Back in October we started a complete renovation of our Calgary design centre (including a new reception area and boardroom) that finished up just in time for our annual Christmas open house. It wasn't a small undertaking: Walls were changed, new electrical had to be installed for our contemporary display featuring Blum's Servo-Drive hardware as well as numerous lighting features, ceilings were redone, and new floors went in. And that's all in addition to four new kitchen displays; a new bar display; a display for our new closet line (more on that in a future post); and new door style/colour displays, moudling boards, and handle boards (with many new handle options).
Our large kitchen display now features Soho doors in beechwood with Ashwood stain on the perimiter, with Berkshire doors in walnut with Coffee stain on the island. The stacked upper cabient glass doors feature custom one-piece wood mullions, milled out of solid blocks of beechwood. All of the panels in the kitchen are 32mm thick, while the island features a custom furniture kick detail and custom-made countertop supports.
The contemporary display now features slab high gloss and textured woodprint doors from Schenk (Soho Bright White and Mesa Grey Oak). This display also features Blum hardware throughout, with Blum's Servo-Drive powering the Aventos lift up cabinets and Tandembox bank of drawers.
The small kitchen display now features Antique White Thermofoil cabients on the perimiter with maple cabinets in Cappucino stain on the island.
Our mid-size kitchen display features NEXGEN™ cabient doors with a synchronous wood print finish in a profile/colour combination called Durban. This kitchen offers a similar look to our large display kitchen at a fraction of the cost for your home. Like the large display, the island also features a custom furniture kick detail.
We're especially excited have on display many new cabinet accessories options, including new chrome/dark grey pullout pantry and pullout corner accesories from Marathon Hardware.
We didn't do this alone of course. Huge thanks go out to our suppliers who helped support our design centre renovation:
A huge thanks also to our interior design consultant Julie West from West Eighty Design, who provided invaluable assistance and input.
A full gallery of our new design centre displays can be found on our facebook page. A video of our Blum Servo-Drive for Aventos cabinets in action can be seen on our YouTube channel.
The Canadian Home Builders' Association - Calgary Region's annual SAM Awards finalist list was released yesterday. A huge congratulations to all of the finalists!
We're very proud to have provided cabinets for a large number of award finalist homes and multi-family projects. We will of course be cheering for all of the finalists and winners (we're very proud of our industry and the homes it builds) at the gala in April, but we might be heard cheering just a bit louder for projects and homes we helped build.
Best Multi-Family Community
Best New Design Villa/Duplex/Townhome up to 1,199 sq. ft.
Best New Design Villa/Duplex/Townhome 1,200 sq. ft. and over
Best Town Home - up to $299,999
Best Town Home - $300,000-$359,000
Best Town Home - $360,000 and over
Best Apartment-Style Condo - One Bedroom + Den
Best New Home - $375,000 - $424,999
Best New Home - $620,000-$719,999
We've got four new NEXGEN™ door styles in our Calgary and Edmonton design centers this week, two of which feature Woodprint technology from Uniboard and Olon's Vista finish for the wrapped profiles.
Textured melamine and wrapped products have been around for a while, having originated in Europe. More recently, the North American marketplace has seen a surge of new textured melamine and thermofoil offerings providing fantastic contemporary looks for great value.
What makes Woodprint and Vista different is the synchronization of the texture, providing the look of a carefully worked real wood product but with the durability, consistency, and performance of an engineered product. According to Uniboard:
Uniboard’s Woodprint Technology® is the first synchronized texture in thermofused laminates in North America. Woodprint Technology aligns the décor paper and the surface texture to replicate real wood characteristics that are perfectly synchronized just as they would be in nature.
The new Brushed Elm finish, using Woodprint Technology, is a luxurious deep brushed wood texture available in six trendsetting, cool neutral colours that will be unveiled at the WMS show. ‘‘The matte-oiled surface of this finish replicates hours of hand polishing wood,’’ describes Susan Doherty, Uniboard Product Manager, TFL, ‘‘while the 3D brushed effect emphasizes the natural cathedrals and crossgrain characteristics of the Elm creating beautiful light reflections.’’
After discussions with our suppliers and at our regular product review sessions, we settled on two colours from the lineup in a Shaker profile:
We've also added two new NEXGEN™ door styles featuring colours/patterns from Stevens Wood with Olon's Belluno finish in a Shaker profile:
For more on Woodprint, check out Uniboard's news release: Uniboard Launches Woodprint Technology.
For more on 5-piece doors featuring the Brushed Elm finish, check out Uniboard's news release: Uniboard Announces 5 Piece Doors in Brushed Elm Finish.
For more on NEXGEN™ check out these posts from our blog: Classic Select: NEGEN™ and New NEXGEN™ Colours.
Photo galleries featuring our current NEXGEN™ lineup can be seen on our facebook page.
The 2014 Calgary Stampede kicks off this week, which means this year's Stampede Rotary Dream Home by Homes by Avi will be open to the public!
We're proud to have been the cabinet supplier of choice for just about every Dream Home since 1989.
But we're especially proud of the cabinets we built and installed in this year's home. Homes by Avi's Dream Home designers asked us to pull out all the stops to help build a kitchen featuring framed kitchen cabinets with flush mounted doors (and latch hardware on upper glass doors) in a painted finish, thick floating shelves in the pantry area in a stained finish (matching the other pantry area cabinets and kitchen island), and custom bathroom cabinets with thick open shelved areas under the sinks.
Our team was up for the task and worked tirelessly for weeks, over many evenings and weekends, to bring their vision to reality.
We hope you agree that the final result is stunning:
Of course, it didn't start out looking like this.
Our journey in helping create this magnificent kitchen started back in January when the Dream Home designers met with us to discuss their vision for the cabinets throughout the home. We realized the only way to fulfill the incredible vision of the Design Team was with custom cabinetry that would be built on site. This is very different from a typical kitchen where modular cabinets are fully assembled in our factory and shipped to site for installation.
With a plan in hand (plus an approved cabinet prototype)—and with detailed site drawings, measurements, and notes from Sales & Design Manager Kelly Biggar—our team began working out how each section of cabinets would be built. Each section was then hand built in its entirety by our cabinetmakers, with custom-sized components and customized drill patterns to the exact specifications of the space.
The work in the shop involved many of our experts including all three of our custom cabinetmakers and our entire paintshop team. Site construction was handled by our Dream Team of Duncan Ritchie and Derek Biggar.
When all was said and done, our installer Dream Team could not have been more excited about how it all came together:
They were also probably really excited to meet Trail's Chef.
A huge thanks to our suppliers, who made this project possible, with special thanks to: Klaas Custom Woodworking (cabinet doors and drawer fronts), Marathon Fasteners & Hardware (hardware), and Multiwood (solid walnut butcher block) for their contributions to the project.
We'll have more pictures of the kitchen, pantry, and bathrooms on our facebook page soon. Check out Homes by Avi's fantastic Dream Home site for more on this year's dream home.
A new video of our manufacturing process, which balances hand-crafted finishes and craftsmanship with advanced machinery to provide a world-class product made in Alberta.
As we discussed on this blog a few weeks ago, our cabinets could be found in a number of homes and multi-family projects nominated as finalists for a 2013 SAM Award. The competition was, as always, fierce and only one of them won a prized goose statue.
The winner? Homes by Avi Urban's The Enclave at Castle Keep won the Best Multi-Family Community award.
A huge congratulations to all of the SAM Award winners. A full list of them (including finalists in order of finish) can be found here: 2013 SAM Awards Winners Announcement.
Every year, the Canadian Home Builders' Association - Calgary Region celebrates innovation and excellence in the residential construction industry with the SAM Awards. We're looking forward to joining the annual Gala this Saturday where 57 winners in 10 categories will be announced along with the GRAND SAM Award winners. And while all of the finalist homes are, of course, incredible, we'll be paying extra close attention to see if any of these award finalist homes featuring cabinetry by us win the prized goose statue:
Best Multi-Family Community
Homes by Avi Urban - The Enclave at Castle Keep
Best New Design - Apartment Style Condo up to 899 sq. ft.
Homes by Avi Urban - Sawyer, Two Bedroom B
Best New Design - Villa/Duplex/Townhome up to 1,199 sq. ft.
Homes by Avi Urban - Edison, Scarlet
Best New Design - Villa/Duplex/Townhome 1,200 sq. ft. and over
Homes by Avi Urban - Edison, Auburn
Best Town Homes - $295,000-$349,999
Homes by Avi Urban - The Enclave at Castle Keep, Yorkshire
Best New Home - up to $229,999
Homes by Avi - The Victor in Nolan Hill
Best New Home - $230,000-$269,999
Homes by Avi - The Murphy in Sunset Ridge
Best New Home - $310,000-$349,999
Trico Homes - The Berkley in Riviera
Best New Home - $535,000-$599,999
Trico Homes - The Newport in Legacy
Best New Home - $600,000-$699,999
Trico Homes - The Birchwood in Legacy
Keep an eye on our blog for a list of SAM Award winning homes featuring cabinets by us after the gala.
You can follow us on twitter @albertakitchens for live updates from the event.
And for a great light-hearted view on the SAM Awards, make sure to follow @SAM_the_Ggoose.
With only a couple of weeks left in the year, we thought we might get our in-house design experts to provide their thoughts on what kitchen design trends you can expect to see in 2014.
Candace Hunt, Calgary
Tom Crowell, Calgary
Vijay Singh, Edmonton
Jane Ly, Calgary
Joe Colonna, Calgary
Sameer Kanji, Calgary
Jim Blakely, Edmonton
We've been talking a lot about our new product development process lately, and thought we might give you a sneak peek into a meeting around something we mentioned in our last blog post on new NEXGEN™ offerings.
This week, representatives from Upper Canada Forest Products and Multiwood (both Canadian companies) stopped in to show us new colours/textures that are being considered for NEXGEN™ cabinet components and doors. We had a great discussion about how each of these new product offerings might work for our clients and how they fit with current and expected design trends. At the end of the discussion, our team submitted their votes for products that we think would work well for our clients, in both new homes and renovations, with a commitment that we would offer all of the new products as soon as they were available.
One of us managed to sneak in to the meeting to catch the team in action (and grab a photo of the new colours/textures being discussed).
The team was positively buzzing when looking at some of the new options being considered.
We've got a lot more information to share from our product development and product line review meetings (we haven't even finished telling you about the new exciting changes coming out of our last full-line review!). Keep an eye on this blog for more soon.
The innovation at Classic Kitchens & Cabinets never stops!
As promised, here's some more exciting news from our complete product lineup review, this time on additional NEXGEN™ offerings.
Our current NEXGEN™ product lineup includes 10 door style/colour combinations. We're expanding that late this fall to a total of 14 options with additional door style/colour combinations in Latitude North, South, East, and West. These new colour options follow the latest colour/interior design trends and will give our designers even more options to help you build the space of your dreams.
This first expansion will mean our lineup includes door styles in the following colours:
And we're not stopping there. Our local Canadian-owned and operated suppliers are looking to confirm a few more colours in the coming weeks, and we've pre-accepted any new options for our standard regular-stocking NEXGEN™ product lineup. This means we'll be offering even more new NEXGEN™ door style/colour options by January.
You can read more about NEXGEN™ in our product launch post here: Classic Kitchens - NEXGEN™.
Even more details, with a video presenting the benefits of NEXGEN™, can be found here: Classic Kitchens - More on NEXGEN™.
This expansion of our NEXGEN™ lineup follows the stain colour lineup expansion announced a couple months back. And we're not done with the announcements out of our last product lineup review: keep an eye on the blog for more on our new Fusion colour and finish options soon.
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