K+BB (Kitchen and Bath Business)

Designer MaryJo Camp, CKD, CBD, CID, hit a hole in one with one of her kitchen designs. Literally. A woman asked the designer, who is the VP of marketing for Standards of Excellence in Rohnert Park, CA, to put a putting green, including green carpeting, in her kitchen so her husband would interact with her while she cooked. “We responded with just that—complete with a hole cover for the times he wasn’t present—and she was thrilled with the result,” said Camp.

Designers often get wacky requests when designing kitchens for clients. As part of the Research Institute for Cooking & Kitchen Intelligence’s (RICKI) latest research study, Kitchen Intelligence: A Designer’s Perspective, a RICKI moderator asked a panel of 22 designers located in cities across the country to describe the craziest or most unusual request they have gotten from a client—only one didn’t have a story to tell. RICKI is an independent, membership-based organization of manufacturers, retailers, wholesalers and publications whose revenues come from sales related to activities that take place in the kitchen, including kitchen remodeling.

Lisa Hilton, CKD, showroom manager at Kitchen World in Jacksonville, FL, told about the most unusual request she’s gotten to date: “to take a baby grand piano and remove the ‘guts’ of it, line it with waterproof material and use it as a bar/serving countertop.” Another designer, Ellen Jackson with Cabinet Solutions in Austin, TX, had a client ask if the kitchen could be designed with tile baseboards and a drain in the floor so he could “hose it down.” Another designer, Rob Iannucci of Goldstar Kitchen & Bath in Charlotte, NC, once had a client ask to install a complete kitchen in a tractor trailer.

Probably the prize for most unusual request would have to go to Colorado-based designer Mikal Otten of Exquisite Kitchen Design who had a client from Brazil who requested a dirt floor in her kitchen. According to Otten, “Apparently she had fond memories of chickens running through their living spaces. We ended up using recycled barn timbers for the floor surface.”

Many of the unusual requests were those related to design elements for household pets. Sharon Flatley, of Flatley Interiors in Dallas, was asked to incorporate a food station as well as pet sleeping quarters in an island. “To meet the requirements for a very large dog (German Shepard) and a small dog (Pug) in the same space, we took a stepped approach, and it worked well,” she said. “Both dogs and homeowner were happy, and each had separate quarters for sleeping.” Kathleen St. Clair, of Ken Topping Home Improvements in San Francisco, had a request for a place for a cat to eat and a place for the cat litter box right behind the food and water bowls. “The litter box was accessible by ‘touch latch’ so the cat could use its paw to open the door and enter the box to ‘do its duty,’” she said. “It must have been a really intelligent cat—but not a very appetizing kitchen space to work in near this area. I strongly recommended using a space in the rather large bathroom to place the litter box, but routines are routines!”