Paul McAlary 0:31 Welcome. This is calls with Paul the kitchen design helpline. In today's episode, Michael calls in, he emailed us his floorplan before calling, and we both go over the tight spaces in his design and other issues with his kitchen. Are you there, Michael? Michael 0:50 Oh, Paul. Paul McAlary 0:51 Okay. We're good. Okay, so let me go to your email. So I'm looking at your design here. So did you have any questions or you want me to first comment, and then you can ask questions, whatever is good for you. Michael 1:07 Yeah, why don't you provide your comments first? And thank you, by the way for the conflict. Yeah, yeah, no problem. Paul McAlary 1:13 So the first thing I would say is, you know, like most people, and most customers, you're everyone's always trying to put more stuff in a space than make sense. Because it doesn't it's not real to customers, the distances aren't really real until they're till everything is done. And then sometimes it's even people even can live with spaces that are much smaller than they really should be. So that's usually if you're in our company's offices, or before the pandemic on a Saturday, at some point, you might have three designers all fighting with their customers, trying to get them to buy less cabinets, to leave more space for their for their kitchen, as a kitchen designer, that's probably pretty much our job all the time. And what the architects do is try to make it seem like they're magic, and can give you more stuff in this space than is actually physically possible. So this applies to your kitchen great, a great deal. So you have 12 feet 11 and three quarter inches across the room, in this kitchen. So that's 13 feet, essentially times 12 is you have 156 inches. So with shims and countertop overhangs and everything else, your countertop is going to come out 26 inches on one wall, so 156 minus 26. Then in this design, you have 36 inches of cabinets, and then a 12 inch overhang on one back of the cabinet. And you'll have an inch and a half or two inch overhang on the other side of the cabinet. So you're gonna have about 50 inches worth of countertop there. So we subtract 50 inches, and you're left with 80 inches. So you have 80 inches of leftover space around this island, that if you divide it in two, you'll have you know, 40 inches on one side and 40 inches on the other side. In this design, the architect or whoever is done these drawings as put a lot of it on one side, and then made the chairs very tight on the other. But I mean the problem with that is that you're now making everybody walk through where you're trying to work to get out the back door. So you really have to, you really don't have the space for for the for the cabinetry as it is. So you're really going to have to make your island shallower. And it really probably if you gave yourself 90 inches or so or you got rid of the 12 inches on the back of the island 12 inch bottom cabinets, those cabinets wouldn't have been very useful anyway, you would have had to crawl under the countertop to get at them. So usually what we would do is if in this picture, you only have yourself sitting on one side of the island on the back end. If you're okay with that, it will look a lot nicer if you made your island 36 inches of cabinets, you could put a cabinet on each end of the island, the full 36 inches and then that would make the cabinetry that you would see from the sides of the island the same size as it was in the original drawing. But you know, so your island would feel and look just as substantial, but the stools would be tucking in in the middle of that and you'd make those two end cabinets on either end of the island 12 inches deep so that you know they weren't taking up a ton of space and they would on one would open towards the back doors and the other would open towards the refrigerator and then the island in the drawer Is 10 feet three and a half inches long? Well, the largest countertop that you'll be able to get unless you spend a fortune to get an unusually extra large size countertop is 10 feet. So your your island has to be smaller, no matter what. But you know, it's got to be at most 10 feet, well, nine feet 11 inches long probably for somebody that successfully be able to cut a granite or quartz countertop, that's a standard slab, slabs are all 1010 feet long and at a maximum normally. And then you really have the same issue around you're in front of your refrigerator that again, get you know, putting 10 pounds of sausage in an eight pound wrapper, the architect is left three inches countertop to countertop. And, and really he's doing it cabinet to countertop or cabinet to cabinet. So he's not even accounting for the overhangs, or, you know, he's he's saying that the cabinets are 12 inches deep, but they actually have doors and handles on them, and your refrigerator has a front to it. So you can't ever leave, I would never leave less than 42 inches of space between the front of the refrigerator and the countertop. Because if you stand in front of a refrigerator, take that you can do this yourself, just stand in front of your refrigerator, take a tape measure and put it put it 36 inches. This is actually he's leaving you here, whoever this is, is leaving you not even 36 Because the refrigerator projects from he's leaving you about 20 to 32 inches from the front of the refrigerator to the overhang on the countertop, if you just take stand in front of your present refrigerator and measure 32 inches and put a chair in back of you so that you can't step back at 32 at 32 or 33 inches, you won't be able to open the refrigerator doors, because you can't step back far enough to get you have to stand on the side to open the refrigerator doors. So it's just patently insane, right, you can't leave this kind of space. So if you go to 42 inches, we find that if you're 42 inches away, maybe if you really want to stretch it, make it 42 inches from the countertop to countertop, but I would probably still go 42 inches from refrigerator to countertop, then if you measure that distance, put a chair in back to you at 42, you'll see that when you open your refrigerator, your back just hits the chair, so that you have enough space to open the refrigerator and not have to you know and be able to step back far enough for the refrigerator doors to swing open. So but 42 would be a minimum so that you know those are two major things that you really, you should correct. And then other than that, you know, I think it would be you know, I think it would be nicer in the design. If you're having double ovens and a cooktop it might be nicest. If you centered the the cooktop in the countertop, you don't have to, there's definitely some there's definitely some advantages to doing it way it's done here. Because having a bunch of extra countertop on one side and less countertop on the other gives you like the event you could roll pizza on the countertop is different. You know, having one big long section has you know, is good, but it doesn't look quite as nice, it would be much more attractive. If the cooktop was centered in the remaining cabinets FDA got past the oven. I think actually what they did enter the cooktop on the whole length of cabinets and not you know, not considering the fact that the oven is there. Yeah. Speaker 2 8:55 So what are your thoughts on the placement of the appliances, the double wall oven, because I'm thinking you know, the double wall oven, it actually it most likely will be a microwave and an oven combo. My concern is that if I were to microwave something straight from the fridge, that that distance is pretty far from the fruit to the oven. It's Paul McAlary 9:15 well it is but the good part about that is is well one thing you could do is put you have a pantry that's on the right side of the refrigerator. And I guess one on the left side of the refrigerator as well. You could put the double, you could put the ovens I don't think you'll want to have the ovens next to the refrigerator, the double ovens next to the refrigerator. If you did arrange and then a microwave you could put the microwave over in the other in the you know, on the right side of the refrigerator or something like that. Also, I would also relocate my refrigerator too. So it's not I would slide the refrigerator down and put a panel on the left hand side and make Get all pantry cabinets on the right if that's what you want, and then a panel on the left of the refrigerator so that the refrigerator actually opens into the gap between the sink and the stove. Yeah, that will also, that will also mitigate the you still should leave yourself to 42 inches though. But it will certainly make it a lot better. And also, if you want to clean your refrigerator, you'll be able to kneel in front of it and wash it and do other things. If you only leave 42 inches, you won't even be able to do that. Michael 10:35 And when you say no to the left of it. Paul McAlary 10:38 So yeah, so matching, so you have cabinet pantry cabinets on the right side of the refrigerator, the cabinet over the refrigerator comes all the way out, because you're going to be getting a counter depth refrigerator, I assume. So where you should be in this design getting a counter depth refrigerator, at least or sub zero or something but a counter depth refrigerator, and then you have the cabinets over the refrigerator come out to the face of the pantry cabinets that are to the right, and then just to close all the refrigerator in into complete cabinetry, then you just have it's called the refrigerator panel, you just have a wallpaper, a tall panel that matches your cabinets on the left hand side of the refrigerator so that all the pantry cabinets are to the right, and the refrigerators you know, to the left, and then the panel goes to the left. And then your refrigerator will end up being with you. If you have the same amount of refrigerator. I mean, same amount of pantry cabinets as you have now you're very much end up right in the middle of that gap between the island and the stove. Speaker 2 11:46 Okay. Sorry, in that instance. So the fridge slightly to the right. So that is kind of pretty much straight in along what working there, then the double oven was stay where it is, Paul McAlary 12:00 then I think yeah, the double oven, I think you want to stay where it is, even though it would be it would work better if it was all the way down on the right hand side. But that will close in the kitchen because that's a tall deep cabinet, it's going to be nice and make the kitchen seem much more open to have the tall deep cabinet in the corner. So if it's going to be a cooktop and a double oven, you definitely want that the oven in the corner, the ovens in the corner, even though it's a pain in the neck. But the good news is that it's a long way from the refrigerator to the oven. But once you make your island smaller, you'll people won't have to go through the space between the sink and the stove, they can walk in back to get to the oven, because there'll be enough room back there. Speaker 2 12:46 Okay. And I guess I was this was one of the things I was thinking about that I think your proposal actually resulted with just you know, the three feet of distance between Connor to Connor Connor to the island there, I also felt like the island should be kinda the edge of the island should have aligned with lined up with the edge of that color on the way the stove. Yeah, Paul McAlary 13:11 I mean, that's not really that important. It that it lines up mean, you know, when things align like that, that are sort of arbitrary. The only way that you really realize even if they're aligned, is if you straddle them, like a referee to look and see exactly where they fall in any particular perspective in a room. It's only that's the only way you even know where they fall is when you're lined up there. So we don't even consider that that has actually, you know, in as a designer, I give I give just about almost zero importance to that. So I'd rather have the correct distance between the countertops. And so if maybe when you get when you give yourself 42 inches between the cabinets and the island, you'll actually end up a little bit short of the end of the cabinet. On the other side, I'm not really quite sure it's going to be close how high are your ceilings Do you know? Michael 14:22 10 feet. Paul McAlary 14:24 So you have a very you have unusually high ceilings. So when your ceilings are 10 feet high. There's good news and bad news about 10 foot high ceilings. And the good news is is that it seems very spacious. The bad news is that your cabinetry is not going to look very built in or if it does, it's going to be going all the way up to 10 feet. A lot of times if we have a customer that has a 10 foot high ceiling, what we would do is maybe bring their ceiling down to nine and a half or nine and a quarter and then stack cabinets So on top of each other with a molding to, to, like make what's called a tray ceiling, where we bring the ceiling down around the perimeter of the room to nine feet and three inches, maybe something like that. And then in the center of the room, you can have a mold and go around the whole interior of the tray to make it more attractive. And then you can have cabinetry that's goes all the way up to the ceilings. But when you make 10 foot high ceilings, you're going to a height that cabinet kitchen cabinets are going to be if you try to go all the way to the ceiling are going to be a little funny looking, they're going to be a little bit too big. So that again architects make things 10 feet high without thinking about how they you know, what they what they're doing the the cabinet tree design. Speaker 2 15:49 So but 90 shouldn't be an issue right? Paul McAlary 15:53 Now nine feet, nine feet, the thing with nine feet is nine feet will also for if you're going to have your cabinetry go up to the ceiling and your countertop and your ceiling is nine feet, you're going to need to get very expensive or more expensive cabinetry, because you're going to if you want your cabinetry to go to the ceiling, you're going to need like I'm sure you've seen the pictures where the people have the little cabinets on top of the bigger cabinets. And a lot of times these little cabinets have glass in them when they're going up to the ceiling. So those little cabinets with the glass on top, they're like twice as expensive as the big cabinets that you're actually storing things in below. And the cabinet companies that make the that have a catalogue that's big enough to actually have those, all the little cabinets that you probably are going to need or may need usually are much more expensive cabinet line. So you sort of if the hot as your ceiling gets higher, you catapult yourself into much more expensive cabinet orders. Because either you're getting more cabinets, or you know, and that's why you need a designer that designing your kitchen in a particular brand. So for instance, if you were in a less expensive brand of ours, we might be able if you had a nine foot high ceiling, we could probably design your kitchen, where we stacked cabinets and got the little cabinets on top of the bigger cabinets below. But the the inexpensive brands that we carry, well, they're very well made, they're only going to come in some sizes. So we have to design that your kitchen so that it we're using the sizes that the cabinets come in. So that's a little bit of a challenge to so when you're really designing somebody's kitchen, you can't really design it, you have to know what cabinet line you're designing it in and what what's available in those lines. Speaker 2 17:46 Okay, okay. I guess question about pricing and stuff I took a I looked at all the cabinet makers and the rankings that you guys provided. And they price so what typically is the price difference between you know, a company that where the value was ranked at one versus five, or double three, Paul McAlary 18:10 probably wonder wonder five is maybe double. What Okay, so two, two, so two, like we carry Fabula Wood is a two and then we carry Brighton which is a five. And Brighton is probably a is a is a is a custom brand. That's not the most expensive custom brand we carry, we carry a couple of really expensive custom brands. But Brighton is a less expensive custom brand. And to go from fab you wood to Brighton, is about 60% price jump. But then usually when we design a kitchen in Brighton, we're adding all kinds of features that you can't do in the less expensive cabinet line, like integrated door panels on the sides of the cabinets, and maybe inset and beaded inset cabinetry. So that even though Brighton is about 60% More than Fabula wood, after we you know put all those little features in the kitchen, the Brighton ends up being more like 80% More than fabulous. So it's a big huge price jump. So that's sort of why and the quality of the construction of the cabinet you can get very well made inexpensive cabinetry, if you're willing to have if you're willing to have a you know, a simple door style or a door or have less choice of door style and finish. So the fab you would brand that we carry just as an example. There's lots of these brands where the cabinets are usually the doors in the front of the cabinets are made overseas, in Vietnam, probably most of them now. And then the cabinets are assembled and built in the United States. They're American companies, but they're, you know, they're getting the labor for the hardest part of the brain eject, which is the front of the cabinets in the doors in the drawer drawer fronts, and don't paint it in and sanded and everything else overseas, which is, you know, saves an incredible amount on labor. So that's how they can actually create build a well constructed cabinet. And it can be up around the, you know, around the same construction quality as the really expensive American brands. Speaker 2 20:26 Final question is, so, you know, I had a couple of my friends who just did some renovation and you know, they said they put IKEA cabinets just for the framing, and then got the doors custom made. Paul McAlary 20:40 That's just got to be that has to be pretty much just about the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Okay. So, I mean, if you're getting IKEA cabinets, you're getting the worst made cabinet that is out there. And then you're gonna pay extra to get fancy doors put on this thing. So it's like getting racing tires for a Volkswagen Bug. It just sort of makes absolutely no sense. You can get like Fabula wood is isn't even the least expensive brand that we sell. But they're probably only 10% or 15% more than IKEA. And they come already assembled. And they're well made a well made cabinet. So why would I get a cabinet? That's all plywood construction, with a solid wood front frame on the cabinet that all the hinges and doors are attached to that has solid wood Dovetail drawers that also have the tracks attached to the solid wood frame. Why would I get why would I not get a cabinet like that, versus IKEA, which is five eighths inch thick particleboard on all the sides of the cabinet. It's a frameless European style cabinet. That is just a big particleboard piece of junk that has doors put on it. So I mean, it's really the it will look good when it's done. And it just that that kitchen is very easy to damage. If you open the door, if you have a little kid and the kid opens the door too much or the doors open and they run into it or something and the hinges rip out of the side of the particle board on the cabinet. There's no way to repair that that cabinets ruined and there's no way and if I key is not making that door style or finish anymore. You know, you have you have that's another problem that you're gonna have your door this cabinet might be underneath $2,000 in Granite, or $5,000 in quartz or whatever. It's just like why would just don't don't it makes no sense. You're spending so much money. What Why save 10% to get something that's poorly made. It's only 10% of the cabinet cost. So Speaker 2 22:51 that's really good feedback. Thank you because I really was. Yeah, I'm not in favor of using IKEA but my partner when Yeah, when they found out about IKEA cabinets, you know their Paul McAlary 23:06 problem with us as a kitchen designer. You know, there's IKEA is a pet peeve for all kitchen designers, that people that are professionals. And the reason is that there's a there's a you know, in this country, we are a nation that is is delusional in many ways. And as human beings, we're very fluid and delusional. And there's actually a psychological delusion that's been named the IKEA effect. And the IKEA effect is the effect that if we in any way take part in making something, we overvalue it to such an extent that it's crazy. We are delusional beings. So they've done these psychological tests where they'll have a customer or a customer have a person do origami for the first time. And then they'll ask them to rate their vert their their butterfly or dragon or whatever they did in origami, they'll ask them to rate it against a professional lifelong origami makers effort. And they will rate their own efforts superior to the thing done by the that professional origami maker. So the that mean that's how you know and that's most of us, that's like 66% of the population. So because of that, that that reason, IKEA every time Consumer Reports has ratings of cabinets. IKEA comes in first comes in ahead of every well made brand in the United States. Because the customers are asked how how they liked the cabinets right after they buy it not 15 years later when their cabinets are falling apart. And they have a vested interest in the IKEA because they are the ones that put it together themselves and they design their own kitchen. So they think the design is wonderful even though which looks like it's done by a kindergartener to a professional. And then they think the cabinets are wonderful because they put them together themselves. And you know, and they're all They're terrible. So it's the IKEA effect is for kitchen designers is a our lifelong challenge. Michael 25:16 Got it? Okay, I'm gonna need your advice and IKEA Paul McAlary 25:21 can so yeah, but I mean, you look stuff up, if you go on house.com and ask people, I mean, they're the interior designers and people that do stuff sort of part time on the side. do it yourselfers, they are IKEA lovers and enthusiast. Because they're all, you know, delusional. It's been, you know, Harvard, Yale, and Duke, I think were the professors that identified the IKEA effect. So it's not like it was a fly by night operations that identified that delusion. But But yeah, so at any rate, Speaker 2 26:00 well, thank you so much. All this was really helpful. Paul McAlary 26:03 Best of luck, and maybe we'll hear from you on another another day. Speaker 2 26:06 Yeah, that was really, really helpful. Thank you so much. Well, Paul McAlary 26:10 no problems. All right. Good talking to you. Felipe 26:24 You've made it this far into the inaugural episode of calls with Paul. So I figured I should introduce myself. I am Felipe are Chela, the producer of calls with Paul. And shortly after we recorded this episode, I sat down with Paul maxillary himself, to get to know him a little better, how he got his start, and how life has been this past year dealing with the global pandemic. Let's listen in. And now just want to make sure I'm saying Paul maxillary. Right. Macelleria? Nick Clary. Paul McAlary 26:55 Yep, that's good enough. Felipe 26:57 All right. I'm here with Paul maxillary. Tell me a little bit about yourself and how long you've been with mainline kitchen design. Paul McAlary 27:05 Well, I started mainline kitchen design 10 and a half years ago. Wow. It's not exactly how I began, be it was my career goal or whatever, when I fit when I went to college, actually, I was studied Computer Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, and did everything except to my thesis. And while I was in school, on and off, I had a small construction company where we built decks. So that was sort of how I paid for school, I was like a independent student at the time. So I was paying for my own college. And, and when I got to the end, I wish I had a bigger construction company, and then never actually did all the work needed to complete my degree, because I was no longer happy with being a computer engineer. Nor did I want to do it any longer. So I start, I just expanded my construction company that I had on the side. And we started doing additions on houses and bigger jobs and bigger jobs until a time when I realized that well, two things. One, the more people that worked for me, I didn't make any more money. That was a sobering concept. And then the second thing was, as I was getting close to being 40 years old, and I had no money in a 401 K. And, you know, sometimes my health care would lapse because I couldn't cover it, etc. So I ended up going to start to work for other places as a kitchen designer. In fact, the first place I got a job was at a Home Depot as a kitchen designer. So I got a job there and then proceeded to go from Home Depot after a couple of years to Lowe's for a couple of years and then to independent and fancier and higher and kitchen design companies for whatever another 15 years until I started my company 10 years ago, and mainline kitchen design has been around for 15 years. And we started as a company. I think the first year we were in business, we did something like $400,000 in business. And this year, we're hoping to do over 2 million, so excellent. When as a company, Felipe 29:24 that's great. Yeah. So what gave you the idea to start this podcast for the world? Paul McAlary 29:33 That would be my wife's daughter, our step my stepdaughter? We have so many people on our website that people were calling in all week long, asking questions from faraway places, Hawaii, Alaska. And so we just said, you know, we, we can't we have to give these people some kind of outlet to ask questions. So we decided to give them two hours every week from two to four in the afternoon. So from In two to four in the afternoon, we were taking calls from all over the country answering questions, but not recording them. So we did it for two years with no, not recording it or anything else. And then Riesling, my wife, or my stepdaughter said, you know, why aren't you recording them? You can make a cop podcast out of this. And I think a lot of people that are interested in kitchens would be, you know, some people aren't brave enough to call up, they can listen to the podcast and maybe get some information from the podcast without having to feel embarrassed about what they know or don't know or anything else. Felipe 30:33 Absolutely, including me, my wife and I, of course, I've mentioned to you, at some point we might need to be be actually participants in the fall, given in our kitchen situation now being about 40 years old, I think it's time to refresh. That That's great. Yeah. So tell me, Paul, you've been doing these calls a while, but how things felt different in the last year given this global pandemic? Paul McAlary 31:02 Well, the pandemic has affected us quite a bit and we no no longer meet with customers anymore in our offices, we come out to measure their homes in the beginning of the pandemic, we actually virtually measured people's homes, having them be our eyes, and tape measures, while we directed them around the room to measure their kitchens. Now, we actually all mask up, and then go out to people's homes and measure but all the subsequent design appointments happen via zoom. And so we have now as designers, tons of zoom appointments all day and afternoons and evenings long. And we're only in our offices for very short periods of time, where we show customers sample cabinets, sample colors, sample door styles and finishes. And I guess the other biggest date change, and that change will continue after the pandemic is over. Because now that we've all started using zoom, customers won't want to get in their cars to drive to the office to look at their design on a flat screen TV in our office when they can be sitting at home having a beer and looking at their computer screen or whatever while we're working on their design in front of them. But the one other thing about the pandemic is we have definitely noticed that people's patience and their good humor has deteriorated as time has gone by Felipe 32:24 I bet yeah, there's definitely some stories out there in the wild as I say it in grocery stores and just out in the roads I feel like people have forgotten how to drive even that's insane Paul McAlary 32:36 very true. You can tell people's attention just on the in their driving habits it's certainly is yeah it's it's through the roof this view it's wild, sometimes even just going a short distance you can going along going along family trip or something and you just the what people are doing on the highway as well. Mark Mitten 32:58 Thank you for listening to the mainline kitchen design podcast with nationally claimed Kitchen Designer Paul maxillary. This podcast is brought to you by Brighton cabinetry, high quality custom cabinetry at competitive prices. For more on kitchen cabinets and kitchen design, go to www dot mainline kitchen design.com Transcribed by https://otter.ai