Old / New

Lots of change this month. Part of that change was our attempt to update the kitchen. I needed a little while to recover both physically and financially from the bathroom modifications, but since that time and for the past couple of months I have been planning, planning, ordering, and waiting.

First, a quick view of the old:

And then the new:

…And now the story. I learned quickly that planning a kitchen is an exercise in organization — timing is everything. Most everything you can think of that goes into a kitchen (i.e. cabinets, appliances, sink, faucets, flooring surfaces, counter top surfaces, etc) has a lead time, and each component a different one. The cabinet lead time for me was 4-6 weeks and the cabinets I picked were Kraftmaid through Home Depot. I picked a Cherry wood with a dark Kaffe stain. It would have been much easier to simply re-finish the old cabinets, but there really was no option. They were poorly constructed, and as we learned from taking them down poorly installed. New was the only option. Design was pretty easy. The cabinets are in standard sizes, after you measure your space you essentially compose it sort of like a puzzle. Put in the pieces that fit and, in our case, ensure maximum efficiency and organization. I decided to learn Adobe Illustrator. I originally used Photoshop but was given a very bad time about the ease of use and advantages of Illustrator.

Here are my original designs:

I didn’t really mind our old kitchen layout, other than that we were short on space. I simply sized down our sink base from 30″ to 27″, added those 3″ to the set of drawers (up to 15″), and then expanded the 12″ wall and base cabinets that were next to the range to 18″. That last part was a bit tricky…see the wall that is just to the left of the fridge in the above illustration is only 26″ deep. Standard refrigerators from most any brand I could find were between 30-33″ deep. That wouldn’t have been ideal. Additionally, we wanted to add and not subtract space to the cabinet dimensions, so we needed a fridge not more than 30″ wide…all of the standard refrigerators that met the depth requirement we had (cabinet depth) were more than 30″ and usually up to or at least 48″ wide. We would have had a fridge and no kitchen. So I did something a little different, and found a few European branded refrigerators that were built in the most intelligent of styles: tall and skinny. I had a few [not many] options and decided to go with a Liebherr. Our model is the CS-1301 (no plumbing hookups for the ice-maker). The rest of the appliances were a bit more basic; we had a few GE appliances when I grew up, and I had a GE microwave in college (and am still using it now until the new one arrives — back-orders aren’t fun). I am fairly happy with them. I considered Kitchenaid for a while until I found out they were made by Whirlpool, and online reviews from epinions generally suggested they were overpriced and people had some reliability problems with them. In any case, if anyone wants product specific reviews, email me, our GE models were PDW9880LSS, JVM1790SK, and JS968SKSS. Appliances were pretty forgivable on the lead time, I went to Albert Lee and they said they were able to deliver them essentially any time I wanted to match my project timing. That was nice of them. Flooring was similar, I had left over marble from the bathroom projects and in the end just couldn’t justify spending more to get a different product when I had just enough to do the kitchen. I ordered one extra box from Home Depot just in case. The counter tops were a different story. As I did in the back bathroom I decided to go with an engineered quartz, Silestone. Costco has better prices on a different brand of engineered quartz, Zodiaq, but I wanted to be consistent with what I had already done. Engineered quartz is similar to granite, though doesn’t quite have the depth in appearance. The advantage is that it is non-porous and doesn’t have to be sealed every 6 months to a year, or won’t stain as easily. Timing on counter tops installs is my biggest criticism of a kitchen renovation project. I understand their reasoning (and they do great work), but they won’t come to measure until you have all of the cabinets installed and all new appliances on location. Then the come to template and you are left, as we are now, without a counter- top. The situation is slightly worsened if you decide on an undermount sink (as we did with the Kohler we chose), then you additionally don’t have a functional sink or dishwasher for the two weeks it takes to fabricate the counter. We are managing.

In any case, here are some photos of the process. First, old cabinets already out, new ones arrive.

Cabinets unpacked:

Kitchen empty:

The new:

Cabinets arrived on the 5th of this month, appliances on the 6th, and on the 7th the counter top people came to template. We had all of the old cabinets out on the 4th-5th, the new cabinets installed on the 6th, and the floor installed on the 7th. On the 8th we grouted the tile, and finished the trim. Then on the 9th we installed the appliances and cleaned. Quite a process. Old and new, and lots of change. I will post some more when everything is finished — this Friday the counter top is installed and we will finally be able to use the dishwasher and sink. The microwave is supposed to show up the 24th, and then I will tile behind the range. Then, photos.