Focus On: Kitchen

With the house somewhere in the upper 90th percentile of completion, I thought it might be fun to go room to room and highlight the before and after, as well as discuss the factors that impacted the choices we finally made, whether they were financial, structural or space related in nature. The obvious first choice was the kitchen, as it's the room we spend the most time in and the room that required the most amount of preparation to make the space work to create something as close to our dream kitchen as possible.

The biggest consideration in our kitchen design was space. Since our house is only 20 feet wide and 40 feet long, we often found ourselves trying to design in tight places. Two of our biggest challenges in the kitchen came with working around the duct work for the central air conditioning and working around the newly installed steel framing.

I worked closely with our architect Alden Maddry on designing a kitchen with the classic triangle between the sink, stove and refrigerator, as well as making sure there was plenty of counter space from every location in the kitchen. Another important factor was the ability to put a long, skinny 6 person table in the dining area. Plenty of storage was another big consideration, as we needed a lot of room for Eric's huge collection of Belgium beer, martini and cognac glasses. Additionally, I was dead set on a 48" storage and a large French-door style refrigerator so we had to get very creative.

Plans in place, we commenced with the building…

As a reminder, this is what our kitchen space looked like once all the old sheetrock and walls came down. This space used to be the kitchen/hall/bathroom of our ground floor when it was being illegally squatted in.

From the living area

From above (what is now the guest bedroom/office)

Fast forward months later, after all the plumbing, electrical and HVAC is put in and now we've got to squeeze all these ducts and pipes tight to this wall. We've got beefy ventilation for both our stove and our dryer as well as all the A/C ducts venting through here. It turned out to be a tight squeeze in a very small space.

With a whole lot of work we were able to squeeze it all in with the exception of the vent for the range hood, which was a full two feet farther over than it needed to be (pretty much the distance between where the hole is in the plywood and the electrical cable coming out of the green board). We came up with a pseudo plan for customizing the vent hood at a later date and started closing the walls.

On the opposite wall we also needed to sheetrock over the brick fireplace, as it was in such a state of disrepair there was no fixing it

We kept the brick on the left of the fireplace exposed all the way to the front of the house, but the section on the right looked like hell. So our custom cabinet makers Wüd Furniture made a pantry that matched our cabinets to go in that section. The guys at Wüd showed me a few samples but it seems very clear early on that we were going to have to go with the Sapele or African mahogany. This red striped wood is quite striking and matched our red cherry floors exceptionally. Later we wound up using Sapele for both our stair treads and our cap rails, we liked it so much.

Meanwhile the cabinets got installed. We opted for a very large island, with sink, dishwasher, microwave and storage on one side and more storage for bar glasses on the other side. We like our drinks…and their special glasses

Then the appliances went in, all painstaking researched by yours truly. Consumer Reports is your friend

The LG 25 cu. French door fridge with bottom freezer

The 48" Thermador Dual Fuel Range

The Fisher and Paykel DishDrawer

We got our fabulous dark green, sparkly granite countertops from SMC Stone in Greenpoint, but do yourself a favor and don't buy anything from them. They have beautiful stone, but they messed up our order and installation so many times that I can't recommend them at all. The finished product does look nice though.  This color is called Emerald Pearl and is part of their "World Granite" collection

Back to the range hood, I found the simple Plane hood from Futuro Futuro.  Our contractor Tim mounted it, took the top off and created a custom venting solution which brought the vent around and to the left, through the cabinet and then into the duct work.

Then he put plywood on top of that which will later get a large piece of stainless steel installed over it to complete the whole look. The stainless backsplash still needs a bit of work to even out the places where you can still see wall, but that is all in the works.

We designed the island to have a small overhang where we could fit two chairs on each corner, but with the actual construction the dimensions of everything shrank slightly.  With the structure steel frame and all the insulation on the back of the house adding more bulk than we originally thought, we were even nervous on whether or not the island itself would be too big. It turned out that it fit just fine, but we nixed the stool idea, kept the countertops tight and instead found a wine fridge that almost fits perfectly in that space…it juts out a few inches, but I don't really mind—it holds 32 bottles! That's a whole lotta booze...

And here is the (almost) finished product

Maui and Vincent check out all the storage for booze and booze related glasses

Here's the island from the other side—again with the nosey animals!

Comments

[DHL]

I think you were stalking us (Ordered our appliances in Sept 2006, house finished 3/9/07)... we have the same LG Fridge, the same Fischer Paykel dishwasher and the same broke ass Thermador Stove. I'll e-mail you a link to our pictures.

[~dana]

how strange. We ordered all of our applianced in August 2006, so who's stalking who? :-) Do send photos...

[DHL]

Did you also get the Uba Tuba granite? Stalker... :oP

[~dana]

It's very strange to see my appliances in your house! Your's looks a lot less dusty though. Our granite was called "Emerald Pearl" and we opted for the extremely square "Easy Edge"--looks like you did a much fancier edge...thanks for sharing!

[DHL]

We selected the single Ogee edge which tacks on a bit of $$, but it was per linear foot pricing and we don't have that many linear feet. I do have the dusty pictures, but I only put up the spit and shine photos. :o)

[Tim]

I'd highly recommend you visit the birthplace of your granite countertop. Uba Tuba is one of the most beautiful beaches in Brazil!

[From Hawaii]

whats even weirder... Im browsing the web and I come across this page. We are installing sapele cabinets in our new home right now same cabinet pulls same color granite with stainless appliances and we own a bengal cat and an african gray

[dana]

hawaii--that is odd! i guess great minds think alike...send photos!