2021 Wood Diamond Award Residential Kitchen Frameless Under $25K: Symphony Kitchens - 1st

Main Category: Residential
Sub Category: Kitchen - Frameless
Project Value: Under $25,000

Symphony Kitchens Inc. is a Canada-based family business. that provides exclusive custom cabinets to Greater Toronto Area. Trying to have fun create exclusive kitchens, make clients happy and in between trying their best to keep balance between family and business. Always learning improving, creating music and harmony in today’s crazy competitive world.

Describe the project, what makes it unusual, and/or any outstanding characteristics.
This project was made for a good friend of mine and it all started from just a simple design recommendations and ideas. Since this was his first major renovation he really didn't know where to start and how to redesign the space and make it interesting and exciting for him as well as his family and friends. My friend knew he wanted to make it bright, open, and have an island so he can entertain. He wanted modern clean and bold look. He hired me more as an interior designer and wanted me to compare to make a drawing using standard box cabinet sizes that are available from big box retailers like IKEA. Because standard kitchens don't have flexibility in sizes, it is very hard to make a symmetrical balance design specially when you're limited with the space. In this scenario, he was limited on the stove wall so we ended up building the kitchen for him and making the cabinets custom.

It was a good comparison to see the difference between regular kitchen cabinets and custom kitchen cabinets. Sometimes by doing custom cabinets you just do not realize even how much flexibility your clients can have, and you forget the fact that all the designs that we create are totally unique and exclusive and the value to the client is huge. Which means the price must be different? Of course, custom kitchens cannot cost the same as your standard kitchen. They are not mass produced. Every single cabinet is designed to fir the space and client needs. This was a great project and a reminder why we are doing custom and why custom costs more.

At the end of the day my friend saw the value and realized that the quality is different and much better, and he did not mind paying a premium for the more exclusive design.

In this design, we added elements that would give this exclusive custom look. Since the clients likes to entertain his friends, we wanted a wow statement right from the start so we created a pull out that would be used as a bar. We added glass panel and LED lights to the cabinets so all of the bottles could be on displayed which added an interesting and cool introduction to his kitchen. Side panel was made from black Sahara with tinted glass. Island was also made of black Sahara on three sides facing the living room. The inside of the island is white high gloss to match the rest of the kitchen cabinets. Also to make the kitchen more entertaining and fun we used a lot of LED lighting under the island as well as under the cabinets and inside glass cabinets. The lights were put on a few different switches and they were all controlled by remote control as well as a phone application which added extra excitement to his entertaining.

We had a lot of fun designing this kitchen and went through a lot of different materials. For backsplash we experimented and did a custom concrete finish which turned out remarkably interesting and different. Client was very excited with the results and had also received a lot of wow comments from family and friends.

List any items that were outsourced.
Decorative Hardware