Ham and High Feature

Tim was recently contacted by the Ham and High for a feature on top tips when designing a kitchen. We thought you might like to see what he said.

"Kitchen designer Tim Moss creates bespoke ‘workshops’ for his clients from his Muswell Hill studio, as well as custom made pieces of kitchen furniture.

His understated designs, whether contemporary or more traditional in style, are reminiscent of the Georgian townhouse – versatile and utilitarian but also aesthetically pleasing.

Using natural, quality materials such as oak, beech, maple, tulipwood and stone, and a subtle grey and earth-toned palette, his kitchens are designed to be used. They are popular with clients in North London and he has worked on several kitchen extensions and refits in Hampstead, Highgate and surrounding areas.

And he has finally put his ideas into practice in his own Bounds Green home, which he shares with his wife and two sons. “We have one of my kitchens, at last. We wanted one for a while but it’s kind of the case of the cobbler’s children.”

Swiss Cottage kitchen with panel doors set in a beaded frame, finished in Farrow & Ball 'Skimming Stone' Estate Eggshell, Lincoln Pull handles in patine, Caesarstone 'Ginger' worktop, Lacanche Range cooker

So, what are Moss’s top considerations when designing a new kitchen?

Get your lighting right

I always do a suggested lighting plan. My tips for lighting are to spread it out, and use targeted task lighting. You can kill a kitchen with bad lighting. You can kill anything with bad lighting.

Modern touches can bring traditional bang up to date

My signature look is pared down and traditional looking, but with the odd contemporary feature. Just adding a few small touches can make a kitchen look very modern. The main things I use to give things an updated look are modern handles and appliances.

Porcelain worktops are coming on the market now and are set to replace quartz composite as the material of choice. They are very hard and durable and come in a huge range of colours.

Cabbage motif cupboard in Tim Moss' kitchen

Keep things flexible

There’s a trend for a looser type of kitchen in the air at the moment. People are getting away from the ultra-fitted look and going for a more broken up space, which gives you much more flexibility. You can change the furniture around and you’re not stuck with units that all have to be exactly the same height.

You’re creating a workshop, so make sure it’ll stand up to use

I always say to people “this is a workshop, it’s got to be designed and made for that purpose and it has to be durable.” I don’t like the idea of them not being used.

I did have one client who I went to see five years after we built her kitchen. She was saying that her oven didn’t work and they’d stopped making the model. It turned out it was the first time she’d tried to switch it on since it had been fitted!

A large, shallow cupboard will change your life

What we really wanted in our own kitchen was a good ergonomic space as we had quite a tight spot to fit it in and we’ve got a dining area in there too.

The one thing we’ve got in our kitchen that almost everyone who sees it loves is a huge, tall, shallow cupboard. The fact that it’s shallow means that it’s really easy to access everything but it’s still big enough to fit everything in.

Introducing our 5 Oven Aga Total Control

We are currently designing our new display kitchen for our showroom and will be incorporating the beautiful 5 Oven Aga Total Control.

5 Oven Aga Total Control

Perfect for passionate cooks, large families or those with bigger kitchens, the brand-new 5-oven AGA Total Control series cookers feature roasting, baking, simmering, slow cooking and warming ovens.

Available as a standard Total Control model or with iTotal Control technology, the 5-oven AGA cooker occupies the same footprint as the 4-oven AGA and offers the same peerless cooking performance you would expect from AGA. The new slow cooking oven is perfect for dishes such as shoulder or leg of lamb, steamed puddings, casseroles and stocks.

At the heart of the electric AGA Total Control cooker is a touch-screen control panel which puts you in charge of how and when the cooker is used.

Discreetly housed behind the door, the nerve centre of the AGA Total Control cooker can be accessed directly or programmed via a remote control handset. Using the control panel, the hotplates and ovens can be turned on manually when needed. It's so flexible – you can heat only one hotplate or both. You can opt to heat only the roasting oven, the baking oven or the simmering oven – or all three. The Warming Oven, Slow Cooking Oven and Warming Plate are operated via the button on the front of the top plate.

Alternatively using the remote control handset, you can even programme the cast-iron ovens to come on automatically for one or two cooking cycles per day, seven days a week. You can set the AGA Total Control cooker to provide the constant ambient warmth to the kitchen for which the AGA cooker is renowned.

AUTOMATICALLY READY

 
Manual (you choose)

Each zone (an oven or a hotplate) can be operated individually in manual mode. Any zone selected will remain on until switched off.

TCA Touch Screen Control Panel Slumber (ovens only)
In this mode all three ovens are active, pre-set at a simmering heat. Slumber setting is ideal for slow cooking and giving a gentle heat into the kitchen, creating that unmistakable ambient AGA warmth. When the ovens are in slumber mode, they take less time to reach full heat.

Auto (ovens only)
Selecting the auto function brings selected ovens up to full heat from off automatically when a programme is set. The ovens can be selected to operate once or twice each day, with the start and finish time of the 'cooking cycles' set by the user.

Auto slumber (ovens only)
Choosing this setting automatically brings the ovens up to full heat from slumber mode.

 5-oven AGA Total Control
 

W- Warming plate
B - Boiling plate
S - Simmering plate
C - Control panel
1 - Roasting oven
2 - Simmering oven
3 - Baking oven
4 - Warming oven
5 - Slow cooking oven.

Warming plate - Rest plates and food on the warming plate to keep at a warm temperature, for a limited period of time.

Boiling plate - The boiling plate is the hotter of the two hotplates. From cold, the boiling plate takes approximately 11 minutes to reach its operating temperature.

Simmering plate - The simmering plate is on the right-hand side. It is the cooler of the two hotplates. From a cold start, the simmering plate will achieve its operating temperature in about 8 minutes.

Roasting oven - roasts and grills beautifully and is big enough to fit a 13kg (28lbs) turkey. Radiant heat means food keeps its natural succulence and flavour.

Baking oven - heated to an ideal moderate baking temperature - ideal for cakes, biscuits and bread.

Simmering oven - Simmers perfectly by constantly maintaining the oven at just the right temperature for long, slow cooking. This develops flavours and will make even the toughest cut of meat melt-in-the-mouth tender.

Warming oven - designed to warm plates and serving dishes, to rest meat before carving and to keep food warm, prior to serving, for a limited period of time. Food should not be left in there indefinitely and certainly not for any longer than two hours.

Slow cooking oven - the exciting addition of a slow cooking oven makes this new model perfect for those with a large family or anyone who simply loves to cook. The slow cooking oven is ideal for dishes such as shoulder or leg of lamb, steamed puddings, casseroles and stocks. The slow cooking oven and the warming oven operate together via a switch on the cooker. And as well as the two hotplates, there is a useful warming plate.

Please visit our showroom to find out more or place an order.

The Wonderful Language of Carpentry

The craft of working with wood is one of the main catalysts for human civilization. There's no escaping the magnitude of how important wood has been to our world.

The Neanderthals started producing practical wood objects over 100,000 years ago. Egyptians not only made their own tools but also constructed chairs, tables, and chests. Many of these furniture items are still preserved in tombs today.

The Egyptians invented veneering and varnishing and the early Chinese invented the plane and chalk line.

Carvers and carpenters created wonders that still astound us today, from the magnificent roof of Westminster Hall to the Coronation Chair, last used by Elizabeth II, but created 700 years ago.

To this day, you can find societies using the same tools and techniques to build homes and feed their families.

Many wonderful words and terms are used in wood working, below is a short glossary of some of my favourites.

Anthropometry - The comparative study of the dimensions of the human body

Arris - The sharp edge where two surfaces meet at an angle

Bosting in - Carving roughly to shape

Burl - A warty growth of the trunk of a tree. When sliced it produces speckled burr veneer.

          or

         An extremely thin strip of metal left along the cutting edged ofa blade after honing or grinding

Cauls - sheets of wood or metal used to press veneer onto groundwork

Chatoyance - the effect seen in dramatic wood grain direction changes as seen in flame figured maple.

Chattering - The noise caused by a workpiece vibrating

Collet - A tapered sleeve made in two or more segments that grips the shaft of a cutter

Crown of thorns - a system of self-supporting and interlocking pieces

Cruck - a pair of crooked, structural timbers in a timber frame building

Curly figure - The grain pattern on wood that has been part of a tree where a branch joind the main stem or trunk

Ferrule- A metal collar that reinforces the weood where the tang of a chisel or other handtool enters teh handle

Flitches - Pieces of wood sawn from a log for slicing into veneers

               or

               The bundle of sliced veneers

Fox wedging - A jointing procedure where wooded wedges are used to spread a tenon in a stopped mortise

Foxing - a yellow-brown discoloration of wood due to fungal infection.

French cleat - a molding used to hang cabinets

Gullet - The space between saw teeth

Heartwood - The mature wood that forms the spine of a tree

Hollow Ground - A term used to describe circular-saw blades that are reduced in thickness towards their centres

Kerf - The slot cut by a saw

Kicker - A strip of wood fixed above a drawer's side to prevent it topping upwards as the drawer is withdrawn

Lopers - Rails that are pulled from a cabinet in order to support a fall flap

Muntin - The central vertical member of a frame-and-panel door

               or

             A grooved strip of wood that divides and supports the two sections of a wide drawer bottom

Patina - The colour and texture that a material such as wood or metal acquires as a result of a natural aging process

Pawls - Pivoted pointed leavers designed to grip a workpiece as soon as it is thrown back by a moving blade or cutter

Riffler - a paddle-shaped rasp.

Ripsawing - Cutting parallel to the grain

Rottenstobe - An abrasive powder similar to pumice but ground even finer

Scorp - a drawknife with a curved, sometimes completely circular blade, often used for hollowing out objects such as bowls.

Shellac - A secretion of teh lac insect used to manufacture French polish

Sherardized - Coated with zinc

Skiver - Thin leather prepared for gluing to a desk or table top

Snib - a wooden toggle used to hold the work on a table.

Strop - To produce a razor sharp cutting egde by rubbing it on a strip of leather

Tang - The pointed end of a chisel or file that is driven into the handle

Veiner - a small deep gouge.

25 Beautiful Homes

We were delighted when one of our kitchens was featured in the January 2014 issue of 25 Beautiful Homes.

(c) 25 Beautiful Homes magazine, as featured in January 2014

www.housetohome.co.uk/25beautifulhomes

http://www.housetohome.co.uk/25beautifulhomes

The client had just bought a beautiful Georgian end of terrace house in North London with high ceilings, beautiful plasterwork and elegant windows which allowed light to flood in. However he inherited some less pleasing traits of a two hundred year old house. On the day of completion he discovered standing water was behind the walls in the basement where the electrics were.

We had to remove and reinstate the kitchen furniture and took the opportunity to tweak the design a little to suit the new owner and add under floor heating under a textured limestone floor. The kitchen was painted in three different shades of soft white to keep it light and airy.

It's great to be able to transform an existing kitchen for a new client. A lick of paint and it looks like a brand new kitchen.

An unusual commission

We're delighted to have recently been commissioned by Mr Smith's Letterpress Workshop (www.smithsrules.com) to design two pieces of furniture to be used at his upcoming pop up printing exhibitions.

Mr Smith is a polymath - a craftsman, designer, typographer, printmaker, wordsmith and maker who creates exquisitely crafted contemporary typographic printed matter using a collection of English traditional wood and metal types in his Letterpress workshop in South London.

Mr Smith in his Letterpress Workshop

The brief was to design two solid cabinets, to house all the printing equipment and tools, that he can load easily onto his van and take to pop up exhibitions.

The first cabinet is a 'random' or 'case rack' which will house all the upper and lower case racks. Behind the drawers will be an open area where his prints and proofs can dry by hanging freely on a hanging ball mechanism.

Upper and lower case racks

The second cabinet is the 'stone' or 'composing surface' a cupboard, on top of which lies the incredibly heavy steel Galley Press, where Mr Smith can work.

Underneath there will be a pull out drawer, with either a metal or glass top which acts
as a third worktop, where tools and equipment will be stored.

A Galley Press

Portability and ergonomics are essential factors to consider, and of course the aesthetic, and Tim is still in discussions about the final design. The cabinets will be made out of different sized oak panels crudely nailed together and sitting on industrial casters.

Mr Smith's next pop up exhibition will be at the Royal Academy in March 2014, watch this space to see the finished product.

Sourdough - bread the natural way

Watch out for our upcoming bread making classes at our Muswell Hill showroom.

Be inspired, spending the day in a beautiful Tim Moss kitchen, learning the art of
making a range of sourdough breads;  including cultivating and maintaining
your 'mother', baking loaves in the showroom Aga that don't just look and smell
great, but have that particularly flavoursome taste that only sourdough can
impart. It takes a bit longer than bread made the more conventional way, but
once you've had it, it's difficult to go back.

For more information please call 020 8444 9911 or email helen.laing@timmoss.co.uk