A partnership between Algonquin College and the area’s kitchen and bath industry is poised to improve the design of the two most important rooms in the house.

Algonquin recently launched a training program for kitchen and bath designers, while those already in the industry work toward creating a local chapter of the prestigious National Kitchen and Bath Association (NKBA), an international non-profit association of professionals with more than 36,000 members in North America that provides resources for both consumers and its members. Certification of both the program and the chapter is pending.

The move will encourage those who want to become kitchen and bathroom designers to come to Ottawa to train and will help those already in the industry keep informed and “raise the bar” of knowledge in the industry as a whole, says Laurysen Kitchens vice-president Giuseppe Castrucci. For the past 15 months, he and interior designer Sandra Gibbons of Algonquin College have spearheaded the initiative.

“I noticed that there was a gap in how we’re training designers and decorators; there wasn’t anything that filled the kitchen and bath demand,” says Gibbons, who was a faculty member in the interior decorating department before creating and becoming co-ordinator of Algonquin’s kitchen and bath program.

“The interior decorating program did have an eight-week course. I increased it to 15 (weeks) and the students were still asking for more, because there’s too much to teach in 15 weeks … and a lot of the mistakes that you can make in the industry are extremely expensive mistakes.”

What kind of mistakes?

“Well, if you order the wrong granite for a countertop, that could be a $7,000 to $8,000 mistake in your measuring,” says Gibbons. “We’re also getting more complicated with the information that is required for a bathroom and kitchen installation. We’re putting granite countertops on top of cabinets. Can the cabinets support the granite? Can the floor support the weight of the granite?

“We’re adding multiple shower heads in showers. Can the drains support the amount of water that’s coming through the shower?”

The benefit to homeowners of the certified program at Algonquin and a local chapter in the NKBA is to help prevent those mistakes from happening in the first place.

“Your return on your home for a kitchen and bathroom renovation is an extremely high percentage of the money that you’ll receive back and more,” says Gibbons.

In order for Gibbons to base the Algonquin curriculum on the NKBA, it was necessary to create a local chapter of the association. Enter Castrucci, who agreed with what Gibbons wanted to do wholeheartedly, taking it upon himself to “call everybody in the kitchen industry and get a chapter going.”

He was surprised to find out how many were already members, making the task of finding and keeping 75 of them to meet the requirements for a local chapter that much easier. The group has been meeting regularly for more than a year, holding seminars and product knowledge sessions, and hopes to become a full chapter by next year.

Once the Algonquin program is certified,the college can then become an accredited testing centre, saving members from having to travel to Toronto or the U.S. The one-year graduate program is the only one of its kind in Eastern Canada and officially launched in January with 13 students.

“I think the average homeowner, when they hire an NKBA company or an NKBA-certified kitchen and bath designer, knows that company or that individual is basically as educated as you can possibly be,” says Castrucci, who is president of the NKBA Ottawa sub-chapter. “(The NKBA is) a band of professionals that are getting together basically to uphold the high ideals and values of the industry. We do have a code of ethics that we must follow.”

As a way to recognize all the work the local group has done in the past 15 months, members held a kitchen and bath design competition earlier this month called the Ottawa Vision Design Awards with 41 entries representing about 20 companies in Ottawa.

“It was a celebration of just 12 months of hard work,” says Castrucci. But it was also a way to showcase local talent in Ottawa.

“What really irks me is when I read an article … that says, ‘We couldn’t find what we wanted in Ottawa so we went to Toronto or Montreal’,” says Castrucci.

He says there’s a lot of talent in Ottawa, but “we don’t promote it. So if we have the Vision Awards and we start telling people about the NKBA and they discover the 100-plus kitchen companies that are here … (homeowners) won’t have to go to Montreal, they won’t have to go to Toronto, that ability is right here in Ottawa and we have to do a better job of making sure the Ottawa consumer knows that.”

Winners at the Vision Awards included Astro Design Centre in both the large kitchen and large bathroom categories, Panoramik Home for medium kitchen and Kitchen Craft taking the people’s choice award.

Vision award winners

Members of the kitchen and bath industry that are working toward creating a local chapter of the National Kitchen and Bath Association held a design competition earlier this month to acknowledge great work by the area’s designers. Here are the winners:

Large Kitchen

Winner: Astro Design Centre; honourable mention: Muskoka Cabinets

Medium Kitchen

Winner: Panoramik Home; honourable mention: Muskoka Cabinets; Astro Design Centre

Small Kitchens

Winner: Acco Renovations; honourable mention: Kitchen Craft

Large Bathrooms

Winner: Astro Design Centre; honourable mention: Gemini Kitchen & Bath

Small Bathrooms

Winner: Denys Builds/Design; honourable mention: Carleton Kitchen Creations

Other Rooms

Winner: Detail by Design

People’s Choice

Winner: Kitchen Craft; honourable mention: Laurysen Kitchens Ltd.