with your styles and will make any room look and feel captivating, specifically, in the kitchen it is one of the most crucial rooms in the house to really hit the nail on the head in terms of design and quality.

When creating the plans for your project, it is super important to create a truly efficient and functional outcome. The kitchen is the heart of the home – if you are second guessing whether or not to go that extra mile and spend the extra money to ensure you are receiving the best quality products, take our word and just do it! You will not regret the finished products and after all, we spend almost every day in the kitchen, so it is really a great investment and not only that – it also can add significant value to your home.

Any kitchen is going to look absolutely breath taking and just exquisite on it first days, but the tell-tale sign of a really great quality Kitchen is how it holds up, how everything ages and how it feels when you are using it on the daily basis. This is why choosing colours can come to a great, feel-good final and quick choice and happens fairly early in the planning stages, but it is what’s “behind the scenes” you could say, that is the more wandered upon stage of the project that determines the long-lasting and practicality. If or perhaps when the time comes to sell your home, the quality feeling of your kitchen cabinetry could be just the thing to push that potential buyer over the finish line.

With our wonderful suppliers and knowledge our professional Team have gathered over the years, this makes selecting only the best quality for your kitchen, easy. We have more affordable ranges which have very similar qualities and have been proven to stand the test of time also – of course the general wear and tear and how you use the area really has impact on the test of time but seeing as we care just as much as you do for your kitchen, we have provided how to best maintain your darker kitchen cabinetry but this way is also suited for your light, bright and vibrant colours too which you can check out here: Dark and Light cabinetry care blog.

Like our suppliers (Blum, Hettich, Hafele – just to name a few), we understand how important this project is to you, it really is the heart of the home. In our opinion, it should be designed and built to provide a long lasting, efficient, stylish kitchen which requires little maintenance (and by little, I mean your general cleaning and not having to replace things here and there.) This understanding lies behind all the kitchen fittings and accessories we incorporate in the kitchens we design, build and install.

The build quality is crucial, as is the smoothness of the materials which really revolves around doors and drawers and how the function whilst opening and closing them. By choosing the slightly more costly materials it really does ensure the capability these materials have to stand the test of time.

We want to spice up the kitchen or nail the new build once and have it look like a brand new kitchen every day, the key to achievement this is certainly quality material and maintenance.

Here at Next Edition Kitchens, we make sure you walk away with the knowledge on the correct way to maintain your benches and cabinetry, we stock local, great quality materials to suit each and every project at an affordable cost! how can that be? too good to be true? our answer is simple – we care about the future generation of design which we are 100% passionate about, all of our designers are constantly testing materials, researching pros and cons and also just staying up to date with product knowledge.

Being able to provide customers with the project of their dream at a great cost is such a heart warming feeling and it is the reason we do what we do (and a bit of help from our wonderful accounts department who loves to fairly negotiate as well gives us a great kick-start on unbeatable costs!)

Enquire on sales@nexteditionkitchens.com or call our office on 09-430 3074 to get an estimate now!

Countdown NZ Spinach & Feta Scrolls (Summer Fave)

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Not all delicious recipes have to come from Nana’s hand written cookbook with the flour, milk and cocoa splatters throughout the pages, although nothing will ever beat her golden recipes this sure does come close.

Spinach & Feta Scrolls – perfect for the kids lunch boxes and also just as a snack or a great addition to that BBQ you have been invited too..

Here’s what you need to make this mouth-watering meal:

  • 1 1/2 Sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed.
  • Spray cooking oil.
  • 250g Baby spinach.
  • 100g Crumbled feta cheese.

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200°C (180°C fan-forced). Line a large oven tray with baking paper. Join pastry sheets, overlapping them by 1cm and pressing together to join. Place pastry over the baking paper.

2. Spray a medium sized frying pan with oil. Place spinach in the frying pan and sauté over a medium heat for 1-2 minutes, or until just wilted. Transfer to a colander and squeeze out excess moisture. Spread spinach over pastry, leaving a 3cm border around the edge. Sprinkle feta over top.

3. Brush pastry edge with a small amount of water and roll up loosely. Cut into 6 equal rounds. Arrange the rounds with the cut-side up on the baking tray. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the pastry is crisp and golden.

I love countdown for many reasons but if you browse the hundreds of recipes on their website (www.countdown.co.nz) it actually generates a shopping list below the recipe in which it gives quantities and the amount of food you need to complete the recipe – SO EASY! There is also many different meals/drinks/appetizers based upon the event or season to browse recipes from, it’s a great tool and the food never fails to disappoint, the kids will love it too.

 

Countdown shopping list - Feta & Spinach Scrolls

Countdown shopping list – Feta & Spinach Scrolls

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What are you waiting for? lets start summer with a bang (and a yummy, easy, affordable meal).

 

(Image & Recipe from www.countdown.co.nz)

Bathroom

Bathroom Vanities (History included)

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What’s the first thing you notice when you walk into the bathroom? to us, the vanity is a key focal point of the bathroom.

When you enter a well design bathroom the vanity usually is the eye saw area your eyes dash to but it is also very essential for storage means. Investing in a upgraded vanity with a professional will leave you stress free and liking LOVING the bathroom even more.

At Next Edition Kitchens, we incorporate all aspects to your style and also always consider the space we work with to present an exquisite design that will leave you speechless.

When it comes to bathroom vanities, to us – it means more than just designing a stock standard bathroom, it is a room in the house that you use frequently, sometimes briefly and other times for a  nice and peaceful time to relax and wash up – we aren’t just designing your bathroom, we are designing your very own bathroom sanctuary! practically to us is also very important so whatever your style or requirements may be, we can certainly do it all.

Sprucing up the bathroom vanity really can uplift the room and make it seem like a new bathroom, however – you need to consider the following when planning:

  • Sizing – One of the most important (and probably obvious) aspects is of course, the dimensions. The correct sizes are crucial, you don’t want something that is too big and overcrowds the space. In contrast you don’t want something that is too small for the space.
  • Storage – Storage in your bathroom is also very important, really evaluate how much storage you need in the bathroom along with the style of it, when you come to us to help you with this then all your storage ideas are easily achievable as we are fully custom and love getting creative.
  • Style – Super important to make sure you are still matching the current style of your bathroom a beautiful coat of paint on the cabinetry and a stunning stone bench top would look great in any style of room. The options are totally endless.
  • Accessorize –  If you feel like you are needing just that one more thing to bring everything together, buy a nice scented candle or even a plant – a bigger mirror can create the illusion of having a bigger room also!

 

History (the interesting stuff!)

The original bathroom vanities is pretty much zero resemblance to what the term probably makes you think of today. In fact, until just a little over a hundred years ago, the bathroom as a whole didn’t really exist. The very first “bathroom vanities” were really washstands (just a wooden stool really!) These small wooden tables sat somewhere in your bedroom, equipped with a pitcher full of water and a bowl to wash your face and hands first thing in the morning.

It didn’t come into effect until the Victorian era that bathrooms became separate rooms and started to resemble what we would think of as a modern bathroom. It’s also when we started to really jump aboard the indoor plumbing era. At this stage, “bathroom vanities” evolved into fitted wall mounted sinks. Back the, the bathroom was nowhere near as practical as they are today and they where all super standard compared to all the different styles/designs out there.

Did you know, for many years the bathroom was viewed as an extension of the bedroom rather than it’s own private space? and as indoor plumbing improved, console vanities evolved into more functional, more particular bathroom vanities. These were often based on the design of furniture – dressing tables, chests, or cabinets.

Over the years these vanities have gradually became more simplified yet still gripping the practicality at the same time, we love this! there are so many designs out there in which you can totally alter to make it your own style – we are taken back in time with all the older vanities and it amazes us on how far we have evolved the meaning and style/s of vanities, best thing about this is that we are always going to change and evolve different, new styles, colour schemes, practicality etc ,. We are just so excited to see the unfold as the years continue to flow on.

 

I hope you have found this interesting, i would love to know your thoughts on this – what vanity style is your favorite?

Kitchen

Refresh that rental

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Are you currently in a cosy rental but the idea of a new kitchen excites you? We all know with rentals we are quite limited with what we can and can’t do, this can be a bit of an itch we NEED to scratch – especially after going through all the possible ideas for design and what our dream kitchen would be when we win lotto. Good news is; I have the perfect guide to achieving the feel of a new kitchen without overstepping our limitations.

 

This first step is a bit of a questionable one until you read the reasoning as to why I have added this in, start sprucing up the room by adding a plain, medium sized mirror in the kitchen it does in fact achieve all sorts of visual positivity. It’s an unexpected element in the kitchen so it instantly makes a statement. If you have a window, it’ll help spread the light around. If you don’t have a window, it’ll be even more vital for reflecting what light you do have in the room.

Create a temporary splashback in the kitchen, a lot of times rental kitchens don’t have any sort of splashback as they are just done to be as basic as can be whilst focusing on that practicality but whose to say you can’t spice it up a bit? You may need to run this past your landlord, but you can achieve this by using a small cut of a detailed/patterned wallpaper in which you can buy from your local paint shops (& even hardware stores if they stock wallpaper!) super easy yet super fun way of adding a dash of your style, temporally.

Do you have old, raggedy flooring that you just want to take a jack hammer to get rid of the awful eye sight? Use a rug – you can get as creative as you like with all these different sorts of rugs out there and you can use any size to cover how ever much you like (bonus with this is you can take this rug with you if you decide to move or even change it up when desired with another rug! Winning)

Boring cabinets? Colour not quite up your alley or isn’t quite linking in with your other colour scheme going on in the rest of the house? Try getting some contact paper, temp wall paper or even vinyl to give your cabinetry a new beginning – just be sure that you can remove whichever product you use without damaging the underneath and, some may need consent from the landlord.

As we all know and have seen how amazing open shelving looks in the kitchen you may not quite have that in a rental, unfortunately there is no real way to have proper floating shelves without getting consent and spending some money to achieve that BUT I can help you fake this look in a more easier, affordable way and this involves taking the doors off your cabinetry where you desire to have open shelving. Of course, this will look a bit different to open shelving, but it is a pretty close idea in comparison and it keeps the area looking more open and modern (just be sure to store those doors safely away and easy to put back on if needed.)

Add a magnetic knife block or a utensil wall holder, these are easy to install and can be taken off when you no longer need that – this looks edgy and keeps storage under control.

Add some plants to jazz up the positive vibes in your kitchen,  plants can uplift your mind set and feel more relaxed – you can even add some herbs and spices so when your cooking up a storm you have this right at your fingertips! Super cute idea and an amazing way to spruce up your kitchen.

Don’t have a ton of space do your prep work? Consider DIYing or buying a chopping board that covers your kitchen sink or stove when you’re not using them to add extra space to work. this creates more space and you can store this easily – another advanced option is to DIY your own kitchen island with wheels! look ideas up on Pinterest as there are so many we couldn’t just choose one!

 

Hopefully you feel like your in the next best thing to your dream kitchen in your rental kitchen.

Easy-Peasy Quiche and Salad

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Summer is slowly creeping up on us leaving our appetite for soups and hot roasts in the cooler seasons, now is the time you get stuck with ideas for healthy, easy and quick dinners.

Lately I’ve been working hard in the kitchen picking and choosing parts from each recipe online to create the perfect quiche of my own, after countless failed dinners turning into takeaway nights i was getting tired of not perfecting this summer goodie until i came up with this recipe – you better believe i was very stunned on how such a simple, easy meal turned out to be liquid gold!

All in all, here we have the PERFECT summer time favorite that you just HAVE to try, it’s quick, easy (and cheap!) besides, who wants to be stuck hovering over a hot element for 5000 hours in this heat? definitely not us!

What you will need:

400g Savory shortcrust pastry

2x Spring onions (Sliced)

3x Medium Courgettes (Sliced thinly)

1/2 Cup Sliced red pepper

2x Large mushrooms (Sliced)

150g Feta (Crumbled)

7x Eggs

1x Cup Milk (Or cream for a more creamier taste.)

1/4 Cup Chopped parsley

1/2 tsp Salt & Pepper

1/2 Cup Cheese (I recommend tasty)

2 1/2 Tbsp Olive Oil

250g Cherry Tomatoes

1 1/2x Handful of spinach

 

Directions:

  • Set oven to 180C.
  • Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured board. Line a 22cm quiche tin with pastry and cut off the excess around the edges.
  • Refrigerate for 20 minutes. Line the pastry with baking paper. Bake blind for 20 minutes.
  • In the base of the cooked pastry arrange the spring onions, rocket and courgettes. Sprinkle the feta over them.
  • Whisk the eggs, milk, parsley, salt and pepper, spinach, mushroom & Red pepper. Pour the mixture over the courgettes carefully and sprinkle with cheese.
  • Bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes or until set. Remove and let the quiche rest for 20 minutes before serving.
  • Put the tomatoes and oil in a small ovenproof dish. Season with salt and pepper. Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes until softened and juicy.
  • Serve the quiche warm, topped with the roasted tomatoes.

And there we have it! Healthy, Easy & cheap! Also not to mention, it’s a real hit with the family – especially those ones who steer clear of vegetables (you can smuggle as many as you like in there they probably wouldn’t even know).. Easy-Peasy or what?