Mark Mitten 0:05 Are you tired of talking to Jumo? Don't have great kitchen design ideas. You better call Paul the kitchen whisperer. You Paul McAlary 0:31 Hi, Jean, it's Paul. Can you hear me? Gina 0:33 I can hear you, Paul, how are you very good. Paul McAlary 0:37 Welcome to better call Paul. Just to fill everybody in. We've talked before, just over the phone, and we tweaked your design or made some changes to it from the original plan that you sent me, and now you're calling back in, and we're going to discuss whatever the whatever other changes you want to make or move, or how to move things around or answer questions. But we're starting off. If you're listening to this and this makes it to our podcast, you're starting off halfway through Gina's journey. So, Gina 1:10 and it's been quite a journey, to be true, I mean, to be certain. So Paul, I went back and I looked at the variations that I've had over probably the last 18 months, and you were just like the kitchen whisper, I cannot believe the way you came up with this brilliant design, looking at the way compared to others. So thank you. Paul McAlary 1:29 We'll have to Def with this on the podcast, just because, in real life, I don't get flattered so well, used to tell you a funny story we used to when we first started the podcast. It wasn't a podcast, it was just a helpline. And then more called in. I think I told you that, yeah, used to get many more phone calls. And the funny thing that happened is, is, before COVID, we all worked out of the office. Now we all put most of us at home, now working, and we only go into the office to meet customers, to make selections, but when we were in the office, people would call up, and they'd get different people every week, and then sometimes would call in, and I'd answer the phone and I'd say, you know, Paul speaking, and there'd be a pause, and then the person would say, the Paul. And then everybody that worked with me, all the people that work with me would all roll their eyes, shake their heads Gina 2:29 that way when you call, when you called last week, Paul, I felt that same like I just felt so grateful and a little bit of little star struck after reading your website as Much as I have. So that's Thank you. Paul McAlary 2:41 Well, if good at our job. So if you talk to like Chris, who's the one of the other more experienced designer at our company, if Chris designed something and I design something, or anybody that's been doing it for a long time and is good at it, it's not that I'm really that great. It's if you're good at it and you do it for a long time, you come up with the same things. So it's but if you're not good at it and you haven't been doing it a long time, then it's impossible for you to come up with those things. You have to fail Gina 3:14 Absolutely. And what your expertise really was very transparent. When you sent that design, we were just like, Oh my gosh. How come? How could we couldn't even come up with it. We just don't have the experience in this. So it's Paul McAlary 3:28 you're really obeying like a few, almost 100 rules that that are forcing your hand into the into that design. So that's why, if I gave your plan to Chris, he would rattle off the same design pretty much, probably in the half an hour. So just it just sort of forces. But you know, again, just because we like it, that's not usually the kitchen that people buy, right? Because it's not our kitchen, it's theirs. But we want to start the thing that's the most, you know, the most functional, and then everybody has their own needs and their own things that they really want. So we wouldn't be making any money if, you know, we alienated people by forcing them to get our designs. We just want them to see the course, and then we change them from there. So that being said, what do we what do you want to change? Gina 4:19 Well, that is, you know, we spent some time and we looked at the design that you sent. And one of the things where we failed in kind of expressing, maybe the dimensions of the room accurately is when you're looking at where you currently have the peninsula next to the sink that first thought it covered, what we discovered was that it we wouldn't be able to get them to run perfectly parallel to one another, because where that vent is currently, they have kind of like a bookshelf of sorts that we're using as a pantry that sticks out alongside where our refrigerator currently is and where this vent ends. It actually. Protrudes about two inches beyond where the upper cabinets currently end. So if, if we had a cabinet there, we'd have to dig into that vent by two inches, and we're not sure that we even have that space. So I'm wondering what we might think Go Paul McAlary 5:15 ahead. Paul, well, the two things you can do, one, you don't need that cabinet there at all and but you want the molding to die into the chase if it's going to so probably the building is going to stick out at least three inches. So maybe about two inches Now you make it deeper, okay, but that probably wouldn't look as good. The other thing is, I think if you take off the drywall that's on this area with the pipe Chase, you'll find out almost certainly, because it's going to a second floor, and we don't know this, we're a fact until you open the drywall up, but it's quite likely it's behind studs. So the vent goes up, and then they built the wall right over the vent, so maybe the vent is eight inches, and then they put two by fours on top of the eight inches, and then dry walled it. And then the combination of all these different things ended up being too bigger than the cabinets on the right hand side, in which case, if you pull off the studs and you turn them sideways, because the studs are three, they're two by fours, they're three and a half inches deep, you could just pull them off and turn them sideways, and now they're an inch and a half deep. And now that everything would be coming out, maybe, if it's two inches, even with your cabinets. And then if you really wanted to get fancy and you wanted this same look, you could pull all your wall cabinets out one inch, and then, okay, then put a fake front on the pipe Chase. But that's a ton of work, right? Gina 6:59 Yeah. Do you think it's, I mean, if we it makes sense what you said, certainly. But do you think is the return on that step really worthwhile? I mean, is that you're right? It sounds like a lot of extra work, because we'd have to make everything, we'd pull everything forward by about an inch and a half, then in order to make sure that they're aligned, is that what you're suggesting, Paul McAlary 7:19 you could pull all the wall cabinets forward in an inch or so. But, yeah, the one thing about all this is it's going to look better, but it's not getting it's not getting you one iota of extra storage. Yeah, you're doing a lot of work, and you're only getting looks. So I don't know that it would be a horrible thing, if you just had the pipe Chase stay as it is, and then maybe made it a little bit deeper so that the molding would die into it. Gina 7:50 Yeah, it's, it's, it's unfortunate because we were going through it. I mean, it all looks so beautifully, esthetically. But then we thought, Oh, darn it, this, this pipe Chase is, and how Paul McAlary 8:03 you sure the shelves are 12 inches deep? Gina 8:06 Yeah, when we measured it, they're 12 but, but what's, what shows are we talking about? The current shells that we have next to the refrigerator, the pipe chases right ahead of, okay, Mark's gonna go measure it. But I'm pretty sure that we have they're 12 inches I thought they were Mark's going to measure, Paul McAlary 8:21 and the pipe Chase comes out two inches past them. Gina 8:25 Yeah. So the it comes out two inches beyond where our current upper shelves. And so our current upper shelves are in set two inches. Okay, so he's measuring the shelves again, yeah. So they're 12 inches. The shelves themselves Paul McAlary 8:43 currently, and the pipe Chase comes out 14. Gina 8:50 About 14 is what he's trying to measure behind our refrigerator, which is a bit of a challenge. But the pie trace comes off the wall, comes out about 12 inches. Comes out about 12 inches. Yes. So that's why it's coming out beyond because I think our current shelves, the current depth of these mark is only 1111, inches, 11 and a Paul McAlary 9:13 half. So it sounds to me like what you can do is you can leave the pipe chase the way it is, okay if it's really only 11 inches deep. And then you can just take all the wall cabinets on this side of the wall, and okay, just put fairing strips on the wall. You know what? Fairing strips are just three quarter inch cheap pieces of wood, and so that you're pulling your wall cabinets out three quarters of an inch, and when you're pulling wall cabinets out three quarters of an inch, now your wall cabinets will all be 12 and a half inches off the wall, or choice to be 12 and three quarter inches off the wall. And then you could just put a fake cabinet front, right on top of the. Pipe jits, and then it will look exactly like the thing I did. And now, if you get fancy, when you open that it's called a cabinet front, you just buy the cabinet front, and then you just ship it out so that it's perfectly even with your wall cabinets. And then what you do in back of the cabinet front is your paint bowl with either a race Mark paint or Blackboard paint. So you can open those doors and have notes and things to yourself about your, oh, that's super cool. If you want to, yeah, if you want to have, you know, whatever you potatoes or whatever, you just open the doors. You write potatoes down, you write whatever. That's your and it looks really good. It's a great idea. It's not a great idea. And now just running some furring strips on the wall and back of the cabinets is nothing. No, Gina 10:51 I love that idea. I wonder, could we, we could probably put a very thin cork board back there too, so we could actually pin our list and stuff board Paul McAlary 10:58 back there too, yeah. And then you could just pin the notes up there. That might even look better. I Well, Gina 11:03 that makes me happy to think about at least being able to utilize that space. So that's fantastic. Paul McAlary 11:10 Well, now it's all going to look really good from the outside, and then, you know, it's your little secret. So it's sort of cute. A lot of the gadgets that we give people in kitchens are don't really work very well and are crazy expensive. This thing is going to be very inexpensive, and it's going to be sort of cute. Oh my Gina 11:30 gosh, you're, yeah, he's, he's, he's singing our song. I love it. Okay, so that's, that's perfect. And then so Paul, like, Would you explain with the with the peninsula countertops, we're trying to understand like we read your specs, but about how much is it sticking out from, where that, what we call it, where the wall kind of Yeah? Paul McAlary 11:53 So you mean that, you mean on the backside, where you had the coffee bar before, or whatever, yeah? So look like the designer had reduced the depth of those cabinets to 21 inches, because the wall only came out 22 inches, or 23 inches. They had reduced the walls because that's why they had remember, if you remember their design, they had, like, a diagonal bump out going to the wine refrigerator. Yes, Gina 12:26 okay, yes, I do remember that Paul McAlary 12:29 the reason they had the diagonal bump out going to the wine refrigerator because the doorway to the left was, you know, they couldn't make all the cabinets 24 because they needed the countertop not to stick out into the doorway. So what they did was they made the cabinets there a little bit shallower, but then all the wine refrigerators are all 24 inches deep, so they had to have an angle bumping out to put the wine refrigerator there. And that, I didn't have exact measurements, but that was just my interpretation of when I looked at the scale of the drawings and looked at the door and everything, it looked like that was the reason that they were doing that. So I just, you know, I didn't want to assume that I had any more space than they were using. So I made the cabinets to the left of your wine refrigerator only 21 inches deep. And then the problem with that is, if you still want to keep your wine refrigerator, I don't want your wine refrigerator bumping out. So the only way you can have the wine refrigerator and not have it bump out is it has to recess into the wall there. And that would only be a problem. It's very easy to recess it or an inch or two, because you can have turned on their sides, and you can have an outlet there, and everything else, no problem. The only reason it would be a problem would be if you had duct work running up in the wall in that exact location. Gina 13:56 Okay, and when we looked at it last night. Now we are not we're not total professionals on any of this, but it seemed that we would be okay. So it seems like it was going to work. We don't think it's going to run into the duck there, but that's fantastic. So we're looking at 21 deep. And then what about the full length of that Peninsula? Then from, if you're looking at the bar area, to the edge, how long is that right now, from the Paul McAlary 14:22 bar area all the way to the edge or the corner to the end of the dishwasher panel on the left of the dishwasher? Gina 14:32 Yes, yes, yes. So the corner Paul McAlary 14:35 to the edge of the dishwasher, you've got 24 inches of the base cabinets, then you need a three inch filler, then you need an 18 inch double trash can pull out. And we didn't discuss it, but giving you an 18 inch double trash can pull out means that your sink cabinet can only be 24 inch that means that at this. Now your sink abnet can only be 24 inches wide, which means the sink bowl is exactly 21 and a half, which is a standard single bowl sink. So because giving you the bigger trash can pull out, your sink is going to be a normal, very standard single bowl sink. But you know that's a big deal having a standard but now you have 235 quart trash cans, which is probably most people would like to have, so that. So with the countertop overhang, you sort of have 95 inches from the corner of the wall to the end of your countertop on the left side of the dishwasher, and I was just guessing at how big the space would be between the inside of the door opening and the inside of the trim from that line to the inside trim on the doorway, was my guess. And I was guessing it was going to end up being 32 but as long as it's Gina 16:05 we're very impressed because about how precise your numbers were with as little of information, little as information as we provided. But yeah, we figured it was going to be about 30 What did you about 34 so move, yeah. And so if he moves that, the lower, yeah, he's looking at actually removing that little piece of wall there that's jetting out. So we could potentially even capture the 12 inches there. Paul McAlary 16:32 Well, if you take that out, if you can, you only need this space. This space only needs to be 30 inches wide and Oh, wow. Okay, what I would do? And it's 30 inches isn't going to feel feel tight, because right you might have a doorway or a wall, but on your left is going to be wide open with your arm, can swing out essentially across the countertop and all the ways to bedrooms and bathrooms. Well, not even bathrooms. A lot of bathrooms are much narrower than that, but the standard bedroom is 30 inches wide. So having this walkway space be 30 inches or 30 and a half inches is all that it really needs to feel comfortable, and it's also the distance that you're going to need to get a stove in to get all refrigerators will be able to, usually be able to come in, like, if you got even a really deep refrigerator, gigantic refrigerator, their boxes are only going to be 30 inches deep, and so you'll have to take doors off the refrigerator. But there's not really an appliance that you couldn't get into the room rolling. Great. Gina 17:40 No, that's That's great to know. That's wonderful. That's great. What else let me see So Paul, one of the things that I noticed is, so we're looking at, am I looking at the stove, and I'm looking to the left hand side, you've got the three drawers. And I'm assuming those are all, like roll out drawers. Is that the way you design those Paul McAlary 18:04 on the left hand side of the boat of the stove? Yeah. So that's a 30 inch drawer base. So that's what you usually would be referred to as pots and pans drawers. And it's the narrowest that you would want pots and pans drawers. So okay, but it's a fine size, and you have a lazy susan all the way in the right hand corner. And that lazy susan would, you know nowadays, it wouldn't have a pole, and it wouldn't be cheap plastic, even in the inexpensive cabinet brand solid wood, Lazy Susan with ball bearings on the on the swivel, you know, a shelf underneath it, so that any inexpensive, but higher end, inexpensive cabinet brand, up to the the most expensive brands, they'll all sort of be the same ball bearing Lazy Susans, and they'll spin independently, and you'll have a shelf underneath them so stuff can't fall off. So you'll be able to keep pots and pans and bowls in both of your big drawer base and also your lazy susan cabinet. Oh, Gina 19:09 that's great. Okay, that's wonderful. And then so with the Lazy Susan that we have in the lower cabinets above, we have a really interesting kind of and I was trying to understand what these letters mean. So is it 24 is it 24 lanes by 42 high? Is that what that means? So 42 Paul McAlary 19:32 high, and it's 24 by 24 it's a diagonal wall cabinet. And, okay, you know, a lot of designers that lock like more contemporary styles, would not that a 24 by 24 angle cabinet. They would make it a 24 by 24 easy reach cabinet. An easy reach cabinet is where the door folds. Okay, I didn't make it that because I. It was more important to me to have the the size of the door to the angle cabinet is more like 15 inches wide, and then the door to the cabinet on the right side of the window is 17 and a half. So the two doors are closer in size, which looks a little bit better if I made it easy reach cabinet, then each door would be a little 12 inch door. But it wouldn't be so bad, because all of your doors are twelves. You know, the 24 inch cabinets to the left of the hood and the right of the hood, they're also inch wide doors. So you just have 12 inch wide 12 inch wide door hood, 12 inch wide door, 12 inch wide door, easy reach, folding door, wall cabinet, 12 inches by 12 inches, and then you'd have the one different size cabinet to your right. You know, I think if I gave this to the other designers that work for me, they would all not give you the angle cabinet. They would opt for the folding. But that's just personal. The Gina 21:01 folding Okay, so it's the folding door is an option, and it Paul McAlary 21:05 will also end at the same distance from the window. So it's going to be 24 inches along one wall, 24 inches ago the other. The Angle cabinet has the advantage of having more space in it, but also you can lose things in it, like towards the back, yeah. But by the same token, you could put a lazy susan on the bottom shelf of that, and just wouldn't Lazy Susan in the bottom shelf, and then put all your spices on that. And then those could be, you know, you could put stuff that you use less frequently up there, but you, you know, either way, it's, no, it's personal preference. Okay, no, Gina 21:41 that's great to know. And then when we look at the shelf just to the right of the window there is it a little bit shorter than the other shelves that you have on the other side. Paul McAlary 21:50 Oh, did I make a mistake? That's my mistake. Yes, it should be the same. I just thought it Gina 21:55 was a design choice. Okay, Paul McAlary 21:59 I'm imperfect. Gina 22:02 I know. Okay, Paul McAlary 22:06 42 and I click, 36 it's a miss. Click. Gina 22:10 Okay, so it's 42 as well. Yeah, should be we cook a lot, Paul, and one of the biggest complaints we've had besides, you know, you saw the kitchen we were working in, so you can appreciate that, but it's not being able to access all of the spices and see what we have. And I'm wondering if, in the shop, in this drawer that you have to the right of the stove, if we might, there might be a better use of space if we maybe had drawers in there, and had, I've heard pros and cons about, like, the spice racks that people use that kind of, they lay into the drawers themselves, Paul McAlary 22:50 I guess. Yeah, if you're going to get those kind of, if you're going to put spices in a drawer, uh huh, you could pick, you know, say you could pick either drawer. You know, you could even take the top drawer of the drawer, base 30 for the that's on the left side of your stove. That really wide drawer there could be divided into. You could put spices on one half of it, and then maybe knife knives and or spatulas or other utensils on the other side. Or if you decided to do that with all spatulas and everything else on the left side of the stove, and you wanted to turn the right hand side of the stove into spices on the right hand side of the stove, that's fine, too. The kind of thing you would use with that drawer, I would think, is not the old fashioned kind. The old fashioned kind was like this little thing that was like angled up at you, so that you'd put your spices on the wooden thing, and they'd all be like McCormick spices, and they'd all face an angle to you. But the problem is now all your spices have to be that perfect height, and if they're any longer than that, you can't close your drawer. So right? What they make nowadays, really inexpensively is a rubber spice mat. And this rubber spice is like scalloped so that all your spices can be any height that you want, and you just put them in rows. I guess in a 15 inch wide cabinet, that's that wide, the inside of that cabinet is like eight inches wide. You would get one, two, I think you get four rows of spices, and then the depth of the draw is like 20 inches. So you'd have four rows of spices 20 inches. They could be any height that you'd want. You'd get, you know, a whole bunch of spices in there. I don't know if it's enough, but it would be a ton. And great if you Google rubber spice matte on Google. And it it's a whole roll of this rubber mat that you put down. And then you just cut them to the right length. And then you just click them in to each other until you get to the end of your drawer. And then you just take a utility knife or scissors and just cut it off so that it fills the whole the drawer bottom, and then the whole roll costs like $22 and it can do two drawers. So Gina 25:27 Wow. Okay, I love that idea, yeah, but Paul McAlary 25:31 it's much better flat. You don't want them tilting up, because then you have to switch all your spices to all the same sizes. Gina 25:41 Now that makes, that makes great sense. And I like that idea of maybe just even off, would we have to use, like, how deep would that top drawer need to be, Paul, in order to get that? Paul McAlary 25:52 Oh, no, it's, you know, you have more unfortunately, you have more room than you need. The depth of the drawer is, like, I forget what the depth of the inside of a drawer is maybe it's four inches, but the spice is a quarter inch thick, so it's okay, not thick at all, maybe of an inch. So there's no spice we just had. If Gina 26:14 we decided we just wanted to use one shelf for that one drawer, we could probably keep the formation the way you have it now, and just kind of commit to the top drawer on the right hand side and then on the left hand side, because we have tons of utensils. And of course, we need to, we need to purge, but um, and then our silverware. I was thinking that could be on top of where you have the pots and pans right now. Paul McAlary 26:36 You could do that, but a better place for your silverware might be to the left of your refrigerator only because then you don't have to pull out a 30 inch drawer for silverware. So silverware sort of works a little bit nicer if it's in a 15 to 18 inch drawer, because you know, you only need knives, forks, spoons and maybe big spoons, right? So you only really nice slot thing, and you get that easily in a 15 or an 18 inch drawer base, okay, I would use the 30. It's not bad. It's just that every time you want a night for a spoon, which is going to happen all the time, you're going to have to pull out a whole 30 inch drawer. Gina 27:19 Got it? Okay, got it. That makes, that makes great sense. And Paul McAlary 27:21 you don't want it your trash can probably, so that's why you wouldn't put it your sin. I would make no Gina 27:29 that makes, personally, that makes great sense. And then, do you see, one of the things we're going to talk about, also, Paul, is you had said if, if we end up keeping that step into the crazy pantry. You said there's a way that we can kind of design the pantry around that without having to do a custom cabinet. Paul McAlary 27:52 Yeah. So the way that you would do that is, right now your pantry is 96 inches tall, right? Okay? And you'd have to tell me exactly how high that step was, but it's gonna work. But do you know how high it is? Gina 28:10 Believe, I mean, it's, it's, it's not, it's not a standard step. It's like, it's nine inches high. But Mark's going to go measure it right now, and Paul McAlary 28:17 it sticks out in front of the because in the pictures that you sent me, there was nothing sticking out, but it wasn't removed or something. You just don't have it there. Now, no, Gina 28:26 it's definitely, unfortunately there. So it's nine inches high. And then how wide is it? Mark, so it sticks out from the wall. The height of it is nine inches, right? And then how far does it look like this way? Mark, it's nine by nine. Yes, yeah, nine by nine. Paul, it's only Paul McAlary 28:47 nine inches wide, inches deep. It's nine inches deep and like 30 inches wide, nine inches deep, nine inches high and nine inches deep. Got it? Oh, sorry. Okay, so it's nine inches high. We're going to take 96 inches, which is how high that entry is now, and when they're going to subtract nine minus nine, which of these 87 inches minus 42 equals three? Okay, so the way you would do this, very inexpensively, order a wall cabinet, two wall cabinets, excuse me, that are 18 inches wide and 42 inches high, right? So okay, and then you're going to have to pay it will cost 25% more you pay to have made double depth, 24 inches deep, instead of 12 inches deep, Gina 29:43 24 inches deep. Okay, so now you pay to have it 20 Yep. Paul McAlary 29:47 So now you've paid for these two wall cabinets, which are minute in price compared to a pig tall pantry cabinet. So this, I. Expensive than even a pantry cabinet, and you're gonna just two wall cabinets made double depth, and then you're gonna lift them up right to the same height, even with all the other cabinets in the room, and then end up the bottom of this cabinet, when you do this, is gonna end up being 12 inches off the floor, not nine and so okay, then you'll just have to close in the bottom with matching plywood or whatever on the bottom of this cabinet. And then now your door will open and close, and it will be three inches away from the cabinets. And when you do this, by the way, because you're stacking these cabinets on top of each other, you have to build a platform on underneath them to hold them up. Because if you're just screwing them to the wall, they're too deep to just be screwed to the wall, right? They need to be supported from the bottom too. Gina 30:55 Yep. Okay, that makes great sense, Paul McAlary 31:00 going all the way down to the floor, and then your girls. Gina 31:04 So even though we have that clearance at the bottom, I guess what I'm what I'm trying to make sure, I would love to have a space to get rid of my brooms so I don't have to hide them in obscure places. So could I still keep it the full depth of the 96 inches and just raise that makes sense. So the cabinet would open, but it would Paul McAlary 31:25 even if you want room in a cabinet, most cabinet companies don't make the bottom. The bottom part of their cabinet is not big enough for a broom. Okay, the top part of their cabinet is made. There's a floor in between the top part and the bottom part of a pantry, and that helps hold the pantry together, but they make the top part of the pantry most cabinet brands, if you're not in a really expensive brand, most cabinet brands make the top part of the pantry the same height as the wall cabinets, so that the doors match right, that the pantry doors align wall cabinets. So if they do that, then if you're getting 42 inch high wall cabinets, which I have you getting, then top pantry door is going to be 42 and your bottom pantry or is going to be 54 inches minus the toe kick, which is 4.5 so your bottom pantry door is going to be like 48 and a half inches. And unfortunately, all brooms and mops are like 52 inches. So what people do is sometimes they cut a hole in the bottom of the cabinet above so they can slip the handle of the broom or mop into the cabinet above, which you could do with your 40 twos too, just that you'll be slipping way more. So you'll be slipping an extra eight inches up into the cabinet above. I mean, you could cut out a whole chunk of the cabinet above and then just raise the shelf up in that cabinet, especially since you're supporting the whole thing from the bottom. But it will look a little. Depends on how good a job you do cutting the thing out. It could look a little you open the door to get your Yeah. Gina 33:12 No, I can appreciate that, but that gives us some perspective on what our option is. There for sure, one Paul McAlary 33:20 thing we didn't talk about, I don't think that I mentioned that I made the hood over your stove 36 inches wide. Gina 33:27 No, I did not know that. So that's great to know. So Paul McAlary 33:30 most kitchen designers would design the hood the same width as the stove underneath it. That's what most people would do. But long ago, I learned from a very good designer that it looks much more proportional when the hood is a little bit wider than the stove. It also works better. The hood also works extends beyond the stove that's underneath it. But when I put it on my computer and then show customers, they'll Well, look at the 30 inch stove with the 30 inch hood over it. And we'll and they'll think it looks fine, and then I'll make it a 36 inch hood. And then everybody says the same thing, oh, oh yes, that does look better. So just to remind me to let you know, and you know, if you don't like it and you want to go 30, then you could make your wall cabinets on either side of the hood three inches wider on each side. But just so, you know, it looks a little bit better when the hood is a little bit wider than the cooking surface. Gina 34:29 That makes that makes perfect sense to me. Paul, yeah, to have a little bit of space, Paul McAlary 34:36 any space, this hood is still going to be right up against the cabinets on either side. Got it just that the wood itself is wider in proportion. It looks nice, like if you look at the picture, I think I don't really even have a head on picture of the stove, but if we show, I showed you a head on picture, you'd see it looks a little bit nicer. And somebody's going to have to put this thing on the computer for you locally, and when they. What you can play around with it too, and have them do a 3030 or a 36 but I think you'll like this inch better. It also more tile around it too, right? So it makes the area seem a little nicer. And Gina 35:14 I think that sounds great. So there's a 36 in should. But of course, we're looking at a 30 inch stove underneath it, so just does a little bit. Okay, great. No, I think that makes great sense. And then, what were some of any other questions? You Paul McAlary 35:30 don't want to stove, right? You don't want to buy a stove that has a back to it once you're getting a hood. In this case, I did this that you had before, which is called a chimney hood. But once you're doing decorative kind of Hood, you don't want to buy a stove that has a back sticking up into your back splash. You want to get what's called a slide in stove that slides in with all the controls and everything on the front and no clock and no controls or anything on the back of the stove. Gina 36:00 Perfect. That sounds perfect. You had mentioned Paul that because we you had designed this with, I think you said, like 12 inch crown molding because of the size of the ceilings, that an option would be to drop the ceiling by three inches. Paul McAlary 36:16 Yeah, a good idea, right? Only because your house is old, so if you did drop the ceiling three inches, that would enable you to make it perfectly level. So you just take two by threes, right? It's not going to hold any weight. Take two by threes that are very inexpensive, and then you just First you make a line around the room that's completely and totally level. And then you put the two by fours and the perimeter of the whole room two by threes, I'm sorry. And then you just cut the two by threes so that they're, you know, just like regular studs, 14 inches on center. And then you can run any put any lighting you want in there. You can do whatever else you want, run all the electric very easily to whatever locations that you want. But now your ceiling will be completely and totally level. And then when you do do your moldings, your moldings won't be have to be so big, and they'll look a little bit, you know, less imposing. And then they also won't be crooked, because probably, if I, if I had a guess the or the average house that's 100 and something years old, like yours is right? Would probably my house is your age? My house is ceiling, yeah, is an inch and a half off around the room. It's a lot off. That's Gina 37:37 a lot off. Well, that's definitely something we can talk to the GC about as I look at there, the window casing goes up full height. Yeah, Paul McAlary 37:45 that's a problem with your window casing. It's true, but then the solution, the solution to that is, were you thinking about replacing that window with the replacement window? Or is it okay now it's already been replaced? Well, Gina 37:59 we haven't gotten that far. We haven't even thought about that, but certainly we could, if Paul McAlary 38:04 you did from the outside of the house, you just have, like a little header in white cater above, and then you just buy a window that was shorter if you got a vinyl replacement window, cost of a vinyl replacement window generally is under $300 so well, maybe a 300 window plus the installation of it. But if you were planning on installing a window, a new window there anyway, once you're redoing your whole kitchen and they're working in this room, then it wouldn't really be costing you anything, but you would have a problem, because the casing in the trim of this thing goes all the way up to the ceiling. Yeah, that if that was the case. So we'll talk, Gina 38:43 we'll talk to the general contractor, get a sense of what that would cost. Paul McAlary 38:50 Yeah, they might cut you a little bit of a break on lowering the ceiling too, because it is going to make the electricians job incredibly easy. And even, like if they were planning on ripping the whole they're probably planning on ripping the whole ceiling out and running all the they are when they they're going to rip the ceiling out, because they need to run all the electric everywhere, and it's just easier if they rip everything out. Well, now they don't even have to burn out. If they don't want to, they drop it three inches. It's six half dozen the other so the electrician he needs to run all the wiring and everything else, and depends on what he thinks that makes Gina 39:27 that makes great sense. I'm definitely going to ask him that question. Okay, so just more out of curiosity, Paul, you had said that by going to the 42 inch cabinets versus, I think the 30 was right. Yeah, you said we saved 1000s. So just, is it? Are we looking at probably saving maybe $5,000 by doing that, just Paul McAlary 39:51 the brand? Are we talking about? Well, Gina 39:54 I probably still going towards the FABI would so, so right now, Paul McAlary 39:59 if I. Look at your kitchen. Well, I have it on my computer, right? Oh, yeah, so I can tell you what we would charge. Okay? Well, you know, instead of bringing a key out and everything, I don't have it designed in the other design, with the other cabinets on top. But you know, if I look at this kitchen, what do I think this kitchen is going to cost them fabulous the way I've got it now, probably in total, total cabinets, like I said to I don't know if you want to do the molding from Fabi would. So once you have white cabinets, if that's what you're getting, then right reason that you might want to do the molding and unfinished wood is if the contract is really great and does a wonderful job, and you do all this molding from fabulous not only you spend a couple $1,000 on molding, or at least 1500 the $1,800 on molding, but it all looks beautiful when he leaves and then right the wood all shrinks and contracts based on the heat and the air conditioning in your and then from now or two years from now, because it's white cabinets, all the seams between the moldings, when they open up just a little bit, they're all black lines with the white cap. Oh, wow. So it looks funny. And then they're all enameled, so you can't really caulk and touch up paint those seams. So if it was now unfinished wood, then you wouldn't even have to cut the wood so well, because any crack that was a hairline crack, he just filled with cork. And then the painter would come and paint everything. And then a year or two later, if the when everything, all the seams opened up. It's all just latex, you know, room paint that's been color matched cabinet color. So they can just, you know, caulk all the seams over again. And you can open up a can of a gallon of paint that, you know, matches your cabinets, mix it up, and then just touch up all those seams. So that saves you money. If you're doing maybe your total cabinet cost here is, is under $15,000 for cabinets, and fabulous if you take molding, Gina 42:12 oh my god, became my husband's best friend, Paul McAlary 42:16 but under 20 by a mile, right? And oh my gosh. Gina 42:21 Well, that's almost half of what we've been charged lately. Paul, so that's huge. So Paul McAlary 42:25 then you said, what would it be with the glass doors on top? The way the doors work? Because I don't think you want to do it with the stack cabinets without the glass door with, you know, it looks sort of funny a lot of people, you know, it looks so much nicer to have the little glass doors on top. Well, yeah, yeah, little glass doors, those cabinets with the glass doors are way more expensive than the big cabinets underneath them. So Wow. Yeah, that's why you're going to have probably seven cabinets, maybe not all of them, the one over the pantry and the one over the refrigerator wouldn't be glass. Five of them would be glass in the other room. You have them glass, maybe on top. So I forgot about those little cabinets on top in the other room. So you know you're getting maybe over 15. Now you 1617, with the glass doors on the top there. How much would you save without the moldings? $17,000 now, your doors gotta be at least $5,000 probably okay. Well, that's and it Gina 43:34 looks great. The way you set it up looks great. So I just, I wanted to get a sense of what it was going to cost in additional, you know, if we, and that is if we did the stacked right? The stack? Paul McAlary 43:46 Yeah, okay. And Gina 43:48 honestly, we have them that way now, and we seldom use them. It's only for storage. And so we can, we can store things 40 Paul McAlary 43:57 twos too. So that's eight feet high. So if you're getting anything higher than that you're on, you got to be on a pretty high ladder to reach it. So then I don't know how old you are. I always say, my wife will tell you I'm a scaredy cat, so I'm pretty athletic and everything else, but I don't contractor walking on roofs and everything when I was young, I don't go up in a line, I know, or at all. And, you know, I play pickleball every day or every other day. But I'm not climbing anything. I'm not falling off anything. Gina 44:29 Well, yeah, I will just tell you, Paul that we had a, we had a ceramic top stove, and I made the mistake once when I was putting something up there of just like stepping on to the stove a little bit, thinking I'll be fine and crack, of course, right? I'm not nearly as cute as I'd like to think I am. So, yeah, that was a huge mistake. Lesson learned, but that's great, great advice. I think I just have two more final questions, and I'm gonna, I think, use like i. One is this, I, you know, I do a lot of design work in the work that I do, and so selecting the colors is probably going to send me over the edge next most but I'm curious. I've also been on the FABI wood, they have a wonderful Instagram page with lots of different designs and cabinets that they've done. And I'm really also loving that timber with possibly the white or even maybe incorporate in some navy. But do you know of these colors? Which one we still have a lot of people in our home, or a lot of people who visit or young people. So it's a navy versus the timber. Does one? Does one get scratched easier? Does one hold up a little bit better? All Paul McAlary 45:50 painted cabinets get damaged far more easily than stained cabinets. That's why people all the time write horrible reviews on cabinet brands, about all the different brands I got these cabinets. They're all chipping and scratching. They're all damaged. My old cabinets last 30 years with our old cabinets were old stained wood and probably oak, and then their new cabinet are all painted. And then paint chips and scratches easily. Paint gets damaged by water easily. So yeah, if you're looking for cabinets, and the cabinets that get the most damage are the bottom cabinets. So if you did do right cabinets and timber and top cabinets in white. But remember, if you do top if you do bottom cabinets and top cabinets different colors, if that's what you choose, then you do the tall cabinet, the pantry cabinet, the wall cabinet color, right? So that all the mold that go around the room and cabinet over the refrigerator is the other color. But, yeah, stain is more durable. Gina 46:53 Is timber considered a stain, or is it considered a paint? Paul McAlary 46:55 Oh, no, timber is a stain. Timber, it's a timbers, a light stain that looks they're trying to make it look as much like maple as they can, but it's on pocket birch, and they have a hard time getting it to the color that they want. So that's why they only have that one color, and they succeed in the most part. But if they were to make the cabinets out of maple, Maple is not available overseas. So it would just be way more expensive. So then you'd go to an American made cabinet company to get maple and then the price of the cabinets, would, you know, but we sell integrity cabinets, or 1951 which is the same as you know, Shenandoah at Lowe's, or Timberlake, and that's probably 20% more expensive. So your price of your kitchen goes up 20% if you switch to Maple. But if you like the timber color, then you're, you know, then you got timber, and you're saving 20% and the cabinets are just as well constructed and everything else, wow. Gina 47:57 And so the timber is going to definitely hold up better than like the painted Indigo, yes. Paul McAlary 48:02 But the good thing is, is because everybody gets painted cabinets nowadays, most places, where are you guys located again, Denver, most places there are painters or furniture finishers now that will come out because everybody's gotten painted cabinets and they're all getting damaged, right? So now there are furniture finishes that will come out to your house after 10 years and touch up your whole kitchen for maybe. Around here, it might be $700 around you. It's probably 1000 or 1100 Oh, it's not a fortune. And then, when they're professionals, they will make it look perfect, so you won't even know any damage to your campus generally? Gina 48:41 Well, that's, that's great advice. I'm afraid that even if we had that plan, it would still be 20 years before we have them paint it. And I just would rather they look nicer, longer, immediately. Might be a better move for us. We have animals too, and so that is great. Yay. Great to know. Okay, and final question, Paul, this is where the I was thinking of all the wonderful adjectives to describe you. And I was thinking, you know, you're also kind of like a, you know, not only your consumer advocate for kitchens, because there's so much information out there, and we just it's really hard to decipher it and to know you know who's given you, if you're getting all the information that you need to make an informed decision and so, but as you know, we've had somebody recently spend a bit of time with design, and if we decide not to go with them, I I feel a little sense of like obligation to give her something for her time, even though it's not required, and Paul McAlary 49:43 you wouldn't go with her because she doesn't have the brand that you Gina 49:47 want. No, we would go with her, but it was, it was had to do with the fabulous piece that you and I were talking about. Paul McAlary 49:53 Everything else, yeah, this is you're not buying the design that she did. You. Correct. You could give her this design and have her replicate it, and have her give you a price, and then she best price for this, and then you're hoping that it's going to come in. I mean, you're in Denver, so, you know, I'm saying what we would charge, but the factor fabulous factory is close to me, not you. So they're shipping across the country. So I mean, if she came back with $20,000 for all the cabinets that you're getting in this design, that would be totally reasonable, right? So you can do the opportunity to price out the design that you want, and okay, and then if you share her price is too high, or you find somebody that you want to buy it with, I don't think I feel bad. I mean, part of being a designer is I'm mad if I do a design and the customer loves it, and then they run off to some Amish man or something and have him make the cabinet right. And you know what? That's not even custom cabinets. That's like homemade cabinets. It's just they think they're getting a better deal, but they're not. It's just a different animal, and it's not even as good as the custom cabinets they would get from us, but we might do that design, and then I'm just mad because the Amish guy could never have done the design, if they would just have listened to me, they would have better deal. But yeah, the fact that they took the design is what annoys me, because they might have been thinking about doing that the whole time, but if someone does my design, then all the power to them if I didn't think of it, I'm not mad when someone ends up getting something different. So if you give this design that's totally different than hers to her. And then she prices out the thing that you want, which now isn't even hers. And then you end up someplace else because you get a better price. You know, you gave her the opportunity to do the kitchen in the cabinet brand that you thought you might even want, and then for whatever reason, she didn't price it out well or whatever. But is she like a real kitchen place, that they have displays there and everything else? Gina 52:09 Yeah, it's kind of a grassroots place, but they have, they don't have, yeah, it's just a small emerging business, kind of getting off the ground and so Paul McAlary 52:20 out of our house, or is it out of our like out of a Gina 52:24 office building? Thought of an office building, that's okay, you know? And so I think that that might be true. And Paul, you know, after you've designed this wonderful design, you know, I would go with you. I would totally go with you, if you would. No, Paul McAlary 52:42 we you're way better off getting this design from her, where she's where, you know, there's somebody local that when stuff, I know it's wrong, she would order it. It would be a ship to you, I can't fly out there to, you know, once in a blue moon, I've done a kitchen in Jackson, Hole, Wyoming, or Bozeman, Montana, something wild, like because it was a friend, or something like that, that really and it actually doesn't even cost as much because the shipping isn't that expensive, but the cabinets in those areas are more expensive just because taxes and other things make it more expensive. But it's just not a great idea, because if you do have any problems, the person that you need to help you is not close by. Gina 53:30 No, I appreciate that. I just wanted you to know we would certainly when you change that policy, what's that Paul McAlary 53:40 I said when you give her the design now she knows you got a good grasp for this now, so you can tell the whole cabinet. Make it deeper we're thinking we want to get, don't want to get the moldings from the cabinet company. She's going to have to suck it up and realize she's not selling you $40,000 in cabinets anymore. It's all of a sudden, maybe $20,000 in cabinets. But let give her the opportunity to sell it to you, and then if she gives you the price, you can take that price and then take your same design that I gave you and take it to another fabulous dealer and get their price there. They didn't do the design and they didn't think of it. So they shouldn't be that freaked out if Gina 54:17 no love lost, it's not, it's not. I just want to just be just That's all. And so Paul McAlary 54:25 I don't think that that's, you know, believe me, I am a stickler for ethics. When it comes to ethics, we too, you know, when contractors give us customers, and they ask us to design their kitchens, and then the customers will say, we know. Do you know any other contractors we could give this to I'm not going to give them the name, right? Director. That's not absolutely that person gave me their their thing and, you know? And I don't think when customers come to me and they give me designs that were done other places and want me to price it out, I'm like, Listen, I'm not just going to price out somebody else's design. I want to come out to your house. I want to measure. I want you to go through the whole process. I'm not going to come up with the same design. I'm sure that they did anyway, but you either go through our process or and start from scratch. But we just don't price out other people's projects. That's not what we do, absolutely. And if you if somebody comes up with a better design than I do, I've actually embarrassed, right? You know, customers sometimes come up with better designs than I come up with. You know, it's usually not contractors and engineers and architects. Sometimes customers, you know, they have their thinking caps on. They're spending more time than anybody else is thinking about it, and then they just come up with a tweak or a change. You know, maybe I would have done if I had a little more time, or if they wanted to spend that much more money, right? Oh, well, what if we took out this wall too? Well? We didn't discuss that, but I don't know. Let me do it and see. Oh, look, it's a lot better. You know? What if we move case? Oh, if you're willing to move the staircase, well, then that's a lot better. But the design. When you buy the cabinets from us, you're paying for our design time. If we didn't design, then we didn't do you a service. So I got no problem buying the cabinets from Gina 56:13 them. Yeah. Well, you are just a gem, and I cannot thank you enough for I mean, truly, you are advocating for the consumer and helping us navigate this very overwhelming world. And I'm going to stay in touch. I'll let you know how things, how they shake out. And so you're not, you're not, you're not through with me yet, but I am definitely Paul McAlary 56:37 and don't so great. It doesn't mean the way I look at this, it doesn't mean that she's not going to be mad at you. What I'm saying is, is you don't really have the right if you didn't do the design Gina 56:47 right? Yeah, no, I appreciate that very much. The design Paul McAlary 56:51 is. The design is what makes your home valuable. And so if you're not doing it as the designer and somebody else did it, you got a lot of nerve if you're marking that up too much, you know, when you weren't even responsible if you lose that job, you didn't lose any of your own work product. You lost it because of your pricing, not because if someone took your work product from you. So, so whatever. No, Gina 57:15 I agree. I agree. Okay, Paul McAlary 57:20 by the way. Just to mention this, as far as colors go, you said you're very Yeah, colors and things like that. Now is when you do your recess, lights in your ceiling, there'll be lights and lighting systems that are only $100 or $200 more that can be programmed to your phone and will change the color. Oh, wow, an infinite number of colors all for Wow. It's like the whole lighting system is a few 100 a couple of $100 more. And then you can wow. People that like will freak out, like some of our customers will insist on custom colors and custom cabinet brands, color matched to unusual finishes and all these different places that they found, and Sherman Williams and Benjamin Moore colors and everything else. And if they just have their lighting system and adjust the lighting and make it more gray, it changes all the white cabinets and all the colors of the cabinets completely the lighting, right? So, wow. Really that concerned about color? Get that lighting system. And then if you're thinking that your cabinets, after everything is done, look a little yellow, you take a little yellow out of the light. And if you're thinking, Oh, my God, be gray, take a little gray out of the Gina 58:37 light, I think that's right. Now, Paul, I lied. I have one more. What kind of countertops Do you rec, what kind of countertops do you recommend? Well, there's Paul McAlary 58:45 this good things and bad things about every kind of top. What kind of countertops? Considering, had you gotten that far, Gina 58:53 I can tell you, I've done a little bit of homework, and I've had people tell me different things, and so I don't I really am kind of clueless. My sister says that the courts is the only way to go, and the gal that we had been working with said, go with the manufactured. I forget what it's called. Is it the manufactured? I don't know, Paul, but is there one that withholds better than others? Paul McAlary 59:18 I'm sorry, not DECT, Gina 59:21 that con. It might have been deton Paul McAlary 59:23 Is, is like a porcelain, kind of top, or glass, painted glass, whatever. Okay, but, but, you know, generally, 90% of all the countertops that get sold now, the customers want them to look like sort of marble, so that's the reason they're all getting quartz tops, is that the courts got real marble. Real marble would be scratched and destroyed, you know, almost instantly. So get those kind of colors in marble. So the man made surfaces like all the courts. Colors look the most likely granite just doesn't come in those very marble like looking colors. It's about half the price for the inexpensive granite colors than the quartz colors. And there's nothing wrong with those granite colors, other than they're less fashionable right now. And you know, they don't come quite as close to looking like Mark, or they don't come close at all to looking like marble. There's also kinds of tops that are called quartzite, which is a stone that looks more like marble and has more of the properties of granite to it, so it's hard and it doesn't scratch as easily, and everything else. But those quartz tops are about the same price as the courts, so that's why, just most of the time, or at least most of our customers, get courts. But it's not because it's better. It's just that's the pattern that they want, and you can't get that in anything durable, if it wasn't courts. And courts, by the way, unlike granite and unlike any kind of natural stone, you can't take a pot right off the burners and put it on quartz, because temperature of the quartz is like 420 degrees. So anything out of the broiler or anything a red hot pan off the stove could singe your quartz. Gina 1:01:17 Wow. Okay, well, that's, that's something worth considering. It's just because we're not always the ones managing that. So that's, that's good. And there's not one that you say just the courts is, courts is good. Look at that. But we can also look at some of these man made countertops. You said that the courts is Paul McAlary 1:01:36 man made quartz is, that's why it melts, because the resin, glue that bonds the courts together in the man made tops is the engineered stone, the resin that bonds it is what melts at 425, degrees. The stone doesn't melt. Okay, resin melts. Whereas natural tops, like granite or marble or quartzite, those are real stones. And all of those, pretty much it can't really, certainly can't burn them. They're, they're rocks you might be able to stain. And the marble scratches really easily. It shouldn't get a marble top. A marble top is just scratches and etches. Etches is where it loses its shine and it stains. It does everything really easily. And then the Dekton is the thing I mentioned. That's a new kind of top that's has beautiful patterns on the surface, but the patterns don't go on the edge of the top, so the edges of the are all just solid white. So a lot of times, people don't realize that, and you know, if they did, they wouldn't be ordering them. Gina 1:02:47 Got it? Well, my friend, you are like, yeah, the best. I'm just so, so grateful. And my husband sat here and I wanted to make sure we had two sets of ears. Now, you know, he's a laid back Australian, so thankfully, it takes a lot to get him to pull his hair out, and when you consider the fact that we haven't killed each other working in the kitchen that we've been in for the last 24 years, it kind of speaks to the man that he is. Because, yeah, I'm the one who gets a little bit more crazed with those things, but Paul, you I cannot. Thank you. Enough. From the bottom of my heart. Thank you. Have a wonderful week. Okay, okay, you too. All right. God bless you. Bye, bye. Mark Mitten 1:03:35 Thank you for listening to the mainline kitchen design podcast with nationally acclaimed Kitchen Designer Paul McAlary, 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