MelissaH's Kitchen (Renovation) Dreams

[kiliki]

For one thing, the lids just get thrown into the cabinets wherever they'll fit, since we don't have a good place to keep them.

I love love love my lid drawer, with the lids all neatly leaning against one another in a deep drawer.

[MelissaH]

We've hit a possible snag, and definite frustration.

Last night we were looking at the kitchen plans, both A and B, as well as the not-fully-fleshed-out C and D, discussing cabinetry in detail. We were coming to the conclusion that with the way things were set in Plan B (which we much preferred over Plan A), we'd be headed down the road towards multiple semi-custom or completely custom cabinets. We based that on the IKEA catalog and also the Kraft-Maid catalog my husband found on line.

But then my husband noticed something odd. We still plan to keep our existing refrigerator, which is not a cabinet-depth refrigerator. And in Plan A, which I haven't posted plans for, the cabinets around the refrigerator were specifically moved out from the wall to give us a 30 inch wide countertop, so the front of the cabinets would be more or less even with our fridge. But in the drawings for Plans B, C, and D, the refrigerator is also set to be even with the cabinet fronts, but the countertop is just 24 inches wide!

This in itself isn't a huge problem to us: so the refrigerator sticks out a few inches in front of the cabinets. The bigger problem is that in Plan B, which we liked in general, the refrigerator is directly opposite the range. According to the GE Monogram catalog that I had handy, the 36-inch range is also about 30 inches deep, which means that the range would also protrude slightly from the front of the cabinets. And with the refrigerator and the range directly opposite, each sticking out half a foot in front of the cabinets, the walkway between the two is narrowed by a full foot, to only about 3 feet. This seems like a really narrow space to us, especially between two appliances that would likely get relatively heavy use. But worse, the refrigerator is about 33 inches wide. I'm concerned that we wouldn't have enough room to open the fridge door without bashing the oven handle. And that's a huge problem!

We've e-mailed our designer, to be sure we aren't overlooking something. And until we hear from her, we've come up with a workaround. Our workaround is to move the refrigerator to the other side of the kitchen, so that as you walk in the side door to the kitchen the refrigerator is immediately to your right, where the tall pantry cabinet was in the original drawings. Then, next to the fridge heading back into the corner, make the countertop next to the refrigerator 30 inches wide, so it's more or less level with the front of the fridge. We also considered relocating the dishwasher to the other side of the sink, so it's closer to the dining area.

In this rearrangement, between the edge of the refrigerator and the front of the baking area, there's enough room for a 12-inch-wide base cabinet. That's not a problem, per se. But if we lower the countertop in the baking area, we'd probably end up with a dead corner space or an expensive custom cabinet. Furthermore, with the six-inch-wider countertop on the refrigerator side, to accommodate the refrigerator depth, we'd have to shorten the baking area's lowered countertop by half a foot. And I'd be worried about having my rolling pin bash into the non-lowered part of the counter if it got shortened.

So I went looking a little more, and found this post from Dave the Cook's kitchen renovation thread, which describes the "rule" for countertop height: measure the distance between your bent elbow and the floor; subtract 3 inches for normal tasks and 6-7 inches for kneading and rolling out dough. So I had my husband measure the distance between my elbows and the floor last night, and we came up with 39 and a half inches or so. This means that a standard 36-inch counter should be fine for normal tasks (and it is), but for kneading and rolling I should be a couple of inches lower than standard. I was in bare feet at the time we measured. But my favorite most comfy clogs add about an inch and a half to my height, so if I put those on before I roll out my dough, I'd supposedly be very close to the "ideal" counter height. (Hmmm: might need to try that recipe for potato-stuffed parathas in Mangoes and Curry Leaves this afternoon and see how it goes. Part of my current rolling issues come about because my rolling surface is a wooden board that I put on top of the counter; it has a lip to grab the front edge and also a built-in backsplash; it makes the surface about 2 inches taller than the countertop itself. Maybe I should learn to roll in stiletto heels? )

But this got me thinking: maybe the baking area countertop would be just fine at standard height, especially if I wear shoes to roll my dough. (Shoes in the kitchen probably aren't a bad idea in any case.) And if we put the baking area counter at standard height, we'd be able to put in a non-custom corner cabinet next to the fridge and not lose the entire corner space. The tall refrigerator would also serve the same purpose as the tall pantry cabinet in the original design: blocking the view of my potentially-floury dark blue stand mixer and food processor, which would live in the corner of the counter when they weren't being used. We'd still have landing space countertop next to the fridge.

An added benefit of relocating the refrigerator to the end of the kitchen is that we wouldn't have to worry about whether or not the baseboard heater could be removed: if it needs to stay put, we just bring it forward to the toekick of the cabinet. And that would work even if we put the dishwasher to the left of the sink (rather than the right, where it is in the drawings). We don't see a real problem in having the range and dishwasher directly opposite each other: for one thing, the dishwasher is standard depth, so you have an extra six inches of aisle space compared to the fridge. And it's unlikely that we'd be doing anything at both the dishwasher and the range at the same time, especially compared to the likelihood of using both range and fridge at the same time.

And another big bonus: by relocating the refrigerator, it looks like the space got juggled enough that we'd be able to use mostly stock cabinets, from either IKEA or KraftMaid, which will help us stay within our budget. We're working on the assumption that our appliances (range, hood, DW) will cost on the order of $8k. We're also working on the assumption that the cabinets (without countertop) will run on the order of $5-6k. And those are the big things that won't be easy to change out afterwards, so we want to get them right from the start. In playing around with things, we've discovered that we should have the room to put a wine fridge under the counter to the right of the stove (if you're standing at the stove cooking), facing out to the dining area. This is a fun idea, if the budget allows!

The original plan didn't explicitly show a place for the microwave. We use the microwave for two things, mainly: reheating leftovers for us, and heating up the cats' afternoon portion of canned food after it comes out of the fridge. (Yes, they're pampered.) Other than the fact that we need to plan for leftovers (this semester, both of us get home late on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which means that dinner on those nights is leftovers, nuked and eaten at whatever time each of us gets home), we think we could manage quite nicely without a microwave. So it makes sense for us to put the microwave down near the dining area rather than the cooking area. And we're considering a location facing the dining area in the cabinets on the sink side of the kitchen. We haven't quite worked out the details, particularly whether the existing microwave will actually fit down there, but we're hoping to do so.

First, we need to see what our designer has to say about the refrigerator depth issue, and her ideas for workarounds (if it is, in fact, a problem). In the meantime, we've compiled a list of cabinets we'd need from IKEA, and an equivalent list of cabinets we'd need from KraftMaid. This will enable us to do an apples-to-apples price comparison, and should let us know whether IKEA is a viable possibility, especially in light of the long-distance vs. local factor. We'll try to talk with our local KraftMaid people this week, since IKEA's easy to do ourselves on line.

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

We're on spring break this week! That means we can think about the kitchen for a little while! So yesterday, we ran all sorts of errands in Syracuse and Oswego, including spending two hours or so in our local Lowe's store to get a quote on Kraftmaid kitchen cabinets from them. And along the way, we made some more tweaks to improve on our design. Behold, from the printouts we got:

The major changes are all in the closed end of the kitchen. (And the sink we put in is not the sink we'd ideally want, but it's the one in the software that fit into the sink cabinet we used.) And the changes largely came about because of the refrigerator, the reason we deviated from the designer's plan in the first place.

Our refrigerator is fairly new. It has a freezer drawer on the bottom, and a single door refrigerator up top (with hinges that can easily be reversed so the door will open whichever way it needs to). We love it. But it's not counter depth. Since our kitchen is fairly narrow, we have decided that the refrigerator cannot be opposite any other appliances, because there's just not enough room. In our original tweak of the designer's plan we'd put the refrigerator next to the side door: as you walked in from coming up the stairs, the refrigerator would be on your right. But because the refrigerator is deeper than a counter, we'd made the counters on the other side of the fridge deeper than normal, back into the baking area, to compensate. And as a result of the deep counter, the workspace that will be my baking area was narrowed because the whole back of the kitchen was narrowed, which meant that the area for our Lion of Flanders mural was also narrowed.

When Charlie, the designer we worked with at Lowe's, saw what we'd proposed, the first thing he asked was if we were planning to get a new fridge. We've been asked that question enough that it might just be easiest to permanently relocate this refrigerator downstairs and give in to everyone and get a new one, but we don't want to do that for a few reasons. First, buying a new refrigerator, especially a counter-depth one in the equivalent size, would take the money away from something else that we don't already have a functioning equivalent of. Second, one full-size refrigerator is plenty for the two of us, even when we entertain. Third, looking at the fridges available at our Lowe's, the only counter-depth versions I saw were side-by-sides, which I absolutely could not live with. And fourth, this refrigerator was a gift from my grandfather, as part of a family tradition. So it stays, until it reaches the end of its natural lifespan.

Charlie's next suggestion made a lot of sense. When we'd put together our modification of the designer's plan, we'd put in some extra cabinets, both up above and down below, to take up the space leading up to the fridge. But the designer suggested using standard-depth counters, for starters. His plan has the area up above completely empty along the side wall, although we plan to build some open shelves to give us some more storage space for pretty stuff and to help block kitty access to the top of the fridge. For down below in the corner, we learned that in addition to the symmetrical 33- and 36-inch turntable cabinets, Kraftmaid also makes a 33/36-inch asymmetrical corner cabinet. He put one of those in the plan, instead of the symmetric 36-inch version we'd used, and added a 3-inch filler strip (instead of an extra cabinet). The end result is that when the time comes and our refrigerator needs to be replaced, we'd be able to replace it with a counter-depth fridge up to 37 inches wide, just by taking out the filler strips, trimming the countertop down, and relocating or resizing the shelves to hug the new fridge. (We'd hinge the fridge on the right, so it would open fully.) And furthermore, because the counters are now the same all the way around, the baking area is widened back up, as is the mural area! And in any case, having the refrigerator (of whatever depth) there will serve the same purpose as the tall pantry cabinet in the designer's original plan: giving me a corner in which to hide my beautiful dark blue KitchenAid stand mixer that shows every grain of flour, as well as my well-loved, well-used, 1990-vintage food processor, from view of the dining area.

Then we started the discussion of what to do with the cabinets in the baking area, across the short side of the kitchen. We preserved a symmetric look in the corner cabinets (symmetric 36-inch in the outside wall corner; the 36-inch leg of the asymmetric cabinet on the other side). According to our designer's measurements, the short dimension of our kitchen, from wall to wall, is 96.5 inches. If we wanted to, we could theoretically put in a 24-inch base cabinet to fit between the two corner cabinets with a half inch to spare. But since we're planning to do this ourself, and we don't install cabinets or remodel kitchens on a regular basis, the thought of only having a half inch of "wiggle room" made us nervous. Instead, we put a 21-inch cabinet, with appropriate (and equal) spacers on either side, so that we won't run into a problem if a measurement isn't quite perfect somewhere. We put in a 4-drawer unit, to hold many of my kitchen toys primarily used for baking, and could easily put in whatever dividers are necessary to keep things organized well enough that either of us can find what we're looking for.

Up above the baking area also turned into an interesting discussion. We started putting in cabinets, trying to fill the area with the widest possible cabinets yet maintain the symmetry, working from the walls inward. And at one point we wound up with a 6-inch or so gap dead center. Slightly facetiously, I suggested leaving it as open shelves, which at 6 inches wide would nicely showcase some of our prettier handmade mugs. Well, the designer took that idea and ran with it: he narrowed the wall cabinets to 18 inches each, which left us with a more reasonable 12ish-inch space in the middle. Furthermore, he made those slightly shorter cabinets, so they'd give more height in the baking area (and more mural space!), and suggested making the shelves glass so that light could get through. This would again accomplish the goal of giving us some wiggle room. We'd also be able to put under-counter lights of whatever kind we wanted, as well as possibly something up above the open shelves, which would all then be high enough that my work area wouldn't get warmed too much. And the more we talked about it, the more we realized that these shelves would be the ideal place to put a small stereo system.

One of the errands we'd run earlier in the day was a trip to the Apple store in Syracuse, since for my birthday, my wonderful husband gave me an iPod, both to use for myself and as a music source for the new kitchen. We were there to look at options for putting the iPod into the kitchen. Of the options, you either need to be able to sit the stereo on the counter so you can plug the iPod into the top of the stereo (where it plays music and also gets plugged into power), or you use an under-the-counter stereo, put the iPod on a shelf or inside a cabinet somewhere nearby so you can plug it in through an auxiliary audio cable, but run the iPod from its battery because it has no way to draw power. We looked at both the Bose and the iHome system, and while the Bose won't fit into this space, the iHome will. And in many ways, it's the perfect place for a stereo/clock in the room: the sound will go out into the rest of the kitchen, the clock would be visible from the whole length down into the dining room, and it would be safely out of the way of danger.

So that's how we left things in the baking area: plenty of spacers below, and a gap to be filled with shelves above. This also gives us a way to use our existing refrigerator, but also be ready for a counter-depth refrigerator when the time comes for that.

The only other interesting little tweak happened in the wall cabinets closest to the deck door. We'd put those as a stack of two 30-inch-long cabinets, each 15 inches tall with a door that hinges at the top, one on top of the other. (These would hold our glasses: the ones we use regularly in the bottom one, and the ones we don't need regularly in the top one.) We've also considered using a frosted glass in both those doors, although we didn't spec it in the plan. But because the other cabinets we'd been using up top were 36 inches tall, if we lined up everything at the top, we'd have a 6-inch difference. Kraftmaid has some 6-inch tall units that are 30 inches long, and we put one of those with five little dovetailed drawers underneath the stack, envisioning a place for napkin rings, chopstick rests, candles, and other little table "atmosphere" bits and pieces.

The base cabinet directly next to where the deck door would be is a sort of kludge. It's in our quote as a microwave cabinet. But we still think we'd want something angled to ease the entry pattern for people coming off the deck into the kitchen, and this is likely something my husband would need to build himself. However, the exact size and dimensions (triangle? trapezoid?) are yet to be determined because whatever we do would need to be deep enough to accommodate a standard-size microwave such as the one we currently have, and we haven't measured that yet. So we just put a stock microwave cabinet there, so we'd have something.

There are other spacers, on either side of the sink. These spacers serve a dual purpose. First, they give us some wiggle room in this cabinet run. And second, they enable us to be sure that our sink will be centered on the window.

The sink base cabinet is another interesting piece. It's not clear to us whether Kraftmaid has a 42-inch sink base for an apron-front sink. So that may need to go by the wayside, unless we juggle things again. But they do have a 42-inch sink base with a 5-inch deep drawer (or something that looks like a drawer) on top. And on their sink bases for apron-front sinks, the cutdown is 5 inches. So we may be able to modify the standard sink base to work with an apron front sink without too much trouble.

We put the dishwasher to the left of the sink, if you're standing at the sink. This gets it closer to the table, as well as to the area we plan to store the dishes and glasses. The dishwasher is directly opposite the range, but neither of us could foresee a situation where both the dishwasher and oven had to be open at the same time. We don't see it as a problem.

The 15-inch cabinet next to the range is full height without drawers up top, and we've put dividers in it so it can hold sheet pans and similarly shaped items vertically.

We've also, in this design, not put anything angled on the end between the dining area and the range. However, we did discover that a 24-inch cabinet costs about the same amount as a wine fridge (which we'd actually use more for cheese than for wine, probably). So even though we're showing a 24-inch cabinet here, we're really thinking of it more as a wine fridge. And we're considering orienting the wine fridge to face the dining area rather than the kitchen, possibly using the corner space between as either open shelves or a cabinet door that faces on an angle. This, again, will likely involve some construction by my husband. But this is a decent starting point, and something that we could use to get a reasonable quote.

Next, we discussed door fronts and drawer slides. For the latter, there was no question: full-extension, self-closing. This works out to be Kraftmaid's top-of-the-line upgrade. For the former, something interesting came up before we even started talking to Charlie about this. When we looked through the options, we knew we wanted something in natural maple finish, similar to the IKEA Adel Birch. We found what we were looking for in a design called "square" or something similarly uncreative. But we also found a design called "shaker" which is similar, the only difference being that instead of a single panel in the middle of the cabinet drawers, there's a stile in the middle and two panels inset. Neither one has any sort of molding or routed design. The interesting part: the "shaker" design was significantly less expensive! Charlie assured us that the construction was identical on the two; all we could figure was that the "shaker" design uses the same width rails and stiles as all the other designs while the "square" design needs wider ones, and between the wider rails and stiles and the larger panel, they need to start with bigger pieces of wood, so the price is driven up. Since we didn't have strong feelings about one or the other, we went with the less expensive "shaker" design for our quote.

And finally we priced countertops. They didn't have a soapstone option, but we were able to get prices for laminate (based on the linear foot) and a solid surface (per square foot). And as we expected, the solid surface was about three or four times as much. The designer was a little surprised at just how much counter we had when he added it all up!

So, what was the damage for the above plan? For the cabinets, with filler strips and toe kicks, and the top-of-the-line drawer slides, nearly $10,000 delivered to our door. And that price didn't include door pulls or tax.

This morning, we went back to the IKEA software, to jigger things and include the new baking area/refrigerator arrangement. We also took another look at the pictures and re-read the catalog yet again. And we got a price on a comparable (but not quite identical) set of cabinets. That price tag, including some filler strips (we aren't sure of the exact number and sizes we'd need, but we threw in about 10 end panels of various sizes), and door pulls: about $5000.

What we learned:

*Kraftmaid cabinets have more flexibility than IKEA cabinets, especially in corners, because they have more options (including asymmetric cabinets) available. The Kraftmaid Super Susan corner cabinets are appreciably nicer than the IKEA turntable cabinets: a Super Susan has a lower turntable, shaped like a Pac-Man, and then an upper turntable that sits on its own shelf, also shaped like a Pac-Man. There's no post spearing through the center of the turntable, and it feels really solid, much more so than any other turntable unit I've ever seen. I'd have no hesitations about putting things like my flour bins on a Super Susan, but I'd worry about doing so on the IKEA turntable. However, as my husband pointed out to me, it should be possible to modify an IKEA turntable corner cabinet when we put it together, by building in a shelf and putting in our own Super Susan (or equivalent) hardware top and bottom. A quick search showed me that the hardware is certainly available, but about $200 for each turntable unit from the first place Google found for me (and we'd need a total of 4 for the base cabinets). The IKEA upper cabinets don't have lazy susans either, so I'd want to add those also. But since those come with adjustable shelves, it would be possible for us to make those modifications after-the-fact if the budget runs tight. With these modifications, my husband was able to make a kitchen design that was almost as perfect as the Kraftmaid design. And even with four Super Susans, the overall cabinet order is still much less expensive than Kraftmaid (at least without IKEA's shipping!)

*IKEA cabinets with drawers have full-extension, self-closing hinges without any upgrades.

*The construction on Kraftmaid might be a little nicer, and certainly more traditional, than IKEA.

*The lead time on Kraftmaid is on the order of 5 weeks; if there are any problems, you typically get the replacement cabinet within a couple of weeks.

*The one thing at this point that would completely kill the idea of an IKEA kitchen is if it's both impossible to put a wall oven in a standard base cabinet (down below a cooktop, not at typical wall oven height) and I find out that neither the GE Monogram nor the Viking 36 inch dual-fuel range has an oven equivalent to the GE Profile "true European convection" single wall oven. I should be able to find that out tomorrow with a quick phone call. If you bake in any of the abovementioned ovens, let me know what you think of them! (Of course, after my current and immediate previous ovens, anything that heats evenly and is big enough to hold two 8- or 9-inch cake pans on the same shelf is a miracle.)

*While we both really like the idea of using a local cabinet dealer, the $5000 minus shipping difference is (presumably) a lot of money. Of course, we don't know what shipping will be, only that it will be more than the minimum of $105 to NY by common carrier.

While working through all of this, I realized that I'll be in Atlanta for a conference at the end of next week, and there's an IKEA store in Atlanta. So I'm going to bring the IKEA software file with me to the conference, as well as printouts of both the design and the cabinet list, and hopefully I'll have a few hours to get to that IKEA and get a quote that includes shipping. If the price including shipping is still significantly less expensive than the Kraftmaid quote we got yesterday, IKEA's still a very strong possibility despite the lack of a local store. If the shipping jacks up the price to within a couple thousand of the Kraftmaid quote, for whatever reason, we'll probably stay local. I'll probably phone that IKEA up and make an appointment to talk with someone this week; if anyone can give me recommendations for a specific person to talk with, that would be great.

However, we've also pretty much decided that either way, we'll probably be looking at laminate countertops for now. We might have expensive enough cabinets that we won't be able to afford our dream. Or if the cabinets are less expensive, they'd be IKEA, and by using a laminate countertop we won't have a huge investment should the cabinets not hold up to our use for whatever reason. (I don't really think this is going to be a problem, but to us, metal sides just feel a little lightweight compared to wooden sides, and we aren't quite convinced that the drawer slides IKEA specs are quite as robust as the top-of-the-line Kraftmaid slides. We generally trust what everyone here and the magazines we've read have said, but I also haven't heard from anyone with an IKEA kitchen that's been around for 10+ years.) Furthermore, if we do have to replace the refrigerator sooner than we'd planned, it would not be a problem to cut back laminate to make room for a wider counter-depth model. Even if we use laminate for the vast majority of the kitchen, we'd still put some kind of metal between the range and the doorway, so we have a place to put hot stuff, and we'd put marble (or other stone) in the baking area. Those are the two places where we need something to serve a specific function, not just to be a counter. We've both had laminate counters all our lives, and other than needing something different for specific reasons in those two places, we believe we can live with laminate for everywhere else, at least until we feel like we're ready to pay for our dream soapstone.

So, now it's time for yet more agonizing: making sure I can live with the proposed IKEA kitchen, assuming the price break with shipping turns out to be significant. Otherwise, I'll just be agonizing over how much this is all going to cost!

MelissaH

Edited March 13, 2006 by MelissaH (log)

[Darcie B]

This is so exciting! There is nothing more fun than planning a kitchen.

My husband and I did this three years ago. We went with the Kraftmaid cabinets, upgraded to full plywood construction (+15% compared to regular cabinets), and got the full slide/self closing hardware upgrades as well. Our kitchen is similarly sized, but our cabinets only ran about $8500. Looks like the price has gone up!

We installed our own cabinets and really didn't have any trouble with measurements, etc., and on one wall we didn't even have a spacer for fudge factor! Where we did have spacers it made it really easy.

Word of advice: make sure your level isn't wonked. We installed three base cabinets that didn't quite look right but the level indicated they were straight. Turns out the level had been damaged. Grrrr...

What kind of apron front sink do you plan to put in your kitchen? I wonder if you really need a 42" sink base - we went with a 36" apron front sink base and put something very similar to this in it. The edges of the sink rest on the cabinet edges, and the countertop mounts over the edge of the sink. We had to cut down more than 5" but it was fine. The edge of the apron comes to rest just above the cabinet doors. We really like it.

Here's a view of the sink (sorry, image quality isn't the greatest).

If I had to do it over again, I would not get Corian and would use laminate (I too soapstone and it will make an appearance in the next kitchen). Since I have a tiled island, I have a place for hot things, and the Corian was (1) damn expensive and (2) the contractor was a PITA to deal with. The counters are f**ked up since he couldn't figure out how to screw them down near the sink so they go uphill to the sink. Just plain stupid but since this was a subcontractor through Lowe's we really had no leverage. All they could tell us was, "No one else has had any problems with him..."

Re: wall oven in regular cabinet. You will have to watch for clearance issues. One thing we did that wasn't required but seemed like a good idea was to get some sheet metal (18 or 22 gauge, can't remember) and line the back of the oven cabinet with it. You might consider doing something similar to an IKEA cabinet if there are any heat/fire issues.

Good luck and keep us informed!

Edited March 13, 2006 by Darcie B (log)

[halloweencat]

re dishwashers...

we've had two boschs. love them. they do a great job and they're very quiet, and that quiet is +well+ worth the money, especially if you live in a home that has a lot of open space or community space.

in our old (small), 2-level townhouse, the entire home was open space. only two rooms (and a bathroom) were enclosed with their own doors. whatever anyone was doing in the house anywhere, you could hear it, from kitchen activity to the television.

when our old dishwasher went on the fritz we knew we wanted the quietest, most reliable that we could get. we got a bosch, a mid-range one. we +loved+ it and never regretted spending the money because it cleaned things well and added no needless noise.

in our second (slightly larger) townhouse, the dishwasher also needed to be replaced. we wanted another bosch, but my SO was convinced that there probably wasn't much difference (re noise) between the middle-level one and the lower-end one. so we bought the less expensive model.

it wasn't a mistake, because it does clean well and it is quiet, but it's definitely not as quiet as the first one. if we were to have the chance to do it over again, i would definitely push for the bosch that was more akin to what we had before. quiet (especially in this new house, with our noisy neighbors), is an important commodity for us.

(p.s., your new kitchen seems wonderful. )

cheers --

[MelissaH]

What kind of apron front sink do you plan to put in your kitchen? I wonder if you really need a 42" sink base - we went with a 36" apron front sink base and put something very similar to this in it. The edges of the sink rest on the cabinet edges, and the countertop mounts over the edge of the sink. We had to cut down more than 5" but it was fine. The edge of the apron comes to rest just above the cabinet doors. We really like it.

We haven't really decided, other than it needs to be big enough to hold our largest roasting pan, and big enough that washing a half-sheet pan would be easy. When the time comes that we have soapstone counters, a soapstone sink would also be nice. But for now, we're setting our sights on stainless. And big.

Re: wall oven in regular cabinet. You will have to watch for clearance issues. One thing we did that wasn't required but seemed like a good idea was to get some sheet metal (18 or 22 gauge, can't remember) and line the back of the oven cabinet with it. You might consider doing something similar to an IKEA cabinet if there are any heat/fire issues.

←

That sounds like a good idea. We don't have a clue yet as far as local building codes. We should probably look into that before long!

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

we've had two boschs.  love them.  they do a great job and they're very quiet, and that quiet is +well+ worth the money, especially if you live in a home that has a lot of open space or community space.

Strange as it sounds, a totally silent dishwasher isn't a huge deal for us. Our house has a fair amount of ambient noise, particularly this time of the year, because the pipes that carry hot water through the heater system are apparently snaked through some very tight areas, and we get a fair amount of creaking and popping as they expand and contract. Once the weather gets nice enough that we can turn the heat off for the season, we tend to keep the windows open, so then we get some noise from the cars on the main road. And wind—there's always wind in Oswego!

Our neighbors on both sides are generally quiet. Nobody is across the street, and behind us is the Newman Center, and they're quiet except for on Sundays.

That said, if we can get something that's quieter for a little more money, and we aren't totally squeezed in our budget, maybe we'll be able to do that.

How long do dishwashers last?

in our old (small), 2-level townhouse, the entire home was open space.  only two rooms (and a bathroom) were enclosed with their own doors.  whatever anyone was doing in the house anywhere, you could hear it, from kitchen activity to the television.

when our old dishwasher went on the fritz we knew we wanted the quietest, most reliable that we could get.  we got a bosch, a mid-range one.  we +loved+ it and never regretted spending the money because it cleaned things well and added no needless noise.

in our second (slightly larger) townhouse, the dishwasher also needed to be replaced.  we wanted another bosch, but my SO was convinced that there probably wasn't much difference (re noise) between the middle-level one and the lower-end one.  so we bought the less expensive model.

it wasn't a mistake, because it does clean well and it is quiet, but it's definitely not as quiet as the first one.  if we were to have the chance to do it over again, i would definitely push for the bosch that was more akin to what we had before.  quiet (especially in this new house, with our noisy neighbors), is an important commodity for us.

(p.s., your new kitchen seems wonderful.  )

cheers --

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[MelissaH]

A couple of phone calls later:

The cost to ship $5000 worth of IKEA cabinets to us will be on the order of $900, give or take $100, depending on exactly how heavy the order is. I don't have that information at my fingertips, so I wasn't able to get an exact number. We'd only pay state sales tax (4%) if we did this option, since there are IKEA stores in NY (although none even close to locally). On a hypothetical $5000 order, with 4% tax the cost would be $5200.

I just visited the U-Haul Web site, to see what a one-way truck rental would be, if we pick the truck up in New Haven, load up the cabinets, bring them home, and drop the truck off here in Oswego. The delivery wouldn't cost us anything if we have the cabinets shipped to the New Haven IKEA store (although we'd pay the local sales tax; I know CT has a state sales tax of 6% but I don't know if New Haven has anything added on top of that), but we'd have to pay for the truck to move the cabinets ourselves. With 6% sales tax, the cabinets would be $5300 plus whatever it costs us to get them home.

The price on a 17-foot truck, with a capacity of 849 cubic feet (dimensions 14'1" x 7'7" x 7'2", which U-Haul claims means 2 to 3 bedrooms), for 3 days and 364 miles, is $367 plus whatever taxes apply. For the 14-foot truck, with a capacity of 669 cubic feet (11'4" x 7'5" x 6'9", or 1 to 2 bedrooms), the price drops to $344 plus tax. I'm guessing the Mass Pike and Thruway tolls would also be a touch less on the smaller truck, although not significantly lower enough to make a difference. If we pick the truck up in Mystic, where we have friends, the price increases by $14 on either truck, and the free driving distance is upped to 395 miles. This is a less expensive option unless the price of truck fuel goes up an order of magnitude, even if we do a one-way car rental (on the order of $60/day) to get down there so we only have one vehicle to drive home.

IKEA's Web site claims that their delivery service happens 1 to 3 weeks after you place the order, or longer than that if you set a later delivery date. They say that if you have a problem with cabinets that are delivered, you call them and they get a new one to you "as soon as possible." I don't know what would happen if we picked up the cabinets ourselves, other than we'd probably spend quite a while at the store, opening every box to be sure that nothing was damaged before we loaded it all into the truck to drive it home, unless we could talk them into giving us the same deal as their delivery customers. So, if you include the increased sales tax ($100) and the cost of a rental car (probably 2 days, so call it $120) and truck (call it $350) as well as gas for both (figure $100), bringing them home ourselves would cost probably on the order of $500 to $600, which is still $300 to $400 less expensive than having them delivered. However, picking the cabinets up would probably cost us 2 days of work time (although we'd get a chance to at least have lunch with our friends).

Should we do IKEA cabinets, we'd want to go to the store and place our order in person. If need be, we could do that on an ordinary-length weekend, but that wouldn't be much fun. We do have a long weekend coming up for Easter, which would give us a month to make up our minds.

MelissaH

[LindaK]

Melissa, thanks for reporting the comparison between Ikea cabinets and other alternatives. I've been (s-l-o-w-l-y) planning my own kitchen renovations and am just assuming that a good contractor and a little custom carpentry can tweak the Ikea sufficiently to suit my needs--and help me afford the few high end items I want (good range, not optional. concrete countertops of my dreams, we'll see...). Please let us know what you learn from your Ikea visit.

[snowangel]

Melissa, have you read this topic on experiences with IKEA cabinets and cupboards?

[MelissaH]

Melissa, have you read this topic on experiences with IKEA cabinets and cupboards?

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Yup, I have. Check out the last post.

My husband talked more about kitchen cabinets last night. At this point, we've pretty much decided that IKEA cabinets are the way to go. We'd really like to go with something more local, but when you consider that the cost difference would nearly cover the cost of the range we're considering, we just can't justify spending the extra $$$ just to get something local. So, to New Haven we'll be traveling.

Furthermore, we've also decided that we'll likely let IKEA deliver the cabinets for us. When you compare the delivery cost to what it would cost us to go pick them up (including the 2 days' time spent to drive 350 miles there, spend a night somewhere, sit in their store and open every single box right there in the store to see if there are any problems (which I'm sure they'd love , reseal all the boxes with umpteen rolls of tape, load everything onto the truck, and then drive 350 miles home) it's a wash even if the delivery charge is $1000. By the time we're ready to have boxes of cabinets sitting in our garage, we'll be too busy with other facets of the remodel to be able to take two whole days off. And that way there's no question about getting replacements if something doesn't arrive in perfect shape. Unlike jongchen, who started the thread linked to above, we don't have the option of visiting the store 5 different times to pick up missing parts.

My husband's currently playing with options to make an angled cabinet to hold our microwave at the end of the counter. We need 12 inches of depth to go from the back of the microwave to just in front of the front set of feet, and the microwave is 20 inches wide. If someone has a trigonometry student in the family, here's a real-life problem for them to work on: we have space for a 24-inch-wide cabinet at the end of the run. If we just lop off the cabinet from corner to corner, leaving the back and one side, will our microwave fit in the cabinet and be stable? If not, and we therefore need to leave a bit of the other side in place, how much of the other side would we need to leave there, to get the microwave to fit? (I'll be working on this myself, but I need to make some lecture notes for next week first!)

Anyone have experience with Blanco sinks or faucets? This sink and this faucet caught our eye. Much as we'd love an apron-front sink, it wouldn't really work without undermount capability, and we have such a gloriously huge amount of counter space planned that we really can't afford the dream soapstone countertop to make an undermount work, at least for now. (At least we'll be able to put in a sponge holder tip-out or a towel bar on the front. I don't think both would work?)

MelissaH

[Kouign Aman]

What fun this is to share your design process. Thank you!

Not only has it been enjoyable, but I've learned a lot and been given a lot of food for thought.

42" seems like a huge sink. Have you taped its outline on a counter and played pretend wash-up yet?

Would anyone ever want to be loading or unloading the dishwasher while another person was working on stovetop cooking?

With your existing fridge, it looks like that asymmetrical upper corner cabinet might be darned-near inaccessible. Is it slated for 'rarely used' storage? Would shelves work in place of either of the corner cupboards?

Dishwasher - ours (courtesy former owner of house) is nice and quiet but it takes for-freaking-ever to run a cycle. You might consider cycle-time when comparing models.

[MelissaH]

What fun this is to share your design process. Thank you!

Not only has it been enjoyable, but I've learned a lot and been given a lot of food for thought.

42" seems like a huge sink. Have you taped its outline on a counter and played pretend wash-up yet?

Well, the sink won't be 42 inches wide. IKEA's sink cabinets only come in 36-inch widths, so that's what we'll be using. (And consequently, we'll be able to add a little extra width to other base cabinets on the baking area side of the sink, and get a little extra space between the cabinets and the door to the deck.) The sink we're thinking of is nice and big, though, and will easily hold the big roasting pan or a half sheet pan. My husband was thinking that he'd want a double sink, with both tubs the same side, but when I asked why he could only come up with two reasons that didn't really hold water, so to speak: that was the sort of sink he'd always had, and it worked well for washing dishes because one side holds a drying rack nicely. But once we get a dishwasher, we won't be regularly washing dishes at the sink, at least not the dishes that will fit in a sink-sized drying rack.

Would anyone ever want to be loading or unloading the dishwasher while another person was working on stovetop cooking?

What we decided, after talking about it, was that if someone was cooking at the stove, there wasn't anything that would need to be loaded into or unloaded from the dishwasher that couldn't wait a moment or two. We decided that we couldn't live with the refrigerator there, but that it was a logical place for the dishwasher.

With your existing fridge, it looks like that asymmetrical upper corner cabinet might be darned-near inaccessible. Is it slated for 'rarely used' storage? Would shelves work in place of either of the corner cupboards?

We don't see it as a real issue. IIRC, we were planning to hinge it on the right side (as you look at the front of the cabinet). And we have a stepstool, stored very close to the kitchen at all times, so we can reach the upper shelves of the wall cabinets all the way around. Our plan is to use all those upper shelves for items that are not used as often, since neither of us is ten feet tall. But we can both reach the lower couple of shelves without a problem, including those in a similar corner cabinet in the existing kitchen.

Dishwasher - ours (courtesy former owner of house) is nice and quiet but it takes for-freaking-ever to run a cycle. You might consider cycle-time when comparing models.

←

Cycle time is something we'll be looking at. But whatever it is, it will be better than our current dishwashers!

MelissaH

[Kouign Aman]

IKEA's sink cabinets only come in 36-inch widths, so that's what we'll be using. .. My husband was thinking that he'd want a double sink, with both tubs the same side, but when I asked why he could only come up with two reasons that didn't really hold water, so to speak: that was the sort of sink he'd always had, and it worked well for washing dishes because one side holds a drying rack nicely. But once we get a dishwasher, we won't be regularly washing dishes at the sink, at least not the dishes that will fit in a sink-sized drying rack.

... whatever it is, it will be better than our current dishwashers!

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That's a thought... thank you. Maybe we could replace our double sink with a single....we use the second side for holding washed stuff pre-rinse, but I think I'd rather just be able to fit large pieces into the sink and deal with rinsing another way.

hmmmmmm must ponder.........

DW: aint that the truth! !

[lcdm]

Melissa, have you read this topic on experiences with IKEA cabinets and cupboards?

←

Anyone have experience with Blanco sinks or faucets? This sink and this faucet caught our eye. Much as we'd love an apron-front sink, it wouldn't really work without undermount capability, and we have such a gloriously huge amount of counter space planned that we really can't afford the dream soapstone countertop to make an undermount work, at least for now. (At least we'll be able to put in a sponge holder tip-out or a towel bar on the front. I don't think both would work?)

MelissaH

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I have the Blanco sister sink; same model but 10 inch depth undermount. It is very deep and I wish I got the 8.5" (the counter added an additional inch and a quarter). If you go with the 12" and want a garbage disposal or garbage can under the sink measure to make sure it will fit (our garbage can now resides elsewhere, oh well live and learn).

I found the cheapest price was on ebay from faucetdepot.com (even less expensive than their online store).

Love the faucet you have chosen. We went with the HasGrohe Retroaktiv

http://www.hansgrohe-usa.com/products/sing...&prod_num=06128

I agree that soapstone is expensive, if you still want undermount and a stone counter look at granite, some of the selections are quite reasonable (even less expensive than corian). But than again some of the formica choices are also very nice and about 1/3 - 1/2 the price.

[MelissaH]

I have the Blanco sister sink; same model but 10 inch depth undermount. It is very deep and I wish I got the 8.5" (the counter added an additional inch and a quarter). If you go with the 12" and want a garbage disposal or garbage can under the sink measure to make sure it will fit (our garbage can now resides elsewhere, oh well live and learn).

The cabinet just to the right of the sink is actually a garbage can pullout drawer, which will hold both a trash can and a container for our recyclables. But I hadn't considered the disposal height issue, and if depth becomes an issue we can easily step down to a 10 inch deep version. I guess that means we should start looking at disposals, so we know how much room they'll take up.

I found the cheapest price was on ebay from faucetdepot.com (even less expensive than their online store).

Love the faucet you have chosen. We went with the HasGrohe Retroaktiv

http://www.hansgrohe-usa.com/products/sing...8719;_num=06128

Pretty faucet you chose!

For a while, I lusted after a restaurant-style sprayer with the looooooong hose that hangs from the ceiling, like the one my aunt and uncle have. But I was also a little bit afraid of them, specifically the mess you could make with one if you inadvertently pointed it in the wrong direction. I also wasn't sure what having something like that would do in terms of being able to hang a light above. The one here has the neato sprayer (which will make cleaning that big roaster much less of a chore) but with a little less danger, and certainly no obstacles to a pendant lamp.

I agree that soapstone is expensive, if you still want undermount and a stone counter look at granite, some of the selections are quite reasonable (even less expensive than corian). But than again some of the formica choices are also very nice and about 1/3 - 1/2 the price.

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For us, we decided that it's going to be soapstone or laminate. My parents, when they built their house in 1988, spent $$$$$ on cabinets (and got what they paid for) but chose to only spend $ on laminate countertops. A few years ago, they swapped the countertops out for granite, and at that time put in an undermount sink. This is the route we're likely to take as well, just because we dream of soapstone (like the beautiful darkened soapstone you find in old chemistry labs) and don't want to spend much on something else for the interim. The only downside to laminate is the lack of an undermounted sink, but we've both gotten used to that, and figure that after so many years, we can live with it for another 10 or so (or till we win the lottery, whichever comes first) when we feel ready to make that last upgrade.

We'd thought about ways to somehow put a solid surface countertop around the sink area, to make it possible to have an undermount sink. With the refrigerator in the impossible location across from the range, it might have been possible, because then the stretch of counter that included the sink wouldn't have been huge: just the area from the fridge all the way down the wall to the end to where the marble for the baking area begins. But with the dishwasher there, we don't have a good place to make a transition from solid to laminate, which means that we'd have to do the entire length of that wall in our solid surface. Furthermore, because we want the same surface on both ends close to the dining room, we'd also have to do the solid surface between the range and the end of that run. And once you're doing all that, you may as well also do the little bit more on the other side of the baking area, to the fridge...at which point you're talking about 30 LINEAR feet of countertop, which would mean more than 60 square feet of solid surface for standard countertop depth...and then you're running into serious cost issues.

The other reason for laminate countertops is something I'd hinted at earlier. I haven't heard from anyone with an IKEA kitchen that's more than 10 years old. The IKEA cabinet warranty is 10 years. Not that we're distrustful, but we want to know what happens with these cabinets in the medium- to long-term: do they hold up well? If something happens and the cabinets don't hold up well and we need to replace them all in 11 years, that will be easier and slightly less painful if we don't have to destroy our dream countertops in the process. So laminate it will be, and laminates today are much nicer than they were even ten years ago. We've waited this long, and can wait a bit longer. This way, we'll still have something to look forward to.

MelissaH

[lcdm]

Melissa,

Sounds like you have a good handle on what you want/need.

Everything you ever want to know about Ikea cab/kitchen:

http://ths.gardenweb.com/search/nph-ind.cg...m_name=Kitchens

[KitchenMom]

Melissa, great thread. Kitchen reno is so obsessive, but so much fun. I recently completed a major kitchen renovation with Ikea cabinets. I did the design myself and, so far, it is working out wonderfully. One of these days I'll have some pictures.

Anyway, if you are going the Ikea route, I highly recommend you check out IkeaFans.com. It is a fantastic site full of knowledgeable people. You can see pictures of finished kitchens, get info on long-distance ordering, assembling, and all kinds of clever modfications. The folks on the forum are super-nice and helpful.

Also, while my kitchen is new, I know a few people with Ikea kitchens that are over 10 years, and they are holding up just fine.

For sinks, if budget is an issue, you might want to check out Kindred sinks. They are very similar to Blanco, just as nice, and cheaper. I have the Kindred Big Single, which is similar in dimension to the Blanco you linked (I think it's 9" deep, but I'm not sure). I have it in the Ikea 36" sink base, with a laminate counter and it is great.

I love that Blanco faucet. I have the Blanco Purus II, which looks like the faucet you linked, but without the restaurant syle sprayer attachement. It is a very nice, heavy faucet and so far is working beautifully.

Have fun!

[Kouign Aman]

Would someone be willing to explain why a solid surface counter is needed for an under-mounted sink?

I am thinking its because "undermount" means not only the final resting place of sink relative to counter, but because sink is literally mounted to the underside of said counter.

Would it not be possible to build a hidden sink support and install a sink as if top mounted, but below counter height, to give same final effect, using the flimsier laminate counter?

[MelissaH]

Would someone be willing to explain why a solid surface counter is needed for an under-mounted sink?

I am thinking its because "undermount" means not only the final resting place of sink relative to counter, but because sink is literally mounted to the  underside of said counter.

Would it not be possible to build a hidden sink support and install a sink as if top mounted, but below counter height, to give same final effect, using the flimsier laminate counter?

←

The bigger issue is water.

Laminate is glued onto a plywood surface. To undermount a sink, you'd need to cut a hole in the plywood, somehow run the laminate around the sides of the hole and onto the bottom, seal every last stinkin' crack so water can't get in and totally wreck the countertop under the laminate, and then somehow seal the sink up to the surface.

It's the sealing that's the big problem. There's just no good way, as far as I know, to somehow completely seal the laminate up so it looks decent and keeps the water from rotting the wood underneath.

With a solid surface, sealing isn't a problem because it's a solid surface. The sink is sometimes supported from underneath, but the only sealing that needs to be done is between the sink and the underside of the surface, which is pretty easy to accomplish.

MelissaH

[Daddy-A]

Would it not be possible to build a hidden sink support and install a sink as if top mounted, but below counter height, to give same final effect, using the flimsier laminate counter?

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Yes it is. CLICK

[Groovy Flash opening too!]

A.

[MelissaH]

Melissa, great thread.  Kitchen reno is so obsessive, but so much fun.  I recently completed a major kitchen renovation with Ikea cabinets.  I did the design myself and, so far, it is working out wonderfully.  One of these days I'll have some pictures.

Anyway, if you are going the Ikea route, I highly recommend you check out IkeaFans.com.  It is a fantastic site full of knowledgeable people.  You can see pictures of finished kitchens, get info on long-distance ordering, assembling, and all kinds of clever modfications.  The folks on the forum are super-nice and helpful.

Also, while my kitchen is new, I know a few people with Ikea kitchens that are over 10 years, and they are holding up just fine.

For sinks, if budget is an issue, you might want to check out Kindred sinks.  They are very similar to Blanco, just as nice, and cheaper.  I have the Kindred Big Single, which is similar in dimension to the Blanco you linked (I think it's 9" deep, but I'm not sure).  I have it in the Ikea 36" sink base, with a laminate counter and it is great.

I love that Blanco faucet.  I have the Blanco Purus II, which looks like the faucet you linked, but without the restaurant syle sprayer attachement.  It is a very nice, heavy faucet and so far is working beautifully.

Have fun!

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Thanks for the vote of confidence. It's always nice to know of people who have done what you're going to do, and it's worked well for many years. And yes, budget is definitely an issue so we'll be checking out the Kindred sinks. (Their Web site isn't as easy as Blanco's to navigate and find the sink we're looking for, though.) If we're going to be replacing our countertops in a few years, we'll also be replacing our sink then. So we need something nice, and big, to get us through but we don't want to spend a fortune on something that we know isn't going to be a permanent fixture. (And if we can get it in a farmhouse sink, so much the better because that would make my husband very very happy!)

But thanks even more for the IKEA Fan Web site. There's an incredible wealth of information on this site, and if I vanish from eG for a few days, you'll know where to look for me!

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

Would it not be possible to build a hidden sink support and install a sink as if top mounted, but below counter height, to give same final effect, using the flimsier laminate counter?

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Yes it is. CLICK

[Groovy Flash opening too!]

A.

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Do you trust this? How much does it add to the cost of a laminate-plus-dropin sink arrangement?

Melissa

[Daddy-A]

Would it not be possible to build a hidden sink support and install a sink as if top mounted, but below counter height, to give same final effect, using the flimsier laminate counter?

←

Yes it is. CLICK

[Groovy Flash opening too!]

A.

Do you trust this? How much does it add to the cost of a laminate-plus-dropin sink arrangement?

Yes, I trust this as far as I trust the installer. If you purchase the ring pre-mounted in the deck, then it's virtually fool-proof ... but again, it all comes down to the installer.

As as as costs go ... a "ring-in-board" sets me back about $250 plus about $50 for the epoxy (and you NEED to use their epoxy for warranty purposes).

It's not my favorite option, but that's only because I don't like laminate. If you're going to use laminate, I wouldn't hesitate to reccomend it.

A.

[MelissaH]

We think we've found our floor.

We were originally thinking of the Armstrong brand commercial vinyl tile like this (or in another color, or putting a couple of colors together to make a pattern). I liked the durability, the ease of installation, and the ease of care. I didn't care so much for the feathery pattern within each tile, and the fact that it looks like the floors in many institutional-type buildings including the one I work in.

And then we watched This Old House, and saw the episode on which they were putting in the kitchen floor in the house they're renovating in Washington DC. It was a click-together linoleum floor. And as my husband and I watched them set the floor in place on TV and listened to them talk about it, we just looked at each other, thinking the same thing: "That's our floor!" We liked the overall look, and when they showed us the side view we liked that it looked robust, and we liked their blue color although it probably won't work in our kitchen which will have yellow and red accents. We also liked that the linoleum is considered a much "greener" material than vinyl. So we watched the credits, and saw a line for Marmoleum floor. There are places around here that sell it, and we'll be going to look in person. But this looks like a prime candidate.

In other news, we know about what we'll be looking for in lighting, and we know what we'll need to do for the utilities. My husband has a preliminary calendar of events, and if everything goes as planned, we'd be done by the end of July. Which is good, because we need to be done by the end of August when classes start!

MelissaH