Saturday 17 March 2018

Created in true Milestone fashion .... properly !

Ey up my faithful blogworms, rock 'n' rolling again with our latest kitchen, lots of clever unit design gives us the skill with which to design proper kitchens properly !!

After this blog you may want to look at my blog of 11 Jan 2014 ( Bespoke by definition ) that explains more about how we use cabinet design to it's best advantage. 

This weeks kitchen over doubles the amount of storage in the same space and provides nearly double the amount of worktop, the blog mentioned above explains how !

I'm going to do what I seem to do a lot these days and let the pictures tell the story. We have the kitchen 'worktop ready' now and are just waiting now for the quartz tops to be fabricated, so this is really a 'story so far' post.

This kitchen is in one of our new colours for this year "Fjord Green" with Eco Cosentino White Diamond quartz worktops.

That feeling of 'here we go again' comes to mind, badly fitted, badly plumbed and wired, all to be sorted out

Oh, did I mention the floor was miles out too ! This shows all the nasty pipes and wires replaced, the walls cleaned up and replastered

Units going in using clever trick design to make this layout function spot on. Note the chicane at the far end !
The left side on here has the sink, dishwasher and oven in place so is quite appliance rich and has to be full depth. Hence the reason for the chicane, we had to put the fridge somewhere !

The only space to put a tall built in fridge/freezer was opposite these units, so by using an angled base to lead into a reduced depth drawer pack, we created the space for the fridge to work perfectly.

One way to add walk space is to reduce cabinet depths but keep the units usable, how often do see reduced depth functional working drawers? We do it as standard.

By using the drawer packs shown above we can create a slimline run of cabinets, increasing storage and function and walk space

This was a tricky little blighter !! Designing a housing for a built in microwave where the space is a tapered triangle under stairs ! Again to save worktop area, it was ideal to place the microwave in here rather that have it sat on the worktop. Giving silly shaped, dead space a useful function.

There ya go ! Perfick !

Doors going on where the wall units are individually hung and on tension stays to hold each one up seperately. Looks like 'bi-fold doors' but none of the obvious drawbacks. Note the fridge housing at the end. This bit is worktop ready now, a full run of quartz worktop going on, 3.2 metres of it, loads of space.

Angled base ...Easy ! Reduced depth base unit...Easy ! Putting drawers in it.... tricky but not impossible.

Loads of space to open the fridge and turn round to put stuff down.

Viewed from the fridge end, this shows there will also be easy worktop space to put things on as they come out of the microwave.


We've considered the ability to open the dishwasher and oven doors, made sure there's enough room to bend down and still clear the worktop on the reduced side, made sure there's enough space to use the fridge properly and the storage space speaks for itself.


Forget this " I'm sorry madam, you can only have it if it's in the catalogue" crap, there's only one way to do kitchen design and that's properly !!

Whoops ! nearly forgot to mention ..... this kitchen is from our Eco2 stable and it's a 100% eco built and we can prove it. Happy days !

AND, just as importantly, created the Milestone way, this kitchen with all it's clever design costs a lot less than you think, we need to talk !

Jules.










Saturday 10 March 2018

Driving Eco forwards, once more !

Ey up my faithful blogworms, it's been a month since my last post, hope you haven't missed me too much but it's been an eventful month !

Firstly, I was rushed into hospital with Diverticulitis but the wonderful staff on the NHS looked after me superbly and I survived, all credit to them.
Secondly, we've been working down in Dover on a superb new Eco project which I'll tell you all about in a minute. 
We've gone totally handleless with a new system to us and it can be created using all our current stable of Eco2 materials, happy days !

Bit of a learning curve on this one but we sorted it and results and comments have been more than complimentary, feeling pleased.

We are making this type of kitchen an addition to our stable and hoping to use gloss colours aswell to cover thecurrent trends.

Anyway, here's what it looks like:

First of all, here in the sleepy little village of St. Margarets at Cliffe, is where it all takes place

The entrance to the Bay Trust Project which is an environmental education and study organisation and well worth a visit if you're ever in the area.

Intial set up and cabinet placings.

Because we were transporting the whole things to site in our own van, the tallhousings were flatpacked are needed gluing and clamping together on site.

The vertical rails going in on the housings to provide the hand space to open the doors

The wall units have a rebated aluminium trim to go in at the bottom, again to provide handspace.

The base units have a rail section fitted just under the worktop for the same reason

Appliances going in

This view shows the base unit rail providing the handspace just above the doors

This view and the one below shows how the rails provide for opening the doors


The finished look giving a very clean, smart, contemporary appearance.

Simplicity with style and functionality is definitely the key here.


The whole thing was interesting for us the create, being the first full project we've done in this style and something that we would love to do again.
We don't currently have this on display but are going to have some display cabinets made to show you exactly how it works here at our HQ.
One final thing to mention, is that we are now looking into building a fresh website for Milestone as this kitchen version will bring our Eco stable up to 9 different styles of kitchen. More Eco kitchens from one company than are currently being offered by any other company in the UK, a fact we're very proud of !!
Driving Eco design forwards once more !
Looking after the planet..... Jules