Le Tour Milestone !

Ey up my faithful blogworms, we are less than a month away from the biggest thing to hit our wonderful county of Yorkshire  ......... I, of course, refer to :

Le Grand Depart ..... Le Tour Yorkshire, the beginning of this years Tour de France

Starting in Leeds City Centre and roaming around our beautiful county over the weekend of 5 - 6 th July

For all you fanatic bikelists, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see this massive event in our local area.

If you've looked at our website: www.milestone.uk.net  lately then you'll know that we are based smack on the Le Tour route, the main A65 through town, and the cavalcade and competitors are due to pass our very door front from about 10.30 am onwards on Saturday 5th July.

We will, of course, be open on the Saturday and would like to invite you, our faithful blogworms, to join us on the day for a fantastic vantage point of this spectacular event. 

We have created a very special range of Le Tour Milestone kitchen units which will be showing off in our showroom window very shortly, ....... watch this space !!

We will be offering light snacks, teas, coffees throughout the day with a warm dry viewing point if the weathers not so good, a place to sit down for a bit and toilet facilities at your disposal.

All we ask in return for this invitation and to book your space, is that you give us a donation to our favourite charity " Guide dogs for the Disabled" via a box in the showroom. It's up to you how much !.

Places will be limited so do let us know via our email: julian@milestone.uk.net if you would like a place just so we can keep a check of numbers.

Hoping to see you on the big day !! ..... Jules

Top Tips to change the way you think

Ey up, my faithful blogworms, 

It's TOP TIPS time again.

3 sets of top tips this week following conversations I've been having with our customers over the last few weeks. You can choose to use or completely ignore these tips but I would say that 90% of people we talk to have used and loved the results achieved.

# First Top Tip

When planning any room that involves fitted furniture ie: kitchens, bedrooms and sometimes bathrooms, sticking to 3 colours ( one of which can be your metals if you want ) for the entire concept gives a feel of coherency and completeness without getting visually messy. The furniture should be the feature of the room and chosen well, use the colours to complement it not shout at it !

You can, however, for one of your colours, use differing shades of the that colour and if chosen carefully, it can work well.

 If you start using more than 3 colours, when you walk into the room you really don't know what to look at first, your eyes are all over the place and the room totally loses it's focus. This destroys any wow factor you may have created and just makes the room a place you want to get out of quickly and not a place you'd enjoy being.

FORGET feature walls ! these are a stupid idea in a kitchen !  The kitchen should be the feature and anything that detracts from that is a pointless waste of time and effort.

# Top Tip 2

When using built in furniture that has countertops, worksurfaces etc use a principle of blending verticals and blending horizontals to create harmony.

Choose your furniture first in terms of cabinets and tops putting some contrast in between the two, these are your priority. Using your chosen worktop colour then blend the floor covering with it. I use the word blend deliberately as they don't have to match but need a tangible link to pull them together.
Once you've sorted that, then using the blending theory, apply it to the vertical surfaces. These two principles together give a good platform to base everything else on. Certainly kitchens where these apply look much, much better in their overall look and just look right.

If you've ever looked at someones kitchen where they've got this wrong, the kitchen probably looks nice but something in your mind is telling you that somethings wrong even if you can't put your finger on it. This is why !

For example: where the floor is a similar colour or tone to the doors, it looks like the units have sort of frayed into the floor and it becomes indistinct and vague, this can look weird and is the bit that's not right, particularly if there are dark worktops accentuating the problem.

So, blend verticals with each other and blend horizontals with each other and irrespective of your colour choices, usually it looks spot on.

# Top Tip 3

This one is where wall colour can make a room really feel like a nice place to be, I suppose that's stating the obvious but consider a twist !

To really give the room a cosy feel, ignore most peoples conditioning where you always paint the ceiling white ! White ceilings are for people with no courage and imagination !! ( unless, of course, you're painting the whole room white anyway ! )

This works best where you are decorating with pale to mid colours and paint the walls and the ceiling with the same colour !  
Trust me ...... with the right colours this looks absolutely stunning and really makes the room feel cosy, warm and a nice place to be ! 

90% or more of people we've suggested this to have done and love it and admitted that it's something they would never have thought of trying.

You've got nothing to lose cos if you don't like it, repaint it white but at least be brave enough to try it first.


There ya go 3 top tips that always work, experiment, open your mind, follow these simple principles and you will be surprised at the difference it makes to your life.

And I pass all these tips on for free ..... I must be mad !

Jules, see ya next time.

Trumpet blowing is thirsty work !

Ey up my faithful blogworms, 

Big week coming up for us this week, the H & M Head office kitchen is ready to deliver. H & M are one of the most eco conscious companies we've come across and really do get our full support. If you're not currently an H & M customer, you really should look at what they can offer !!

This is quite a big kitchen and they're materials / appliances choices have been made sensibly and sympathetically to eco issues. 

Our strength in projects of this type lies in our ability to put together the full project as a "one stop shop" and by careful communication with the customers specifiers, we can ensure that no parts are missed, everything arrives as planned and we make absolutely certain by careful checking that every single piece required from us arrives in one go, complete and has all the detailed plans with it that you need to assemble the project successfully.

More often than not, the customers own contractors are doing the installation work so, when the job is delivered I carry a full set of plans with me, wherever I am and give the project manager my own mobile number so I can answer any questions that may arise immediately.

On this particular project there are also 2 coffee stations required with a request for quick throughput commercial glass and dishwashers, which aren't the prettiest things to have on display in a stylish office environment but are needed for fast turn round of plates, cups & glasses between meetings.

By careful and thorough design, we have been able to design housings / cabinets around them to incorporate them seamlessly into the overall layout and by providing the detailed sketches ( seen left ) that we designed them to, then any contractor should be able to build them exactly as they were designed.

Projects like this for company head offices need to tick so many more boxes than normal domestic kitchens, they are often quite involved in their design and clever design brought about by thinking outside the box is what we're bloody good at. These are the things that we can really get our teeth into and provide solutions not normally available using standard kitchen units.

I did a blog a bit since that put definition to our way of doing " bespoke" and the way we look at it, this project is a really good example of that level of thinking.

It doesn't matter whether you're looking for a large corporate project or a well fitting kitchen for your home. Everyone gets the same level of committment from the work we do and the best quality at the best price. If you read my blog last week, you'll know that poor quality, badly thought out really winds me up. There's only one way to do a job ..... and that's correctly !!

We've always said ..... " the answer's Yes ! ..... now what's the question.  If you want it and can imagine it, we can make it, ... no exceptions !

Phew .... Blowing your own trumpet is thirsty work, I'm off to make a cup of tea. We'll talk soon, I'm sure. You know where we are ..... Don't be shy.

Jules.

Caveat Emptor (with a back up plan)

Ey up, my faithful blogworms, really busy at the moment and struggling to keep pace with all my computer stuff but this weeks blog is a cautionary tale for all you purchasers of new homes and apartments in converted old buildings.

Stating the screamingly obvious, you wouldn't employ an accountant to fix your roof any more than you would employ a tree feller to decorate your house !!

This becomes important when looking at new builds where builders have fitted your kitchen, builders build they don't fit kitchens ..... or they do .... but not well.

I must stress that not all builders are like this, but the frequency with which we see this is on the increase as corners are cut in the current economic climate and the only people who lose out are you, the house buying public.

It's been our experience this last two weeks where , what should have been a simple refurb of a fairly new kitchen in a old converted building, has turned into a fault finding excercise putting things right that shouldn't have been done wrong in the first place.

This makes our job more difficult, take longer and as a result, cost more than it should.

Examples:

1) A badly butchered sink base where the corner structure had been cut away and not reshaped to put the strength back leading to a wobbly cabinet, which wasn't fastened the wall anywhere making the problem worse.

2) Where the sink base had been cut round some soil pipe boxing in the corner all the fibre glass insulation they'd used to lag the soil pipe was falling into the sink base .... nice ! ... that makes your rubber gloves itchy when you put them on to wash up !

3) Washing machine and dishwasher waste pipes laid on the floor and taken up into the sink waste without the correct uphill loop of pipe that makes the pump work properly  .....shortening the life of your appliances.

3) The old favourite ..... this is a kitchen .... you need as many electrical sockets as possible, for all your small appliances, it gets very irritating when you've got to unplug the toaster to put the kettle on !, as usual this installation was sadly lacking.

4) The wall boiler has a wall cabinet around it where so much of the structure was cut away that you might aswell have just stuck a kitchen unit door directly onto the boiler with magnets. ....  design it better to have a wider cabinet, you muppet !

5) An outside tap was fitted to use a hose pipe outside, nice touch you'd think but not good when it doesn't have an isolator fitted to it so you can turn it off in winter ..... that'll be an insurance claim for frozen / burst pipes then ??

6) Fitting new doors to the fridge / freezer housing was a giggle, on most fridge / freezer units there is a natural gap down the hinge side to allow the doors to work properly but when the gap we found was 24mm at the top, tapering down to 18mm at the bottom, then it appears the original fitter couldn't read a tape measure either ! This has pushed the housing out of square, no wonder the doors looked wrong when we got there causing an extra 2 or 3 hours to straighten it all back out again.

7) And the one that always upsets me when I see it ..... not only were the cabinets not fastened to the wall but the worktops weren't fastened to the cabinets either ..... this is stupid ! pure laziness, bad practice and if any fitter we employed fitted kitchens this way, I'd sack him on the spot !!!!!  The rigidity of any kitchen ( and it's longevity ) is totally dependant on everything being fastened to the walls and units fastened together .... if not it's doors drop, cabinets twist, go out of square and generally fall to bits long before they should. 

Please take more care when looking at your new dream home in case parts of it turn into a nightmare !

Open doors, look in, test things, poke and prod things until you're happy, this is your hard earned cash you're spending ! 

We are always willing to go out and do an 'MOT' on a kitchen if you feel something's not as it should be. 

So, help is at hand if you have any doubts at all .  Choose wisely, 'Caveat Emptor' (Buyer beware) .... all that glitters is not necessarily gold !

Your kitchen crusader, Jules.

Earth, Marble & Stone ( Milestone, of course! )

Ey up my faithful blogworms, sorry I've missed for a couple of weeks but we've been away working and last week away with our campervan for a bit of R &R. 

This week is all about Bathrooms and some surprising tit bits of info that you may not know for all our Eco minded followers 

 Below are some pics of a bathroom we've just finished creating. Natural materials very much the theme to be used and to make it as eco friendly as we could was our mission.

The brief was to use all natural marble for the walls and floors, create a false wall to enable us to put a bath one side and the shower at the other, use a high level flush w.c. with a 6 litre flush to save water and to install a free standing vanity unit for two people.

OK, the sharp eyed amongst you will probably have spotted something missing in the top left of the first picture .... we were waiting for the mirror to arrive when I took these photos. !! 

But even we've been surprised at the amount of eco boxes we could tick while putting this project together cos let's face it .... when looking at this style of bathroom .... eco is usually the last thing on your mind !.

Those of you who are familiar with the range will have spotted Fired Earths involvement here with the bath, the vanity unit, the framed mirror and the shower door all being of their supply. Fired Earth have surprised me with their current Eco thinking with regard to their materials sourcing and are much more eco friendly than I realised. I really feel that in these environmentally conscious times they ought to shout more about this. As you would expect from the brand we found the quality to be superb of the items they produce. The shower door, for example, is probably one of the best I've ever fitted ! fiddly to set up but perfect when done.


The marble for the floors and walls was from a great importer in Tockwith, ( in the York area ) Terzetto, and they supplied us superb Marmorex adhesives and grouts that are all eco friendly in the formulation, contain none of the toxic nasties usually found in these items, very low VOC content and have a high recycled content in their mixes. 

Not only that but the results using them were very good indeed ... a big up to Marmorex called for I think !

The stud wall between the bath and shower was built using FSC sourced timber products with recesses both shower and bath sides to stand your usual array of bathroom products on / in to keep them to hand when needed. Funny, isn't it, there's never anywhere to put your soap !!


The purpose of the doors in the end of the wall are to give access to isolation valves for the shower unit and bath taps ( something which I find are woefully lacking in most bathrooms ) and to allow us to place the wiring for the LED lights that illuminate the recesses in the walls. The lights that you see in the flyshelf over the vanity unit are the new low energy Led COBB lights I mentioned in an earlier blog and as you can see provide a fantastic light right in front of you when using the mirror .... the perfect lighting set up !

Another bonus is the extra storage space they give for things you don't necessarily want on show in your bathroom. ( see pics below )
 
Something were particularly pleased with is that every single piece of kit that water comes out of has it's own isolator, so all the items can be switched off individually should problems occur, without affecting the rest of the bathroom.


I even made the little boat sat in the recess (bathside) out of bits of the crate the tiles came in, I've recycled the pallet that the bath arrived on into staging in my wifes greenhouse at home and made the doors & the frame for them in the false wall out of recycling the skirting boards that we took off when stripping the room down initially.



It just goes to show that even the most glamorous bathrooms can be pretty Eco friendly if you have the will to do it and a little bit of creative thinking. 

Do check out people like Fired Earth, Terzetto and Marmorex and view them in a new " green " light, they're trying more to work the rest of us now and take climate change a lot more seriously !!

As ever, Jules

Full set of pics here

http://www.pinterest.com/milestone01/earth-marble-and-stone-milestone-bathroom/

 

Drinks, Memories & Campervans

Ey up my faithful blogworms, more this week about how you can recycle discarded or broken everyday items into something unique, fabulous & functional.

It was William Morris who said " Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful ! " I couldn't have put it better myself, function should definitely come before form but there's no reason why it can't look fantastic too if designed right.

The two items I'm showing you today, made by my own hand, in my shed ( where all the best things are made ! ) tick all the form and function boxes you would ever wish to, but are made completely by recycling other stuff. That's what I think Morris would have added today !.

I know this has nothing to do with eco kitchens but it sort of does really, it's to do with our kitchen in our campervan which, itself, I made from recycling oak floorboards.

We've decided to start a sort of 'tradition' of our own when going out in the campervan with our good friends in theirs.

Arrive at site, set up the awning, get unpacked, have a drink. That's the sequence. That's where these fab little boxes come in. I've made us one each, ours has a picture of Pandora, our bus on it, and theirs has a picture of Poppy, their bus, on it.

Ours is made entirely from recycling a wooden framed swing / hammock that my mum had & enjoyed right up untill she passed away a few years ago. So it great for us to think the a little piece of my mums memory goes with us on every trip we make. It holds 2 Gin & Tonics, perfect for us and we've got other spirit miniatures for our kids to take with them when they, in turn, take their kids away for a campervan trip.

The second box took a whole load more making than ours as the design challenges were more difficult. It's for our really good friends, Tracy & John from Liberty Campers , a camper hire company based here in Ilkley, it holds two beers and is made in the colours of their bus 'Poppy' who's red with a white roof.

Modelled on a Westfalia pop top roof, it's the only "Westfakia Pop Top Beerbox" in existence, made from recycled plywood, recycled mdf and recycled curtain linings for the pop top fabric.

Using a small hydraulic piston, the pop top opens automatically when you undo the catch and you just lift out you bottles of beer. The fabric lower edges are on Velcro so they can be released to clean out the box if necessary and to let you replace the piston if it ever stops working. 


Completed by the addition of a picture of 'Poppy' on the lid & the number plate on the front, should Tracy & John ever sell Poppy ( god forbid ) the box could be repainted with a new pic on the lid and it's ready to go with a new bus. !! Simples.

Well, there ya go, isn't recycling wonderful, a few bits of discarded material, a bit of lateral thinking and a whole new campervanning accessory is born. 



A positive heirloom that can be passed down the generations of future guardians of our wonderful vehicles !!

See ya next time, Jules

On your bike & mind the local sheep !

Ey up my faithful blogworms, You can't have helped notice that "Le Tour Yorkshire", the Yorkshire leg of the Tour De France has been in the news recently as the 100 days countdown has started

As you will see from the map, the Tour hits Ilkley on the Saturday 5th July and goes straight past our showroom front window on the main A65 trunk road.

Le Tour is the biggest major event to hit Ilkley in " I don't know how long". Certainly nothing this big in my living memory and I'll lived around here all my life.

Ilkley is one of the Tour 'hubs' so everything you could want to see will be going on in and around town, that's going to make it murder to move around by car for the whole weekend but then one of the purposes is to promote people moving around by bike or on foot as it's better for you anyway!!


As we're slap bang on the main road, we will be open all day on the Saturday and are welcoming our valued existing customers to join us in the showroom for the perfect vantage point. We will have unlimited free tea and coffee on all day, toilet facilities, and a place to shelter & sit down if the weather's inclement and you want to rest your weary legs.

We are also proposing to have small commemorative "Recycled Roadstone Plaques" to celebrate the event available for sale both before and on the day for a reasonable cost. Numbers of these will be limited so fans of the plaques, this is a one off opportunity, so don't miss out !!

(More details of size, format and cost of  these in the near future)

If you want to book a 'Roadstone Plaque' before the event, do let me know and we can make sure you get one. In fact, if you want to take advantage of our viewing point, it would be good if you let me know anyway as we only have so much space and if we can limit the numbers then we'll all have enough space to enjoy the day without getting squashed. Unlike our local sheep !!


You can contact me through our website or on: julian@milestone.uk.net to book your place at, probably, the only venue on the day where it costs you nowt to be here and not be crushed in the crowds !!

Supporting Le Tour and helping our valued customers enjoy it .... What a Public Service from those extremely nice people at Milestone Design !!

Your interests at heart ..... Jules 

"Which" Pan

Ey up my faithful blogworms, my apologies for leaving you with nothing to read last week but eco duty called down in sunny Essex so I didn't get chance to spout forth words of wisdom last week. Hopefully this weeks will make up for it

I bring you further news from a cast of thousands, can you see what I did there ??

Following on from last weeks dipping into all things iron, I felt I should elaborate a bit more on our fabulous deal with these brilliant products.

Every one who takes advantage of our "Try before you Buy " scheme will be asked to fill in their own personal test report .... don't worry ... it's not "War & Peace", just a few simple questions with even simpler answers about how you feel the pans perform with your style of cooking. Your version of a "Which" report , if you like. By the way .... the Tagine ( pictured left ) is brilliant and very effecient.... we know, cos we've tried it !

Just simply for filling this in and returning it, we will offer you a 10% discount of your first purchase ( 3 item limit ) as a thank for your honest opinions and feedback. This will be a big help in further developments of new and existing products

If you get your first pans as a freebie with your new kitchen purchase from us then we'll still give you a chance to fill in the report with the same 10% discount off further ironware purchases.

There's so much more in the range than just pans, you know, it's worth checking out the full range either by coming in to see us or looking on Nethertons website:   http://www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

Just a short one this week, hope you all don't mind, testing has started already so we thought it important to let you about it and how we can work together to help new developments

" Th ... Th ... Th .. That's all folks !!  ( It's a cartoon thing ! if you're old enought to remember ? )

Jules

'Pan Handling' Done the Milestone way !

 Ey up my faithful Blogworms, this week is all about traditionally made, eco friendly, British produced, outstanding cookware

In this day and age where the words 'modern' and 'progress' nearly always refer to something electronic & technical, it's nice to see products coming onto the market where neither of those words apply.

Those who know me, know that my favourite phrase is 'Roman Engineering' keep it simple, solid, good quality, reliable and with very little to go wrong. The Romans achieved this phenomenally well with few tools and a great creative way of thinking.

This really does apply to this fantastic range of pans and cookware we've taken on to complement our eco kitchen ranges.


How can a pan be "Eco Friendly" I hear you ask..... well, these pans are from wonderful people at Netherton Foundries in Shropshire, the birthplace of our industrial revolution and heartland of our iron foundry work. They are manufactured using traditional techniques, (think Roman Engineering !) all the materials are sourced locally even down to the locally grown Flax oil used to season the pans and the Oak used for the handles. There are no toxic nasties included in the process of iron work itself and manufactured using more environmentally controlled plant and equipment.


Netherton themselves quote the following as a company ethos:


 Reduce the wasteful shipping of materials around the globe.

 Develop local supply partners and use sustainable materials.

 Use finishes and materials that can be restored and even improve with age.

 Be easily repaired with simple tools.  We will ensure spare parts are available.

 Be packed in readily recyclable packaging, which ensures the product arrives fit  for use.

We've talked at length to the enthusiastic and creative people at Netherton and we are going to be dealing with their product range through our showroom as we feel their products and ours will gel together beautifully.

But, you all know me by now .... there's a twist !!

We are going to pioneer a "Try before you Buy " system. These are damn good, well made, quality items of cookware but we know that different people cook in different ways so we're going to let you:

 Take a pan away for a few days,

Cook in it, 

See how you like, 

Clean it and bring it back, ( emphasis on the'clean it' )

Before you decide whether to purchase. Which we're pretty confident you will, if you're serious about your pans !!

So, Come on down !!, .... leave  us a deposit, take your pan away and have a go ! ... You've nothing to lose by trying something that just might change the way you cook forever !!  Bring the pan back for the next cooks to have a go and get your deposit back.

Oops ! nearly forgot, ..... there's a second twist ?  Every Eco Kitchen purchased from us between now and the end of July, will receive 2 of these remarkable pans totally free of charge with our compliments. Choose any 2 from a selection of 7 pans.

Pan Handling done the Milestone way is a much better way !!

Always looking for ways to improve our lives.

Jules

Having a smashing time !

Ey up my faithful blogworms, Having a smashing time this week, wish you were here !

Have you ever wished you could take out your frustrations with life by deliberately smashing hundreds of glass bottles ?

Well that's exactly what's involved with the fabulous worktop products I want to show you this week.

100% recycled glass worktops & splashbacks

If you're of an eco persausion ( as I trust all my blogworms are ! ) you may have seen many recycled glass products out there but the examples shown here are probably the only true contenders.

The wonderful people who run this business quite literally get hundreds, if not thousands, of waste glass bottles and smash them all to bits themselves. Give me a hammer !!

The particles are then all graded for size, in a machine of their own invention, from 5mm upto 20mm sizes. This enables different looks and textures to be created. Plain coloured panels and panels with a mix of colours can then be produced.

The next step is the really clever bit and the bit that makes these products stand out above all others. The particles are poured into moulds and placed in a kiln to fuse everything together. Unlike most other recycled glass worktops etc, these have nothing added to the mix .... it's pure glass !!. 

Many other companies add resins which is environmentally nasty and quite frankly .... cheating ! but not these.

There is some very complicated technical witchcraft takes place in the kilns through a complex series of timed temperature climbs and falls which take the glass through chemical changes to get the end result. I don't pretend to understand most if it but they clearly do !

What you end up with is a fantastically solid glass material which is a durable as granite and doesn't suffer from the scratches that lets most other glass products down. With it being glass it can also be used to fabulous effect by lighting behind it as shown by the splashback opposite ... Wow factor of what ??

It's perfect for worktops, splashbacks, tiles, etc and even, as you can see in the pic, many small custom items of furniture. The wonderful people who make this are also just as open minded as we are to looking at creating anything you may have in mind. All you need do is ask and they'll have a go !

As you know, from previous blogs, we have been dealing with another environmentally 'switched on' company .... H & M Retail Stores by supplying all their in-store staff kitchens, well.. ... we've just got the order for their kitchen and drinks stations in their head office in London and they have chosen this very recycled glass in pure white for the worktops in their main kitchen, we're really looking forward to doing it and seeing, what will be, the stunning results

Contact us for more details and samples, we know you'll be impressed with what you see.

Onward & upward. Jules