Category: Kitchen 2

From the very beginning, Ben and I had planned to use some sort of natural stone as kitchen counters.  When we bought the marble slab for our dining table, we thought we’d use the same marble for counters.  It’s beautiful and has held up really well.

The problem though, is the marble we fell in love with was a mis-order, not something routinely stocked.  So we can’t get it now.

With the beautiful marble eliminated, we turned to granite.  I have yet to see a light granite I love.  The only thing that comes close it Bianco Romano, so we figured we’d end up with something dark.  Ben liked Cosmic Black, I thought it was okay.

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The boys and I looked at granite on Tuesday, but didn’t see anything we fell in love with.  And they’re out of Cosmic Black.  I liked the look of soapstone, until I heard that you can easily scratch it with your fingernail.  I’m not big on a patina look, and the $105 per square foot price tag didn’t help.  Sadly, I learned our default granite, Absolute Black, costs 80 bucks a square foot.  Our kitchen, not especially huge, has 34 square feet of counter tops, excluding the bar top we plan to add.  Do the math.  80 times 34 equals $2720.  Ouch.  Soapstone would come to $3570.  No thanks.  Maybe granite isn’t in the cards.  But, this one is pretty.  And so is this one.

We didn’t even consider a different marble because Carrara isn’t practical for a kitchen.  Ben hates the look of concrete (he doesn’t like how modern and cold it looks) and doesn’t like Corian or Silestone.  We’re both opposed to a metal like stainless steel or copper.  We don’t want tile because we’re not going to clean tons of grout lines.  Formica is too cheap looking.  What does that leave us with?  Wood.  Specifically, Bubinga.  In huge slabs, not butcher block.  Here it has been used as a bathroom vanity top.

I haven’t seen the slabs yet, so that concerns me.  We haven’t completely committed, but we’re strongly considering.   And, just so you can see the thought process in my mind, here’s a pro and con list of each material:

Granite Pros:

• Durability
• Seen in many kitchens

Granite Cons:

• Price, running at least $50 per square foot, for anything we like at least.
• Availability, limited to the suppliers stock.
• Seen in many kitchens.  Is granite the Formica of the new century?

Marble Pros: 

• It’s preeeeeetttyy

Marble Cons: 

• Everything else, not durable or practical in a kitchen

Wood Pros:

• Used for hundreds of years.  Can look both modern and classic.
• If damaged, can be sanded to look new again.
• Price: For 2 inch thick slabs, the price for the raw cut wood is $2376.  It will cost another $100 to have a cabinet company sand it to 180 grit for a total of 2476 bucks for the entire kitchen.  Still $244  cheaper than Absolute granite, not including the bar top.

Wood Cons: 

• Can be damaged easily by knives
• We don’t have much wood in our house, other than our floors, so it could look out-of-place
• I haven’t seen the slabs yet.  This is a huge con for me right now.
• Ben has to DIY the counters.  If we had a fabricator do the work and they messed something up, we could hold them accountable to fix it.  Now Ben is liable.

Who has wood counters?  Love ’em or hate ’em?  Do you treat them as a large cutting board?  Anything we should know before taking the plunge?

We’ve already made progress on our kitchen remodel, like building cabinets and buying sinks, stoves, and flooring.  All of which are easily stored until we’re ready to use.  But, on Sunday, we made some changes, and there’s no turning back.  You remember what our kitchen looked like when we last saw it.

Ben built drawers on Saturday, then climbed in the attic to reinforce the load bearing wall.  I thought we’d prime everything on Sunday.  After breakfast Sunday morning, Ben informed me of his plan.

Ben: “Yeah, I want to take down the cabinets and tear down the soffit.”

Amanda:  “Umm, why right now?  I thought we were going to wait until we had the cabinets ready to install.”

Ben:  “Because I don’t want to work over the new cabinets and damage them.  Do you think you can take everything out so we can get started?”

Amanda:  “O-friggin-kay.  Let’s start moving stuff.”

We moved everything in the upper cabinets either into the guest bedroom closet, the pantry, or elsewhere in the kitchen.  Then Ben the builder and Handy Sammy unscrewed the cabinets, occasionally cursing stripped Phillips head screws.

After unscrewing the cabinets, Ben pulled them all down.

Vincent and Everett loved the cabinets.  I actually looked at the old microwave cabinet and thought it would make a cute play kitchen if painted.

Then, the real demo work started.  Ben happily knocked a hole in the soffit.

Then, he used a utility knife to score the sheet rock.  We want to keep the ceiling as nice as possible to decrease repairs.

Roughly an hour later, the boys had removed the built-to-withstand-an-earthquake soffit above the stove.

Now onto the wall, door frame, and soffit along the dining side.  Again, he scored along the ceiling to pull out the crown molding.

The dining wall had two 2 by 12s as a beam, as well as soffit boxing.  Apparently, that was more difficult to tear down.

Then the soffit above the sink.  Ben cut a few pieces of sheet rock to fill the open areas and called it a day.  But not before we considered tearing out the wall between the kitchen and living room.  Go big or go home, right?  I hoped we could get the majority of the demo done in one day.  But I guess Ben still had some electrical work to do before that wall could go.  Since Sunday afternoon, we’ve been living with a half torn apart kitchen.

Taking the cabinets down made a huge difference, but I think the biggest change was removing the wall along the dining room.

We also have a hole in the floor where the wall used to be.

Hopefully we’ll tear down the rest of the wall soon.  Oh, and Ben picked up our range yesterday afternoon.  It’s still in the box, so we don’t know exactly what it looks like.

They fight to be the center of attention.  After several minutes of witty banter, the vent hood is the victor.  Which means the sink is left to mope in the corner.  If only Johnny came into say, “Nobody puts sink baby in the corner.”

So what does this lame story mean?  First off, our vent hood has arrived and it’s pretty.  Strike that, the under side is pretty.  Secondly, a little info on why our sink will remain off-centered.

Let’s discuss the range hood first.  When we open up the wall between the kitchen and living room, we’ll have roughly a nine foot wide by three-foot tall opening.  To keep the stove side of the kitchen as island-y (no, not tropical pineapple island-y) feeling as possible, we wanted a low profile range hood.  So, we couldn’t go with anything that hung low, like this.

So, Ben scoured the internet for a high CFM range hood insert with integrated lights.  We decided this 40 inch insert was best for us.  The low price was a bonus.  Now, I know $800 doesn’t seem like a low price, but we expected to pay about one dollar per CFM, or 1200 bucks.  Ben called to place the order and the kind gentleman on the other end offered Ben 10% off with free shipping.  Score!  So we saved 80 bucks for a total of $719.95.  About a week later, the FedEx man delivered a giant box.

Of course, Ben unpacked it right away, and plugged it in to make sure it worked.  Man, did it work.  And here it is.

Yeah, we know it’s not pretty, but we’ll build a frame around it and add trim for a more custom, less vent hood look.  Kinda like this one.

So all of that ugliness will be covered.

But from below, you’ll see this.

Not quite because the hood also came with six dishwasher safe baffles, so it will look more like this.

Now we’ve got our own little kitchen supply store in the basement, complete with a few hundred square feet of wood flooring and a vent hood.

All we need is the kitchen sink.  Oh wait, we’ve got that, too!

Now, here’s the low down on the off centered kitchen sink situation.  Currently, our kitchen sink isn’t centered on the window.  To the right of the sink, we have a dishwasher, then our refrigerator.

We plan to move the trash to the left of the sink.

Because we’re turning the drawers on either side of the stove into one large bay of drawers, we can’t keep the trash in it’s current location.  Here’s what it would look like to center the sink on the window.

Better, right?  Let’s get a closer look, though.

No, even closer.

We’d be stuck with a nine-inch cabinet, the same size as our current one, to the left of the sink.  One thing that Ben and I don’t like is that cabinet.  It’s pretty useless.  We only have so many cutting boards and cookie sheets.  What’s worse is the right side of the centered sink.

We’d have a really narrow six-inch cabinet.  If we don’t like the nine-inch, you can bet we’re not going to like the six-inch.  (Avoid the “That’s what she said” joke on that please.)  Because Ben is using 3/4 inch plywood to build the cabinet frames, you’re actually left with an interior of 4.5 inches.  Umm, no thanks.  As much as I’d like to put design over function, I just can’t do it in such a small kitchen.  Especially because we’re removing most of our upper cabinetry.  And because Ben has already built the cabinets.

That’s the dealio.  I guess neither the range hood or sink will be the center of attention in the kitchen.  What will?  You’ll just have to wait to see.

Now I’m wondering what you hate (or hated if you’re replaced it) the most about your kitchen?  Do you prefer for the range hood to take center stage in kitchens?  Perhaps the stove?