Apt Kitchen & Closet Installations Pty Ltd

There is a nervous system in your home that you almost never think about. It runs behind the plasterboard and through the ceiling void. It lives in the distribution board in the passage, behind a plastic cover you open perhaps twice a year. It terminates in the plug points you use without a thought, the light switches you press without looking, and the WiFi router you resent when it drops. It is the electrical and data infrastructure of your home. And in most South African houses, it is the most neglected, most undervalued, and most dangerously under-planned system in the building. I have written extensively about the hidden work in a renovation — the waterproofing beneath the tiles, the fall of the floor toward the drain, the void covers that conceal the pipes. All of it matters. But if there is a single part of the home that is more ignored than any of them, it is the wiring and the data cabling. Because unlike a leaking shower, a failing electrical system does not announce itself gr...

A practical guide for the woman who runs the household, holds down the job, raises the children — and would rather not pay someone R800 for a ten-minute job. --- I make my living doing this work. So you may reasonably ask why I would write a piece teaching you to do it yourself. The answer is simple. I would rather you trust me with the big things than resent me for the small ones. Because here is what I have seen, over and over, in homes across Johannesburg. A single mother — working full days, raising children, carrying every decision alone — calls a handyman for a job she could have completed in twenty minutes. Not because she lacks the ability. Because no one ever showed her. And because the fear of getting it wrong feels more expensive than the cost of a call-out. I understand that fear. It is the same fear I had as a young man, contemplating putting up a guardhouse at my sister's smallholding, but unable to work out how a spirit level was supposed to help me build straight. I...

There's a dimension to cabinet units — specifically kitchen units — that people usually don't come to grasp and explore. And that dimension is retrofitting. This came to mind as I was contemplating re-flighting the Kitchen Refurbishment blog last night. And I thought, it would be wise to flight this piece immediately after the re-flighting of that very first blog on the dashboard, because the two are, in essence, complementary. But you may be wondering what it is that I'm getting at. Well, just as it is possible to refurbish a kitchen, it is also possible to retrofit aspects of your kitchen. Let's say, for example, that when you bought your house, you didn't see the need for installing a new kitchen. But a while later, you realise that it would be convenient to have a spice unit in your kitchen. Retrofitting makes it possible for you to call in an installer, give him a brief on your requirements, and have him follow through and effect the changes or alterations req...

Many a potential client has asked me, "Why don't we have kitchens and closets done in solid wood or timber?" Or something along those lines. It is a fair question, and it deserves a proper answer. This piece is my attempt to explain why that is, and to walk you through the finer, nitty-gritty of the wood, timber, and board industry—the science of why solid timber is rarely the right choice for built-in cabinetry, and the economics of where all that timber actually goes. --- 1. The Problem with Solid Timber: Movement, Moisture, and the Science of Wood Wood is alive. Even after it has been felled, milled, kiln-dried, and planed into planks, it continues to respond to its environment. It is hygroscopic—it absorbs and releases moisture from the air. When humidity rises, the cells in the wood swell. When humidity falls, they shrink. This movement is not uniform. A plank of solid timber expands and contracts at different rates along its length, width, and thickness, depending o...