To design a kitchen well, you need to actually work in one, cutting up veggies, scrubbing pots and pans, and mopping the floor. You also need a sense of aesthetics, and a knowledge of materials and detailing that will help you make the kitchen pleasant and attractive as well as useful. Beyond that, a certain amount of "book learning" will help you to coordinate and optimize storage, counter space, traffic flow, and other factors critical to this very function-oriented space. Steve Thomas and Philip Langdon, authors of This Old House Kitchens, seem to have all of these qualities. Their book is based on projects undertaken for the popular PBS television series, and it rivals Rodale's Build Your Harvest Kitchen as the book
