I wrote about the Bodum BISTRO Toaster before, when they released the little chrome beauty exclusively for Crate & Barrel. Now you can get it in nearly every color imaginable, which may be particularly enticing for those with an adventurous side or a strict kitchen color scheme! I couldn’t spot a price for this new version, but if the chrome variety is any indication, chances are it will be affordable to most consumers. Check out it at Bodum.com.

Here are a few vintage ads that ought to put a smile on your face! Have a great weekend!
From Flickr group “I Love My Electric Appliance!“

Yowza! Check out this sleek little toaster (not to be confused with The Brave Little Toaster) from Bodum exclusively for Crate & Barrel.

Award-winning, retro-modern design in perforated brushed chrome, available exclusively at Crate and Barrel. Two-slice toaster features 900 watts of power, variable browning and temperature settings, defrost and cancel buttons, built-in warming rack and removable crumb tray. Footed base stores cord neatly.

That’s all good and well, but with a $69.95 price tag I really want to know if you can fit a bagel in there? If not, I just might have to pass on this sexy little chrome number.

How much would you be willing to spend on a toaster? Do you care if there is adequate space for a bagel? Or is that just me?

Bodum ® Bistro Toaster exclusively for Crate & Barrel - $69.95 (plus that blasted shipping fee!)

With the winter chill comes the joys of heating a house. Our old house had radiant, which was not only very efficient and comfortable, but also didn’t dry out our house to bad. Our new house has normal forced air and a house full of chapped and cracked lips has finally convinced me we need a humidifier. Of course the first one I thought of was the gorgeous plus minus zero humidifier. Try as I might though, I couldn’t talk myself into dropping $300 for it. Blomus also makes a good looking one but it is passive evaporation and I don’t think that is aggressive enough for our dry house. After a lot of searching I finally settled on the Air-O-Swiss evaporator. The $130 price tag is a little high, but it was the best compromise between high prices and good looks. One of the features I am excited about is the fact that you can fill it with a pitcher of water without having to open anything or carry anything to the sink. It should get here in about a week so I’ll let you know how it goes.

Available from Amazon for $139.

I was in a local kitchen store a couple of days ago when I came across this great looking toaster by Cloer. I had never heard of the brand before, but I am a huge fan of their styling. The toaster has a clean brushed steel look to it with a simple control interface. While it has the looks of a high end toaster, the price is quite reasonable at $50. Not surprisingly it looks like Target is one of the biggest retailers of Cloer products, although they are only available online. The rest of the line includes a double waffle maker, electric BBQ, coffee maker, roll baker and electric water kettle.

Cloer products available from Target online from $50 - $160.

We’ve been watching the classifieds for a while now to see if we could get any good deals on some of our kitchen appliances. We finally had some good luck the other day when we stumbled across this Siemens Avant Garde hood for only $450. It’s 36″ wide and normal prices are well above $1,000, so we feel like we got a pretty sweet deal. I actually really like the minimalist shape of it too.
We have drywallers coming in tonight to patch up the whole kitchen, hopefully they will be done by this weekend. We will probably start painting and putting in our Roppe rubber flooring sometime next week. Things are finally starting to come together.
One of the last things on the list is to order our countertops. We decided to go with laboratory counters from Trespa. At a quoted price of $15 a square plus fabrication, you just can’t beat the price.

Sometimes the hardest part about doing a big remodel is being able to visualize what it is actually going to look like when it’s done. Luckily for Ryan, he happens to be a pro at photoshop, so he was able to whip up a digital version of his kitchen before the hammers ever started swinging.

Our blog is full of pretty extensive info. We had no idea what we’re doing. I’m an artist, love modern design and know Photoshop…and that’s how we pretty much figured it out. We really shopped around for deals on cabinets, faucets, drawer pulls, tile and flooring. Even if a reader of your blog didn’t want to do EVERYthing we did, I think they could find bits and pieces of what we did quite helpful.

Our project extended a bit outside of the kitchen (entry door, stairs, etc) which added to the cost. But we completely gutted it and did every piece brand new.

I’ve been lazy about posting good finished pics of the kitchen. If you guys dig it, let me know and I’ll make sure to get them up. You can see everything on our site though in much more detail.

Approx price: $26,000

For more info make sure you check out underdover.blogspot.com.
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In the spirit of affordable modern kitchen remodels, demo on our kitchen starts today. I think we finally settled on a layout, and appliances, and we are just working out the flooring details right now. Since I am doing all the work, it will probably be a while until we have a fully functional kitchen again. To try and make it a little easier, we set up a little kitchen in our laundry room. We are using this little Avanti Induction hotplate to do all our cooking. I am totally obsessed with the whole induction cooktop idea, and if all goes well we will be doing an induction cooktop in our main kitchen also.

Avanti induction hotplate + skillet available from Compact appliance for $107.

More about induction cooking here.

With all this talk about kitchens going on here at Grassrootsmodern, we have started looking around for appliances for our new kitchen remodel. I was looking for refrigerators when I came across these great colored compact refrigerators made by Haier. Obviously at 1.7 cubic feet for refrigerator and freezer these little guys won’t fit a whole lot, but if you ever needed just a little bit more cold space, they might fit the bill. The price isn’t too bad either. One refrigerator will run you just over $100 at Compact appliance. At that price you could have a 34 cubic fridge wall for less than most 19 cubic foot cabinet depth fridges. If only you could remember which one of twenty had the leftovers…

Available from Compact Appliance for $107.

OK, I’m not going to even try and claim that this is affordable, but it is beautiful. I’m not quite sure what my obsession is with simple looking radios, I don’t even listen to the radio. Nevertheless the Magno Wooden Radio by Singgih Kartono is one of the best looking ones I have seen in a while. Heavy on the looks, and low on the technology, this little guy only does AM/FM and two shortwave channels, but it does have a audio in for your mp3 player.
Available from A + R for $210.