Mark Mitten 0:04 Are you trying to be your own general contractor, coordinating plumbers, electricians, cabinet makers, and all the other tradesmen needed for a new kitchen? You better call for. Paul McAlary 0:32 Cooper, can you hear me? Cooper 0:33 Yeah. Can you hear me? Paul McAlary 0:35 Yep. Welcome to a critical poll. I have your design in front of me. And we had a bunch of people send me plans this week. So I just want to make sure that I printed out everything that I needed. So the floor plan that you sent had that corner closet area? And you're still you're still keeping that in your design? Or you weren't planning on it? Right? Yeah, Cooper 0:59 keeping that load bearing wall there. So that is an option doing like a prolapse cabinet pantry. There, and just getting rid of that. Paul McAlary 1:11 Yeah, I'm gonna say that that area, you have that area now. Right? So you know, it's just, it's absolutely sort of a gigantic waste of space right now. Right? I mean, you can, you probably when you open that very narrow door, and you sort of step into that area, everything is sort of crowded, and half of this space that you're taking up is just the space that you're standing in, to be able to access the stuff inside that this nuk right. Speaker 1 1:42 So I mean, you can really even stand in there, kind of brooms, and then we have Ellison. It is nice to get everything, we have a lot of volume there. But it's not really a walk in pantry. It's yeah, and so Paul McAlary 1:57 it doesn't really function very well. So usually, the philosophy that we sort of try to make sure people understand is that you're spending so much money on this project, I don't know if you've priced everything out. But you know, if I'm looking at your your design, I'm thinking that no matter what you do, you're going to be spending, I don't know $10,000, at least on cabinetry. And then you go spending, if you don't get your looks like you're looking for more contemporary cabinetry, so then you're going to probably get quartz countertops that are more expensive than granite countertops. So maybe you're spending at least $4,000 on countertops. And then if you're buying new appliances, you got a peninsula hood, I'm not sure if you're getting all new appliances are not but say you were that's going to be another eight grand at least. So we start adding these things up, and you're spending 1014 22, you know, wouldn't be surprised if by the time you did flooring and backsplash tile and sinks and faucets and handles and maybe splurged on a couple of things, you're spending $30,000 Just on the materials that you're buying. And then you're going to have a contractor that's going to do the construction work. And even if you change nothing, it's still going to be close to $20,000 for them to do everything. I mean, very rarely do we ever see anybody get an estimate from a contractor nowadays, less than $15,000 for a whole kitchen remodel. If you're talking about at least 45 or $50,000, getting rid of your whole pantry and putting a new beam going across that part of the room, because it's load bearing might cost you a few $1,000 that might cost you 3000 or something like that dollars. But that's sort of pennies compared to the whole cost of the project. And you'll end up being able to have a way bigger island and a way more useful Island. If you did that. Right. Cooper 3:56 Yeah. You could Paul McAlary 3:59 probably sit on two sides of it, too. Speaker 1 4:02 Yeah, definitely. And you want Paul McAlary 4:05 any storage space, right? Because if you just take away all of that, that whole wall going back with that the entry is and you were to put like it looks like the you know from the floor plan, it's a little bit shallower of a shallow area, but you could probably take away all the walls there and then put like an 18 inch deep pantry that would be 44 inches long or something like that. And it would be even with the refrigerator, make the refrigerator look built in. And you'd barely be losing any storage space would look way better and more open. So I mean that's the first thing I would recommend doing because certainly I haven't picked out cabinet yet. Have you gotten prices for any cabinets or brands or have you have any brands or different cabinet companies You're priced out. Speaker 1 5:00 Yeah, I'm talking to a custom cabinet company that does the installs, too. They do you know, like the Shinozaki. Laminate, there is finicky veneer. Paul McAlary 5:14 So in the day, do this plan that I'm looking at the 3d view of Cooper 5:20 No, I did that one. Paul McAlary 5:24 Okay, well, that's, that's good, because there's things about it that are bad. And if you're getting custom cabinetry, now you're spending a whole lot more money on you're talking $40,000 on cabinetry or something like that. And the design itself is what gives you a home value. There's no value to these expensive cabinets, really, whoever buys your house isn't going to realize that they're custom, and that they were four times more expensive than a non custom cabinet. Right. So yeah, I Speaker 1 5:56 mean, actually pretty reasonable with the install. It comes in at 20k, Paul McAlary 6:01 then it's not custom cabinets. That's not custom. I mean, Speaker 1 6:07 it is custom CNC. But they're your chin. Okey, so you can do like that. Furniture board or Paul McAlary 6:19 plywood. And the installation is installation of cabinetry without running without any without plumbing and electric and yeah, contract that part. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, you know, I just tell you that usually the companies that do this, you know, I mean, I don't know Shinozaki is the name of the brand, or what is it? Speaker 1 6:44 Now that's the veneer, Pacific custom cabinetry shop here, they do a lot of commercial and residential, and they're Paul McAlary 6:53 gonna build you frameless cabinets that are less durable than frame, but that's okay. We don't call that a lot of times custom cabinets, we sort of call that sort of homemade cabinets, that sort of building them themselves, and then not mass producing anything. And sometimes, because that's just the plywood or they're going to be particle board or plywood boxes. I would I would think they're probably going to be particle board. But if they can do plywood that would help your cause. Essentially, you're getting an expensive IKEA kitchen, right? So if you got a real cabinet brand that did cabinets, you're going to need a general contractor to run the electric. You know, the first step in this project is gutting the room essentially, in ripping out the cabinets, and they're going to have to do capital, the plumbing lines to rip everything out, cap the gas lines, etc. Do you have a hood over your cooktop now? Yeah, so you do have a bit over your cooktop. So that's good. They someone's already running the ductwork or whatever that they're going to need. But still a whole bunch of stuff that you're going to do when you might want undercabinet lighting, I don't know. But then if that's the case, somebody's got to run the electric lines for that. And then someone's gonna have to do the backsplash tile. And you know, there's a lot of work that's involved. So generally, the sensible way to do that is to hire a general contractor to do all the work not to make yourself the general contractor trying to find electricians and plumbers and having the cabinet people install the cabinets. The people installing the cabinets don't really know anything about anything other than installing cabinets, so they're not doing plumbing, they're not doing electric, there's not like one brain coordinate in your project. The only brain that's got it all together is you and you're the least experienced person in this whole project. If you've hired a general contractor to do this, and they installed the cabinets for you, wherever you got the cabinets, um, I think you could probably get better constructed cabinets than you might get from this place. But even if you got the cabinets from this place, then the person that least would be installing them would be doing everything together and could coordinate everything could coordinate when the plumbing was getting done. When the electric was getting done. When the cabinets were getting installed when the flooring was getting done, etc. I think that that's sort of important. And then and then also taking out the wall or whatever if you do decide to take out get rid of your pantry because your kitchen was designed by the builder. You know the builder was an idiot and didn't really know anything about kitchens. So we created this pantry area. You have so little amount of countertop space to work at at your cooktop, that when you're actually by the way in the drawing that you sent me. I don't know if this is really the numbers that you have. But according to the calculations I've got, you only have 27 and a half inches on one side of the countertop to the pan. rewar in 26 and a half inches from one side of the countertop to the wall that's coming out on the other end. And that's actually illegal. It's supposed to be 30 inches at least. Speaker 1 10:16 It's honestly smaller now, like, it's 21 inches on one side and the current. So yeah, it's not great. Paul McAlary 10:21 The builder that built the house knew nothing about kitchens. So he had no idea what he was doing. And even the building inspector didn't even understand that you can't leave a 21 inch space, that's not even code. But he didn't even know code well enough to even help the poor builder who didn't know any better either. So, you know, once you get rid of this wall, you will suddenly be able to grow your countertop and grow the cabinetry that you have. And then it will be a much more functional cooktop, because you want to have these tight spaces around it, and not only want you to have the tight spaces around it, you'll have so much more countertop, that you'll have maybe another two feet of countertop on one side of your island. And that will also mean that you can see more people at it. That's the most important thing. And then in your drawing. Some other critiques that I would say is you have cabinets going all the way up to the ceiling. Now. If this company that you asked to do cabinets for you thought that they could do that, that would just be an indication that you should run for the hills. Because, you know, nobody's ceiling is perfectly level. So unless you're a huge exception, but if you take the average relatively new home, the ceiling is still half an inch at a level, we have a lot of older homes in our area. So there's kitchens that are relatively small that are an inch and a half or an inch at a level or more in big kitchens in our area with homes that are like built in 1920s or something like that. But even if your kitchen was a half inch off, you'd have your cabinets are all going to be put in level. So one cabinet would be touching the ceiling and another cabinet would be you know, a half inch away from the ceiling, which would look terrible. Yeah, what you want to do is order your cabinets may be six inches shorter than the ceiling. What's your ceiling, eight feet high. Cooper 12:17 Yeah. Paul McAlary 12:18 So if your ceilings eight feet high, your order your cabinets to 90 inches, so seven and a half feet, and then you just put a flat if you're looking for a contemporary kind of cabinet, then you just have a flat piece of wood, or whatever the finishes on the cabinets over the top of the cabinets. If you were doing custom cabinets, you could make it 93 inches up to the top of the cabinets and just have a three inch piece of wood, because that would you know that would be a very custom size of cabinets. But if you were using less expensive standard sized cabinets, then 90 inches is a standard height that cabinets would end at. And then you would just have a six inch flat piece on top of your cabinets. And that way you wouldn't notice how off your ceiling was as you went down the run. And then also your doors wouldn't scrape against the ceiling possibly when you tried to open them. And then also, if you had lighting or anything like that, over the on top of the ceiling, when you open the doors to your cabinets, you wouldn't find out that you'd forgotten or the contractor had forgotten about, you're going to the ceiling with the cabinets and all your doors or hitting the trim on the light fixtures. Right because there's no play in anything. We never put 10 pounds of sausage in a 10 pound wrapper in kitchens, we're always leaving a little bit of play a little bit of filler space and things like that. So that if the walls are out of plumb and your ceilings at a level, which everybody is is that, you know, we can adjust to that and everything still opens and nothing scrapes. And things look better. Just those would be the main things. If it was me, I would I would focus on. Cooper 13:57 Yeah. Paul McAlary 13:59 But I mean, you have to decide if that's okay, the expense of putting a new beam in to get rid of that thing. But really, I think once you start really getting all the numbers, your numbers together, no matter what even if you subdivide this via electricians, and hire flooring people and hire all the people that you need, you're still going to end up in these really big numbers, that having somebody that knows what they're doing and can put a beam in the ceiling will also sort of once the contractor is good enough to put the beam in the ceiling. They'll also be good enough to organize the project better, and make sure everything sort of runs smoothly. And you should get a bunch of different contractors to bid on the project so that they're all bidding on the same thing. You know, when you have a bunch of people bidding on it, that should help you get competitive pricing for the construction part. And then you'll be able to much more easily figure out before you start this thing how much the whole project is going to cost you. Speaker 1 14:55 Yeah, no, that's super helpful. Yeah, so right now in the Correct kitchen the upper wall shelves that out past the opening on the right side of the kitchen and we have to tear up the floor because of the leak and it's all hardwood engineered floor that we can't find matching or replace. So we're wondering if we should and the you know the sink line right at that opening which loses a little bit of counter space so that it matches the you know, maybe tile floor Paul McAlary 15:30 that we put in the kitchen that's our understanding this so where are we talking about? Speaker 1 15:37 So where that wine fridge is right now it's in the upper wall cabinets on the right side of the the countertop along the sink, it kind of juts out past the opening into the kitchen Paul McAlary 15:53 I'm looking at the picture of the drawing of the cabinets and I'm looking at your floor plan that Speaker 1 15:58 was made end right at the opening on the right side so it's a bit shorter right now it gets out into the opening so it looks kind of funky. But wonder could do there to like either in the cabinet line well with so Paul McAlary 16:15 this is next to the door or the other side. Oh you mean the wall juts out eight inches past the cabinet. Speaker 1 16:23 The cabinet set out eight inches past the wall. Paul McAlary 16:26 Oh the cabinets jut out eight inches past the wall in our current kitchen than your current kitchen and but when the cabinets dried out eight inches past the wall this is you're talking about the base cabinets or the wall cap Speaker 1 16:39 both the base and the wall cabinets right now do you know Paul McAlary 16:43 I don't think that that's a problem wall cabinets don't come out past the wall do that. Speaker 1 16:48 Right now they do but in those drawings, I made them and right at the wall. Paul McAlary 16:51 Oh, I see. So what you're saying is is there is no wall you're thinking about closing it in by making a putting adding a wall to that side of the kitchen. Speaker 1 17:02 Now there's a little like an out in a lower ceiling than the vaulted ceiling in our dining room. So there's like opening that Paul McAlary 17:10 you sent me a drawing of your kitchen. Yeah, let me just look at it. Okay. So it's jutting out past the soffit. So on top we're talking about not on the side. You know, there's a bunch of different solutions to that one solution would be it doesn't matter about the base cabinets and the base cabinets don't necessarily have to line up with the wall cabinets, right? Yeah. And so right now you also don't have any molding or anything else on top of your cabinet. Your cabinets are being pushed up to the ceiling right now. Right? Yeah. And what did they do just leave you like a little? So there's like a half inch gap or something like that, or? Yeah, yeah, I think you want to fix that too. Although the fact that nothing is really opened up a whole lot probably means that your house hasn't settled that much. And also that How old is your house is probably relatively new to Is it 2000 or something or 2078 78 Okay, well you may find out that the cabinets have changed and your ceiling is it's also a soffit though so that could they could make that have made that real level that when somebody built the soffit or whatever. Yeah, but yeah, I think you could end your wall cabinets. I think it would look nicer the base cabinets can go as far as you want. But I would end the wall cabinets with the at the end of the that part of the room, at least how you were going to do the backsplash tile would just be a little bit funny. Right either you'd have to end the backsplash tile with the last wall cabinet and then the base cabinets and the countertops would continue out as they're without any countertop or you'd have the the backsplash tile stick out past the end of the wall cabinet and then come down and where your countertop was. But that would be a less funny thing than the wall cabinet sticking out past the soffit I think Speaker 1 19:14 yeah, and since we are going to replace the floor the most obvious blind cut the floor would be right at that wall and it would be weird to have the base drive be really hard to have the base cabinets spanning the the the flooring change, but we're wondering if there's like some waterfall. We could do there something to maintain the counterspace there over the flooring change that might be funky. So Paul McAlary 19:39 the flooring change that you're going to do because you have laminate flooring on the whole first floor. Speaker 1 19:46 It's engineered it's engineered hardwood can't match. And Paul McAlary 19:50 it's it's everywhere on the first floor or on this floor. I mean we're only talking about it sticking out six inches right so Yeah, if you really want to not do any more floor, I mean, you could always elect to do the floor, not just in the kitchen, but in the dining area too. If you did the kitchen, the flooring in the kitchen and the dining area, then you know, you wouldn't have any problem, you could choose to do whatever you want it. But I think I agree that if you want to try to make the transition to have the floor, it will look a lot better if it happens, right where the wall ends, in which case, I think you want to make everything shorter. But now the other problem is, is when you do that, since it's a laminate floor, I don't know if they went underneath your bed. Yeah. So they went underneath the, but when you take out the cabinets, what's it going to look like? Right? Because you got to do have a panel on the right side of the the, the right side of the wine refrigerator or whatever. So when that panel comes up, is the floor presentable there? Cooper 21:02 Yeah, probably not. And Paul McAlary 21:05 then, you know, maybe you could steal some of the flooring from the other parts of the kitchen and repair it or it just sort of depends, you have to ask a flooring person? Yeah, yeah. When we're designing people's kitchens, I always say we're trying to de funkified people's kitchens. So this whole thing stick out a little bit past is funky. So ideally, you want to sort of have the least amount of funky things. You know, that's what really makes it look like the whole kitchen was designed for the space that it's in. And, you know, I'm having 21 inches of space between the island and the wall, you know, and all those kinds of things that's really funky, right? You don't want to reproduce those things. Because then you've got to sell your house, they come in with the husband and the wife and the mother in law and the real estate agent, and they're walking around your kitchen. And then they only have either 21 or 26 and a half inches to get by. And let me tell you when they get into the car, you know, what's everybody saying when they get back into the car after they leave your brand new kitchen? Well, it's a nice kitchen, but it's really tight in there. You know, I don't think you want to reproduce spaces that you shouldn't have really ever created to begin with. The magic number to get by an island, if you're not sitting there or anything else is pretty much 30 inches, you never want to be less than 30 inches. And to know. And those would be my recommendations and see if there's anything else from the pictures that you sent. Oh, and right now it looks like there's a wall on the right side of your refrigerator too, Speaker 1 22:44 isn't there? Yeah, I think you need to pull out. Paul McAlary 22:48 You're gonna pull that one out. That one out. Speaker 1 22:52 Okay, under depth fridge in there on a lot of standard depth fridges now, so I think we can get by pulling that back. Paul McAlary 23:00 Okay, so yeah, so those would be my recommendations, you decide to take out the wall and you're playing around with it. And you're, you want to see how much space you're leaving or how much bigger you can make the island or anything else, feel free to call back or whatever. But that I think, you know, I tried to get a general contractor to give you some numbers and maybe find a real kitchen place that designs kitchens, I mean, you're sort of going to a fabricator and not like a kitchen cabinet dealer that actually has designers that design people's kitchens really. So I would try to find a kitchen place where the designer can put the measurements on the computer, get the designs that you think you want to do, even with the wall eliminated and the beam extending so the island can become much bigger than just give those those plans that you got from the kitchen place to a whole bunch of different general contractors to get an overall pricing for all the things that you're getting. Okay. Okay, well good talking to you. Unknown Speaker 24:04 You too. Thank you so much. Paul McAlary 24:06 No problem. Best of luck. Thank Mark Mitten 24:09 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