When Melbourne creators Luke and Sassy Scott O’Halloran (@lukeandsassyscott) renovated Luke’s Elwood apartment, the kitchen needed to do two things at once: look the part for the camera, and actually function for two people who film, cook and host at home most days of the week.

The kitchen they landed on was custom designed and built by our team at Kitchens U Build. Here is how the kitchen came together, and why the brothers chose custom over off the shelf.

Luke and Sassy Scott’s custom kitchen in Elwood, designed and built by Kitchens U Build.

Why The Brothers Chose Custom Over Flat-Pack

The name “Kitchens U Build” suggests one thing: you build it yourself. That is one option, and plenty of customers take it. But it is only part of the story.

As realestate.com.au put it when the apartment featured on the site, the kitchen is “by Kitchens U Build, where you can install it yourself if you choose; O’Halloran opted for custom-designed to suit his new abode.” That single line captures the whole positioning. You can DIY, you can have it fully installed, or you can split the difference with a hybrid install. The choice is yours.

For Luke, a custom design made sense. The apartment is a 1980s corner building with a strong 1970s-inspired interior scheme, and an off the shelf kitchen was never going to sit naturally inside it. Custom meant the cabinetry, finishes and layout could be drawn around the actual room and the way the brothers use it, not forced to fit a standard module size.

Designing Around A Real Space

Most kitchen problems are space problems. Luke’s was no different, and it is where having an in-house kitchen designer earns its keep.

Reclaiming Room With A Smarter Rangehood

Overhead cupboards can make a compact kitchen feel boxed in. In Luke’s kitchen, the overheads were removed to make way for a cylinder Qasair rangehood, opening the room up and letting the wall breathe. It is a small structural decision that changes how the whole space feels to stand in.

Removing the overhead cupboards made room for the cylinder rangehood and opened up the space.

Hiding The Laundry In Plain Sight

Apartment living rarely leaves room for a dedicated laundry. The design solved this with a concealed European laundry built into the kitchen joinery, so the washing tucks away behind cabinetry instead of eating into living space. Tidy, quiet, and completely out of sight when guests are over.

A concealed European laundry built into the kitchen joinery, so the washing tucks away behind cabinetry.

Finishes That Match The Home, Not Fight It

The broader apartment interior was led by designer Nicole Rosenberg of Liberty Interiors, with a colour-drenched 1970s palette in Haymes Paint tones and light beige ABI Izmir Travertine tiles running through. The kitchen was designed to sit inside that scheme rather than stand apart from it, which is exactly the kind of coordination a custom build allows and a flat-pack rarely does.

What “Your Home, Your Choice” Actually Means

A custom kitchen is not only about looks. It is about the process behind it, and that process is built to flex around the customer.

• DIY – you take the designed kitchen and install it yourself, with support along the way
• Hybrid install – you handle some of it, the team handles the technical or heavy parts
• Fully installed – the team designs and installs the whole kitchen for you

Every option starts the same way: with an in-house kitchen designer who maps the layout, the storage and the finishes to your space before anything is built. That is how a small apartment kitchen ends up with no wasted centimetres, and how an awkward corner becomes the most usable part of the room.

See The Reveal

Luke and Sassy Scott shared the full kitchen reveal with their audience, taking followers from the old layout through to the finished custom design.

If Luke’s kitchen has you looking sideways at your own, you can browse finished kitchens in our gallery for ideas, or book a design consultation with the Kitchens U Build team to talk through your space, your budget, and how much of the build you want to take on yourself.