Kitchens

I've received a couple of emails over the last year or so, plus the odd comment, asking me which kitchen company we used for our own Huf Haus and why. Well, here's the post I've been meaning to write to give a full and structured answer.


The Capucho kitchen (by Leicht)
One thing that's very noticable when going through the design of your dream Huf Haus is that the Huf people don't include a "standard" kitchen as part of the "standard" house.

Compare that with the bathroom situation where a decent standard comes as, erm, standard, and then a set of options can be applied to upgrade it right up to posh hotel levels of luxury. And if that's not enough for yer, then they have their StilART people waiting in the wings who can design you a bespoke solution, at a cost mind, which would make the Onassis family jealous. But I'd say that 99 times out of 100, there's still plenty of the standard bathroom somewhere underneath even the wildest StilART creation.

So why don't they offer a similar approach for kitchens?

Well, it's because kitchens are too personal, too emotional, too non-standard by their very nature. 99 times out of a 100, the Huf owner wants something different; something completely different, as the Monty Python people would say. So the Huf people pragmatically offers us a 'kitchen base' as part of the package, and that base includes the following:

Floor tiles - similar to the bathrooms and entrance areas

Water pipes sticking out of the walls

Electric sockets in the walls

Electric cables sticking out of the walls

Painted walls and ceiling

Glass in the kitchen window

Air

Erm, that's it

Lemme see, I'll carefully review that list to see if I've forgotten anything. Da di da di dah. Nope, it's all there.

Now most people would consider that to be a bit too minimalist, although I have a mate who wouldn't notice as long as he has somewhere to plug in a kettle. But for the rest of us the concept leads yer to two possible solutions: Call in the StilART people, who will suck on their pencils and work with you to design your wet-dream of a kitchen; or to call in some non-Huf related kitchen people to do likewise.

What's important to remember is that the water and electrical channels are built into the very guts of the Huf Haus, so whatever kitchen layout you end up going with needs to be with the Huf people before they start to manufacture yer house in their Hartenfels factory. They'll make a few clicks on their CAD-CAM design software and lo and behold yer electrics and water'll be in the right places when your kitchen people turn up months later to do their work. As we found out, they have some limited flexibility to move a few water pipes and electric cables about once the house is up and standing, but they can't make any radical changes without open heart surgery - and that comes at a serious cost.

So yer want to have a kitchen layout figured out before the build, or you're sunk.

The second thing to remember is that no pesky kitchen installer is allowed anywhere near yer Huf Haus until after the formal handover. This might seem like a case of over-formality, but there're a myriad reasons that make this a necessity: site insurance is an obvious one; workers tripping over each other, is another; water and electricity flowing as needed - or not flowing, as needed; floor tiles in place; etc etc etc.

So, here's a recap of the research that Claudia and I went through before landing on our own kitchen.

During our trip to Hartenfels, we had an afternoon with the StilART people; mostly on the bathroom 'cos we wanted a fancier double sink unit than comes as standard. Anyways, we also discussed the kitchen 'cos the setup in the showhouse really did look good. We left them with an outline of what we had in mind, and then waited to see what their offer would cost out as.

In parallel, we looked at some of the fancier kitchen suppliers that we're up to our necks in around Zürich.

First stop was Poggenpohl, a German manufacturer.


Poggenpohl - 250% of our budget
Now you should understand that out here in Switzerland there are people who would rather cook on an open fire built into a refugee camp gutter than to choose anything other than Poggenpohl. It's posh, it's stylish, it's tasteful, it's the tip of the top. We walked into a veritable Aladdin's cave of cool kitchens, drooling as we looked left and right.

Unfortunately, Poggenpohl's also bloody expensive.

The 'representative' took one look at my shoes and clothes, and then rushed us through a design to see how the costs might look. That quick estimate told us that the bare units without the electronics yer might need for cooking, indeed without the doors yer need to hide them pots and pans and cutlery, would be significantly outside our price range. Like 50% more than we had in our budget for the lot. I'm serious. We exited stage left feeling like tramps that had accidentally walked into Claridges instead of the soup kitchen next door.

Oops.

I have to stress that the Poggenpohl bloke was really very tactful with us, and very likely saved us all a lot of time and bother.

What would I recommend to you? Well, in theory yer Huf Haus is the Bentley of "factory-made component houses", so it deserves the Bentley of the kitchen world. Is that Poggenpohl then? Well, very likely. They're both German nowadays anyway. Maybe Claudia and I were in the wrong movie, as they say, and massively unbudgeted for what should be a significant cost in our Huf Haus project? Maybe we really are skinflints, and we should have devoted about 10% of the entire project budget to the bloody kitchen. But we didn't, so there.

Go and see for yourself, and if yer appetite and budget stretches to Poggenpohl, then go for it. What they have is beautiful, truly beautiful.

Next stop was with a local supplier who handles the SieMatic brand, also from Germany.


Siematics - 120% of our budget
The first thing we did was to establish whether we could afford the bloody prices. This rather upset the salesman who's more used to discussing such indelicacies as dosh somewhere towards the end of the sale process. Preferably while you're reading the final invoice placed upon the worktop of your new kitchen that'd been installed some weeks previously.

Slimey salesman git.

Still, this was our first opportunity to do some real research. And here's what we found: The better of yer modern kitchens have doors and drawers that don't make scraping and banging noises when you shut 'em. Oh no. They slide almost shut in a single silky motion, and then, by virtue of their built-in dampers, slowly but surely close the last bit all by themselves. The drawers themselves should be made of wood laminate or metal, and abso-bloody-lutely not be made of plastic. As goes the cupboard and drawer handles; if they have 'em, 'cos the fashion these days is to have door-width slots to break yer finger nails in. And yer can stand in them drawers, and in fact when you open the bottom drawer in the kitchen showroom, look for footprints. If there aren't any, flag a passing pimp, erm, I mean helpful kitchen salesman, and dare him to do it. The door surfaces should be as hard as nails, nay harder than nails - as hard as a decent kitchen surface which is very very hard indeed. The designs themselves are too subjective for me to discuss here, but for sure the kitchen range should include something that'll make yer dreams come true.

And SieMatics of Deutschland offers you all of the above.

Indeed, as we found out a little later, it may be the cheapest entry to that level of quality that's available here in Switzerland. Your experiences in the UK or elsewhere might differ, but have a butchers at those details just in case.

Well, the pimp salesman did for us, so we moved on... and up up up to Bulthaup.


Bulthaup - 200% of our budget
How best to describe Bulthaup? Well, Swiss designer stylish. Ever seen that Wallpaper* magazine? It's one of the few English language magazines available in a foreign airport newsagents without a photo of Keira bloody Knightly on the cover. If you know it, then you know it. Well, Bulthaup supply designer kitchens that even the snottiest and most elitist design snob couldn't sniff at; the kind of kitchens that yer see in Wallpaper*.

There're a couple of Bulthaup showrooms in Zürich, but the one we went into had easily the coolest kitchen salesman that ever existed. He was really a great guy, and we had hours of fun going through the Bulthaup range. When we'd found our look and feel, he waved his magic wand and created... art. That's what he was: an artist in the medium of kitchen sculpture. We discussed the philosophy behind the design, the original designer himself (twas some French bloke, I think). We discussed surfaces and textures and tones and shades and and and, and we discussed space and proportion.

Stainless steel worktops? But they'll scratch to buggery? Oh yes they will, but after a good few years scratching they'll look as scratched as a restaurant kitchen: i.e. they won't look scratched, they'll look glorious. Er wot? Downstairs for a look see into their training and cooking club centre, where the worktops get a serious hammering. Stainless steel worktops after a few years look... bloody glorious. We'll be having 'em.

I felt like a designer myself at the end of it all. Or as close as some git from Manchester gets.

But, and there was a BIG BUT, we couldn't afford the end result. No way. All concerned looked pained that the lack of readies had doomed all of this glorious creativity, but twas so. He choked with his pain. Claudia sighed wistfully. I clutched my wallet, and sighed with relief.

Still, there was a good outcome to all this wanky designer stuff. Up to the point we walked into Bulthaup, we were hellbent on fire-engine red cupboards and dark grey marble surfaces and a sort of barrier-reef row of tall kitchen cupboards. In between sobs into his handkerchief, our Bulthaup designer made us promise that we'd commit to the white cupboards, stainless-steel worktop and general layout of the pinnacle of kitchen beauty that he'd created for us. We promised, and exited to the sound of his heart-rending sobs.

Oh the horror of surviving alone in this world as an artist.

Next stop was Leicht, so back to the Germans. No more crying then. We walked into a major Swiss electronic chain (Fust, a sort of Comet equivalent) that supplies Leicht kitchens on some sort of strategic corporate deal, whatever that means.


Leicht - 150% of our budget
By now we were kitchen veterans, and swooped in on the salesman fully prepared for battle. Poor sod never stood a chance.

We'll be having that design, with, erm, those cupboards and this layout. Nope, we said this layout. Yep. And a stainless-steel worktop, thanks muchly. Yes, we know it'll scratch. Yes. Yes. Look, we're having the bloody stainless-steel, alright? Alright. Cupboard doors in white. Yes we said white. Look, what part of white don't you understand? Right, so white it is. Oh, and those handles over there. No, the other sort breaks yer finger nails.

Oh, and open that bottom drawer and stand in it.

Now jump up and down.

Can yer sing?

No, yer can't sing can you.

Total cost in the post? Ta muchly. Bye.

He tried it on a bit, in a similar fashion to the SieMatics pimp, but to be honest we left him with no area to play his salesman games in.

But! But! But!

But the story continues just a little longer. The offer we received a week or so later contained a little cost time-bomb (on the electronics) that I wasn't going to put up with. So, Claudia and I walked into a small kitchen supplier in a nearby town called Baar. We'd noticed that it had a Liecht logo in the window, so worth a shot. We handed over the spec to the blokey (imagine a big cheery bloke with a red farmer's face and a vicelike handshake) and an hour or two later walked out with the deal done. He'd even spotted an implication that'd slipped past quite a few expert noses; a minor detail not worth noting here. Not telling. No.

Is there a moral or six in this story?

Probably a few: We had under budgeted on the kitchen. Which is equivalent to me confessing that we've blown our kitchen budget by 50%. Take yer pick. Oh, and using the 'all fur coat and no knickers' line of reasoning, what's the point of spending a bloody fortune on a Huf Haus build if yer gonna slap in some cheapo kitchen? Well, actually there is a point, and a family we visited a couple of years ago had done just that (Ikea) to get 'em through the first few years before they could afford their dream kitchen (a bloody Poggenpohl, of course). But the most important point to all this is not one of design or cost or whatnot. It's all about service and people and trust.

Look, I've really ripped the pee out of the Bulthaup designer, but the reality was that here was a salesman bloke who really cared a damn about what he was doing, and who he was doing it for. He's the star of this story, followed by the farmer who finally sold us the Leicht. One did the design, the other provided the good service. A bit rough on the designer and his sales figures, I must admit. The other salesmen were, to be honest, the kind of salesmen that we've all learned to fend off over the years.

A week or two later, the StilART offer came through the door: someone had been on holiday or sick or something. And the cost? Way way up there with Poggenpohl.

Some time later I'll go through the electronics story, but that'll have to do for now.

Furnishing yer Huf Haus

Question: how do new light-house owners furnish their light-houses? Answer: they start by chucking out all their old furniture.

The same applies to Huf Haus owners. And wind-mills, now I think of it.

I have a feeling this post'll mean more to existing Huf Haus owners (for whom it'll strike at least a small chime of a chord) than to those of you who're researching a new build. But come back later when you're all moved in, and see if I was right.

One of the things we've found as we've become accustomed to our glass-walled, open plan Huf Haus, is that most of our existing furniture just doesn't work anymore. There are two very good reasons for this: Reason One and Reason Two.

Ahem.

Reason One.

Most furniture (especially ours) is designed to be pushed up against one of the three available interior walls of a comparatively small room (compared to a typically cavernous Huf Haus lounge, for example). Almost everything is designed and manufactured with that assumption: indeed the majority of furniture, even quite expensive stuff, isn't even painted at the rear.

Saves costs, right? And who's to see anyway?

Well, yer get a wake up when you move into your spanking new Huf Haus where you have little or no interior wall to shove yer sideboard against - it's all glass, innit. Maybe you have a dinky side unit that'd look just so against that big exterior window anyways? 'Cept for the bare wood and screws on the arse end that's there for the outside world to see. Or perhaps you want to place a particularly prized antique in prime position where your visitors (already blown away by yer Huf Haus) can admire your exquisite taste in Victorian cabinet-making - only the skilled artisan of yesteryear wasn't going to spend an extra month of sundays extending that veneer all the way around the back.

So yer need to start thinking about furniture that's nicely finished on every side. Literally, furniture you could look at from every side.

The good news is that dining tables and chairs, and coffee tables are better in this regard 'cos they're designed (or so you'd hope) to be placed away from walls from the off. But here's a list of furniture that very often ain't walk-around: side boards, side tables, drawer units, shelving units and TV and HiFi units. Oh, and almost all antiques. And non-grand pianos. Buggah, eh? And there's a lot of sofas that look, well, a bit crappy from behind.

So, Reason One is due to the fact that most furniture ain't walk-around. Ergo, you need walk-around furniture. Some of your furniture is already walk-around, which is great. But then we have Reason Two to consider.

Reason Two.

Most furniture (especially ours) might look great in some suburban semi, but maybe not quite as good in that great design icon wot is known to us as the Huf Haus. A Huf Haus is cool, fresh, classically modern. It's notable, nay, remarkable. It's a landmark design, that will make yer friends, family and neighbours just a little bit envious, and yer enemies openly seeth with green-eyed jealousy. So you can't be furnishing it courtesy of Ikea and Leather World, can yer? That'd be all fur coat and no knickers, design-wise. As James Bond would say, your cuffs and collars wouldn't match.

So, that's Reason Two: you've got yerself a design classic Huf Haus, so you'll be needing to shove in the design classic furniture to match.

So, we have two good reasons. Huf Haus furniture should be design classics, and walk-around design classics at that. Ahh, don't take me too seriously, but there's a valid point somewhere in all of this.

Conversation with Frau Capucho when we moved in:

Claudia - "We need a new sofa, don't you agree? Don't you?"

Me - "What? That cost a bloody fortune - and it looks... like new. Erm, the covers can be cleaned. Nah, we'll make it work. How about putting it... erm."

But it was true. Our sofa was a bloody fortune in Italian chic, about 3m long, Only we didn't have a 3m wall to put it against. Not in that house. And it looked a bit daft when we tried it as a walk-around sofa. Chic from the front, side, and, for all we know, from below, but dowdy from the back. It had to go... and did, sort of. It's still down in our Keller if someone wants to buy it.

And that was just the start of it.

Our dining table is a 2.5m behemoth that looked smart and stylish in our old pad, but looks a bit, erm, unadventurous in the Huf Haus. It's walk-around all right, but really lets the side down style-wise. We're keeping it for now (skint) but notice has been served. Our dining room chairs passed muster. Phew.

The ethnic-Indian wall cupboard that we used to keep our CDs in never had a chance. The back end of it was unvarnished, and indeed had some sort of writing daubed on it in what looked like magic marker. The importers, one supposes. We now have nowhere to keep our CDs. But then again, we don't have a hifi either - or more to the point, we haven't figured out (a) spots to put the hifi and speakers and (b) how we could hide the cables and (c) whether there's a hifi unit that doesn't look daft from the back.

Sigh.

We desperately need shelves and storage, but just about everything we've looked at won't work. Unpainted at the rear. Falls over unless screwed to a wall. Falls over, even then. Not cool enough. Decidedly uncool. Very cool, but useless for storage. We've had it up to here, really we have.

Soooooooo, here's the thing. We've turned our attention to a whole class of furniture that's not only walk-around, but also design classics comparable to the building they'll be going into. And as I've got to do a shed load of research on the furniture subject, I thought I'd write it all up for you lot. Well, the truth is that I've already done plenty of research, but it'd look daft if I started reeling it all off without some form of introduction; which is what this post is about.

Gives me something to write about, anyway.

DaVinci differences - an update

I've received quite a lot of extra information regarding pricing of the DaVinci Haus, so here's another post on the DaVinci theme. I must stress that everything below is from someone else who really went into a full and detailed comparison, so I can't claim anything 'cept the wording and grammar. Wot is mostly mine. So there.



There's a more significant pricing difference than I'd imagined. All DaVinci models are available in two versions that roughly translate as "budget" and "premium".

The "premium" version comes with a similar level of goodies to the equivalent Huf Haus, but at a saving of 10% to 15%. However, there are some under-the-skin differences that help to explain the saving - more anon on those.

Yer "budget" version gives a cost saving of about 30% compared to a Huf Haus. By "budget version", we're talking about no balconies, no underfloor heating, and by implication a few more missing bits and bobs. Such as a roof? Of course, our friends in Hartenfels will likewise strike big chunks out of your Huf Haus specification, and this appears as a "credit" on yer protocol. But I'm guessing that you'd be down to bare wood and concrete to get yer Huf Haus cost down by a whole 30%. But let's forget the budget version, because if we were budget people then we wouldn't be building our own home, right?

So we're comparing the premium version DaVinci to the standard Huf Haus. How come the DaVinci is 10% to 15% cheaper?

Well, there's a touch of apples and pears going on.

The equivalent DaVinci's windows are double-glazed, compared to the triple-glazing that comes standard with Huf Haus. Double-glazing offers a lower level of insulation, and let's not forget that these are primarily glass-walled houses, so the energy leakage really adds up. My secret informer, erm, secretly informs me that this ups your heating bills by about 15% to 20% per year.

Is this extra energy consumption really a big deal? Well, that's up to you. If you drive a Prius, then yes. If you drive an SUV then no. The rest are somewhere in the middle. Personally, I think the best way to reduce one's carbon footprint is not to be born at all, but I think it's a little too late for that. And pegging it may generate more carbon dioxide than gasping out the rest of your life: the hearse, the church service, the bloody singing. Not to mention the cremation. Hmm, this is a clear digression. Must continue. Sorry.

You can take some greenie solace in the fact that we're talking about different levels of German insulation standards here, which are already way up there with the best in Europe. "Very good" versus "excellent", then.

The next point is a cracker: the lower and upper floors of a Huf Haus are basically made of concrete, whilst the DaVinci floors are all wood. Believe me, concrete's as expensive as hell, so this goes a looooong way to explaining the cost differential all by itself. One can imagine that this might cause a few concerns to those of you like my pure, mountain-bred Swiss wife who're used to living in decent buildings where you can't hear people clumping about upstairs. Unlike almost every house I've ever lived in back in Blighty where a quick trip to the loo sounds like the charge of a bull elephant - with our without carpets. And then there's the bloody plumbing to deal with after yer done.

Eek, another digression.

There's also a more subtle impact which I'll quote:

"The ceiling is a wooden-one, not a concrete ceiling like in a Huf-Haus, which means you have a different "climate" in the house as the concrete stores the heat better than wood – still some people like a wooden ceiling better."

Got that? Good.

The last point's one of standardisation. Huf Haus offer their windows and walls in three different widths (known as "raster sizes") of 2.3m, 2.5m and 3m. In fact they can offer almost anything in between if you have a particularly sticky problem to solve (like wot we did) but that's a different story. Yer DaVinci people've standardised on 2.3m to save their own production costs, 'cos standardised sizing leads to standardised purchases from standardised suppliers. Is this a big deal? Well, that depends on whether you're looking to take advantage of the flexibility that the Huf Haus raster sizes offer.

That's pretty much it on the house itself: increased heating bills 'cos of double glazing 'stead of triple glazing; clumpy wooden floors with a different climate, whatever that means; and a standardised raster size of 2.3m and not a centimetre more or less.

But there's a big difference when it comes to the cellar costs: The bare-bones DaVinci Keller is about 40% cheaper than its Huf equivalent. Why's that? 'Cos DaVinci use a well-known (to the German market) cellar company, while Huf Haus do it all in-house. That well-known cellar company (oh ok, it's called Knecht-Keller) has far larger economies of scale, while Huf naturally builds a maximum of one cellar per house. Stands to reason, dunnit.

Bottom line?

My informant reckons all the above can trim up to EUR 100,000 off a typical project.

Would Claudia and I have made a different choice if we'd known the above? Nay, nay and thrice times nay. No way. Not on yer nelly. Huf Haus it was, and Huf Haus it would be if ever we do it all again (I'd love to, by the way. Very much). We're a little more greenie than I let on (not a lot, but definitely more) and we like the mix 'n' match of the different window raster sizes - in fact we'd have been a bit buggahed with our planning permission if Huf couldn't have offered us the flexibility of trimming a 20cm slice off our central 3m raster (facing the house, it goes 3.0m - 2.8m - 3.0m which tells you something of the precision that yer Swiss planning permission goes into). Anyways, we loikes having whopping big 3m windows in the main, with the odd 2.3m and 2.5m units here and there to make it all a bit more interesting.

And a wooden floor instead of concrete? Pah! This is our home, not a tool shed!

One last point: one of the comments on my last post (you hum it, and I'll play it) is from a chap who built a DaVinci Haus in lieu of a Huf Haus. He said:

"I didn't go with Huf because they were generally rude and didn't return my phone calls when I was speccing the house. This despite having prepared plans for my house with an architect and visiting their offices in Hartenfels. So I was clearly a serious customer. I got the feeling they were swamped with business following the grand designs show."

And here's a quote from my secret informer:

We would have gone with Da Vinci, if their architect had not been an arse in the pricing negotiations... we're moving in our Huf in 2 weeks time."

Go figure.

p.s. A great big thank you to my secret informer, who I recall sent me his first email right at the beginning on my own project when our land was still mostly a grassy bit of Alp, and his own project was (clearly) still deep in its head-scratching paper phase. You know who you are, my friend.