Apt Kitchen & Closet Installations Pty Ltd

Many a time, a prospective client has looked at me askance after asking if I was a carpenter, and I responded, "No, I'm not a carpenter." The thing is, there's a common assumption that a person who works with or installs cabinets is, at the very least, a carpenter or a joinery professional. And so, it's hardly a surprise that when one answers no, the response from the questioner is surprise — and sometimes, a flicker of doubt. I understand that surprise. For generations, the making and fitting of cabinets was the work of carpenters and joiners. That was the old world. But the world changed, quietly and completely, and the evidence of that change is all around us — in the melamine boards that line our kitchens, in the cutlists that guide our installations, and in the very role of the person who now arrives at your home to fit your cabinets. Today, that person is far more likely to be an installer. Not a carpenter. Not a joiner. An installer. This shift is not a ref...

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...

The Tshwane Rehabilitation Hospital project was both similar to and different from the Leratong Hospital project. For starters, the Tshwane brief did not include the installation of fire doors. That particular discipline — the exacting measurement, the custom fabrication, the intumescent seals — was absent from this scope. Nonetheless, this project was, in overall scope, larger than Leratong . Beyond the customary Nurse's Station, there were several in-ward doctor and consultation rooms that had to be furnished, along with patient wardrobes and bathrooms. The Nurse's Station itself was awkwardly shaped — a configuration that did not lend itself easily to standard cabinetry. It resisted straight lines and predictable angles. But we managed to install it anyway, adapting the design to the space rather than forcing the space to conform to the design. As such, most of the modifications and adjustments had to be done on site. That, in its own quiet way, is the essence of installati...

An earlier blog explored in detail why your kitchen is rarely built in solid wood but, melamine. In this blog, we will examine the material mentioned in that earlier piece as the perfect replacement for solid wood in the cabinetry industry: melamine. We will explore the developments that preceded the emergence of this versatile resource and how, over the years, it has woven itself into our kitchens and other intimate spaces, to claim its place as the quiet workhorse of the modern home. It is a story worth telling — because the material that lines our cabinets, holds our plates, and frames our daily rituals is not a noble timber harvested from some ancient forest. It is, in large part, sawdust. Offcuts. Wood fibre that the timber industry would otherwise have discarded. And yet, engineered into melamine-faced board, it has become the single most important material in the built-in cabinet industry. How did this happen? How did a composite of wood particles and synthetic resin — faced wi...

There is a quiet assumption in most South African homes: a kitchen is one colour. The doors match the drawers. The island matches the perimeter. The pantry matches the scullery. It is safe, coherent, and, frankly, a little timid. But look at the most memorable kitchens you have ever seen — the ones that stopped you mid-scroll or made you linger at a friend's braai. They were probably not one colour. They were likely a composition. A soft white up top, a deep green below, an oak island in between, and a black accent here or there. That is not chaos. That is design with a point of view. And yet, in all my years as an accidental renovator — from Mario Lacueva's apartment fifteen years ago, to the corporate kitchens at Kapele Freight in Isando and Sunrise Logistics in Chloorkop, to the government wards at Leratong Hospital — I can count on one hand the clients who have actively pursued this point of view. In fact, in my professional design career, with the exclusion of Sis' ...

As the working week draws to a close and the weekend stretches out before us, there is something fitting about sitting back and considering the surfaces that surround us all week long. We touch them when we make coffee, open a drawer, prepare a meal, or sit through a boardroom presentation. They are the boards of our kitchens, our offices, our hospitals, and our schools. And most of us chose them, or inherited them, based on one question only: "Do I like how it looks?" That is not a bad question. It is a human one. But it is also an incomplete one. I have stood in a client's kitchen, looking at a beautiful high-gloss white cabinet door, and heard the owner say, "I loved it the day it was installed. Now, with two young children, I spend my life wiping fingerprints and buffing out scratches." And I have stood in a school office, looking at a plain, unremarkable woodgrain desktop, and realised it had outlasted a dozen more glamorous finishes because it was specifie...