The Motion-Minded Kitchen: Step-By-Step Procedures for Designing and Building the Kitchen You Want with the Space and Money You Have

Rating:
Summary: best kitchen design book
Review: I used this book to design the kitchen of my owner-designed and built house fifteen years ago. I love my kitchen! Unlike other books about designing kitchens--which are by far the hardest rooms in any house to design--it gets down to the very basic challenges of a kitchen, instead of how to make a kitchen your visitors will ooh and aah over. Clark uses the motion-study techniques pioneered by the Gilbreths in the first half of this century to analyse efficiency in the kitchen. If you are the kind of person who wants to know how to make a kitchen that really works well, as opposed to looks pretty, this is your book. If you want a lot of gorgeous pictures of very expensive kitchens, find another book. This is for people with little money and a lot of practicality.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent advice on layout, design, functional approach
Review: This is an excellent guide to planning and designing a functional kitchen, most useful for those who spend a lot of time cooking. The photos, decorations, and cabinetry displayed are outdated, but the focus is on kitchen design for practical uses. We relied heavily on the author's principles in bulding a kitchen (in 1992) for our 1906 home, and we've been quite happy. Sections on building cabinets & drawers are interesting but not as well done as some more recent publications.