We welcome BLANCO Design Council Member and blogger Joseph Freenor, CFT 411 who has penned this week’s guest post on kitchen design trends including the arts and crafts revival and great rooms. Joseph is a professional woodworker whose long established blog provides in depth information and observations on the kitchen design world.

Arts and Crafts Revival

A trend that has been going on for a long time is the Arts and Crafts Revival. There are any number of people working in the field who are doing incredible work. I wrote a blog on Kevin Rodel in 2008. Mr. Rodel is clearly influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, but he is not bound to making only reproduction pieces. What Mr. Rodel most wants to do is to create works that have their roots in that movement, but that have been designed for contemporary purposes. And that is more than simply putting a TV in a reproduction Greene & Greene bookcase. What Mr. Rodel has done is to use those designs as a point of departure, and then taken them somewhere else altogether. The results are stunning—no other word adequately describes it. Here’s a link to the original post: http://cft411.com/2008/11/05/kevin-rodel-arts-crafts-furniture-design/

Great Rooms

The other trend that I find particularly interesting is the turn to what I call Great Rooms. These are large rooms that hold kitchen, living room and dining room. It’s something that is just beginning in this country, although it’s been in vogue for quite some time in Europe, where homes are so much smaller than they are in the USA. With the economy being the way it is, people are beginning to downsize. Some are selling large homes and buying smaller. Others are older empty-nest people who have taken in adult children with children of their own. Some clever remodeling to accommodate so many more has sometimes been the result.

I have not said anything about the empty-nest angle, but I have mentioned Great Rooms in a number of blogs. Electrolux calls it the “Live-In Room,” and I wrote a blog on them some time back which I recycled last year for Blanco’s Earth Day Celebration. Here is a link to that blog: http://cft411.com/2011/03/31/electrolux-4/

BLANCO has launched a new how-to video section on their website designed to assist consumers with the most frequently asked questions about sinks and faucets including 1) How to clean a SILGRANIT II sink 2) How to change a ceramic disk cartridge and 3) How to select a stainless steel sink. These short how-to videos offer expert tips and advice from purchasing a sink or faucet to maintaining one for the long term. Look for more videos (on topics such as how to buy a faucet or how to green your kitchen) as BLANCO plans to update this help channel with new videos ongoing.

What can you accomplish in four hours? In four hours, I’ll have completed my morning workout, driven to the office, attended several meetings, sent many emails, called my Mom, and most likely eaten another breakfast.

Lots of women and girls in the developing world spend four hours a day collecting water. That’s time away from school, family, work and play.

That’s why this year, Water For People has set out to change the way millions of women and girls spend their time.

Please join us by donating to the Time Well Spent $2 Million Challenge.

If you do, you’ll be helping children like Josephine, a 10-year-old girl living in the district of Rulindo, Rwanda. Until recently, she made a two-hour trek down and then up a steep mountainside to fetch water twice a day. When fistfights started breaking out at the heavily trafficked spring, her mother joined her for protection. For Josephine, this is four hours EVERY DAY that she could have been in school, studying, or playing and just being a kid. For Mom, it’s 28 hours a week that she spends away from her family and home.

But there’s a solution: Through the support of Water For People, Josephine and her mother have regained four hours of their days because, as of June 2012, there’s a tap just steps from their home.

Will you join us in supporting Water For People by donating now to make girls like Josephine’s TIME WELL SPENT?

We need your help today. I hope you can join us in the adventure toward Everyone, Forever in the places where we work. It’s ambitious and we can’t do it with you.

Thank you,

Emma Pfister

Water for People