[aadix]

Originally Posted by TheOne®

With regards to a house reconstructing thread we are afraid it will be rather boring. However, if anyone has questions as to where to go for what (fittings, furniture, electronics, ...) and what materials to use best we will be happy to help. I wouldn't say we know it all but this project has taught us a good lesson lol.

ok , here goes:

well jenny, i remember that you had said in the previous thread that a few ideas werent taken by the local craftsmen, or they felt it couldnt be done. and therby it took a lot of time to get them implemented. would like to know what were they.

also, am mostly looking out for ways for space maximization,as there are tons of stuff which i cant just throw away.

[BaCkSeAtDrIVeR]

@shyamhegde - my apologies; I need to read more carefully. I thought you were speaking of front loaders when you said "two inlets".

The godrej machine does not have a heater, nor a separate inlet for hot water.

I am told by my IFB service engineer (I got a perfect, round, and yellow lemon; but their service levels are not allowing me to complain) says that new machines come with plastic drums.

So, the big question - can plastic drums take hot water?

Another advantage of front loaders (if less consumption of water and power is not reason enough) - clothes do not get tangled much. On my top loader, I had to attend to the maching 3 out of 5 washes to untangle the clothes mess, because tangled clothes in a top loader = unbalanced spinning = stalled machine (sensors detect the unbalanced load and stops the machine).

@amit - my advice is to stretch your budget and go for a front loader. Especially with kids around, the hot water, economy, and reliability is worth it. Plan 3 - 5 years ahead while purchasing such durables.

[manaa45]

I have used top loaders as well as front loaders, beleive me the front loaders give excellent results in terms of quality. The clothes come out as good as new and they also dont tangle, give 80% drying and is cost effective too. So the initial investment will break even if you count the energy time and money you have to put in managing the top loading machine.

As far as the powder is concerned, please note tht it is very important to use the powders specially meant for FL's because they cause less foaming. Once by mistake I had put clothes dipped in normal soap water into the machine and my whole dry area was foam filled.

my vote goes to IFB front load machines.

Mansi

[TheOne®]

Originally Posted by aadix

ok , here goes:

well jenny, i remember that you had said in the previous thread that a few ideas werent taken by the local craftsmen, or they felt it couldnt be done. and therby it took a lot of time to get them implemented. would like to know what were they.

also, am mostly looking out for ways for space maximization,as there are tons of stuff which i cant just throw away.

I see lol. Well, we also had to fight with space maximization in the hall and therefore decided to break down the wall between living room and kitchen, as you can see in this one picture that Sam posted once. This gave us one big room with lots of space.

The convenience of it all was that we didn't need to squeeze our dining table in any of the two rooms anymore. We simply put it where formerly the separating wall was, which also gives you the feeling that kitchen and living room are still separated though they are in fact one room. Breaking down the wall also has the advantage that the aisle to the other rooms is not that narrow and long anymore which gives the apartment a light and spacious atmosphere.

The concept of an open kitchen however is practically non-existent in India (unless you have a bachelor's flat or so). It involved matters ("problems" for our contractor haha) of getting a kitchen done that is both practical and decorative (since it is part of the living room and the first thing you see when you enter the house). Now, it seems that Indians have a different sense of practicality in some matters because it took me a lot of effort to explain concerning what and why I wanted things done in a particular way in the kitchen. And it is a DRY kitchen with wooden floor in it - everybody called me nuts. In any case, if you know what to look out for when implying such a concept it is absolutely easy to handle and to maintain!

We also extended our main bathroom to get more space and had to change the last bit of the aisle a little for that, it takes a little bent now. Due to this we were able to get a dry bathroom too. This was important for me as we don't have wet bathrooms in Europe at all. Again, here we chose wooden furniture - something that people thought was the stupidest thing on earth. And getting a shower tub done was not easy either. BUT, everything works out nicely now.

Apart from that we had lots of discussions about certain finishes for walls, furniture, windows and floors that caused most of the confusion between the Indian craftsmen and the German lady.

If you have any more questions just PM me.

Originally Posted by pranava999

This thread has got me all senti and soft . I am a lousy writer but thanks to google and someone's creativity and skills my wishes are summed up in the following lines...Sam and The One

May you always feel as close as you do this day.
May your lives be graced with good health.
May you always find happiness in your home,
and may it be a refuge from the storms of life.
May your love grow ever stronger as you share
your lives together, and may your future be even
more wonderful than you dreamed possible

Thanks a lot! Very sweet of you.

[Sam Kapasi]

Originally Posted by TheOne®

The concept of an open kitchen however is practically non-existent in India (unless you have a bachelor's flat or so). It involved matters ("problems" for our contractor haha) of getting a kitchen done that is both practical and decorative (since it is part of the living room and the first thing you see when you enter the house). Now, it seems that Indians have a different sense of practicality in some matters because it took me a lot of effort to explain concerning what and why I wanted things done in a particular way in the kitchen. And it is a DRY kitchen with wooden floor in it - everybody called me nuts. In any case, if you know what to look out for when implying such a concept it is absolutely easy to handle and to maintain!

I agree. While the upside is the spaciousness and beauty of a kitchen, this concept still does not work very practically in a typical Indian kitchen.

• Dry kitchens do not exist in India. Coconut scraping, vegetable washing, washing of the platform and the entire kitchen itself. Our culture uses a lot of water, both in the bathroom and in the kitchen. Both are considerably wet areas.
• An open kitchen does not work out well if you cook masala-type food everyday with lots of ginger and garlic and spice everyday. Your curtains, sofa and everything absorbs the smell. The chimney helps somewhat, not entirely. Have you ever smelled the upholstery in an Indian restaurant? You don't smell it during running hours because the AC is on.
• If you are cooking up a storm, all the heat from the kitchen is shared with your living room. People watching TV start sweating, lol. You need a super-powerful aircon to counteract these problems.
• The only true way to maintain a dry/open kitchen is to do what we did. Fire the cook and the bai and cook your own daily food and clean the kitchen yourself everyday after dinner.
• You need a dishwasher to keep everything tidy and to make sure that the dishes are clean and dry, from the machine to your kitchen cupboard. You cannot have pots and pans and pressure cookers lying around. Your kitchen needs to be as nice looking as your living room. Always.
• It gets difficult when you have guests. In a closed kitchen, it can look like WWII while you cook and prepare for your guests. It matters not, as long as the dining table is clean and the dishes are well-presented. In our case we have to cook AND finish all cleaning before the guest arrives. Cooking cannot be completed just before the guests arrive, as everything would smell of food.
• Presentation, reheating and serving of the food is done in FRONT of the guests during the party.
• The used dishes after dinner stay around till the guests leave, or you have to put them into the dishwasher while they are still there. Of course, this is not a big problem for a typical Indian dinner party, as dinner is generally the last thing on the agenda before the night is over.
  In our case, it is usually the first thing on the agenda, before the party begins.

If one can accept all the things mentioned above, an open kitchen is a delightful experience. We enjoy it a lot.


Of course from a simple impractical love story, we have gone on to the practicalities of having a european style kitchen in India, lol.

That's life on TBHP isn't it?

Sam not only was this a tutorial on how to mantain an open Euro style kitchen in India but also "how to survive without bai". Call me a newly wed ignorant buff I never knew dishwashers existed in India or if there is enough market that people would buy them. I stayed at a few "5*service apt (as they like to call it)" Kitchen was nice good and dry but yet; deprived of a dishwasher

Totally OT but I am a fan of dishwashers and have even washed just 1 cup for the heck of it in a dishwasher. Something about warm plates makes me hungry. Sorry about a total OT from my end.

[Vid6639]

So did you get a german dishwasher and german fittings in your kitchen?

I chose a german brand named Hettich for all the kitchen fitting. I believe there are other good ones like Hafele( with a dotty thingy on the "e") and Blum(dotty thingy on the u).

[Sam Kapasi]

Originally Posted by vid6639

So did you get a german dishwasher and german fittings in your kitchen?

I chose a german brand named Hettich for all the kitchen fitting. I believe there are other good ones like Hafele( with a dotty thingy on the "e") and Blum(dotty thingy on the u).

lol we got Italian. Everything from Kaff.

Hettich is excellent. And you're a bit dotty on the Blum, lol.

If you cannot type Häfele with an English Keyboard you can substitute it with Haefele (note the extra e)
But you've made a mistake with Blum. Blum is just Blum and not Blüm.

The additional "e" is an easy substitute for ö, ä and ü.

O is pronounced as an "OH" - just like English. But ö is somewhat like a cross between "UH" and "OH".

And if you have someone called Jürjen, for example, it would be correct to write his name as Juerjen in English.

[abhishek_rait]

i am loving it beautifully written with emotions thrown into it . It was indeed a pleasure to read this space and one thing i know for sure tomorrow morning my company IT guys are disallowing me to use net hehe .

I just love the concept of open kitchen but you hardly get to see it here in india ,i had one back in germany in my good old research work days and i enjoyed it .

BTW sam i studied right across the English Garden in Munich amazing afternoons i would say " The whole thing opposite to the end of the huge road is called the University Area " and i was quite genuinely surprised of what happened.

[TheOne®]

Originally Posted by Sam Kapasi

I agree. While the upside is the spaciousness and beauty of a kitchen, this concept still does not work very practically in a typical Indian kitchen.

• Dry kitchens do not exist in India. Coconut scraping, vegetable washing, washing of the platform and the entire kitchen itself. Our culture uses a lot of water, both in the bathroom and in the kitchen. Both are considerably wet areas.
• An open kitchen does not work out well if you cook masala-type food everyday with lots of ginger and garlic and spice everyday. Your curtains, sofa and everything absorbs the smell. The chimney helps somewhat, not entirely. Have you ever smelled the upholstery in an Indian restaurant? You don't smell it during running hours because the AC is on.
• If you are cooking up a storm, all the heat from the kitchen is shared with your living room. People watching TV start sweating, lol. You need a super-powerful aircon to counteract these problems.
• The only true way to maintain a dry/open kitchen is to do what we did. Fire the cook and the bai and cook your own daily food and clean the kitchen yourself everyday after dinner.
• You need a dishwasher to keep everything tidy and to make sure that the dishes are clean and dry, from the machine to your kitchen cupboard. You cannot have pots and pans and pressure cookers lying around. Your kitchen needs to be as nice looking as your living room. Always.
• It gets difficult when you have guests. In a closed kitchen, it can look like WWII while you cook and prepare for your guests. It matters not, as long as the dining table is clean and the dishes are well-presented. In our case we have to cook AND finish all cleaning before the guest arrives. Cooking cannot be completed just before the guests arrive, as everything would smell of food.
• Presentation, reheating and serving of the food is done in FRONT of the guests during the party.
• The used dishes after dinner stay around till the guests leave, or you have to put them into the dishwasher while they are still there. Of course, this is not a big problem for a typical Indian dinner party, as dinner is generally the last thing on the agenda before the night is over.
  In our case, it is usually the first thing on the agenda, before the party begins.

If one can accept all the things mentioned above, an open kitchen is a delightful experience. We enjoy it a lot.

It may seem a bit strange for Indians I am sure, for Europeans this is quite normal. While not everyone in Europe has an open kitchen the concept is well-known and accepted.

However, I was actually more referring to space and kitchen construction itself when I posted - not daily life with an open kitchen lol. In my opinion, if you take away the wooden floor and substitute it by tiles or marble I am quite sure that an open kitchen also works for Indians, with or without dishwasher. If you have pots and pans and whatever lying around this is up to you - I don't like it but this is a personal matter. The only thing that could indeed be a problem is the food smell as mentioned by Sam. If you only cook typical Indian dishes all day long you may have a problem sooner or later. Though, thinking about it, who closes his kitchen door behind him when cooking?

[aadix]

Originally Posted by TheOne®

If you have any more questions just PM me.

thank you jenny, have tons of doubts, will def pm you as and when am gonna implement things. currently still debating wheter to do the same, demolish the kitchen wall and put up a open kitchen.

sam sounds just like my dad when he spoke about the disadvantages of a open kitchen, lol.

another doubt, how are the kaff appilances holding up? esp the dishwaher?, we have been using the ifb ones, and they are quite good. didnt go in for kaff, cos of lack of proper after sales service in hyd.

[Technocrat]

Originally Posted by Sam Kapasi

The only true way to maintain a dry/open kitchen is to do what we did. Fire the cook and the bai and cook your own daily food and clean the kitchen yourself everyday after dinner

Isnt this how things are in most homes? Atleast back in my hometown My mother & all My Aunt's whose Kitchen I have seen follow this as a rule.
In My house too We do try to keep it that way atleast most of the times

[Vid6639]

Yes even I'm interested in the Kaff dishwasher as well as hob and chimney.

[Sam Kapasi]

Originally Posted by aadix

another doubt, how are the kaff appilances holding up? esp the dishwaher?, we have been using the ifb ones, and they are quite good. didnt go in for kaff, cos of lack of proper after sales service in hyd.

The Kaff dishwasher works well. One great advantage is that the dishes come out bone dry and warm.

Dishwasher soap is frightfully expensive in India, we now carry large bags of dishwasher detergent from germany. Much cheaper, lol.

However, I believe the Siemens dishwasher is pretty much the best available in India and their after-sales is top notch too.

[Vid6639]

The concept of open kitchen is pretty popular in bangalore Sam. The apartment I took has an open kitchen design with a breakfast counter facing the hall. There is a small sink for washing veggies and the one for dishes is in the utility area. My mom did not like this so we struck a compromise and had to remove the breakfast counter and put a small display cabinet suspended from top. This closes the kitchen a bit but is still open to the hall more or less. I'll post pics once the interiors are done.

Infact in the house hunt I am doing now, I see almost 70% of new constructions having an open kitchen.