Mark Mitten 0:03 Are you redoing your kitchen and have 11 grandchildren defeat? And maybe just one more question? Or you better call Paul. Paul McAlary 0:17 Again, can you hear me? Yes, I can perfectly. Thank you. Wonderful. So welcome to calls with Paul. So I'm just looking over the printouts that you just sent me of your kitchen. But you didn't send me any plans or drawings of possible kitchens that you were considering? You just sent me pictures of your existing kitchen. And then you know, very helpfully, you sent me the floor plans of your home. So I have all that information. Did you have any ideas yourself that you wanted to bounce off? Or did you want me to just take a walk and tell you what I would space or I would like you to take off, the only thing I did put in there was, today, all the kitchens have the countertop that kind of was in the middle, I want to keep my kitchen table in the middle. Okay, so you want to keep your kitchen table. So you don't want to open up the wall? Which the wall between your dining room and your kitchen? I'm just trying to figure out which doorway that is, is that the doorway next to your let's break? You're right, that's the doorway right next to your refrigerator that goes straight into your dining room. So you are correct. If you said to me, I would like to sell my house for the most amount of money, then I would tell you that the design that would take out that wall would be the answer to that question that nowadays the people that are going to buy your house are going to be younger than both of us. And they're not going to care about having a formal dining room and the kitchen combined, they would rather have a really big kitchen. But that's something that you want to keep a formal dining room and a separate kitchen. Correct. I would say I would entertain the thing, the thing we do is I have like 11 grandchildren. So they eat at the kitchen. I don't very often have everybody here, but I may often have six, sometimes eight or nine. And then the children will be in the kitchen and the adults will eat in the dining. That doesn't happen very frequently. But it happens on occasion. I suppose you know I'm I'm I can go either way. Well, if you did do a kitchen version, that you were going to open up the wall between your dining room and your kitchen, then you could possibly have two tables in the same room and have everybody in the same room. So that that would be the advantage of that it's getting to be a little bit more expensive, gonna be more expensive, not as much because of the construction costs. But you're probably going to end up with even more cabinets and more countertops. So that could be a reason why you might want to keep things the way they are. I'm looking at the window where your kitchen is. And that looks at the back of the house. How I assume is that the backyard. Anne 3:21 The window that looks out the back of the house is the large bay window, but large bay window with the table is at the end of the table. Right. So that's the North Side overlooking the backyard, the window that's in above the sink is look is looking into woods. And that piece? Well, I would think if you're gonna do the big project, I mean, that will be something that would be that it will be common for us. If we really wanted to rearrange somebody's house, we would embark on a gigantic construction project where we might do things like take your bay window and raise it up where you know, not necessarily lift it up but have you get another bay so that we would put the sink in front of that window instead. And then that would have you have a huge amount of counters up, come down along that wall. Then you'd come down along with the wall where your sink is at presently now. Then you'd have your stove, maybe on the wall where the refrigerator is or some people might even end up closing the window. Well actually the refrigerator wall we want to open up so then maybe what was have you come down that whole wall we would actually close the window with a with a sink is and put your refrigerator in the corner, move your stove to along that whole window, put an island in the room and then your dining room would be a gigantic dining room and you Paul McAlary 5:00 be getting the light from the dining room into the kitchen. But why not? I don't know if that's a such a gigantic production. Why don't we maybe not entertain that today? And talk a talk about what if you kept it two rooms? Because it's not bad as two rooms mean, probably really young people are going to not care about having a formal dining room. But you still need to do it actually. Well, I mean, that's the good thing. They might turn your formal dining room, though, into an office, you don't have an like you have this funny office space. That's sort of old fashioned that nobody would really sit at a chair and face a wall nowadays, that yeah, I have an office. I mean, I probably even sit in that part of the plant is an office beyond the family room. But that's neither here nor there. Well, it is. Because if you already have an office, now you have an office, so you don't really need the formal dining room necessarily. How about this? Did you have a budget? I have the budget? Yeah. So what's the budget? Whatever I wanted to be kinda. So let's say if you did the gigantic plan, okay. And it's tough because you're in Massachusetts, right? Unknown Speaker 6:15 I am, oh, my God. Paul McAlary 6:17 You're all you're in Cape Cod. You're on Cape Cod. Anne 6:21 I'm in I'm in her which I'm 80 miles out of Boston. Paul McAlary 6:26 And you're so as you're getting closer to Kate, are you close to the water, or anything. Unknown Speaker 6:32 I'm about three miles from the ocean, and I'm on the lake. Paul McAlary 6:37 So you're probably it sounds to me, like you're in an area, the kind of area where the contractors are not going to be inexpensive. Anne 6:44 Nothing on Cape Cod is inexpensive. Paul McAlary 6:47 So, so it's difficult for me to again, guess. But I'm just going to the thing is the good news is that the price of the cabinetry and the price of the countertops, and the price of the things that you're buying doesn't change very much. But there's a gigantic difference in the labor costs in different places. So for instance, in San Francisco, even your cabinetry and your countertops, and everything else will probably go up 30 or 40%. But the labor costs might double, or my sister lives in Acton. So okay, so she's, you know, not near you, but also in relatively more expensive suburb, in Massachusetts, per labor costs were probably at least 50% More than they probably would have been here. So we live in a nice, we live in the main line of Philadelphia, the expensive suburbs of Philadelphia, our market is nothing like our market. So just you know, if I was to say, What's the most expensive version of this kitchen, and you don't really have to necessarily get very expensive. Your cabinetry right now is very expensive. You know, you have custom cabinets, I don't know if you know Anne 8:01 that. I did well, actually, Paul, they are not cabinets. They what they did was they put in boards, and then they put the doors in which are have the raised panel on both sides, but they are not boxes. And if I'm making any sense their shelves with doors, they're not box, Paul McAlary 8:26 they're just custom made. They just built the cabinets on site essentially. And, you know, made them whatever ways that they felt like it. It's still a box. You can't get through your cabinet to your pantry cabinet from your desk area. They're just custom cabinets. So you're spanning the three things and they're putting the glass doors on the cabinets that they want and everything else but that's an expensive way to make cabinets that they're not pre made units. So you have relatively expensive cabinets now and your cabinet doors. I'm trying to see what they look like they're what's called Lift doors where if you were to open the door of your cabinet, there's like a little notch taken out of the door so part of the door goes into the cabinet and then part of the door sticks on the outside of the cabinet. Is that sort of how the door Anne 9:19 that that that is correct. So it's like they you know, routed them. It's not like the right word, but they've cut them out on all four sides and they fit inside that is that Paul McAlary 9:36 all of these things that you have are the mark of custom cabinets. Do you care about that? Or are you happy? Would you be happy and fine with cabinets with the doors on the outside of the cabinet? Anne 9:50 Well, I mean, these are knotty pine, I mean they're 50 years old. I mean Paul McAlary 9:58 they are made out of a kind of wood that It wasn't the most brilliant kind of wood to make cabinets out of if you're going to make custom cabinets. But back, you know, 50 years ago, some people really liked that look it of course, pine is one of the least expensive kinds of wood. But custom cabinetry is incredibly expensive. So you got a kind of very expensive cabinet made out of softer wood that easily gets nicked and scratched. So yeah, but you know, so it was maybe not the best decision if you're going to be getting expensive cabinets. But do you really care about the cabinet doors being recessed into the cabinets? And you know, what kind of habit what kind of color and style cabinet were you thinking about? Anne 10:42 Well, I, I'm not going to, if I do cabinets, I'm not going to do this, you know, the race piano because I want you know, something different Paul McAlary 10:55 than that to be white? Do you want them to be gray, the Anne 10:58 I will, I will go with a painted cabinet. And that was one of the things I mean, the white and the gray both seem to be out. But I don't want to go with you know, something, pick out something crazy, that's going to be out. I don't want to stain them again, I want something different, but the white and the gray are out. Okay? Let me throw this out. I mean, would I be actually smarter to get a painter in here and think Paul McAlary 11:23 the only thing about painting them is you could do that. And that would be pretty reasonable. Your kitchen layout, certainly, painting them won't be that inexpensive, they're not applying. So you're gonna have knots on them that aren't good, you know, you're probably have to fill all the knots the painter to paint them and not end up that way. The layout of your kitchen can't really improve, you probably want to replace the floor and and you're gonna get new countertops. So generally, I would say you wouldn't want to paint them only because you know, you're going to end up when you redo the floor and you redo everything else that you're going to be redoing backsplash tile and everything else, the painting is still if they do a good job is going to be almost as much as relatively inexpensive cabinetry would cost. And, you know, so the painting might might you know, my question, let's say $8,000, or something like that to paint your cabinets, and then you'd still have the same floor plan. And then you wouldn't have the advantage of getting brand new cabinets, you'd have to replace all the hinges on the cabinets too. And there'd be a bunch of work involved. And probably by the end of the time the project was done, you'd maybe only have saved a few $1,000 from a less expensive cabinet brand. Or even if it was $10,000, you'll have lost the ability to move things around, which really would have made it a way better kitchen. Because Anne 12:57 then that's basically that's not an option, I wouldn't do it. It's crazy, it's crazy to save $2,000 And then, you know, have still have the race panel. And Paul McAlary 13:10 yeah, it's got to be more than that to be big. But you also still have the older cabinets in the insides and everything so and in your area, painting them and redoing the floor. And you know, the whole project is going to still be if I had a guess I'll bet you the contractor that does the work. Even if they're going to they're going to be redoing your plumbing for your sink, they're going to be doing backsplash tile, you're going to be replacing the floor, the construction costs probably are going to be in your area $40,000 Or something like that, or apply this for all of this work, then you might be spending $10,000 That depends on the kind of appliances that you get, you get expensive appliances, do you get inexpensive appliances, I wouldn't be surprised if you spent eight or $10,000 on appliances, but you're spending refrigerators a tiny refrigerator now. So you'd be stuck with a tiny frigerator. You know, maybe you wouldn't spend $10,000, maybe you'd spend $5,000 on appliances because you'd be stuck with a very small refrigerator. He's still going to be spending by the time everything is said and done over $60,000 for the whole project. So I just don't think that that really makes sense to have the painted old cabinets in that scenario. Anne 14:31 So far, it's a consistent stretch intensity appliance with an intent for something else. Paul McAlary 14:37 Well, for the flooring and the backsplash tile thinks the faucets the handles. Any other stuff, they're probably going to do lighting on your ceiling when they're redoing. You're probably gonna be doing a bunch of changes that they'll try to work out but that's one of the reasons why the construction ends up being 40 So you save all the money that you would have saved on cash admits, and then you have $1,000, maybe in painting costs. So we're I don't know, if you include that, and probably not, that's not even gonna be included in the 40. But it's still spending, you know, more than $50,000. And you still got a pretty much antiquated kitchen. So right now, I would say what's not even talk about doing that. And then let's say that yet, if you really want to do digital, you pretty much gave me everything, I would need to hand draw a gigantic version of the floor plan of what one room would be. So I'll do that just so you could sort of get an idea of what we'd be talking about with the gigantic. But let's talk about what you would do if you kept a formal dining room, and you captured your kitchen with the kitchen table. And what you would do is that if that was the plan, so the only thing I mean, when you sent me this picture? Yes. I don't think it's a coincidence that the pictures you sent me don't have any chairs around your kitchen table. Is it cuz you're in there, tears are getting in the way a little bit of the, Anne 16:19 because I I live alone. So half the time I just put half the chairs into the dining room right now there's one, two chairs around the kitchen table. And there's one of the desks. So most of the time I just put them in the other room out of out of the way. I didn't think much about that. Paul McAlary 16:38 Well, the thing about putting a lot of chairs around your your kitchen table is anybody sits, it's like, if you sit at your kitchen table, you really too close to your stove. If you're working at your stove, and somebody's sitting in back of you. They're a little bit close, right? Anne 16:53 Yeah, we don't Yeah, we don't. Yeah, I You're right. We don't I mean, we don't call the kids until, you know, dinner's on the table. Paul McAlary 17:02 If someone's trying to cook and people are sitting at your kitchen table, you know, you're getting, you're getting in each other's way a little bit. Yes. So there's, there's a bunch of different ways to fix that, right. Because if we fix that, then it can really be a kitchen where people could be sitting at the kitchen table. If this was a family that was buying your house. And they wanted a formal dining room, and they wanted a kitchen that they could use every day for dinner. And they wanted to sit for people in their family at that table every day, but they wanted to be maybe have their kids sitting at the table doing homework, and not interfering when they were trying to cook dinner and other stuff. There's different ways that you could get around that. But if I start rearranging things, you know, one of the ways to rearrange these things, your stove is in a particularly bad place. If I put your stove, let's say on the wall where the refrigerator is. Anne 18:02 Okay, the reason is that stove is there is to vent outside, Paul McAlary 18:07 oh, well, we don't need the stove. to vent. We don't need the stove to be on the outside wall to vent it outside. So okay, the way we vent it is weak, we're gonna get your cat, we're gonna make your looks like your ceiling height is eight feet tall to me, do you? Is that true? That is true. So we're going to what we would do is if we move just over to the refrigerator, we're going to move your stove to the refrigerator wall, we're going to put a pantry on the side of a refrigerator and move your refrigerator and the pantry to the corner where your stove is, right. And then we're going to take your kitchen table, and Anne 18:47 I'm going to limit the entry. The entry in stove. Paul McAlary 18:52 Oh, I'm gonna send you, I'm gonna send you again, go ahead. Anne 18:55 Afternoon, I'm ready to jump pantry and fridge to where the stove is. Okay, so Paul McAlary 19:00 I'm gonna send you a hand drawing of this so you can sort of better understand. All right, okay, what this is going to do is this and that now the refrigerator will be a little bit in the way of the table. But you can decide some days, you can you can maybe move your table to the center of the room. But on a on a daily basis, what I'm going to do is either I'm going to get rid of all the cabinets that you have where your desk area is and move the table over in that direction. Or if you just wanted to tweak things a little bit, you could take all the cabinets off of that wall and just make it 12 inch deep pantries along that whole wall. So you had lots of storage space and everything else. But now we can shift your table away from the refrigerator and away from the stove area. And nobody's going to be sitting there or anything else and you The only problem with this whole design is going to be that now your table is not going to be centered in front of the window. So Anne 20:07 Right. And that's what that's why the tables where it is when they built this house, we didn't build it. I had put the table underneath where they had put the light, they had a round table. Yeah. So if I apply the tables where it is, I know it's not in the best location, but I centered it on the light. Paul McAlary 20:25 Yeah, you sent it on the light and on the window. And that's what they centered everything on. If I put your 12 inch deep cabinets along that one wall, you'll get tons of storage space over there, we'll have the contractor move your light, so that the known location of the table is maybe a couple of feet over from where it is now. And it's now centered under the light. But it's not centered on in front of the window. So that's the bad thing. I mean, some people could redo their window you probably your house is citing, right? Anne 20:55 Yes, would you Paul McAlary 21:00 which account which you can't get or whatever. But if you really wanted to make a production out of it, you could redo though, you could redo the window, but I don't think I would bother the table what looks so weird or unusual. As long as the tape the light is centered on it. Okay, yeah. And then we'll shift the whole table over, we're going to switch everything around so that your refrigerator so that goes over in that corner where the stove is now. So you have another deep pantry cabinet, then the refrigerator, and we have the pantry cabinet on the side of the refrigerator, so that when you get a big side by side refrigerator, the doors can both open, and you don't hit the wall or anything. And then you'll have the refrigerator, then you'll have a panel, then you'll have a bunch of countertop that goes down towards where your sink is. And then when you turn the corner, now you'll have a bunch of countertop on that whole wall where the refrigerator is, that will have the sink, sort of actually, I mean, a sink the stove, sort of, you know, a little bit pushed towards the doorway, but you know, not at the end, but maybe like a countertop, the stove, and then a whole roof big bunch of countertop between the stove and the sink. So now when you're working at the sink, you'll have this st countertop ematic countertop or a close close to the amount of countertop, or at least a bunch of countertop that you have in between the sink and the stove, you'll have a bunch of countertop in between the refrigerator and the sink, and then your table, you'll have a lot of storage where your pantry cabinets are. There's something bad about every design that we do. So what's bad about this design? Is that Yeah, Anne 22:39 you're washing dishes looking at a wall. Paul McAlary 22:42 Well, you know, your your sink, your sink stays in the same place looking at that same window, right? Anne 22:48 No, you put it over on the research, I thought you put it on the refrigerator, what Paul McAlary 22:52 they all put in the refrigerator with a stove is over and that Christ was going on the wall, Anne 22:59 the counter. Oh, and you just didn't know. Just ignore me. Paul McAlary 23:07 Okay. I mean, that would be sorry, one of that's okay. I mean, if you wanted to get really fancy, then some people would take out the wall there. And then do what you said they'd close that window up, and you'd put your stove over there. And then you'd have your sink facing into your dining room if you took out the wall between the dining room and the kitchen. But we're not we're not talking about that one. Right now. We're just talking about what would we do if we want to like right now when I look at your kitchen, I know where you spend all your time. You spend all of your time when you're cooking, standing in between your sink and your stove. Because that would be normally the normal work area where you would wash things and then you may be cut and chop on the countertop in between the sink and the stove. And then if you had dishes drying and put them to the mean this is if you're doing it the way most people would you put your display do it. That's the way you do it. So essentially, here's what we do is we if we want to figure out how well somebody's kitchen design is designed, we shaved their countertop, you know like a topographical map according to how often it's getting used. So in your kitchen, you've got a piece of countertop between your sink and your stove that used constantly. And then you have a countertop all around the side of the refrigerator that you may be getting coffee at when you go into the microwave days you're using it but you're not really working there. So by moving your refrigerator over to the other corner and moving your stove onto that long run, you're going to end up with countertop that is going to distribute how often you're using it a little bit more and then maybe like right now you have a hood over your stove, maybe in a smaller version of a kitchen Unlike this, a lot of people would put their microwave over their stove, you don't have to. But then it has to go either on a wall cabinet which doesn't look good, or it has to go on the countertop, which gets in your way, if we put it over the stove, it could be a microwave, it could be a hood, it could be nowadays, it could be a TV too. That could be a microwave, it could be a fan, it could be a hood, but it could be over your stove and it could vent outside and you'd get your microwave off your countertop as well. If you redid this to give you have a lot of room around your table, still keeping your table giving you at least as much storage as you have now and then making it a little bit easier to work in your kitchen. That's one version of your kitchen that isn't going to cost you a fortune. It's going to only cost you you know very similar in the amount of money to the kitchen where you to paint all your cabinets. So Anne 26:05 okay, so what we're doing is we're eliminating the storage and the death we're completely eliminating the well Paul McAlary 26:15 give you we're gonna give you a cabinets there that you're going to keep all your all your foot. Yeah, we're going to only give you a 12 inch deep cabinets over with. So you're just going to have 12 inch deep pantries along that whole wall. And if you want to get fancy, you could put glass doors in the middle of them. You could even have a pantry on the one side a 12 inch deep pantry on the one side 12 inch deep pantry on the other side, some glass doors in the middle, a little bit of countertop if you wanted to have it, but we don't want to make those cabinets as deep as they are. And we certainly have a chairs jutting out, because we want to move the table over towards it. Anne 26:54 Yes, I guess Yeah, I get that. Yeah. Paul McAlary 26:58 tons more storage. Anne 27:01 Yeah, yeah, these two cabinets that I have here now. Actually, one of them is for brooms, which is kind of ridiculous. So you don't the other the other is a pantry. Yeah, these are 24 inches, those, quote unquote, P entries in the glasses here. Actually, the glasses here is 12. Those three, those are 12. So that that kind of tells me so they just you know an extension of that, which as you say does give me room gives you a bunch more Paul McAlary 27:32 room and then you're not sitting there in a chair. So then your chair doesn't have to back up. And that allows you to move your whole table over. And then it's a better working kitchen, it has, you know, when no matter what way we do it, it's sort of got a problem. If we want it to go crazy, we can start rearranging reinventing the whole wheel. But that's just a very simple way to give you a very functional kitchen with more storage countertop redistributed in a good way. And then you could be eating in this kitchen anytime you want. And you're not going to be disturbing anybody working in the kitchen. Anne 28:07 Let me stay on that side. So I would like say the cabinets are the same width that they are now or approximately. So I would have five, quote unquote, like pantry for like floor to ceiling type things. Versus versus AR like, obviously, we're eliminating the desk, which juts out from the 12 inch cabinets. Is that Is that what you're saying? A wall of 12 inch cabinet? Paul McAlary 28:35 No 24 inch? And in fact, no, you could even keep the 20 fours in some ways, when you're going to sit at the table, the head of the table that has their back to the window. That yeah, I mean, your tables got to be like, almost three, that's gonna be 30 inches away from the window for someone to sit there. So because of that, that you got to be if you're if you really wanted to, you could have a 18 inch pantry, let's say that was 30 inches wide in the corner. And then shallower cabinets, but I think it just looks much nicer to have them all the same depths. Anne 29:20 Have the five of them 12 What what this was the pictures that I shared with you does not show this is an old library table. So you know that's not the only reason I'm keeping it back. I put there's a Oh, let's see. Well maybe an 18 inch leaf on each side. So that's but it doesn't look like it's gonna fit you know, and and then I'll use like a bench at the top or a bench on the side. That's how I get the 11 kids around this table. So I do extend it when you know when a bunch of them are here. Paul McAlary 29:57 So one way you could extend it and that Should we get one extra kid, at least if not to, is if you push the table up against the window, then that, you know, you only lose one kid doing that, right? Anne 30:16 But yeah, it depends. Yeah. Paul McAlary 30:19 Yeah, what what, whatever. But then you can extend the table. If you don't have a seating area there, and you're making it wider or whatever you're doing. You could put another card table on the end extension, essentially, and then sit two more. When you Anne 30:35 I hear Yeah, you're on the side. Yeah, no, I haven't, I haven't had to do that. And eventually, I suppose so. I've been anyway, I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna do my whole kitchen around one or two kids, right? For college, and then you'll never see Paul McAlary 30:51 me, I'll never see him again. That's true. If you did do this, with the way you're doing it, and you put the leaves in the table and everything else, once you've made those cabinets that are 12 inches deep, it will just work better, because you'll have a little more room for Anne 31:06 them. Uh, yeah, that makes total sense. And every, you know, everything doesn't have to be centered on the window. Yeah, I mean, Paul McAlary 31:13 as long as the light fixture is centered over the table, it will look, Anne 31:18 I'm gonna get that all has to get changed. Because I'll be putting in some, you know, some of the, they're always complaining about the light anyway. So yeah. Paul McAlary 31:29 That's what sort of justifies the location of the table is if you do have one light centered over where the table is, that will make the table look on a daily basis normal, that even though it's not, on your window, the light is centered on the table, so it makes the table look like it belongs in that location. Anne 31:49 So you would still put a light over the table, Paul McAlary 31:53 I would still put a light over the table. Even though some days, when you do have a whole bunch of people over, it might not end up being perfectly centered. If you really want to get fancy, you put a hook on the ceiling for this little bit of a hack Anne 32:07 that looks like that looks like you know, I messed up. Paul McAlary 32:13 Or even if you don't have a hanging light, you just have recessed lights centered Oh, I'm Anne 32:19 definitely, I'm definitely doing recessed light. So you Paul McAlary 32:22 could just have recessed lights centered over the location of the table where it's going to be on a regular basis. And that helps it look like it belongs to and then when you do have your grandkids over and the table shifts a little bit, and it moves a little bit for the grandkids when the table gets wider or whatever. So what if the recessed lights aren't centered over the table. But if you do say Yeah, absolutely. Even recessed lights, if they're centered over a table, they make it look like it belongs. And then that's the location of your table on a daily basis. You know, this is just one real version that we sort of walked through. So I think what you can do is, you know, you have to decide if you really want to consider a gigantic project. And if you want to do that, or a gigantic project, then it's probably really too big a project to be able to do to get too far on a podcast phone call. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to just and draw a version of it in for you to maybe mull over just on a floor plan, if you can sort of look at your floor plan and understand the kind of thing that we're talking about. And then I'll I'll hand draw this version in two, and then you can sort of compare the two. And then what you do is, think about it. And then maybe if you decide that you're definitely going to do this, then you go to a kitchen design place that's local to you, where is hanging in relation to you? Anne 33:59 About maybe an hour and 15 minutes, and then you find because that's no it isn't Paul, because that's what I'm gonna have to do. I mean, I may have to go to Burlington or you know, I won't have to go as far as your sister, right? But I have went to one place, your kitchen place. I've gone to two, I've gone to two to actually the first one the gentleman drew up plans and he texts emailed them to me. And I called them up and I said, you know I said that's exactly what I have. And then I went to the second place. The lady did it. And I said that's exactly what I have. I think I told her I'd like to enlarge you know, like the the window that the sink, but there was it was identical except you know the only thing that they're, they're talking about? Well, you know, it's gonna be different because you know, you can have the special drawers, the pots and pans. But identify, ideally, the player was no different than what I have, except that instead of me putting the pots and pans on a shelf, well, I would get to put them in a drawer. Paul McAlary 35:23 Well, the one thing I would say is, the layout of your kitchen, as it is now is not horrible. So even if they're not changing very many things, you know, a lot of people's kitchens are just crazy. So your kitchen for its day, nobody was as sophisticated as we are about laying out kitchens as we are now for its day us was top of the line. So them keeping it the same, it's not a crime, because it does work really well. But certainly, did they change it to a bigger refrigerator? Right? They didn't leave it that like that. Right? Oh, that Anne 36:00 was one of the that was one of the things I specified that I did you know, the only reason I said an 18 cubic foot refrigerator? It's because, you know, that's the size of the hole there. But they didn't totally know. Did they get? Did they sorry, Paul McAlary 36:18 did they give you a desk area again? Anne 36:22 I don't know. I mean, I don't know if they did it, they didn't. But as I say, I just I just wasn't impressed. Paul McAlary 36:30 So if you were to kind of keep the layout pretty much the same as you have now what most what they get rid, you get rid of the desk, and you'd make the desk a bar area. And you'd have like a second refrigerator with a glass door on the front that you would either have a B wine refrigerator or a beverage refrigerator, so that with the glass with all three glass doors, maybe over the top to make it attractive, but that would keep the pantries there and everything else. And that would be one way to sort of redo the kitchen that you had, in a way that would be more contemporary. Like nowadays, people sit at laptops and stuff like that nobody would sit at a desk area facing a wall. Even if they had pens and papers and everything else in the desk drawer, they would just sit at the kitchen table where they had more room, and they could look outside and have more light and not be staring at a wall. Anne 37:30 Yeah, I mean, the only thing I did and I like your idea of doing the 12 inch cabinet. I love that idea. The honest yeah, like I said, I put the out a little note that I put in my blurb too was that that that will excuse me, that wall backs up to the laundry room. So accessing water would certainly be possible. So that was you know, like you just said, you know, either the the second thing which it doesn't sound like it maybe I need maybe I just need a bigger sink and a bigger window. Oh, yeah, I don't know, if I really need a coffee area. So I drew that out, just you know, just just to kind of give you Well, I could, Paul McAlary 38:12 if you kept things very close to the way that they are, you know, you could do the same design and just leave it as tight as it is now, right and not do things cabinets I had and do the same thing, you could move your refrigerator down to the same location, you could move your stove, if you wanted to, you could put the water in the sink where your desk area is and make that a bar area with another refrigerator. And you could do all that and then it would just be a little bit tight like it is now and it would be similar to have but you'd be flipping those appliances. So there's not like a right and wrong. Some people don't want the extra space, they'll get a really narrow table, they won't care that it's a little bit tight. It's certainly a little bit better when you're sitting you know, towards the refrigerator than towards a stove where you know if you're sitting people you're trying to cook and you're trying to work and the refrigerator as bad as it is it's at least it's sort of in the corner and the stove actually is sort of almost like a little bit dangerous that you pull the door Yeah, you're taking the turkey out of the oven and one of the kid grandkids is sitting at the table and you know falls over backwards into your oven pretty much but yeah, it's just all a little bit tight, but some people just don't you know, some people they'll live with it being a little bit tight. I'm a I'm a freak for space. So if it's me I'm willing to live with the table office center of the room and make the 12 inch pantry cabinets which gives you a ton of ton of storage for food and more storage than you know one thing about a 12 inch deep cabinet for storage like a pantry cabinet is that when you have the 24 inch deep pantry, it's so deep that you can't really reach All the way in the back. So the pantry is 12 and you open the doors, everything's totally accessible to you. If you put rollouts in 24 inch deep pantries, you actually only ended up gaining about as much space as an 18 inch cabinet. A 12 inch deep pantry that ran along the whole wall will just give you a very accessible, easy to access and a lot of space without things that have to pull out and everything else. I'll send it to you, you can think about it. You can maybe go to the kitchen places and Anne 40:34 I am I started the other night. Like I was picking like I was going through your printout and I was doing the double A's to see, you know, cabinets to see who was in this area. I didn't get too far. So I'm working on that. Who are you talking about? Is that is that was that that Paul McAlary 40:52 it's one of the places that we recommend in your areas. Yeah, Anne 40:57 let me see if Yeah, I have that. I have that the Hingham lumber in in Yeah, I have that hanging lumber. Yeah, I'm gonna be Paul McAlary 41:07 there might be closer ones to get to Anne 41:10 it see, hang on lumber in Cohasset. I've got Okay, so those ones, you also said the kitchen and bath gallery in her yard. Paul McAlary 41:20 So especially if you go to the bigger company that we don't like Sandra Bullock, I think is the one we recommend that hang them in lumber. And she's like a relative by marriage a couple of times over. But And it's funny, but the font and that's from one. So that's from my sister's husband's side of the family. But then the funny thing about it is that on my father's side of the family, the cabinet dealer, the rep for the cabinet brands that they carry, there is another relative of mine on my father's side of the so Unknown Speaker 42:05 like our government, Paul McAlary 42:08 I guess we're Irish, and for some reason, gravitated towards cabinetry 50 years ago, they ended I don't know we're building I'm not sure it's funny. But the rep for the medallion brands and the other brands that the hang on lumber company carries is the rep for those brands all the way from Maine, all the way down to New Jersey, but not in my area. But I might use those brands, if my relatives were my reps in the Anne 42:39 area, then otherwise, the brands that you use, I think there's only there was only one of them that do that are available in my year. But as I say I haven't gone through the whole list. I had two quick questions. Sure. What's the difference between you can say tell me which I should go for the framed or the frame was I haven't even looked tried to find out what the difference in them is? Well, you have what Paul McAlary 43:04 I would always say unless you want very modern cabinets like contemporary cabinets that are very ultra modern, that are would be outdoors, then there's no reason ever to get frameless. Your kitchen is still here and is indestructible. You're just going to Nick and scratch it and get it beat up because it's framed, framed in front of the cabinet is solid wood and the hinges are getting attached to solid wood. That's all framed cabinets. That's why your cabinets are in this good shape after 50 years because they're well made Anne 43:39 cabinets. And because I took good care of them. Paul McAlary 43:42 And if they if they were frameless cabinets, they can't last that long. It's just a plywood or particleboard box. Usually they're particleboard. Sometimes they apply wood, but they're just a plywood box. There's no solid wood front to the cabinet. And then the doors and the hinges and the tracks are all just attached to the side of the box. So it makes it really easy for the doors to rip out the hinges the repair side of the cabinet and the tracks and the rollouts and all the drawers sort of eventually, you know, start having problems. Anne 44:16 I promise you the last question on the quality in the value. What should I go for? Like if one is A and one is B? Should I go for the like the a quality and the b value or vice versa? Am I making any sense? Paul McAlary 44:32 Yeah, I mean, it's that's a hard thing to understand. It's like we actually have a customer right now that you know some of the cabinet brands that we carry. I uh we rate some other brands even better than the brands that we carry. But right it's all sort of some some, you know, subjective, like if a brand is a little bit more expensive, and it can be really well made. It also then might have a lot of company editors that are less expensive. So we could get a and then a B, but it's only getting a B for value, because there's some other because Anne 45:09 there's others that are less Yeah, a little bit Paul McAlary 45:11 less. So it's not, it's not great. And it's not like it's not even better than the one that's getting the A, it's just that you probably 99% of the customers out there couldn't tell the difference. A B plus is not an any or even a B for value isn't necessarily Anne 45:32 a bad thing. Right? Right. Paul McAlary 45:34 So you always want the construction of the cabinet to be at least a B plus. But once it gets to a bus, it's going to outlive all of us. Anne 45:45 So I'm at one Paul McAlary 45:49 once it's got to be plus for construction, it's like your cabinets now it's going to last forever and it's just gonna get Anne 45:56 so same as my kids when I said you're the same age as my kids, so they're the youngest of 50 and they go from there Paul McAlary 46:11 so I don't think you have to worry about that like if you want a painted cabinet then there's really inexpensive cabinet brands that will do like a Shaker door style or some of these doors Anne 46:25 but but you know to my to my to my girls have read in within the last two or three years have done our for five years have been complete you know remodel you know knocking down walls and yada yada yada. It was I was sitting at one of the youngest kids on our on the holidays and I said to my sunlight said they didn't paint the underneath of those cabinets. I mean that would drive me ballistic I guess she says Oh, well that's we we kind of saved on the cabinet. Paul McAlary 46:59 No, they didn't. They don't paint the bottom of any good the good the best cabinets they don't paint the bottom of so the bottom. cabinets on a framed cabinet are never finished. Anne 47:13 That doesn't em ideally when the dead breads ballistic. Paul McAlary 47:17 Some people it bothers if it bothers what you have to do is put a you have to buy you have that plywood installed across the whole bottom of the cabinet. Or you have to get custom cabinets where you make the whole bottom of the cabinet custom and smooth. But usually what people do is put plywood across the bottoms of the cabinets and then put a piece of molding on the front for light rail, but the recess that's on the bottom of the cabinets that's recessed up there. Usually there's lights and stuff and even wires and things that you're going to see on the bottom of the cabinet. Because you know there there's there's lighting that you have that you put on the bottom and you'll only see this in her kitchen. But when you sit at the table when you sit at the table you're low enough that you can see underneath the cabinets, Anne 48:10 because I've been going there for years right yeah, as I say, you know, I often Paul McAlary 48:16 you know how you won't you won't how you won't see the underneath side of the cabinets. It's very trendy now to get a table that's higher. If you got the table that's the height of the kitchen cabinets, then nobody's head will be low enough to see under the cabinets. Anne 48:32 Oh my god. Paul McAlary 48:35 Actually for older people, the higher table is easier for them to stand up from. Like when you're sitting at your table. It's easy to sit down your feet are like a half an inch or an inch from the floor. And then you know when you stand up you don't repeat you won't have a hard time standing up. It's like toilets, everything we want them all higher up when we get older Anne 48:59 yeah totally i that i that I've taken care of. Paul McAlary 49:04 But if the table that was higher that's very trendy. So My table in My house is the higher height. Anne 49:12 Just put a block of wood on numbers Paul McAlary 49:16 where you have to get a new table you couldn't use your own table. But if you're at your old table then you're going to have a line of sight to underneath the cabinets. And then you have to put plywood on the bottom to have it all match and so that you couldn't see the lighting and all the under usually put under cabinet lights to light up your box nowadays. Anne 49:37 Right right. Last question. I promise. What What direction are we going? What direction are cabinets going? I mean, yeah, everybody in the last 10 years have done the you know the white the Paul McAlary 49:51 unfortunately as a kitchen designer, that's still all we sell. I mean it's not all we sell but now some people are getting different Anne 49:59 colors. I like the white. Paul McAlary 50:03 White will always be popular, it could never possibly be as popular as it's been in the last 10 years. But White will always be popular because it's clean. And the white nowadays is all painted instead of the plastic white cabinets, the thermofoil white cabinets so my 2030 years ago, but also painted cabinets, whether they're white, or whatever color they are, they get nicked and scratched pretty easily. But then it's easy to touch up by professional furniture refinishes you know, they'll catch up somebody's kitchen for $500 around here five years or 10 years later if you beat up your cabinets a little bit. But you know, it's not like stained cabinet stained cabinets, you can hit them as many times as you want. But the color is in the wood, right? It sucked it up. So it's not like chip the cut, you'd have to gouge it, but to get the color off the cabinet. Anne 50:53 So I just don't want stain again. I mean, I've lived with stain for the last 40 years. So Paul McAlary 50:58 yeah, so when you get a painted cabinet, there'll be inexpensive color, like in the painted cabinet world. Yeah. Anne 51:05 I mean, like I said, you know, everything is is the white shaker. I mean, you you don't go into any house. It's not the white shaker. And I'm not ecstatic about the white shake. I mean, I love you know, I love my you know, the the raised panel of mind. I mean, you can still get the rates down, but I'd like something different anyway. All right, Paul McAlary 51:24 well, you could get a recessed panel and not a shaker doorstop. So you get a panel, you get a door still very popular. It's called transitional where the got a profile on the inside of the door so that you have a profile, but then you don't have the raised panel that's a little bit more, you know, out of style. And you have a recent panel, but then a profile on the inside of the door. And that's very popular to reset recessed door, or recessed the panel is the middle panels not raised it's flat, but then you still don't have it be very simple like a Shaker door, the door has a little bit of a profile around the outside. It just doesn't have a raised panel in the middle. That's a very popular door style now too. Although, you know, Shaker door styles that are the absolute simplest in white. Probably account for at least half of every kitchen we sell is a shaker. Yeah. Anne 52:17 Now why am i Girls one with the you know, the white shaker? Yeah. So reset pin, you're calling it a recessed panel. Paul McAlary 52:27 So shakers, a recessed panel, but a Shaker Door is just totally simple. It's just square or Anne 52:32 little bevel. Yeah, I don't I really, I if I can avoid it. I don't want I don't want shaker. So what Paul McAlary 52:40 I like it's called a you know, a profile on the inside edge of your door. Anne 52:46 Okay, I have the raised panel, Paul McAlary 52:49 right now you have no profile on the inside edge of the door, you have a raised panel, but the edge of your door on like, if you go from the raised panel to the frame of the door, it's just so just being square on the inside edge, you make the panel flat, but then you make the inside edge of the door have a nice profile to it. Anne 53:12 Okay, all right. Paul McAlary 53:14 So maybe when I said that to you, I'm going to send you a picture of a kitchen with a profile of the inside edge of the door. Anne 53:21 Here, you're absolutely amazing. So if you have spent over an hour with me, thank you so much. Paul McAlary 53:32 No problems, my contribution every week. I'm gonna start doing it every other week soon. You know, now that we have a bunch in the can, but we'll keep doing it one. Anne 53:42 Can I Can I listen to some of the other? Paul McAlary 53:46 Yeah, they're on our website. Anne 53:49 They're on the website. Paul McAlary 53:50 Yet. On our website, you just in the top, there's a list of all the different cap things. There's our blog, there's our gallery page, there's all of these different areas of our website. If you go to the website of like a laptop, you'll have the tabs across the whole top of the screen will be all these different categories. One of the categories is podcast. And there'll be a list of 22 podcasts that we did with all different customers. One of them is with another person that does a podcast, Nancy from home design, chat with Nancy, but there's all 22 podcasts right now and then you know, probably yours. Unless we have some kind of technical error, then probably yours will be put up in a few weeks. Anne 54:35 And I just click on on on that on the Paul McAlary 54:38 Yeah. Just click on the little thing. You click on it and then you can listen to the podcast. Anne 54:46 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I can just I can't I can't believe you do this. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Paul McAlary 54:51 I enjoy. Looking forward to Anne 54:54 your email. Paul McAlary 54:55 All right, good talking to you about by. Jamie. Mark Mitten 54:59 Thank you for listening Coming to the main line kitchen design podcast with nationally acclaimed 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