Category: Kitchen 2

It’s a Hot Deal

Published on by Our Humble Abode10 Comments

Pun intended.  We’re chugging along on the kitchen renovation.  When I say chugging along, I really mean we’ve been spending money.  So far, we’ve purchased clearance hardwood flooring, ordered a custom apron front stainless steel sink, a range hood (details to come, it should be here this afternoon), and now a beautiful stove.

Because we’re knocking down the wall between the kitchen and living room, we’ll need a low profile range.  To maximize the space, we chose an all-in-one slide-in range.  At first, we thought we’d buy a GE Cafe dual fuel range, to the tune of 2700 bucks.

It has six burners, a large oven, and the lower drawer is another oven.

Ben researched ovens more and stumbled upon the KitchenAid Pro Line dual fuel beauty for $2250.

At first, I thought it was a down grade.  Only four burners and the lower drawer is only a warming drawer.  Boo.

Ever the researcher, Ben started looking around town.  A local shop gave him a price quote of $2044.40.  That’s better.  Trying to save even more money, Ben asked about Sears’ price match policy, thinking they would match and beat by 10%.  Sears can only beat competitors by 10% on in stock items.  Our range is a custom order.  However, they were happy to match the price.  So, we ordered the range on Wednesday, September 28.  We should get it October 11th.  If this were a fairy tale, we could have lived happily ever after; perfectly content by saving nearly 700 dollars.

Luck be a lady, on Sunday, I happened to check the Sears website to get a link for this post.  That’s when it happened.  Sears had a one day Family and Friends online sale, including 15% off appliances.  The list price of the range was $2204.99.  Subtract 15% and our range was on sale for $1874.24.  What?!?  I showed Ben.  We decided it was worth a shot to call Sears to see if they would honor the sale price.  After very little trouble, the sales rep agreed to credit us $170.16.  I’d say saving $824.86 over the GE, or $625.75 over the list price of the KitchenAid is no down grade.  It was fate.  We were meant to buy this range.  Let’s hope we love this baby.  No, we haven’t seen it in person…

As if that weren’t lucky enough, that same day, I went to Wal-Mart.  (That’s not the lucky part.  I loathe going to Wal-Mart)  I went to buy a gallon of cheap paint to test cabinet colors before we spent $50 per gallon for the good stuff.  I ordered Wal-Mart’s brand, Color Place and finished my shopping.  When I went back to grab my paint, I saw it was a gallon of Better Homes and Gardens paint, by Glidden.  Apparently, Wal-Mart didn’t have any satin Color Place paint, so they gave me the Glidden gallon, normally $21.97 per gallon, at the Color Place price, $14.27.

Sunday night, Ben painted some of the color on the cabinets, which I showed yesterday.  Monday morning, I checked to see if I like the color.  I did, so I went back to get three more gallons.  (We’re planning to paint the interiors of the drawers and cabinets with this paint to save a little more money.)  No new shipments of Color Place, so three more $22 gallons for $14.27 each.  That my friends, is how we saved more than $200 ($200.96 to be exact) in 24 hours.  I’d say that is better than Black Friday.

What’s your best deal?  Have you lucked out on an appliance sale?  Maybe you’ve used the same gray we’re using?  Sherwin Williams Pewter Tankard, anyone?

Ben the Builder

Published on by Our Humble Abode17 Comments

Our boys are fans of Handy Manny, not Bob the Builder, but building better describes what Ben was up to.  Maybe we could call his cousin/apprentice, Sam, Handy Sammy.  Last Friday, Ben bought twelve sheets of 3/4 inch cabinet grade plywood.  You see where I’m going with this, right?  Yes, cabinets are built.  Kind of.  The boxes are assembled.  Before Ben could start cutting, we had to do a lot of measuring and some bickering.  Both indoors and out in the garage.  The measuring, not bickering.

After tons of cutting, Ben had a stack of plywood to piece together like a three-dimensional puzzle.  A line of glue around the edges first.

Followed up by several nails to hold the sides together tightly.

After each cabinet piece was assembled, Ben checked to see if everything was square by measuring diagonally each direction.

Surprisingly, building nine frames only took a few hours.  Of course, they’re far from finished, but here’s the super rough version of the peninsula, on the left, with the lower sink cabinet to the far right.  The cabinet on top will be divided into two with doors.

Just so you can get an idea of how huge these are, here’s Vincent modeling the coffin cabinet.  (Just to clarify, we joked that Ben was building coffins because these cabinet are so huge.  I have no intentions of tossing Vincent in one, other than for this picture.)  Sam (on the left) is a little over six feet tall.  Yeah, I won’t be able to reach the top shelf without a chair or stool to stand on.

And, here’s what the stove side will look like.

Yesterday afternoon, I primed the insides of the cabinets.  Afterward, I got a raging headache.  We (meaning Ben and Sam while I ‘supervised’) also cut pieces for the drawers.  I know these boxes are far from finished, but it’s a start.  Still to do:

  • Build drawers and prime and paint the insides
  • Build two by four bases for the toe kick
  • Install the drawers, then build drawer fronts
  • Prime and paint the drawer fronts and visible outsides of the cabinets
  • Install in the house, the add the face framing for a seamless look
  • More priming and painting

Speaking of painting, here’s a glimpse of where we’re headed.

Color me excited.  Literally.  We saved some money on the paint, too.  More pricing details coming tomorrow.

Do you and your spouse bicker about little details?  Have you remodeled a kitchen?  I think planning a DIY kitchen remodel should be part of marriage classes.  If you can successfully plan a kitchen together, I think you can make it through anything.  Haha.

New Kitchen Drawings and Plans

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Remember these drawings?

We’ve made some kitchen changes since I made those lame sketches in 2009.  Here’s the new and improved 2010 model.  Side note, I hate the phrase new and improved.  How can something be both new and improved?  If it’s new, there’s no room for improvement.  If it’s been improved upon, it’s not new, is it?  Ok, rant over.  New kitchen drawings, courtesy of Lowe’s.

Notice any changes?  Well, that’s because there aren’t many.  But, 2011 brought about many changes, some major, some minor.  All for the better.  Except we’re back to my drawings.  Though, I did pull out a ruler.

Now do you see the difference?  Let’s discuss.

Big change number 1:  We’re moving the trash can.  The apron front sink is six inches narrower than our current sink, so we’ll have room for the trash to the left of the sink, not across the kitchen.

Big change number 2:  Switching up the cabinet size.  In the past year, we’ve been discussing all drawers in the lower cabinets.  Really, this isn’t that different from our current set up because we have cabinet doors with pull out drawers behind.  The small drawer stack to the right of the stove is so small that we have utensils in three of the four drawers.  Because of this, we’ve decided to make each drawer stack as wide as possible.  Instead of two drawers, we’ll have only one on each side of the stove.  One will hold our knives from the knife block.  Three cheers for less counter clutter.  Hopefully Ben can make something as cool as this.

Big change number 3:  Extending the upper cabinets to go counter to ceiling.  We plan to use the two smaller cabinets as ‘appliance garages.’  We don’t have room for a microwave to sit near the stove, so we’ll use the cabinet to the right of the sink to house a microwave.  Hopefully.  We’ll have to hunt down the world’s smallest microwave.  It may be this one.

Big change number 4:  No more spice drawers below the bar top.  Originally, we planned to build small spice drawers to double as a back splash.  This would also allow us to use a cheaper stove with a back.  Game plan change.  We’re going with a slide-in (backless) range and the larger drawers below should accommodate spices nicely.  Oddly enough, I’m most concerned about where I’ll put spices.

Small change, known as number 5:  The small drawer stack will now be part of a larger, wider drawer stack, as mentioned in number two.

Small change, number 6:  When I made these sketches, I loved the idea of legs to replace the standard toe kick.  Reality (and building issues) have set in.  Problem number one, the flooring will transition at the dining room and this will be obvious.  We could make a nice transition of the floors, but the second problem is cleaning under the cabinets.  This seems fine and good, but I think I’d get sick of it really quickly.  And, Ben brought up another good point.  We’d probably stub our toes on the legs constantly.

There’s the plan, Stan.  We’ve already made some progress.  Mostly purchasing items (plywood, studs, a sink, range, range hood, and paint) to get our ducks in a row.  Notice I said mostly.  Dun, dun, dunnnn.  Cliff hanger.

Now it’s your turn.  Do you have any of these features in your own home?  If so, love it or hate it?  Where do you store your spices?  How many planning phases have you had for one project?

Sink Hole

Published on by Our Humble Abode10 Comments

Well, the first step of our kitchen remodel is done.  We’ve ordered a custom apron front sink and it is fantastic.  First, let’s discuss our options and why we chose a custom sink.  After a look on Ebay, we realized we liked two options.  One, a 30 inch flat front stainless apron sink, like this:

Pros: 30 inch width, flat front, single basin, great price.  Cons: This sink, like most apron front sinks, is between 18 inches and 21 inches from front to back.   Which means, we would have a four to seven-inch piece of granite at the back of our sink.  That’s okay, but we don’t like the look of a seam at the back.

{via}

Option two is a full depth apron front sink, like this.

Pros: This sink is counter depth, so we could avoid a piece of granite behind the sink.  Cons: This sink costs nearly two thousand dollars.  Um, heck no am I paying that much for a sink.

So, we took a chance and talked to a custom metal shop in town, just to get a quote on the price of a custom-made-to-our-specifications sink.  A few days later, we got a call.  The price?  Only 650 bucks for our design made of 14 gauge stainless steel.  Most other sinks are 18 or 16 gauge, so ours would be more heavy-duty.  Just because we’re paranoid perfectionists, we took another trip to the shop with pictures, to place our order.  Neither Ben or I have ever had something custom-made without one of us doing the work.  It is accurate to say we were apprehensive.  Then, we waited.  Ben received a call only nine days after confirming the order that our sink was done and ready to pick up.  Whoa, that was quick.

We decided it would be best for Ben to drill a hole for the faucet, just to be safe.  Our sink is 30 inches wide, 25 inches from front to back and nine inches deep, exactly.

Completely perfect.  Well, nearly.  The weld and bend marks are slightly more visible than Ben would like, but he should be able to sand it down.

Actually, he has already started.  But, he made a mistake by using a random orbital sander.

Rather than the ‘grain’ of the steel showing, you see the circluar pattern from the sander.  But, Ben bought a different sander, so we’ll share an update once things get further.

Now, allow me to explain why we opted for a custom, $650 sink over a store-bought $320 sink.  First, we got exactly what we wanted.  Seriously, I had my doubts that the sink would live up to our expectations, but it exceeded everything I had imagined.  Secondly, our granite company charges $400 to cut and polish a hole for a sink.  Essentially, our sink total for the store-bought version would come in at 720 dollars.  Our custom-made sink eliminates the sink cutting charge, which means we’re actually saving 70 bucks for our custom sink.

868 dollars spent on the kitchen so far, several thousand more to go.  One project down, roughly 786 left.

Have you had something custom made?  Did it make you happy?  Or was it nothing like you hoped for?

Kitchen Drawings and Ideas

Published on by Our Humble Abode9 Comments

We’ve been seriously discussing our impending kitchen remodel.  Neither Ben or I have ever planned a kitchen remodel, so we have tons of ideas.  Because we don’t talk much about the ugly kitchen, let me refresh your memory on the state of things.  First, we started out with an L shaped sink/dish washing/refrigerator/food prep area.

Here’s our first round of ideas from about a year ago, obviously a rough sketch.

Basically, we thought we’d keep the same cabinet layout with a few slight changes.  We’ve always planned to pull out the soffit to add more cabinet space to our small kitchen.  The biggest change we had planned was extending the corner cabinet from the ceiling down to the counter.  Then, we removed the bank of cabinets over the peninsula.

We really loved how much more light and open the kitchen felt, so now we’re nixing that set of upper cabinets.  The stove side of the kitchen backs up to the living room, but feels very closed off.  And if the vent hood is on, forget about being part of a conversation.

To open up the kitchen even more, we plan to knock down part of the wall behind the stove.  It is load bearing, so we have to keep a support pillar on either side and a beam across the top.  Essentially, we’ll have the kitchen entrance doorway, a large, wide ‘doorway’ over the kitchen cabinets, and then the dining room doorway.  When we tear down the wall, we’re also getting rid of the awkward soffit on this side, kind of like this:

Of course, since this drawing, we’ve discussed more changes that we’re happier with.  As far as the design elements go, we’ve never really wavered on those choices.  We’re still gung-ho on the apron sink, subway tile marble back splash, and hardwood floors.  It’s the layout and functionality that we keep changing and evolving, which we’ll share when we have another drawing to explain the madness.  For now, you can read my chicken scratch ideas detailing each element.

I’m glad we didn’t renovate the kitchen a few years ago, because I’m sure we would be just as annoyed as we are with our current kitchen.  Have you put a project on hold?  Are you happy you waited until you perfected the plan?