8 core principals of kitchen design

December 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Kitchens take on their own personality with the finishes you choose. From the colors to the tiles the options are endless. With all this possibility, there are some things that all kitchens have in common. A proper kitchen follows the 8 core principals of kitchen design. From the work triangle to ease of use, follow these design principals when restoring your kitchen.

The Work Triangle

When designing a kitchen there should be a well-planned work triangle. This is the relationship between the refrigerator, sink and stove. You want the walking distance between these top used objects in the kitchen to be free, clear and easy to maneuver. You must have room to turn between these areas if you are in a wheelchair.

Ease of Use

When designing the kitchen you should keep in mind how it will be used. A dishwasher is great for washing glasses. What is even better is if all the glasses are stored in cabinets above the dishwasher. The combination of these two items in the same space makes it easy to put the dishes away. If the sink is close to the dining table, it is easier to clean up at the end of the meal. If the pots and pans and seasonings are near the hotplate and oven it is easier to cook. Consider ease of use when planning the countertops, cabinets and placement of appliances.

Consider Your Lifestyle

If you are going to be making a lot of pies you will want a smooth countertop for rolling dough rather than a tile countertop. If you have small children who may spill things, marble countertops may not be the best choice. A universal design idea is to offer counters at varying heights. You can use the same material throughout or vary the materials depending on what the space will be used for.

Practicality of Use

When planning cabinets you need to plan for the person living in the space. You do not want to have all the cabinets out of reach of the person living in the home. Shelving racks installed in the cabinetry can make a space more efficient. Lower cabinets benefit from drawers with sliders that pull out. Corner cabinets benefit from a turntable so that you do not have to reach into the back corner.

Minimize Risk

In a kitchen there are many dangers. Sharp knives, hot stoves and the abundance of water and electricity are a concern. A good design principle to follow is that the tolerance for error should be low. Outlets should be positioned away from the sink. Consider safety when you are planning kitchen renovations.

Flow

To create flow in the kitchen you should not interrupt the work triangle. You do not want to place a tower of cabinets in between the sink and stove or stove and fridge. You want to be able to easily slide between these stations.

Low Effort

It should not be a hassle to move around the kitchen. If you are short and cannot reach the counters this is an issue. If you have low vision and cannot see under the countertops you run into another issue. Make your kitchen work for you.

Follow Traffic

Especially with all the action that takes place in a kitchen you need to be aware of the flow between doorways. A kitchen island is wonderful, unless people walk into it over and over again. Live in the kitchen for a week or two before you remodel to see what the flow of traffic will be.

Following these core principles will help you design the perfect kitchen.

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Featured Business: Adelaide City Kitchens

Adelaide City Kitchens create affordable and fantastic kitchens in Adelaide. You can choose from a whole new kitchen or get a face lift (make over) of your existing kitchen to significantly reduce the cost. ACK also specialise in bench tops for your new kitchen but also other parts of your house such as vanities in your bathroom.

Check them out today: www.adelaidecitykitchens.com.au

Filed Under: Home

12 Reasons to Hire a Skip Bin this Weekend

August 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Whether you are a home fix it guru or just are a novice in the yard, you may have times when you just are so overcome with waste. Rather than let that waste consume you and wind up the butt of so many jokes, why not take that rubbish and haul it all away? Calling in a skip bin makes a lot of sense for a variety of occasions.

Remodel kitchen: You could have a great new layout for your kitchen design and you may be ready to tackle the project head-on. Instead of letting your old sink and oven hang around in your backyard, have a skip bin present to take that mess away.

Remodel bathroom: The same goes for your tub and vanity; none of your neighbors want that eyesore out their window. Do everyone a favor and be off with it.

Remodel floors: While tearing up linoleum is beautiful and your new floors may look awesome, don’t leave those old planks where all the neighbors have to see them!

Landscaping: While you may just think your re-composting and making your old yard fertile soil again you can’t make everyone have to look at your uproot as you’re doing it. Instead have a skip bin waiting for all your old dead soil as well as for all the pots and bags that you’re using to bring the new stuff in with.

Swap Outdoor deck: If you’re ripping up your outdoor deck this could take quite a while. Instead of hanging on to all that trash send it off in a bin.

Demolish Front Step: If you’re changing out your front step that’s a lot of paving stone or cement that you’re trying to pawn off on your trash man. Instead be prepared with a skip bin.

Cut down trees: Tree branches are one of the worst for people in the woods. Don’t make everyone’s lives any harder than they need be; get rid of those tree limbs.

Repaving drive: If you’re digging up your drive for a fresh pave it’s a good idea to take that old bit away.

Demolishing standalone garage: You could think that because it’s on your property it’s your business what you do with your old garage. It’s an eyesore though and you don’t want to upset the neighbors or make them anymore hostile towards you than they already may be.

Demolishing tree house: If your small kids have grown up and they have outgrown their tree house, it’s time to get rid of that whole ensemble. Do yourself a favor and have a place for all that waste once it’s come down from the trees.

Trading up above-ground to in-ground pool: Hopefully you’ve hired someone to come in and lay down your new in-ground pool. However just because they’re there doesn’t mean they are ready or interested in getting rid of your ugly above-ground pool. Rather than start a fight about it, be ready with your own skip bin to toss that old pool off in.

Swing set/sandpit removal: If you no longer have kids in the house or worse yet the former tenants didn’t do off with all their property when they left you the keys, you could have a big bit of business on your hands. Whether it’s a swing set, a sandpit, or any other big yard toys, when you uproot them have a skip bin ready to take them away and you will be the better off for it.

These are just a few remodeling home-improvement reasons to have a skip bin on your property to take your rubbish away.

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Just Skips is a South Australian family owned skip and bin hire company established in 2003. They operate a fleet of four skip trucks and have in excess of 600 bins available in different shapes and sizes to accommodate every situation and requirement. Find out more: www.justskips.net.au

Filed Under: Garden, Home

The art of laser engraving

July 13, 2012 by 1 Comment

15 years in the engraving business has taught us one major insight! That is having the technology is only the beginning, how your passion for the technology takes over and leads you to new techniques and applications is the major ingredient to making the acquisition of the technology a success!

Lasers, the new engravers

Laser technology has long been praised for its versatility in whichever field it has been put to work. In our case it has been in the engraving/ branding/cutting arena. Incorporating various types of lasers we are given carte blanche to conceptualise a treasure chest of ideas and turn them into realities. The diversity of applications and substrates to be worked on and into is huge, the variation in finishes is mind blowing and the challenge of the next application can truly capture the imagination. From decorative, to defense, bar coding to scrapbooking and still we have yet to exhaust the potential of this medium.

It is all in the detail

From a hand drawn sketch and incorporating various finishes of stainless steel (matt, satin and mirror finish) we tweaked the laser engraver to commission this contemporary wall hanging. The detail can be controlled with precise manipulation to achieve from photograph quality to the abstract quality attained in the Lion. While various disciplines of bar coding are routinely part of the workload undertaken by this versatile equipment the opportunity to explore and push the boundaries still requires the dedication and inspiration of a modern day craftsman who is in tune with his ‘tools’.

Top 10 list

  1. Personalise your ipad, iPhone, or laptop with a photo, image, a message or just a name.
  2. Create a custom art piece to put up in your dining room.
  3. Create a unique invitation for your wedding, birthday, special occasion. You could use acrylic, glass, wood, leather, paper …
  4. Scrap booking items that need to be engraved or laser cut out of shapes.
  5. Engrave a memorial plaque for a loved one.
  6. Dog tags and pets tags.
  7. Wine, champagne or drinking glasses that can have a name and date, graphic, family crest or wording engraved on them.
  8. House sign or door sign.
  9. Personalise a gift a for special occasions, life moments, achievements, trophies and medals, graduation or just a special moment.
  10. Engrave an apple or other fruit for a talking point at your next party. Put your guests names on it. Wow them.The future

Where to from here

It was once quoted by Henry Ford that one can have any colour you want as long as it’s black??? Look where we have still to go – we are already moving in that direction. You imagine it, The Engraving Crew will laser engrave it.

Filed Under: Retail, Services, Shopping Tagged With: , , , ,

Why Renting a Self Storage Unit is Useful

June 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment

For anyone who spends any time in any kind of urban or suburban area, you know what I’m talking about. We happen by those deserted or industrial sections of town and we have seen those huge, very attractive looking self storage warehouses with the cute advertising before. Maybe you have thought to yourself, ‘what the heck could people ever keep there?’ and for many of us it’s a good question to ask. But there are uses for the self storage units available in these warehouses; here are four different uses for four different sized units.

Small

Seasonal Outerwear for Wife of Disgraced Financier: While no one ever wants to have to hide their expensive furs and cashmere off-season outerwear, it’s just a fact that sometimes your space available is overrun by your closet space. This is especially true for someone who used to have the space yet has space no more. One good example would be the an individual who was caught out running some kind of elaborate Ponzi scheme. They or their wife or daughter may be used to having closets of space; but when they get run out of their mega mansion and the family needs to relocate to a 2 bedroom condominium during the protracted government trial, space is going to be at a premium. They may wish to take some of their off-season outerwear and put it into storage.

Medium

Extra Band Equipment for Touring Garage Band: When you’re an up and coming band, the speed with which you gain popularity doesn’t usually happen at Bieber-speed. Usually there is a natural, organic growth from garage band to supporting touring act to huge superstars. If you’re still in the middle of that process though you may not have room in your garage for all of your garage bands stuff. Getting a medium sized self storage unit may make some sense for you.

Large

Whole Home Setup For Traveling Gypsies: If you are a freelance writer or bi-costal actor and you can’t settle down, it may make sense to have self storage solutions on both coasts with varying amounts of home setups. If you bought a flat-screen TV, bed, kitchen supplies, or futon mattress and frame but you just can’t decide which coast to be on, better to have home situations in self storage units waiting for you on either coast and just travel light.

Extra Large

Storage Space for Helicopter: You really know you have made it once you have your own helicopter. However if your neighbors are upset about your helicopter and the noise it makes and you’re on the waiting list at the airfield for a space; maybe a really big self storage solution would make sense for you. While keeping a helicopter inside of a self storage space may be unconventional you have always eschewed convention and instead chosen to go your own way. Investing in the extra large storage space then can make a lot of sense.

We all have different needs for storage. You may look around your scantily furnished apartment and scoff at the notion that you could ever need a storage solution. However you will never know when your off-season outerwear, garage band musical instruments, or helicopter could need a second home. Or if that gypsy lifestyle suddenly grabs you and won’t let go; you will need a place for what little you have to call a home, for a little while.

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Access Storage is an Adelaide family owned business with years of experience in the storage and removal industry. They pride themselves on their professionalism and ethics. They strive to provide our customers with an efficient service as well as clean, secure storage facilities. They endeavour to handle all business transactions with truth, integrity and fairness. Find out more: www.accessselfstorage.com.au

Filed Under: Home Tagged With: ,

The World’s #1 Referral Source Today

May 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment

We live in extremely changing times. When I initially came out with “Word of Mouth Magic” back in 2003, most starting companies weren’t making use of the Internet.

How times have greatly changed.

Nowadays, the #1 source of referrals and word of mouth is… Google!

People today “trust” Google. If you appear high up in Google’s listings, people would normally consider you superior to your competition, or at the very least, much more preferred.

And Google is now the “online Yellow Pages”. If your company is big enough to undertake advertising efforts, then you definitely want to be found on Google.

Getting ranked high in the first page of Google search results is definitely not easy, and it also costs a lot. You can try the paid advertisements, but that may prove to be even more costly.

Luckily, it costs absolutely nothing to acquire a ‘Yellow Pages’ style listing in Google- known as Google Places- but you have to do it correctly. This is because if you do not come up on Google in the first page or two, you might as well not be listed.

What exactly is Google Places?

How do you get those top listings?

How do you turn Google’s ‘free’ listing into eager, buying consumers?

Well, this is an ever-changing field, so I teamed up with the most prolific and up-to-date ‘guru’ in the Google Places Help forum, Andrew Huskinson, and we produced an e-book that offers you the solutions.

Click here for the most recent update of the…

Google Places Blueprint

Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Exercise For Weight Loss?

May 22, 2012 by 2 Comments

There’s a lot of misinformation about the advantages of exercise, especially concerning weight loss.

Let’s use a little common sense, shall we?

When we become active, such as working out, we use up energy.

If you do not consume additional calories, then this energy needs to come from somewhere in your body, i.e., from fat.

So, the more you exercise, the more fat you burn off. And you’ll shed weight.

Quite simple, right?

NO!

This is how common sense will fail you, and everybody else who pushes this line of thinking.

Do not kill the messenger, though, as I’m just passing on researched reality.

The truth is that exercise features a pitifully small weight loss benefit.

Mild to moderate exercise removes an average of less than three pounds or about 1 kilogram.

Vigorous exercise produces barely any additional weight loss at four pounds or about 1.8 kilograms.

That is all!

Now, that is not to say exercise does not have its importance. It does.

Among other advantages, exercise tones up your muscles, improves your heart, enhances your mood more than any anti-depressant drug can, and helps you live longer. Pretty significant, if you ask me.

It is just that exercise is not all it is cracked up to be for shedding weight.

This not-quite-so-common-sense finding is systematically proven by a review of all the best literature on exercise, compiled by the most authoritative research collation body in the world, the Cochrane Collaboration. They’re not sponsored by medical companies, so they’re uniquely independent reviewers.

The header of their “Exercise for Overweight or Obesity” review says:

“We discovered that exercise features a positive impact on body weight.”

However, buried lower down in the sleep-inducing technical specifics, they admit how miserably small that weight loss is.

“When compared with no therapy, exercise resulted in small weight losses across scientific studies. Exercise combined with diet program resulted in a better weight reduction than diet program alone (WMD – 1.0 kg; 95% confidence interval (CI) -1.3 to -0.7).”

Raising exercise intensity increased the magnitude of weight reduction (WMD – 1.5 kg; 95% CI -2.3 to -0.7).

The small weight loss is definitely the same whether you exercise for 6 weeks, 12 weeks, 6 months, or 12 months!

What’s more, regardless of what type of exercise it is, the outcome is pretty much the same.

You can verify the complete study here.

So, to summarize:

When someone, a fitness instructor, a personal trainer, a buddy, a health adviser, or perhaps a medical authority, tells you that exercise will help you shed weight, I invite you to challenge them.

Ask them just how much weight they believe exercise will help you lose, and watch them ignore your question, squirm, or outright invent stuff.

If they disagree with the study above, then have them send their research proof to me. No one has yet.

Bust the myth making.

The truth is that yes, on average, exercise will help you lose weight. Just not that much.

Filed Under: Fitness Tagged With: , , , , , ,

How to Plan a Great Mother’s Day

April 29, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Show your mum the love and appreciation she deserves this mother’s day.

Here’s a list of things that a good mother’s day should include. The order of most activities is flexible so we’ll leave that up to you to decide.

  • Sleep in & breakfast in bed
  • Gifts
  • Family activities
  • Relaxation (for mum)
  • A nice meal

Sleep In & Breakfast in Bed

This is an obvious one that most mothers would probably enjoy. Make sure you figure out what her favourite breakfast is and get all the ingredients you need the day before.

Gifts

You have two main categories of gifts to choose from for mothers day;

  • Mum/ mother’s day specific gifts
  • Regular gifts

The regular gift option will give you a wider choice but I prefer to get something that’s special and specific to mother’s day and leave the regular gifts for other occasions such birthdays and Christmas.

Mother’s day specific gifts include:

  • Sentimental gifts
  • Pampering gifts
  • Quality time gifts

For more information about mother’s day gifts check out this article: 24 Mothers Day Gift Ideas.

Family Activities

As well as being a day for mum, mother’s day is also a day for the family to spend some time together. There’s lots of activities you can do together from family outings to special events or staying home for a BBQ lunch. Here are some ideas:

  • Picnic at a local park or botanic gardens
  • Adelaide Mother’s Day Classic
  • Favourite family board games such as pictionary, cluedo or scrabble.
  • Go out to the movies or watch a movie at home (including home movies if mum wants *cringe*)
  • Go shopping

Relaxation (for mum)

No mother’s day would be complete without some rest and relaxation for mum while dad and the kids take care of all the housework and any other nagging chores which need doing. If you’re quiet you can try and get this done in the morning while mum is having her sleep in, otherwise mid-afternoon is a good time. To keep mum relaxed while you work away you can simply make her comfortable and give her some peace and quiet or you can send her out for a massage or spa package.

A nice meal

This should be the main meal of the day and could either be lunch or dinner.

  • At home cooked by dad and the kids
  • At a nice restaurant (book early)

What are some activities that you mother’s day simply couldn’t do without? Add them in the comments below.

Filed Under: Entertainment Tagged With: , ,