Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Cohousing kitchen requirements

[Casey Morrigan (cjmorr]

After three and 1/2 years of cooking in our kitchen I can say a few things
about a CH kitchen.  First, everything Liz said in her post matches my
experience here, about the frig, freezer, stove, and pantry.

We used hand-me-down appliances till we could afford something better, so we
are replacing as we find the right thing and gather the will to allocate the
money.  We replaced our ancient double ovens with new ones last year.
Lovely!  We do need two ovens often for our 17 households.

We need but do not have a deep deep sink (stainless will help you break
fewer things compared to porcelain), and could use a second prep sink and
kitchen island.

We have closed cabinets instead of shelves  - shelves would be easier.

We have a cut out so the kitchen is accessible to the dining area, and that
has been great all along.

That's it.  Don't worry too much about mistakes in the design--it's not
worth it to stress out over the "perfect" design, because you'll find the
ideal only after you move in and use it for a while.  And though it's nice
to get it right the first time, perfect design is not necessary to have
community or fun meals.

If there was one principle I wish I'd known ahead of time, it would be,
"make it easy to cook and clean up."  Because that's what motivates us to
have lots of meals together.

Casey Morrigan
Two Acre Wood
Sebastopol, California



> -----Original Message-----
> From: cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org
> [mailto:cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org]On Behalf Of MerylD [at] aol.com
> Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 3:02 PM
> To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
> Subject: [C-L]_Cohousing kitchen requirements
>
>
>
> Hi all:
>
> After many years of delays South Florida is going to get its
> first cohousing
> community! Groundbreaking is expeced in the fall.
>
> We are working with a local developer, who is putting all his
> own upfront
> money into the project. Together we are designing the
> cohousing kitchen and
> were wondering what appliances and sizes groups felt were
> important. I
> followed the recent dishwasher discussion so I know the
> merits of commercial
> versus residential, but what about refrigerator (is one big high-end
> residential unit enough?) and freezer (stand-alone?) and
> stove size (number
> of burners?) and the number of dishwashers needed if we go with the
> residential type. Cost is a big consideration.
>
> Thanks!
> Meryl Davids
> Emerald Place Cohousing, Delray, Florida
> breaking ground fall 2003
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