Keda Kitchen Project

Little House had a kitchen remodel in 2006, in which a house coordinator recommended Formica on walls to facilitate cleaning.  It worked, yet protecting Formica counter tops from water damage, with a sink that wont let water that splashes out flow back into the sink, requires the vigilance of all residents.  Over management resistance the BOD insisted on quartz counter-tops with a recessed-sink for Ekklessia House in 2010, as a longer term investment in easy cleaning. This proved durable despite issues with the sink installation leaking that residents later fixed.

Despite the lack of participation by Keda House residents in our cooperative, the disgusting condition of their kitchen repeatedly caught the BOD's notice when Management had to commit hours a couple years in a row to to restore sanitary conditions there.  Managers spent more time cleaning up messes at Keda than cleaning at any other house.  Repair needs were so severe that residents appeared to have given up on cleaning, they had the newest stove in the coop and yet complained because it looked like the oldest after a couple years.  Keda Kitchen had become MSC's problem, even if no Keda Member participated in Directors meetings to make it a priority. 

Keda got a fresh coordinator, Tim McDevitt, who attended BOD meetings, and articulated many requests for Keda Kitchen.  More of MSC's budget was reserved for projects due to efforts to reduce waste of MSC's limited funds on consumable items residents didn't request and to prefer efficient and durable purchases.  Our BOD determined to do the last necessary kitchen remodel right, and we had funds to do it.

The sustainability Chairman was willing to measure and model the whole Keda basement in 3D if necessary to get a good result. New cabinets were purposely to have no handles to make cleaning as easy as possible, and there is now at least one cabinet for every resident.  Without refrigerators in the repainted dinning room, it is more spacious.  Over the resistance of management, the sustainability chair insisted on 5" diameter ducts so that the right range extractor hood could clear even cooking oil aerosols from the room. The goal was to reduce cleaning required to maintain a nice kitchen used by many residents cooking with oil. 

Oil used to rapidly coat every surface in the room and repeatedly required MSC to annually commit paid Manager hours simply to restore Keda kitchen to a sanitary condition. It was hypothesized that poor kitchen design that ignored how residents use this kitchen, caused Keda to consume more cleaning supplies (specifically paper towels) than other houses and still fail to keep up with grime accumulation.  It was further hypothesized that if Keda residents had a nicer, and easy to clean kitchen they would not only choose to do so; they might have the surplus energy to contribute more to planning better conceived plans in the future.  Otherwise the planned second phase of this project will get forgotten because the residents of other houses that but many hours into Keda's kitchen, have desires for their own homes.

Unfortunately members from other houses couldn't anticipate all design needs without more than the Keda House coordinator participating.  We lost a cheep opportunity to insulate the bedroom above from kitchen noise. Without full cooperation of Keda House and the manager, the intended stainless steal counter tops (fully drafted and ready for bids) were not ordered and equally expensive (yet not commercial kitchen worthy) quartz counters were installed.  Thus water still drips off the counter onto the cabinet faces rather than tending to exclusively flow into the sink. Such minor details matter as water damage and oil accumulation --though much slower-- were apparent within a year. 

Without going into more exhaustive detail, this has been enough to illustrate how resident participation in planning impacts our quality of life.  We share our homes more intensely than a single family home would, and this warrants more intense architectural planning to coordinate room structure with combined resident needs.

This project demonstrated the impact Sustainability conscious planning has on results, and the consequences of people implementing projects in ways that violated the agreed plan. Examples of manager/contractor noncompliance were purchasing deep cabinets along the W wall that shrink the floor space of the kitchen with no benefit to residents, not opening up access on the West wall when an insulation crew was paid to seal all basement rim joists, installing cabinet hardware that comes loose and requires cleaning rather than routering handles out of the cabinet door wood, and until residents busted out the wall intending to not open up the kitchen space to create the path around the central island. Maximizing cabinet space and opening up pathways for more residents to navigate the kitchen at once transformed the kitchen experience.

Sustainability committee translated the motivations of active members to reduce environmental impacts into free design plans, analysis, and rigorous calculations that result in a far better kitchen environment that Keda residents would otherwise received. 

New refrigerators proposed by sustainability committee all paid for themselves. Although Keda residents have since complained about the inadequate performance of the manager's bad range hood choice, the new ducts are more than adequate for the right hood to capture oils and odors. The volume and velocity of exhaust is greater.  Sealing rim joists to keep out cold winter air has completely offset that intentionally larger hole in the wall. This in-spite of neither the manager nor residents cooperating with the request to make rim joists accessible on the W wall of Keda Kitchen.