How to Build A TV Studio Kitchen For a Video Recipe Blog

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This TV studio kitchen is what makes the connection between home life and work for one girl that seems to know how to make waves. Oana Grecea is a Romanian entrepreneur that turns her dream into reality day by day, opportunity by opportunity. She loves to cook and entertain, so the natural move after leaving the economic mass-media path she was on for more than 20 years, was an online cooking show.

Writing about entrepreneurship led to her becoming one. Among other, one place Oana Grecea worked at is Forbes Romania, where she wrote about entrepreneurship. She kept hearing how the best businesses are made out of the things you love. These natural inclinations don’t make you feel like you’re working, even if you do end up working more for your business that you would in a normal job.

The kitchen is the heart of the home. And when your heart is also in the kitchen and your work is poured from your heart, how do you call this kitchen? Oana must be some sort of an alchemist, since she turns her love for cooking and her home kitchen into a lucrative business. Her spacious kitchen was designed with her dream in mind: having fun doing cooking shows, having guests over for culinary interviews or throwing cooking parties for grown-ups and children. It’s all about how textures, colors and aromas are combined, just like in architecture.

This online tv studio kitchen is supposed to serve three purposes: cooking for the family, cooking for dinner parties and cooking recipes for Oana’s online food blog, retetetv.ro. She writes on her personal blog that the reason behind moving out of the city was different for each of the three family members. Oana wanted a kitchen, her husband wanted a garden and their 11 year old girl wanted her own room, including a bathroom and dressing.

The kitchen was designed by Euphoria Kitchens Hall, a Romanian startup from Buzau. They helped Oana build her dream kitchen, one that would welcome both real and virtual visitors. This kitchen has 2 of almost everything: 2 sinks, 2 refrigerators(one hidden in the kitchen furniture), 2 stoves, 2 ovens and a spacious kitchen island where Oana cooks her delicious recipes. She only has one kitchen hood, because if she would have mounted a second one, the filming angle would have been compromised. Measuring a total of 64 square meters, the kitchen and adjacent living room are both part of the home and part of the home “office”.

Oana had to take into account many details that can make or break a TV studio kitchen. She was careful to leave enough space for filming cameras and chose colors and surfaces that don’t reflect light into the cameras. Cappuccino was chosen for the kitchen furniture, while the dark vulcano-colored counter top was made from compact HPL.

Filming “short and delicious video recipes for busy people” in her studio kitchen, Oana told us that her plans include doing the culinary show, having guests over, throwing cooking parties for children between 2 and 12 years old.

Oana, her husband and their 11 year old girl moved from the capital to the countryside, where she built her home in just three months, designing the plans around the kitchen. Besides the fact that she cooks for her family and friends, this kitchen has the purpose to support Oana’s plans in building a career where her family would have her around more.

Since the internet has been sizzling with seasoned recipe videos, Oana’s addition to the Romanian food blogging movement is not only inspiring, but also cleverly done. There’s a YouTube video presenting how the kitchen took shape. Euphoria Kitchens Hall had the kitchen furniture mounted and Oana added details. She already knew how the kitchen was supposed to look like and what functions she needed the kitchen to have.

Since the kitchen island would be where the magic of cooking happens, she knew beforehand that the middle of the kitchen had to be equipped with electricity and current water. The kitchen island was placed at a distance of 1,20 meters from the kitchen furniture so that the furniture doors have enough space to be easily opened. Under the kitchen island that serves as breakfast space for the family, there is even more storage. The surface of the kitchen is 5,80 meters on the window side and 4 meters on the compact furniture wall. The kitchen island measures 1,50 x 2 meters. One of the walls was painted with blackboard-like paint so that the wall can be written on.

Her love for cooking and entertaining took her from writing on her blog about recipes while going to her daily job to a full-time investment into her video recipe channel. When she won this European Blogger Award in 2012 with an inspiring article on her recipe blog, Oana turned her attention on videos and started building her life around this dream. Oana Grecea is an example of how dreams become reality once you mix in some courage and keep your eyes open for opportunities.