By Stan Sauerwein
The look of choice in Kelowna's beautiful kitchens these days is a mix of cosmopolitan influences. Upscale dining, wine bars, galleries and cultural performances are all part of the same phenomena. New residents, arriving from larger centres like Toronto and Calgary, have a solid understanding of interior design and they are forming the vanguard of new experiential design styles.
Trends lean toward visual cohesion, substance and more opulent ornamentation. The finest kitchen designers like Joseph Iozzo of Cucina Del Re, are using a mix of millwork styles to satisfy their customers' unique and sophisticated tastes. But while kitchens have become design statements in the finest homes, the designers are not sacrificing utility to the gods of opulence.
That goal to be beautiful and functional, matched with the fact we live in Kelowna and not Los Angeles or Chicago, means kitchens designed by experts like Iozzo, are within the budgetary reach of almost every renovation or new home design project.
Guaranteed to be more appealing than run-of-the-mill kitchen systems, the layouts by kitchen designers will usually be more functional as well. Depending upon the features you can enjoy fine kitchen cabinetry for about 15% more than you normally pay to have assembly-line products offered by the area's standard cabinet shops.
Iozzo has been in business in Kelowna for six years and has his product in some of the city's finest homes. He says the secret to having a kitchen that will make visitors swoon is pre-planning.
A sought-after manufacturer of fine cabinetry in the Okanagan, Iozzo calls himself a "millwork fashion designer". Kitchens by Cucina Del Re start as low as $7,000 and provide an extraordinary interior design element that improve resale values tremendously.
Low-end kitchens are not the norm for Iozzo however. He has created and installed many in the $20,000 - $40,000 range with the most expensive in the neighborhood of $130,000. Even at those prices however, compared to the cost for equivalent kitchens in other parts of Canada or the US, homeowners are reaping a major cost saving here. Cucina Del Re does no advertising, has no sales staff or high-cost management talent. Iozzo operates his business on a world-of-mouth referral basis with a staff of 15. Even employing such Spartan marketing strategy, his manufacturing plant has been running on a seven day a week schedule since he opened, just to meet the local demand.
The show room off Hwy 97 N on Willow Park Road provides a stunning array of ideas for anyone considering a kitchen remake. It displays many elements that made up the kitchens judged as winners in the Okanagan housing industry's Tommie Awards for excellence in 2001 (Best Kitchen - Quail Ridge Show Home; Best Kitchen - Coral Beach Residence; and Best Kitchen - Casa Bella).
"Trends in kitchens are a mix of styles," he says, but not everything he creates or displays sells well in this market. The Oceans 11 style pictured is a starkly elegant, almost futuristic design. Rounded columns flank both sides of the black trimmed aluminum appliances and hide deep pantry shelving.
He says the kitchen is a high fashion style that would sell well in New York or Toronto. It would even sell better in Edmonton than Kelowna. "With newcomers from those cities it is a different story," he claims. "People (who have lived here for some time) are not as risky about style."
Iozzo has countered that with a design he calls the Legacy. It is a mixture of cherry wood and maple. With a touch of German and Italian styling and the clean lines that provides, you have a Euro-style kitchen. Flush panels in a blonde wood, the design is far more popular he claims.
Cucina Del Re is able to provide customers with carving, chalking, glazing, dusting, antiquing and spattering among other finishes. In some cases, Joe's is the only shop for some finishes in the Okanagan. The design work can be intricate and require some intensive effort.
The kitchen pictured here for example, required two months work to complete. Built for the George Schluessel residence, the cherry wood cabinetry features a curved design. The curved radius is matched by the counter doors on the front, making each a hand-built work of millwork art.
As a trained engineer, Iozzo has a reverence for the beauty of Mother Nature's best counter-top materials. "Other materials are overpriced for what Mother Nature has provided and the granite cannot be copied. You just can't get that look for anywhere near the money."
When considering the use of a professional designer for your kitchen, Iozzo suggests spending some thinking time to create a wish list of everything you'd like in your kitchen. You may have found a favorite tile, or have a swatch of fabric you want to match. Provide that to the designer as well.
"If you are having a home built, the first step (to undertake) before you do any framing is to design the kitchen," he says.
"We ballpark the whole cost first. Once a person has been over that hurdle and we have the appliances selected then the actual design of the kitchen can take place. At that point (in our experience) there has not been a single customer we've helped who thinks what they are getting is overpriced.
"The difference in price between your standardized box where you are raising and lowering cabinets all over the place, and a full custom design in which everything is made specially right here, is surprisingly inexpensive," he adds.
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