Vision Kitchen & Bath

Custom Cabinets and Countertops, Made Locally in Tampa, FL

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There’s probably no bigger kitchen storage quandary than the under-sink area. Low and deep, and with a u-bend drain trap right in the middle of everything, it tends to be only be half-used.

If you’re like most people, you get into the habit of storing cleaners and soaps in the reachable front half, and the back half becomes some sort of kitchen Bermuda Triangle where things go and then disappear, only to re-appear when the odd kitchen search-and-rescue operation demands that even that particular awkward storage stone be overturned.

There’s a legend that it’s where all of the socks that go missing in the dryer end up.

Enter the under-sink pull-out. Suddenly the area under your sink is no longer a place of intrigue and mystery, but a fully-usable, easily-accessible space to store your kitchen cleaning supplies, or anything else that will fit down there.

Under-sink pull-outs are just one of the many options you can make a part of your Vision Bespoke Series kitchen. Make a free measure and estimate appointment today and see how a new custom kitchen can take some unwanted mystery out of your life, too.

http://visionkitchenbath.com/cabinets/under-sink-roll-outs.html/

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Soft-Close Hinges and Glides Standard on Bespoke Series Cabinets

Sometimes the simplest of details can make big differences. That’s why Vision Kitchen and Bath decided to make every Bespoke Series Cabinet—their entire line of made-to-order cabinetry and countertops—with soft-close hinges and glides as standard.

While other custom cabinet manufacturers offer soft-close hardware as extra-cost options, Vision felt that it’s customers deserve this kind of attention-to-detail as part of the Bespoke Series experience. Soft-close hinges and glides give a quiet, firm close, each and every time. Avoiding the shocks of slammed doors and drawers helps keep all cabinet components stable and properly aligned for additional years of day-in-day out durability.

And, of course, fewer late-night snacks given away by the “Bang!” of carelessly closed cupboards.

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Getting Ready for Your Vision Kitchen Remodel

Getting your new Vision Kitchen and Bath cabinets and countertops installed is truly a dream come true. That said, every remodeling project brings with it a certain amount of short-term upheaval. With a little careful planning, however, you can make the transition smoother and less stressful for your and your family.

Move out of your old kitchen. Remove all pictures, mirrors, curtains, wall hangings, or any other objects from your kitchen walls. Be sure to empty your existing cabinets of all their contents. Box and label any items you won’t need during the renovation. Set aside the things you use everyday, as you will need to…

Prepare a substitute kitchen area. On average, a kitchen remodel will disable your kitchen for about eight to ten days, so you’ll need to set aside a place to take care of your cooking needs for the duration. A great space for this might be a garage, especially if you have an extra refrigerator and a few cabinets out there already. A utility room or a basement might be another option. You may want to consider moving your refrigerator to this location or perhaps borrow a mini-fridge. Stock the area with a microwave (and maybe a hot plate), a trash can, a selection of essential kitchen tools, and a supply of paper plates and disposable utensils. Oh, and don’t forget the coffee maker.

Plan your menu. As you might expect with this sort of ad-hoc kitchen setup, your culinary capabilities will be curtailed during the duration of the remodel. This is a where a little planning can go along way. Preparing meals in advance and storing for easy microwave reheating is a great way to stay fed without getting on a first-name basis with the pizza delivery driver or the local sandwich shop. It’s also sure to be a healthier alternative. This is also a great time do a little barbecuing if there’s a grill to be had. Chances are, take-out will be a part of your strategy during this time of kitchen exile, but you should be able avoid a steady diet of kung-pao. (Unless that’s what you’re hungry for.)

Move your pet’s dining area as well. Be sure to relocate water and feeding bowls—an any other pet accoutrements—from the work area. It’s best to do this at least ten days in advance to avoid unnecessarily stressing or confusing your pets during the renovation.

Some final words of advice. A little planning and preparation will help you and your family weather the ups and downs of your kitchen remodel with as little inconvenience as humanly possible. In the end, it’s a small price to pay—especially when you know your dream Vision kitchen is just around the corner.

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Great Deals Going Fast: Vanity Blowout Sale

When we have a sale, you know it’s something special. Particularly when it’s a Vanity Blowout Sale! As part of our Inventory Clearance Event, we’re offerring stellar deals on first-quality, solid-wood-construction bath vanities. 

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New Inventory Clearance Event Items Posted Now

Vision Kitchen and Bath’s Inventory Clearance Event is going on now!

We’re cleaning out our warehouse so we can expand our custom cabinet manufacturing facility. This is a great opportunity to get brand-new, first-quality, locally-manufactured cabinetry at cost!

Visit these links for more information on currently-offered items:

60-inch NEW Double Width Vanity at Cost

36-inch Wide NEW Vanity at Cost

36-inch Wide NEW Rounded Vanity at Cost

Granite countertops available for all featured pieces.

To see these items in person, and for a wider selection of clearance items, be sure to visit our showroom at 5614 Powhatan Avenue in Tampa, just north of Hillsborough Avenue.

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Vision Kitchen and Bath Earns Esteemed 2012 Angie’s List Super Service Award

Award reflects company’s consistently high level of customer service

Vision Kitchen and Bath has earned the service industry-coveted 2012 Angie’s List Super Service Award, an honor awarded annually to approximately 5 percent of all the companies rated on Angie’s List, the nation’s leading provider of consumer reviews on local service companies.

“This is our third year in a row, and we couldn’t be more proud,” said Vision Kitchen and Bath General Manager Jerry Krech. “We are truly blessed to receive an award that recognizes the collective efforts of both our staff and our installers. It is they who ensure that our customers are always priority number one! Now we’re looking forward to an outstanding 2013 with many NEW improvements on the horizon.”

“It’s a select group of companies rated on Angie’s List that can claim the exemplary customer service record of being a Super Service Award winner,” said Angie’s List Founder Angie Hicks. “Our standards for the Super Service Award are quite high. The fact that Vision Kitchen and Bath earned this recognition speaks volumes about its dedication providing great service to its customers.”

Angie’s List Super Service Award 2012 winners have met strict eligibility requirements, including earning a minimum number of reports, an excellent rating from their customers and abiding by Angie’s List operational guidelines.

Service company ratings are updated daily on Angie’s List. Companies are graded on an A through F scale in areas ranging from price to professionalism to punctuality. Members can find the 2012 Super Service Award logo next to company names in search results on AngiesList.com.

 Angie’s List helps consumers have happy transactions with local service professionals in more than 550 categories of service, ranging from home improvement to health care. More than 1.5 million paid households use Angie’s List to gain unlimited access to local ratings, exclusive discounts, the Angie’s List magazine, and the Angie’s List complaint resolution service. 

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Custom Cabinets: Handmade by Robots

If there is one watchword when it comes to building custom cabinets, it has to be “precision.” To begin with, you need precise measurements of the area where the custom cabinets will be installed. Unlike mass-produced cabinets, custom cabinets are made to fit in very specific location within your home. This means that the precision—there’s that word again—required to ensure a proper fit is beyond exacting. It is also beyond the capability of even the most precise woodworker to execute within a reasonable time frame.

image: routercad.com

Computer Assisted Design and Computer Assisted Manufacturing have revolutionized mass production over the past generation. As digital technologies of all stripes have become more economically accessible, CAD-CAM is now within reach of short-run, custom-products manufacturers such as Vision Kitchen and Bath. We use CAD programs to design your cabinets so that they will fit with the desired installation location. The program also allows you to see how the cabinets will fit in your home once they are installed, before a single board is cut or screw is turned. Once the plans are finalized, they are sent to ourCNC (Computer Numerical Control)woodworking machine which cuts, drills, and routes premium hardwood to the precise specifications required. 

State-of-the-art technology, applied to the ancient craft of woodworking, is what makes affordable, made-to-order, custom cabinets possible.

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Are You Cooking With a Sharp Knife? Here's How You Can Tell

As Julia Child (well, actually Dan Aykroyd as “The French Chef”) once said, “You can’t do nothing without a sharp knife!” Well, Master Bladesmith Bob Kramer knows sharp.

How can you tell if you’re cooking with a knife that is truly, honest-to-goodness, empirically sharp? A sharp knife should be able to:

Cut the tops off of carrots while they are being held, without the use of a cutting surface

Cut through paper

Slice through a rolled up magazine page

Easily slice a tomato

Bite into the papery skin of an onion, without sliding

By these standards, I’m afraid I’ve never cooked with an “according to Hoyle” sharp knife. If Mr. Kramer inspected my knives, he would not be pleased.

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Easy Baked Tilapia For The Culinarily Impaired

Eventually, whether it’s the hassle of it or the expense, we all get sick of eating out. If you’re anything like your esteemed scribe, it’s really easy to fall into in a rut in the kitchen. At my house, the “meatloaf/pasta/grilled chicken” cycle can get pretty monotonous.

So I often venture online for new ideas. However, being the inveterate tinkerer, I can never leave well enough alone. I always have to throw in something “off-recipe.” Sometimes it does wonders. Other times, well, I have to make a quick trip to Papa John’s.

This is an easy baked tilapia recipe that is a modification of several that I found online and melded together. Failed experiments notwithstanding, I wholeheartedly recommend a little kitchen improvisation. Cook a few recipes and—when you feel confident enough—throw something of your own in and see what develops.

Ingredients:

4 Tilapia Filets

3 Teaspoons of Minced Garlic in Olive Oil

Old Bay Seasoning (What? You don’t have any? Go out and get some now.)

photo by T o n y via flickr.

Butter

Grated Parmesan or Romano Cheese (Or some equally suitable combination thereof.)

Butter-Flavored Cooking Spray

(You’ll also need a baking sheet and aluminum (or as the Brits say “alumiNIUM”) foil.)

 What to do with this stuff:

Take the baking sheet and cover the cooking surface in aluminum foil.

Spray the foil with the butter-flavored cooking spray.

Place the tilapia fillets on the baking sheet.

Spread butter on the fillets in a thin layer, like a generously buttered slice of toast.

Spread the minced garlic evenly over the fillets.

Liberally season with the Old Bay.

Evenly coat the fillets with the grated cheese.

Cover the tilapia fillets with a sort of aluminum foil tent. This will keep the fish from drying out while cooking.

Put the whole shebang into an oven pre-heated to 400 degrees F and bake for 25 minutes. (I like my fillets with crispy edges.)

Serve with a starch and a veggie and dig in.

photo by Yu+Mi via flickrMore

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Kitchen Islands: Culinary Superheroes

If there’s one always-reliable kitchen design truism, it’s this: there can never be too much counter space in a kitchen. No matter how much you may have, you can always use a little more, am I right? Look, right in the middle! It’s a counter! It’s a bar! No! It’s… the Kitchen Island!

Okay, now that got that out of my system—ahem—it’s fair to say that a kitchen island is a great way to add a multi-functional space to any kitchen.

It can be more space to prep ingredients, knead dough, set out your food processor/bread-maker/waffle iron when you need to use them, or just hang out while someone else makes dinner. Add a couple of stools and a bit of counter overhang and you have an informal place to nosh.

This asymmetrical island features knick-knack drawers on the narrow end.

What makes the kitchen island such a boon to your culinary efforts is how it converts the empty area in the center of most kitchen layouts into space you can use. And, remember, that new-found counter space doesn’t just float in midair. The kitchen island brings with it flexible storage opportunities galore. And, isn’t that another thing every kitchen can’t have too much of?

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I found this great video on cleaning granite countertops at eHow that is full of not only basic granite countertop cleaning tips, but also more specific advice on handling especially stubborn stains and marks. eHow is a great resource that I can highly recommend for quick answers to DIY dilemmas.

And, hey, did you know that granite rates a “7″ on the Mohs hardness scale? (A stainless steel knife blades rate a “6” but we still don’t recommend using your countertops as a cutting board!

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Kitchen Organization Starts With Infrastructure

Kitchen organization is something that all of us could do a better job with. I don’t know about you, but it always seems to me that kitchen organization is a process that can never end, so long as you actually use your kitchen to, you know, make meals.

I’d have to say that, every six months or so, I go on an organizing binge. This happens when I can no longer take the chaos that entropy has brought to my cabinets and drawers since the last biannual kitchen organization-fest. This might surprise you—seeing as I work for a kitchen cabinet fabricator—but, being recent homebuyers, my wife and I (yes, the kitchen is my domain in this house), are still living with the cabinets that came as original equipment.

I recently happened upon a blog post in Outnumbered (a very well-written, day-in-the-life blog from Danelle) that invited readers to take a look insider her cupboards. She also admits:

“Obviously, I would never let you look inside my cupboards if I hadn’t just organized them.”

That having been said, I highly doubt that Danelle’s cupboards look much different when they’re “messy.”

One thing I’ve learned in my time at Vision is that sustainable kitchen organization starts with what I call “the infrastructure.” First, you start with custom cabinets that make the best possible use of the available space. (In our old house we found a quesadilla maker—not seen since our wedding—all the way in the back of one of those awkward corner spaces next to the range. I won’t lie to you, it was like Christmas. Quesadillas for everyone! ¡Sí Señor!”)

Needless to say, made-to-measure of kitchen cabinets avoid creating that sort of organizational black hole. You can incorporate thoughtful details like specialized spice drawers with an integral rack, and pull-out, sliding kitchen trash bins. That way, there’s more than just a place to put something because that’s we’re you decided to put it, but a place for something because it the place was made for it. No more having a stuck drawer because I put a spatula in the wrong place. (It went in. Why won’t it come out?)

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The Proper Care and Cleaning of Granite Countertops

Granite is known as one of the most durable types of countertops available. That does not mean that granite countertops are maintenance-free, however. While granite countertops are indeed strong and durable, precautions to keep them from being stained or damaged are called for. Proper care and cleaning will ensure your granite countertops will continue to look beautiful for a long time to come.

Clean Spills Immediately Avoid spilling anything other than water or mild dish soap on your granite countertops, particularly liquids that are highly acidic. Beverages such as orange juice, soft drinks, and anything alcoholic contain acid and can damage to your countertops if they are not cleaned up immediately. Use a cloth or paper towel to soak up any spills and and wipe with a damp cloth to avoid leaving behind any sticky residue.

Avoid Harsh Cleaning Products Just as foods and beverages can have high levels of acidity, common household cleaners can contain acid or other chemicals that could potentially damage the finish of your granite countertops. A solution of mild dish soap and water will allow you to thoroughly clean your granite will protecting their lustrous shine.

Protect Your Countertops with a Sealant A great way to protect countertops from potential damage is to apply a sealant. A non-toxic sealer can keep granite countertops looking new. While sealer does not make your countertop stain-proof, it will give you more time to clean up spills before the granite will begin to stain. For optimum results, sealer should be re-applied very two to three years.

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What's the Ideal Kitchen Backsplash Height?

Some questions have no right or wrong answer, and this is one of those. That said, the wrong backsplash height can have a major impact on the usability of a kitchen.

Too high a backsplash can compromise cabinet space and make under-cabinet appliances difficult to use. Too low and the taller members of the household could find the available space too confining.

However, for something that can have such an adverse effect on the utility of a kitchen, little attention usually given to this design element. In the event of a kitchen remodel, the height of the backsplash often comes down to the height of the cabinets being replaced.

Some elements to consider: average height of the household, location and placement of both countertop and under-cabinet appliances, under-cabinet lighting, location of any concealed appliances and desired design aesthetic.

A good place to start when deliberating the merits of a given height is to start the 17-inch level, and adjust higher or lower from there as appropriate.

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Vision Kitchen and Bath Earns Coveted Angie's List Super Service Award

Award reflects businesses’ consistently high level of customer service.

Vision Kitchen and Bath has been awarded the prestigious 2011 Angie’s List Super Service Award, an honor bestowed annually on approximately 5 percent of all the businesses rated on the nation’s leading provider of consumer reviews on local service and health providers.

“Only a fraction of the businesses rated on Angie’s List can claim the sterling service record of being a Super Service Award winner because we set a high bar,” said Angie’s List Founder Angie Hicks. “The fact that Vision Kitchen and Bath can claim Super Service Award status speaks volumes about its dedication to consumers.”

Angie’s List Super Service Award winners have met strict eligibility requirements including earning a minimum number of reports, an exemplary rating from their clientsand abiding by Angie’s List operational guidelines.

Ratings are updated daily on Angie’s List, but members can find the 2011 Super Service Award logo next to business names in search results on AngiesList.com. 

Angie’s List collects consumer reviews on local contractors and doctors in more than 500 service categories. Currently, more than 2 million consumers across the U.S. rely on Angie’s List to help them make the best hiring decisions. Members get unlimited access to local ratings via Internet or phone, exclusive discounts, the Angie’s List magazine and help from the Angie’s List complaint resolution service. Take a quick tour of Angie’s List and view the latest Angie’s List news.