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Bradco has recently been named one of the ‘Top 50 Kitchen Design Blogs’ by Kitchen Improved! Out of the 50 design blogs chosen, Bradco was listed as the fourth. It is a great honor to be distinguished amongst other great kitchen design blogs for their work in home improvement. To see the entire list of the ‘Top 50 Kitchen Design Blogs’, click here. We will keep striving to bring you the best content regarding home design and decor, while staying true to our green roots.
]]>The kitchen area is a vital part of anyone’s home, so why not make it immaculate with a kitchen redesign. If you spend plenty of your time in the kitchen cooking for yourself and others, you should have the best products on the market. Now you can have your dream kitchen redesign in Los Angeles for a price you cannot refuse.
There are a few deals you can choose from for your kitchen redesign in Los Angeles: Purchase a qualifying 30″ professional range, and select between six Emerald dishwaters for only $499; Buy a Thermador 36″ or 48″ Pro Range OR Double or Combination Wall Oven and any Cooktop and get a free Emerald Dishwater. You can choose to upgrade to an ultimate Sapphire Dishwater for only $500 more for a Sapphire Touch Dishwasher $750; Buy a Refrigerator, get a free Hood; or a Bonus deal when you purchase a built-in cooking package PLUS Steam Oven or 48″ Pro Grand Steam Range and receive a FREE Sapphire Dishwasher, step up to a Sapphire Touch Dishwasher for only $250.
All these offers can be combined with our amazing ‘No Tax in April Special‘ on your new kitchen and silestone countertop! Who doesn’t like saving money in Los Angeles?
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Bradco owns and operates a Maquiladora in Tijuana, Mexico, a production facility under the umbrella of the NAFTA agreement. The BRADCO Maquiladora is an AMERICAN production facility operating in Mexico. The idea behind NAFTA is to create labor jobs in Mexico so that Mexican people don’t have to cross the border to work illegally in America.
Sawdust is recycled to be used as mulchs at the Jose Maria Morelo Park in Tijuana, Mexico.
Our cabinet factory is well equipped but it is not fully automated; instead of relying on everything to be done by machinery, we also rely on hand labor. This allows us to be extremely custom oriented, reducing the amount of pollution into the environment while still being very competitive.
All the boxes are built with Purebond plywood, manufactured by Columbia Forest Plywood. What this means is that they contain no added UREA formaldehyde. As you may know UREA formaldehyde is a carcinogen, a toxin that is definitely not environmentally friendly and can also be harmful to those that breathe in the off gassing from cabinets made of this product. See the Purebond website for more information on the plywood that we use.
Spaghetti Measuring Tool
The stains, colors and glue that Bradco uses on their cabinets are also low VOC or ZERO VOC (Volatile Organic Compound); VOC also emits off gassing into the environment which is hazardous. We try and recycle as much by-product as possible. The sawdust that we generate gets donated to the city; they use it for mulch in public parks. We also recycle any leftover solid wood to make promotional products.
Bradco’s custom cabinets are UREA formaldehyde free and also available FSC certified. When remodeling your home, invest not only in quality work, but also in something that won’t harm your health as well as the environment. Learn more information on our production facility below.
Why do finishes sometimes turn out ugly?
Fine wood finishes require not only a systematic process and precise recipe, but also a level of artistry. Accomplishing such a finish additionally requires proper and absolutely necessary wood surface preparation. Ugly finishes typically result when shortcuts omit some aspects of this in an attempt to reduce costs, increase efficiency, or both.
Splotchy finish resulting from inadequate wood surface preparation
Wood is a remarkable material. Due to it’s organic structure, it has all kinds of avenues for a stain or dye to penetrate, including pores, vessel elements or vascular tracheids (depending on whether the species is of the hardwood or softwood group), and various types of wood cells. It is the penetration of the stain, sealing coat, and subsequent top coats into these structures that gives the finished product its appearance of depth. Generally speaking, these openings tend to be oriented in the direction of the grain, allowing stains or dyes to penetrate in a somewhat naturally controlled manner. However, when these openings are concentrated and oriented towards the surface, things start to get a little tricky. This most frequently occurs in the presence of figure, including wavy grain, curly grain, mottled grain, or grain deviation in proximity to knots. When this happens, the openings of the vessels, pores, and cells effectively form a pipeline for stain to penetrate deeper and less consistently. It is important to remember here that wood without figure is the exception – not the rule.
All the above are serious considerations in dealing with any decorative wood component, including solid doors, face frames, or anywhere solid wood is used, and they also apply when decorative panel products, or hardwood plywood, are used.
Barber Pole Effect
Faces for hardwood and decorative softwood plywood also present unique challenges. They are thinly cut either on a lathe (rotary cut) or a slicer (plain sliced, quarter sliced) and spliced together side to side to create a 48″ width. The most common form of pairing veneers from a given log is book matching, which requires turning over every other leaf of veneer to provide a flowing mirror image at the veneer joints. The downside of this practice is that the tight side of the veneer has different absorption attributes than does the loose side. (See Volume 2, Finishing Challenge: The Barber Pole Effect).
In addition to natural variation in wood, other factors that affect finish include insufficient or improper sanding, the nature of the substrate for hardwood plywood, ambient conditions, compatibility of stains, sealer coats, and topcoats, contamination of airlines in pneumatic systems, and many others.
Ok, so how do I get a fine finish in the face of all these challenges?
For purposes of this discussion, we will limit the topics to two concerns: finish preparation and stain color/sheen selection.
Sizing and Filling
In a by-gone era, finishing was done in a much different way than it is today. Generally speaking, today’s finishes are the result of a three or four, sometimes five-step process, including sanding, staining, sealing, sanding the sealer coat, and a top coat. For the most part, this creates an acceptable and often an exceptionally good finish. However, it’s those times when these methods produce a finish that is NOT acceptable that can be very frustrating, leaving the finisher to try to determine the cause. More often than not, that cause is determined to be the surface quality of the wood part being finished. Surprisingly, I actually agree with this finding, but probably not for the reasons you may think. Finish preparation, a process that is sometimes incomplete, is crucial to producing a fine final finish, and that is where we need to look more closely.
Way back when, finishing usually started with either a wash coat (or glue size) or a fill coat, depending on the porosity of the species. A wash coat consisted of a highly diluted sealer compatible with the topcoat that was to be applied. Glue size, a solution of glue and water, could also be used. After this coat was allowed to dry, the entire surface was sanded just prior to the application of a stain. The wash coat had two benefits: first, it would raise the loose fibers on the wood surface allowing them to be removed during preparatory sanding, and second, it would serve as a filler in those end grain regions and figured areas.Once it was sanded, the loose and tight regions of the wood surface would be effectively neutralized so that a stain could be applied more uniformly, and subsequent top coats would not penetrate more deeply into the loose areas of the wood.
Immediately after the wash coat was sanded, the first coat of finish (usually a pigment or stain) was applied, followed by alternately sanding and clear coating until the desired result was achieved.
For the more open grain species like oak or ash, a fill coat was applied at the beginning of the process. This can be best described as similar to a film of diluted putty that would dive into the pores and vessel elements so that after sanding, the surface was uniformly smooth. Following the sanding of the fill coat, stains and finishes were applied with sanding between each application of finish material.
These methods required some trial and error on scrap pieces to achieve the desired color, smoothness, and sheen, but the end result was a flawless and deeply beautiful finish.
Stain Color and Gloss Levels
Hardwood plywood may be produced utilizing a number of materials for the substrate, including veneer core (sometimes called plywood core), and the engineered cores such as particleboard and medium density fiberboard (MDF). I am often asked which core is best, and I always respond, “depends on the application.”
Medium Gloss Level
Where strength is an issue, veneer core has higher physical properties than particleboard or MDF. It has a very smooth surface and normally little thickness variation. However, it is a natural wood component, and as such some unavoidable attributes may show through the very thin decorative faces used today. Slight imperfections in the core surface, machine marks, and even the natural grain of the core may telegraph through the face and finish, particularly if the finish is a high gloss, or even worse if the finish is a high gloss over a dark stain. This finish virtually serves as a magnifying glass to highlight even the most subtle attributes of the core. Again, surface preparation is the key, along with selecting a satin or medium gloss top coat over a light color stain.
Particleboard and MDF may be a better choice in high exposure applications where strength is not so much an issue. Both have a very smooth surface, uniform thickness, and respectable physical properties. This makes them well suited for most finishes. However, even with particleboard and MDF, very dark stains coupled with a high gloss may and often exacerbate even the smallest imperfection in the core or face that may be present due simply to the very nature of wood as a raw material. More often than not, these imperfections defy detection until such finish is applied.
In closing…
A beautiful finish on a piece of fine furniture, millwork, or cabinetry is a marvel to behold. With the proper surface preparation, substrate selection, finishing materials, and finish application methods it is also achievable. The temptation to short cut any of these processes can and often produce less than satisfactory results and must be resisted whenever possible.
- Via the newsletter from our friends at Columbia Forest Products.
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Bradco Kitchens and Baths is teaming up with Habitat for Humanity for a good cause. It’s a project called ReStore that’s focused in the Los Angeles area and provides local communities with low-cost improvement materials for buildings and homes.
By compiling new, used, discontinued, or surplus materials, ReStore sells these donated items at reduced prices to the public. Proceeds made support Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles’ commitment to building and remodeling homes in collaboration with low-income families and individuals.
If you are wondering how these items are picked up, trucks are sent out daily to pick up resources you want to donate. You can arrange it by calling 866-SHOP-HFH, and all of your donations are tax-deductible.
To see what materials are accepted and more information on the Habitat ReStore project, click here: QScan02172012_110004
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Many people like to be hands on with their home improvement. The general consensus is that when you do it yourself, you save money. While in certain situations this can be true, in most you may be losing money in the long run. If you aren’t certain whether you can do home improvement properly, you should hire a professional. Taking shortcuts can result in many problems down the road.
Here are some examples of situations where you would want to hire a professional:
Tiles – Tiles require correct underlayment, subfloor, and suitable subcountertop to install. The tile quantities that one needs for a job depend on the tile layout. Many DIY enthusiasts miscalculate quantitys and leftovers cannot always be returned.
Cabinets – These might look easy to install, but there are a lot details involved. Cabinets need to be leveled so future counters can be leveled. All these require specific tools that makes this project very expensive. Wall cabinets need to be securely and properly installed to assure that they will stay on the wall once loaded up with heavy plates.
Plumbing – There are many costs involved when pipes are starting to leak. A major hassle with plumbing is the soldering of pipes. This takes a lot of time, preparation, and equipment. If you don’t do it right, you are risking leaky pipes which create mold that is very bad for your health and very expensive to remove.
Electrical Work – You definitely want to hire a professional when working on electrical projects at home. If these aren’t completed the right way, the results can be life threatening.
This doesn’t mean you should bring in the handyman for some home improvement jobs. There are many you can do yourself. We actually encourage you to learn about your home and the proper maintenance it requires. Knowing how to do it yourself is a great quality to have. There are many simple projects you can work on. Some possible DIY projects would be the demolition of existing cabinets (although dumping fees are still expensive), repurposing your garage, installing light fixtures, adding final decorative touches (ie: painting).
Being hands on with your home is great, but know when to call someone in. Save yourself long term money, time, research, and the inevitable headache. Hire someone you trust. Of course, you can always call Bradco. Bradco does not perform any contracting service, since it is a retail store. ONLY B&R Construction performs contracting work.
For more ideas on home improvements or help, contact Bradco Kitchens and Baths at:
Bradco Kitchens & Baths
6011 West Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90035
Phone: 323.936.3457
Fax: 323.939.9354
Toll Free: 866 4 Bradco ( 272326 )
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Recently, the New York Times ran an article about how big businesses are reaping big returns from renewable energy products. The idea behind this is that present, huge “start up” incentives mixed with guaranteed returns in the future make for a win/win situation for any investor. That same incentive money is available for small businesses and homeowners. Few realize this, let alone take advantage of it. Let us break it down for you how it really pays to go green.
Keep Your Water Warm Without Paying Extra
Solar Water Heater
Every winter, it costs more and takes longer for your water to heat. The amount of energy it takes to keep that shower just the way you like it can make your bills sky rocket. Did you know that almost every state in America offers incentives for you to purchase a solar water heater? You can save up to 80% on purchasing one and let the sun take care of the rest. That’s right, you never have to worry about paying to heat your water again!
Switch Your Lights and Save
Retrofit your old bulbs for new LED or CFL lights and start saving every day. These can also qualify for rebates, especially if it’s for your business.
Energy Star Appliances
If you switch over to Energy Star appliances, you’re using less energy. That means lower energy bills! Regardless of where you live, if you do a little research, you will find that your local utility offers some sort of rebate or financial assistance with the purchasing and installing of new Energy Star appliances.
Seal The Deal With Proper Insulation
Faulty insulation can cause your home to leak up to half of your heating bill. How annoying is that? Don’t let your money seep out any longer. Most states and local utilities provide rebates and financing options to seal up your attics, replace your windows, and even plant shade trees to help with the summer heat once it comes around. Even if you’re a low-income resident, there are options for you. Most areas have large and comprehensive funding available so even if you’re low on cash, you can save in the long run by weatherizing your home for free (or close to it).
Geothermal Heating System
How a geothermal heating system works.
Lower your heating bill by installing a geothermal heating system and take advantage of the massive rebates that come with it. In addition to the initial rebates and incentives, most geothermal heating systems qualify for additional tax credits, deductions, or exemptions that make it even cheaper in the long run.
Energy Generation Projects = $$$
If you’re feeling tech-savvy, there are many incentives available to install and operate renewable energy generation projects. Not only are you saving money when using these, but you can also earn money through the electricity you generate that’s fed back into the electric grid. This is called a “feed-back” rate and it’s just another way to save money in addition to the typical tax exemptions, tax credits, and start up rebates that come with building a renewable energy project.
Stay In The Loop
There are all types of incentives available for all types of subjects. The best way to see what incentives you qualify for is to stay on top of it. Keep researching, keep saving. The most notable way is to use an incentive or energy rebate database. One of the best databases is EnergyGridIQ (EIQ), which can be accessed through the website: www.energygridiq.com or through their free iPhone/iPad App called WattRebate. You can find a comprehensive list of what funding is available in your area through this site. You can also post your projects and allow contractors to come to you. This all makes EIQ a must go-to for all energy related decisions. So get out there and start saving.
For more ideas on how to go green contact Bradco Kitchens and Baths at:
Bradco Kitchens & Baths
6011 West Pico Blvd.,
Los Angeles, CA 90035
Phone: 323.936.3457
Fax: 323.939.9354
Toll Free: 866 4 Bradco ( 272326 )
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When preparing food that is kosher, cleanliness and halting cross contamination of all meat and dairy products are essential. To implement these values into kitchen design, we focus on counterspace, appliances, and storage space elements. Implementing labels for separating stored food items such as dairy and meat are a great way to avoid confusion and help keep your kosher kitchen in tip top shape. Two sinks are recommended for a kosher kitchen however, if budget is an issue, there is also a budget friendly alternative. Double sinks are acceptable as opposed to two separate units. Stainless-steel sinks and steel or granite countertops are the recommended options for those who cannot have distinct discrete areas for meat and dairy.
Function and style do not have to suffer when you opt for stainless steel appliances for your kosher kitchen since they are ideal for cleaning up. Two of each appliance are the epitome of koshered options such as two ovens, two sinks, two dishwashers, etc. However, that is not always an option when you’re looking for a budget friendly selection. All appliances you will need for your kosher kitchen are all available from Bradco.
While there are different rabbinic opinions concerning countertop materials that have the ability to be kashered from milk to meat, vice versa or for passover, we can supply you with your desired countertop material, be it granite, composite stone, etc. Any and all countertops need to be thoroughly cleaned by boiling water in between all meat and dairy operations. No matter what your daily use is, keep in mind that cleanliness is fundamental in keeping kosher.
Often times an extra set of dishes, utensils, cookware, and serveware are kept in a kosher kitchen. These items tend to be used often because they are utilized when meat or dairy dishes are served. The storage of these extra items is vital and naturally, extra cabinets are necessary for the storage of these items. We can help you design seamless and beautiful storage options to maximize storage. There are a variety of options such as replacing standard shelves and drawers with modular wire shelves and baskets that could be configured in a variety of ways so that the available interior cabinet space is expanded and used to it’s full potential.
Of course, if there are any questions that arise during the design of kosher kitchens you should seek rabbinic guidance and after that feel free to contact us.
Bradco Kitchens & Baths
6011 West Pico Blvd.,
Los Angeles, CA 90035
Phone: (323) 936-3457
Fax: 323.939.9354
Green Cabinetry in the kitchen
Green cabinetry is on the rise and as the world strives to reduce it’s carbon footprint, it’s only going to get bigger. People are becoming more conscious of the environment every day. The great thing about green cabinetry is that it’s good for your health!
So what is it all about? When someone says they want green cabinetry, they are looking for cabinetry with the least toxic materials possible. The cabinetry should also be built from sustainable materials. It’s important to go through the process of FSC certification for your cabinetry especially if you’re trying to build a project that gets lead points (think points from government and tax incentives).
FSC stands for Forest Stewardship Council, and their mission is to promote the environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world’s forests through standards development and certification. This organization has been around since 1993 as a market-based conservation tool to promote responsible forestry. As a business, it’s especially important to have your products FSC certified because they fulfill corporate social and environmental responsibility goals when it comes to green cabinetry. It shows your support for responsible forest management in the eyes of customers, businesses and the public.
Purebond Plywood
Most non-green cabinets contain a very dangerous chemical: urea-formaldehyde, generally found in the glue or preservation of cabinets. The presence of urea-formaldehyde will seep harmful fumes into your household for years. Not only can it can cause runny eyes and nose, but it’s also been proven to cause cancer. This is why you want to buy cabinets compounded from urea formaldehyde-free plywood called PureBond from Colombia Plywood. This product also has low to no Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC), which otherwise could cause asthma or other severe health complications. These VOC chemicals are especially dangerous for children and animals because they sink to the ground and are very difficult to get rid of.
Another option of green cabinetry would be to make your cabinet doors from recycled wood. A factory can have other green components such as recycling sawdust created in-house. You want to be conscious of all these options to make your green cabinet search as non complicated as possible. The closer the cabinet maker is to the job site, the less carbon footprint there will be on your cabinetry work.
Lyptus Cabinets
So what type of wood products are best to use for green kitchen cabinets? You generally want to use fast growing lumber or grass. The most popular materials would be bamboo, Lyptus (fam of eucalyptus), Alder, European beachwood, etc. All lumber should be readily available and NOT from something like a majestic hundred year old oak tree, which serves better as a tree than your kitchen drawers. For “finishing” your cabinets, you want to use VOC-free stains or water-based stains and paint. Today’s water based stains are more durable than oil based and they don’t turn yellow!
There is virtually no difference in appearance or design between green and regular cabinetry. Be wary of some companies that will try to overcharge you; they’re only slightly more expensive than regular cabinets. They also take the same amount of time to install. You’re getting the same look and process without harming the planet or your body. All of this makes green cabinetry a no-brainer. Start making positive changes in your house by going green and choosing green cabinetry.
For more information on the benefits of green cabinetry or to find out about purchasing this type of material contact us at Bradco Kitchens & Baths
6011 West Pico Blvd.,
Los Angeles, CA 90035
Phone: (424) 209-2309
Fax: 323.939.9354
