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Casa De Nitas The planning & designing of custom Kitchens

Classic in character, warm with rich oak and it’s a space to live in.My client wanted a kitchen that felt timeless and w...
09/10/2026

Classic in character, warm with rich oak and it’s a space to live in.

My client wanted a kitchen that felt timeless and welcoming, with durable finishes for everyday use.

Solid and semi-solid white oak with a Monocoat finish brings warmth and natural texture. Classic framed doors are paired with slim aluminium frames, while handles are reserved for the pantry and integrated fridge and freezer where an easy grip matters most.

She wanted to prep in front of the window, leaving the island clear for serving and giving her extra workspace when cooking. We tucked the microwave/oven combo beneath the island, and I made the hob and custom canopy the focal point.

The same Estrella Careggi stone connects the kitchen and scullery. Behind the scenes, simpler Egger matt cabinetry in Soft Stone balances the budget while keeping the spaces feeling like part of the same home.

Lighting brings it all together: practical light for cooking, illuminated details for depth, and a softer mood for entertaining.

What I love most is how the whole space feels and functions—warm, considered and full of character.

Planning your own kitchen? Send me a DM and let’s talk about how you want to live in it.

Casa de Nita’s
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Design visualisations - by Nita.

Working from a coffee shop, a shared space or the spare room? Your headset has two jobs.Noise cancelling blocks the espr...
08/10/2026

Working from a coffee shop, a shared space or the spare room? Your headset has two jobs.

Noise cancelling blocks the espresso machine so you can hear the call. The microphone is what stops everyone on the call hearing the espresso machine. That's where a boom mic earns its slightly call-centre look. Sitting a few centimetres from your mouth, it hears you far louder than the room, which earcup mics simply can't match.

If your Bluetooth headset sounds great for music but like a tin can on calls, that's normal. A lot of them drop to a lower-quality mode when the mic is on. Ones with their own USB dongle generally don't.

Working from home? A small USB video bar and a second screen will do more for your calls than a fancy we**am ever will.

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Buying a video bar for the office meeting room? Check two things: that it's certified for Microsoft Teams, and that it r...
07/10/2026

Buying a video bar for the office meeting room? Check two things: that it's certified for Microsoft Teams, and that it runs MDEP, Microsoft's own secure version of Android for Teams rooms.

Certified bars are fine until 2028. MDEP is where everything new is headed, so that's what we're sticking to. Right now Yealink, Maxhub, Barco and Neat are shipping MDEP devices, with more brands on the way.

Tomorrow: the home side.

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From tomorrow, petrol is expected to hit around R30 a litre. On an ordinary 25 km commute, that's roughly R2,640 a month...
06/10/2026

From tomorrow, petrol is expected to hit around R30 a litre. On an ordinary 25 km commute, that's roughly R2,640 a month just to get to work and back.

Add the traffic, the hijacking numbers in Gauteng, and the pothole you now know personally, and working from home a few days a week starts to look less like a perk and more like common sense.

The catch is that it only works if your calls sound good. More on that tomorrow.

In the mean time, if you need help setting up your office for remote/flexible work or your home office, give us a shout.

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Music in the kitchen, a film on Friday night, a braai in the garden. It's all sound, but they're very different jobs. He...
05/10/2026

Music in the kitchen, a film on Friday night, a braai in the garden. It's all sound, but they're very different jobs. Here's what each one actually needs.

When a boardroom frustrates people, it's usually the call, not the screen. Someone at the far end of the table can't be ...
02/10/2026

When a boardroom frustrates people, it's usually the call, not the screen.

Someone at the far end of the table can't be heard. Nobody knows how to operate the system. The next presenter spends the first few minutes hunting for the right cable or dongle to present while everyone waits.

None of that is a hardware failure. It's a room that was fitted with equipment instead of designed around how people actually use it and a failure to properly train users on how to use the system.

Sound is the big one. A long hard table, glass and bare walls all reflect sound, so a voice from the far end reaches the microphones along with its own echo. The further away someone sits, the worse that balance gets. Better microphones help, but a room that isn't working against them helps more. That's the job of acoustic treatment in the room. They look like a design finish, and they are one, but their real purpose is to make the far end of the table sound like the near end and everyone not sound like they're sitting in a toilet cubicle...

Then the small things. A touch panel on the table means the meeting starts from where people are sitting, not from a remote that's gone missing. Wireless presentation dongles mean the next person is ready before the last one has finished. The screen and video bar sit on the wall at the right height, with the cabling hidden in the joinery instead of taped along the skirting.

A boardroom works when the joinery, the acoustics and the tech are designed as one room. That's how we approach them.

The usual worry with a dark kitchen is that it'll close the room in.It can. Dark cabinets and dark stone absorb light, a...
01/10/2026

The usual worry with a dark kitchen is that it'll close the room in.

It can. Dark cabinets and dark stone absorb light, and in a room without enough of it, the whole space shrinks. So the colour was only half the decision. The other half was everything around it.

This kitchen has full-height glass doors onto the garden, and the design leans on them. The wall between them carries a botanical mural, so the trees outside continue across the wall inside. The splashback behind the back counter is mirrored, which brings the garden into the part of the room that faces away from it.

Then timber, used in only a few places: the bar on the island, the slatted wall and a lit niche in the upper cabinets. There's enough warmth to stop the grey reading as cold, but not so much that it competes.

The ceiling was part of it too. It stays white, speakers included, so there's a light plane over all that darkness.

The pantry and scullery keep the same grey cabinetry, with open timber shelves above the sink. Nothing changes when you walk through. It's the same kitchen, just the working end of it.

Most people hear "wireless speakers" and assume there are no cables to think about.There are fewer cables. There aren't ...
30/09/2026

Most people hear "wireless speakers" and assume there are no cables to think about.

There are fewer cables. There aren't none.

These are rooms in the same house, each with a TV, a soundbar and some with a subwoofer. Every one of those needs power, and the soundbar needs a cable to the TV.

The soundbar sits directly under the screen and connects via HDMI, to the port marked eARC or ARC on most TVs. That cable and two power leads have to go somewhere. On a slatted feature wall there's nowhere to hide them after the fact, so the conduit and plug points have to be planned before the panels go up.

The subwoofer is where it usually goes wrong. It links to the soundbar wirelessly, so it can sit almost anywhere in the room. Deep bass is hard for the ear to locate, so it doesn't need to be near the screen. But it still needs a plug.

Look at where the sub sits in each of these rooms. One is in a corner beside a plant. Another is on the floor near the door, one is at the end of a low unit, and one is on top of the cabinetry. Each of those spots needs a socket right there. Otherwise the sub ends up wherever the nearest plug happens to be, or with an extension lead running along the skirting.

Where it goes also changes how it sounds. A sub in a corner will sound louder and fuller than the same sub in the middle of a wall, and sometimes too boomy for a small room.

It's a small decision. It's also one that's very hard to change once the wall is finished.

One of our clients regularly brings us in to design for his clients. This time he asked us to design his own kitchen.He ...
29/09/2026

One of our clients regularly brings us in to design for his clients. This time he asked us to design his own kitchen.

He knows exactly how we work, and he was going to live with every decision himself.

The house is open plan. The kitchen faces straight into the living room and the fireplace, so whatever happens on the counters is on display. That shaped almost everything.

The answer was to split the work in two. The kitchen is for cooking and for people: a gas range, a long run of drawers, and an area with a breakfast bar facing the living area. The scullery, through the doorway behind it, takes everything you'd rather guests didn't see. The washer and dryer are stacked in a tall unit, alongside a double sink with a drainer, the microwave, a w**e fridge, and cupboard space for the clutter every working kitchen collects.

Because the scullery carries the noise and the mess, the main kitchen can have open shelving and a clear worktop without looking chaotic by midweek.

Both rooms share the same materials: fluted timber uppers, sage lower cabinets and a concrete-effect worktop. Walking from one into the other feels like one space, not a front room and a back room.

When someone who does this for a living hands you his own home, the brief comes down to one thing. It has to work on an ordinary Tuesday. That's what we designed for.

This TV room had to do three jobs. Lounge, casual dining, and Cinema.That's exactly where audio gets specced wrong. Drop...
28/09/2026

This TV room had to do three jobs. Lounge, casual dining, and Cinema.

That's exactly where audio gets specced wrong. Drop in a too big, obvious surround setup built for a dedicated cinema room with wires exposed everywhere and it fights everything else happening in the space, the gallery wall, the rug, the colour. The brief here was sound that holds its own from the couch during a movie and still works quietly in the background while people are moving around or throwing darts, without turning the room into a home theatre showroom.

We specced a Sonos Arc Ultra for the front, two Era 100s doing surround, a Sub 4 hidden to the side for the bass. 9.1.4 Surround sound all connected wirelessly where the speakers only need power cables. Three visible units in a room this size, nothing else on show. It disappears the way it should, doing its job without asking the room to be built around it.

Nita led the design on this one, colour, layout, the art on that wall. I specced the sound to sit inside it rather than compete with it.

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Greenstone
Johannesburg
1609

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+27733598445

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