About a decade ago, I decided I knew enough about kitchens to write a book about them. I’d been ten years at MFI, where toward the end I’d been involved in writing procedures and policies including for checking designs; after MFI I’d worked for other large kitchen retailers and also for smaller ones designing German and Italian brands. I’d done the magic million pounds in a year – back then it was still something special – and I’d been the top seller at the country’s biggest kitchen retailer. I’d always made it a point to know what I was doing: I knew a lot about kitchens.
Amazingly, there seems never to have been a comprehensive guide to designing kitchens for the UK.
It turned that there was still quite a lot more to know. I was aware of Parker Morris; now I read it, along with the US’s NKBA guidelines and the UK’s DoE report. I tracked down gas regulations. I worked with a lot more brands, until I could say I’d worked directly or indirectly with every major UK one. I did another million, although inflation had started to make it decreasingly special. I gained a smartphone, and took a LOT of photos. Brands and features came and went, and new technologies entered the field.
Gradually, I wrote the book. I decided over time that I couldn’t write fully about designing kitchens without also writing about how to sell them and how to buy them. The result is a bit niche for mainstream publishers, they tell me – everybody has a kitchen, but not everybody wants to know how – so I’ve published it myself, through Amazon.
The Heart of the Home: Kitchen Planning, Design and Sales for Professionals and Consumers covers everything I could think of in all that time, and more than 300 of those photos, along with drawings and renders – everything that a designer or a careful consumer needs to know.