Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Kitchen Remodel, New Cabinets

They're here! After days of an empty kitchen, it felt so odd to see the big tall towers coming in and eating up the space. I thought my kitchen was feeling very small for a while there. Tipping the refrigerator surround up into place was quite a feat of maneuvering. I somehow expected all the cabinets to come in smaller sections, but they are custom built to super tight tolerances and some of the runs were long and heavy.


The color is a bit creamier than I anticipated. It's so hard to tell what paint will look like in big doses, even though I painted a two foot square board as a sample. It will be beautiful with the Brown Antique granite and espresso island, coming later, but I definitely need to tweak the wall color.


The missing floor tile is where the island used to be, since we had the previous cheap engineered hardwood replaced with tile when it became worn and discolored after about 5 years. There are other missing tiles around the perimeter as well. Some of the cabinets were cut on the spot to work around that, and tiles will be replaced on Friday.


Now the room looks somehow larger, perhaps because the cabinets go all the way to the ceiling. Tomorrow the puck lights in the top glass cabinets will be wired and the crown moldings and toe-kicks will be added.

We've only found a couple of mistakes. I had requested that the insides of the glass cabinets be painted, but they were left with the clear-UV-coat birch showing. That was a choice that I was on the fence about, so evidently the powers that be thought there was enough white (it was less work, for certain). What do you think? Beyond that, the apron of my stainless steel farm sink is only 9" high, whereas the sink itself is 10" deep. The sink cabinet was made for the larger depth, so it needs to be modified. Obviously, we should have asked for more detailed drawings. It's fairly straightforward to change the rail on the front, but I also asked about the possibility to add a piece of granite or espresso maple trim underneath as a drip rail. Just another reinforcement that mistakes are opportunities.