Author Archive: doug

Lis and I went to Interior Stone in Waltham today to look at countertop materials. We already knew we would like to go with a quartz (a man-made stone-like material that doesn’t stain), so we concentrated on those.  This showroom has a good variety of brands — Caesarstone, Zodiaq, Hanstone, and Silestone; the only major brand not represented here is Cambria.  We pretty quickly narrowed the field to browns & reddish-browns; here is one of the better Hanstone samples.

We met with Gina at the store today to nail down the cabinet design.  We spent a good 3 hours going over everything and I think we came up with something we’re happy with.

Of course, it’s not really final until we sit down again with our contractor, which we’ll do a week from Monday.

We’ve chosen a favored cabinet manufacturer.  To a greater extent than I anticipated, this decision was driven by by door/drawer front styles available from each manufacturer. Then we sat down with Gina and went over the cabinet selection on each wall. I’m particularly happy that we came up with what seems to be a nice solution for the peninsula area.

We’ve had a few discussions and come to a few decisions over the past few days.

Lis had some good ideas for the area of our mail / charger area, in front of the plumbing & electrical chase.  Rather than a tall & narrow cabinet in the corner, with our mail cubbies in the next cabinet to the left, it would be better to have the mail cubbies as part of that tall cabinet, even if it means building something custom.

As I mentioned on my Project 365 blog, I opened up the plumbing/electrical chase today to see what’s inside.  The answer? thankfully, not much.  The main plumbing stack is against the outside wall, as expected, with some power and phone/cable wiring twist-tied to it (I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to do that 🙂 ).  There are also 4 copper pipes; I think these are hot side for the 2nd and 3rd floor heat, and the hot & cold supply for the 2nd floor bathrooms.

There is also a rather steely blue paint on some of the original plaster, and what I assume is original bead-board wainscoting.

Looking up:

Looking down:

This chase does not need to be anywhere near as large as it is.  By relocating one of the heating pipes it could easily be 12″ deep (same as an upper cabinet), and by relocating both of them it could be just a few inches deep, shallow enough to actually put something in front of.

This week we met with the contractor again and have had a few back & forths with the kitchen designer.

On the contractor front, he’s off revising the draft contract to reflect the newest kitchen design, and correct some issues that were not what we wanted.  We came to some decisions:

• The cost of radiant floor is above what we perceive to be its value for us, so I think we will be doing normal kickspace heater(s) instead
• The “new” layout is generally better for us than the original one,
  and he’s proceeding assuming we will do something based around this
  design.
• We will do a normal 4″ backsplash and paint above the majority of the counter, and a tall tile backsplash above the stove. The short backsplash may be counter material, or may be tile that matches the stove’s backsplash.

• What locations for the prep sink are doable and cost-effective, due to vent pipe?
• Since we’re probably not doing radiant floor, do we still want tile?  Or do we want wood?
• What can we do for heat in the area of the coat closet, since the existing radiator will be inside the closet, and we’ve got poor access to the crawlspace under there to move any piping?

We’ve also signed a contract to do the design & zoning work for the sunroom. I did some trial furniture layouts and determined that the minimum useful size for us is 10×12 feet; 12×12 would be better, and 12×14 would fit better when taking the existing window/door into account.  Our Southboro sunroom was 12×16, but it also had what amounts to a hallway along one end, and the chimney taking up a pretty large footprint.  Based on sunrooms on several other houses in the neighborhood, we’ve okayed the use of a flat roof.  Flat roof, besides being less expensive, also frees us of some constraints from the 2nd floor windows.  Even though that’s more of a Federal detail than Victorian, I think we can pull it off with appropriate details, maybe something like this (the railing on the porch roof):

Gina came through with 3D renderings of the new plan.  This one in particular gives a good feel for the space (though it’s missing the 1/2 bath door).

Slow project progress around here.  Our contractor is trying to finish up some other projects by Christmas and so we’re waiting on his availability to get the design stage really rolling.  I continue to make tweaks to the plan I posted about last time.  I think this will wind up being a better design for us overall.

We took a trip down to Yale Appliance in Dorchester today.  They have a higher-end selection of appliances than the big-box stores, and we were able to see some things in person that we hadn’t seen before.

We saw the Sharp microwave drawer.  I think that if the design dictates that we use this for space savings, it would work for us.

However, I am still concerned that if it doesn’t cook well, or if it breaks down the line, that we’d have trouble replacing it in place.  This same display had an extra-deep upper cabinet above with a normal countertop microwave on a shelf, and I think this is probably a better idea for us.

With the extra-deep upper cabinet I think the options are about a wash cost-wise.

We also looked at sinks.  Lis is not a fan of the appearance of a 0-radius sink — too modern. The P-shaped sinks seem like they’d be good for us, and a round prep sink would be a nice touch.  Neither of us likes farmhouse sinks. At all.

Yale has a big selection of refrigerators, especially high-end.  While a Liebherr or Sub Zero is impressive and I’m sure does a very good job, they’re too ostentatious for us, and too much $$$$ besides. We saw the higher-end brother of a KitchenAid fridge we liked at Lowes, and it adds some very nice features, especially to the arrangement of the freezer section.

Finally, we looked at range hoods.  I was pleased to find that Lis likes my current top choice (Zephyr Venezia) just fine.

We have one more field trip we need to make over the next couple of months — to the stone yard.  Other than that, I am chomping at the bit to get the design nailed down. I hope that after the holidays we’re able to pick up the pace a little.

The kind folks at the GardenWeb Kitchens forum did indeed have a totally different arrangement idea for me to try.  This is just a quick post to share this alternative, which is a pretty radical departure from what I had drawn, and in some ways works much better.  We haven’t run this by the contractor yet.

This plan moves the stove and prep sink into what’s now the sunroom, and moves our bistro table to over by the foyer at a banquette.  It also gives us room for a small walk-in pantry in the corner.  And a truly enormous 54″ primary prep space between prep sink and stove.

I’m not happy yet with the “perch space” / hang-out seating in the middle: I feel like this should be somewhat of a focal point, not a plain rectangle as I’ve drawn it. And we’re not sure if we’d prefer the finished look of a banquette or the flexibility of an open space for our bistro table.

Today I wanted to bring the blog up to date on how the kitchen plan has evolved over the past few weeks.
First, a reminder of the current layout:

… and a floorplan of the whole proposed first floor:

Now finally, the current kitchen proposal:

We’ve chosen a contractor!  The company we’ve referred to as “Contractor 2” is the same company that remodeled the kitchen of friends of ours several years ago.  Their estimate was mostly in line with what we were expecting, and more importantly, they seem to really get what we’re after with this project.

Contractor 3, while I’m sure would have done a good job, didn’t seem to understand our scope and goals quite as well as who we selected.  It made our decision easy that Contractor 3’s estimate was at the very high end of what we’re willing to pay.

I want to tighten up our preliminary design — which the professionals we’ve talked with seem to think is reasonable — and post it to a rkitchen-remodeling forum I’ve been lurking on. GardenWeb’s kitchen forum has a wealth of ideas and experience, and is populated by people who are passionate about kitchens.  In the time I’ve been reading that forum, I’ve seen a lot of folks post their designs and get good feedback.  The people there are focused on functionality first and foremost.  They don’t know me, and don’t know our house, so may well be the source of some out-of-left-field idea that fits brilliantly.  Or I may get nothing out of it at all.  Either way, that’s a community of people who are remodeling their kitchens and so are going through the same stuff we are.  Making myself known to such a community certainly can’t hurt.

Gina was kind enough to go through my sketched layout and enter it into her system. It’s great to get a pro’s input, constrain the design to what’s easily available and typically done, etc. What I was not expecting is how useful the 3d renderings are in visualizing the space.  They’re by no means photorealistic and don’t reflect our choices for styles, materials, and finishes (which we haven’t made yet), but give a good impression of flow and visual impact.

In the first shot, we’re standing about where the new fridge is slated to go.