The super contemporary kitchen images sent through by our Perthshire family would have been easy to replicate if we’d had the money for a designer Italian kitchen, but getting it on our budget and also adding in those essential traditional twists proved somewhat more difficult.
Salvation came in two local metal magicians. One was Brian the blacksmith and the other Perth steel fabricators McGarrie’s.
The kitchen design was all about the owner and her cooking space so I wanted to focus on an area other than this. Of course…. the focus had to be the disastrous Wall of Screws which had been beautifully skimmed & finished by Mark & Neil. Not easy to find something off the shelf to enhance that gorgeous curve, in fact impossible, we’d have to go ‘bespoke’ – a word which brings PM Nick out in hives 😉 The existing metal stair frame had recently been made by a local metal worker known to the family and I asked him if he could make something entirely unique and bespoke for the wall.
We’d made a template of the curve of the wall to replicate what would be the glass shelf and took it along for Brian to work out how he’d make the shelf bracket. He bent a single piece of steel with a welding torch and hammer (of course I couldn’t resist having a go!) so it would weave under the glass shelf supporting it and be fixed straight to the wall. Brilliant! Make that two of them, Brian 🙂
Next up was the issue of bringing stainless steel into the kitchen in a wider design sense that just a sink. A few years back I’d had a piece of steel fabricated for my own house especially to place a hob in and from memory it hadn’t been all that expensive, but the piece was only 1.4m long and much more was needed in Perthshire. After a few calls to local steel fabricators, one name kept keep coming up – McGarrie’s in Perth seemed to be the men for the job.
Armed with plans and measurements, I visited the factory and it was good to see that it wasn’t just on our site where sparks were flying, see above 😉 The team at McGarrie’s couldn’t have been more helpful and worked closely with the Perth Kitchen Centre to calculate exactly what was needed and how to do it in HBH time – i.e. under 48hrs! Once the kitchen base units were fitted, a template was made of the total work surface area. This template, in sections, was taken to the factory and steel wrapped around it, plus a 100mm upstand made for behind the sink and internal wall area. Their price was £800, from which I begged for and luckily received a discount (just to please Nick!) which I thought was brilliant for a bespoke chef’s kitchen surface, and more importantly perfect for the family’s cook’s style requirements and practical needs.
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