BBC 2 Your Home Made Perfect, featuring Zenith Caldeira

Objective

Your Home Made Perfect is a BBC2 home makeover show that sees two architects go head-to-head to inspire homeowners with their designs, then plan and complete extraordinary home renovations.

Presented by Angela Scanlon, each episode of Your Home Made Perfect follows a different couple drastically redesigning their home. Season 3, episode 7 features Naomi and Yehuda, who redesign their family home with an open plan design, featuring Zenith compact laminate worksurfaces in Caldeira in their new spacious kitchen diner.

Questions for Naomi and Yehuda (homeowners)

What were the biggest changes to your home you were hoping to achieve by taking part in Your Home Made Perfect?

We wanted to ensure that we had an amazing, unique space where we could entertain family and friends whilst making lifetime memories over all of life's great milestones, big or small. We knew we needed extraordinary architecture and design to achieve that, and Your Home Made Perfect was the perfect opportunity!

What do you think of your Zenith worktops? Please give details about your favourite aspect, thoughts on the design, its properties, and anything else you like.

We wanted a worktop that both was minimalist but looked solid. As texture was important to us as well, the zenith worktops both provided texture of touch and light, complimenting the design and exposed block work of the building. The worktops provide the perfect transition of wall-worktop and feel bespoke to our house!

Why would you recommend a Zenith worktop to others?

100% yes! Solid, beautiful, lovely to touch and behold. What's not to want?!

Questions for Sian (Interior designer and build project manager)

What were you trying to achieve with the design and style of the homeowners’ new kitchen and how does the addition of the Zenith worktop help to achieve it?

The ambitious and transformative architecture by Robert Jameson was a spectacular design and build for me to work on, featuring charcoal grey internal blocks as the wall surface material and open pine ceiling joists - the build is literally the finish. As such the kitchen needed to work with that aesthetic both visually but also be super practical for a busy family home housing two keen cooks - maybe more as the children grow! The red earth painted kitchen was specified to both reflect Robert’s original VR scheme of compacted earth walls, and to also add warmth to a very industrial space. The Zenith worktop chosen - in ‘Caldeira’ - is absolutely perfect in tone and finish, drawing the anthracite of the walls down onto the worktop and adding swirls of coppery texture to complement the two beautiful metallic sinks and tap. We looked at many, many samples of different worktops and Zenith was the clear winner! It ticked every box both design wise and practically.

Have you used Zenith before in previous projects – can you give some examples covering where you have used it and why it worked so well in those projects?

I’ve specified Zenith on two of the other Your Home Made Perfect projects and also for other clients, with it never disappointing. One client chose a crisp ice-white finish for a white kitchen within a new dining / living space set against reclaimed timber flooring - the fitters were very nervous but were total Zenith converts afterwards. Interestingly we also used Caldeira in a very different style of scheme, a grey contemporary kitchen plus warm oak and copper highlights. The same worktop but with two very different feels in two differently designed and styled kitchens - worked equally well in both.

What are your favourite aspects of Zenith surfaces?

I particularly like the textured surface and feel of Zenith Caldeira and the way the very natural feeling surface contrasts with the ultra-modern 12.5mm thickness of the slabs. They join well and almost invisibly, with fitting made even more cost effective as it can all be done on site rather than via off-site fabrication, even down creating integrated drainer grooves next to sinks. Just as important for me as a specifier is the fact that the worktops are so super durable - this means happy clients. 

How would you recommend others use Zenith surfaces in their kitchens?

I’d encourage homeowners to be brave with their colour choices and don’t just go for the obvious, order some samples and play around with them in your own home against the proposed kitchen door finish or with the paint colours for the room. Think about using more than one finish, maybe one finish on the main wall run and then another on the island. In Borehamwood we used Zenith Caldeira on the island but added a piece of reclaimed Iroko at one end to add even more character. On one project the clients even used pieces of the left-over Zenith to make wall shelves and a small side table with some hairpin legs. It’s super thin at 12.5mm so maybe consider using a thicker piece of timber or stone to add interest if combining two different materials to make the complete work surface.

Discover the whole Zenith range here.

If you missed the show, watch it now on BBC iPlayer.