Mark Mitten  0:02  
Are you an architect with a statement kitchen that needs a kitchen designers input? That you better call for? That is if you got the guts

Unknown Speaker  0:16  
Awesome. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi, Paul. Hi. Bastian. How are you?

Paul McAlary  0:25  
Oh, yeah. What's your, uh, your husband?

Sebastion  0:28  
Yeah, Sebastian.

Paul McAlary  0:29  
Okay, great. Welcome to better call, Paul. Yeah, why don't we start just with going over the design as it is right now. And what things I think that you're you should be considering? Okay. Not in any particular order. But I would think one of the most important things is, in the design, you have this, you have a table shown, that's four feet six inches wide. And then the spacing, leaving in back of the table for chairs is two inches, two feet, four inches. So 28 inches, I would tell you, if you test that out, you'll find it a little bit tight and insufficient. However, the good news is that a four foot six inch table is actually way bigger than you need to sit four or five people, the most typical size kitchen table, that would be round would normally be four feet wide. And a table that's four feet wide, will sit for very comfortably. And you could squeeze a fifth person in once in a blue moon if you had to. And then if you did do that, then you then would be leaving yourself four feet, seven inches everywhere, because you definitely can bump out back off the window wall pretty easily. And then four feet, seven and two feet seven inches sorry, is 24 is 31. That's probably just enough, when you leave space for sitting, you have to leave enough space to push the chair backwards. So you can stand up, and then easily exit from where you're sitting. And really, probably 30 inches is sort of a minimum. Otherwise, every time you open your chip, push your chair back, you will hit the wall, and you'll be scraping your wall and even 30 inches, you might want to even make it a little bit bigger than 30 with the four foot wide table just so you don't scrape up your walls.

Alison  2:31  
That's a good point. Would you say if we do a bigger, this bigger table that we have in here now is that more like a dining room size table than a kitchen table like that will look a little too big. So we do have a formal dining room to

Paul McAlary  2:45  
which table to mean the table which you have in the kitchen.

Unknown Speaker  2:49  
Yeah, that's not what you're saying it's not really kitchen size table, it's more like

Paul McAlary  2:54  
the space that you're leaving isn't really big enough for that table, a four foot six inch table is okay. But then you're gonna have to change the plans a bunch. So making it a four foot wide table will be in the picture, you're only showing that your seating for there, and a four foot table very comfortably sits for. So that just got your six inches that you desperately needed. And then if you wanted to give yourself a few more inches, you could make the vestibule where you're entering a little bit smaller, or your pantry a tiny bit shallower, or something like that to make it more comfortable. But what you really should do is take a table and a chair and put it 28 inches away from a wall and then try to get out. And you'll sort of see what I'm talking about. And then you can decide how much space you want to leave based on the reality of what a chair needs when you're pushing it back from a table. And you can decide if you're happy with 30 leaves 30. I think when you do that, you'll find that 28 is not enough.

Sebastion  3:57  
Yeah, so the one thing one of the reasons. So something when we are drafting things, it didn't let me draw the table the way that I want it because I actually my intent was to do it at a 45. So would that the conversation if the chairs were at a 45 rather than 92 the plan.

Paul McAlary  4:16  
If the chairs are 45 in the plan, it helps in some ways, because you're opening into the corners, so it makes it a little bit better. But I think that even when you're opening into the corners that way, then the size of the chairs and your elbows are sort of close to the walls and you're better off not I know you're an architect or whatever Sebastian architects and kitchen designers were at odds a lot of the times when you're drawing plans for a living the reality of what happens after this stuff is installed. A lot of times doesn't fall on you. Whereas with us after the whole kitchen is done and somebody spent $30,000 on cabinets and everything else if They're not happy with the spacing that we've left them, we'd better have worn them, otherwise they're gonna want to sue us or whatever. So we're more sensitive, I think, to stages. And, and I think it's good. It's you want to judge something by how comfortable you are in the space, everybody's first instinct is to try to get as much as much as they can in a space. And, you know, I always say this in our podcast is, if you're in our offices before COVID on a Saturday, you'll probably find the moment in time when all four designers are fighting with their customers to leave more space. Because until it's a real thing, nobody anticipates until it's real. Nobody wants to give up anything. So you're always trying to put 10 pounds of sausage in an eight pound wrapper. And then once it's actually installed, no one's ever complained to us that we made them leave too much space. So just makes the whole thing more comfortable. So that's just one thing. I guess the other thing, go ahead.

Unknown Speaker  6:02  
Yeah, no, I appreciate because obviously, you're you live this experience of like, the site, you know, what a number reflect and what it actually comes out in reality, and how we get to experience so we appreciate the feedback. Yeah. And

Paul McAlary  6:15  
architects today, they get critiqued by how beautiful their designs are. And it's a different critique criteria. So it's like, I don't know, an architect, every architect puts French doors in every room, all over the place. But the problem with French doors for us as people that are, you know, now having to figure out how you're going to furnish your room or anything else, is that French doors open into the room. And if they're not folding back against the walls, then they're in the way of travel, etc, then you can't have furniture in the room and other things. So everybody looks at the design before it's furnished. And it's amazing, because it's so beautiful that you have all these French doors in this room. But then once you actually need to open and close all the doors, it's impeding on the tables and the furniture that you would have wanted in the room. And so we're taking over after the thing is designed, and it's beautifully designed, it's just that no one's thought through how this room is getting furnished, where people are coming from and going to, and what the travel patterns are. So our sensibilities are just sort of different a lot of the time and, and we're judged on a different basis than architects are. But that being said, you know, if we want to move on to the next thing I would say is that just to warn you, your island in the picture is 11 Feet Two inches long. And the standard length, for 99% of all countertops, whether they be quartz, or natural stone, granite, or soapstone, or anything else is 10 feet. So you would need to get an oversize slab of quartz or natural stone to be able to make an island without a seam that was 11 foot two inches long. And even 11 foot two inches is so long, that it's almost like an aircraft carrier in the middle of the kitchen, I think that you'd be better off, bringing it down to the standard size 10 foot and you'd save yourself $5,000 on your countertop, and 10 feet is really big already. Okay, let's see what else we've got here. You know, there's some things I didn't really quite understand, like the area that has the the bar sink, with the bar sink, and then it looks like there's a pass through, that's going into another room. And there's it's got cabinet surrounding it.

Unknown Speaker  8:45  
Yeah, so basically, that's the axis between the two rooms, we're looking at different ways of, you know, utilizing that wall. And I think we sort of came to this idea of what if we made that wall made it cabinetry, and it's like two foot in depth. And we can sort of integrate it and then it becomes like a truth threshold, where it does a couple of things, it gives us an opportunity to like create a wall of cabinets, where a lot of the rest of the other walls in the kitchen are mostly windows. And then what it does is that it creates a little bit of a buffer because that room down the other side is our living room. So we like the idea of having a connection, but we were definitely not of the we want to have a fully open floor plan kind of scenario. So we this is like a way of navigating a little bit of that and then sort of you know trying to make this while which I will admit it still needs a little definitely needs a little design but in terms of like functional instead of Yeah, I would.

Paul McAlary  9:53  
I would tell you that when you put wall cabinets over the top of A doorway. That that's a pretty funky thing, unless you've got some Leonardo da Vinci plan to maybe make this a hidden door that you wouldn't, wouldn't even know was was a doorway and you want to keep your your living room a secret. But if that's not the case, you're just creating this tunnel that you're going through on the way to your living room. And then that does the doorway, I guess the doorway is not going to have any trim on it. And then how do you transition from the sides of the pantry cabinets that you have on either side of this doorway, when it hits that opening, and is that opening, just a drywall opening?

Unknown Speaker  10:45  
Yeah, we would put trim it, we would trim it. So from the living room, it will be all trimmed up. And then so then you

Paul McAlary  10:51  
have to leave space for that. So then your doorway is going to be much smaller than the opening that you you have. Because you're not, you're not going to have you don't have any trim on the inside of the doorway, you can't have trim on the outside of the doorway, and not on the inside of the doorway. Because you have the thickness of the wall that's there. And then you'd have to finish that off. I would think that instead of making this a tunnel that you have to go through that the more normal thing would be to get rid of the cabinets over the top of the doorways. That's just an instinct to put cabinets everywhere that I would discourage you from going. And then I would probably not enclose my sink, with pantry cabinets on both sides, even though that makes it symmetrical. Only because the countertop that's there, you only have 24 inches of countertop really, that you're going to try to be working at. And you have a 24 inch deep cabinet right next to you. So your elbow, you can't if you try to cut and chop on that countertop, it's going to totally be uncomfortable. And your elbow is constantly going to be hitting the side of the pantry cabinet. I think better to have the pantry cabinet on the one end, the pantry cabinet on the other end of the wall if you want and then get rid of the one in the middle don't have it symmetrical. Symmetrical is the first instinct of everybody when they're first designing, but it's eliminating function as a criteria, and it will be so much nicer to have more countertop. And then when you go into the room, it's gonna seem way more open going into your living room, you won't be going through a tunnel, when you get rid of the cabinets over the top of the doorway, and you get rid of the pantry on the side. Now you'll have countertop going almost to the doorway. And then you'll be able to put stuff down maybe on your way into the living room, or set a drink down or be able to use that bar area that you have. Maybe when you look at this thing in three dimensions more, when you get the cabinet people to put it on the cabinet stuff, you're sort of if they do it both ways, you'll sort of see how open it will feel, and it will feel better. So that would just be another thing that I would say. And then of course, if I move on to the My next observations, you are eliminating all wall cabinets and even any kind of floating shelves that you have in your kitchen proper. So you have a statement kitchen, but it's not going to be very comfortable. Or, I mean, I hope you don't cook a lot. Because you want to get a crisis out of a cabinet or something like that you're not really leaving yourself. You're leaving yourself a very beautiful space, but not one that really is very conducive to working in all your plates, well your glasses, every plate, every glass, all your spices, all your cooking oils, everything is going to be going below the countertop. And so glasses and things like that, you know, I put them in drawers, then they'll rattle and clink and possibly get banged up when you open the drawers. And if you have them all the way across the room in the one space that you have created for wall cabinets, you really don't have that much wall cabinetry over there either. It's a lot of times people do these statement kitchens that are beautiful, but they don't cook because they have maids or other people that are waiting on them. And it doesn't matter if they have to go to a butler's pantry that's a half a mile away in their home. They don't really care. But if you're really cooking in your kitchen, it's going to be frustrating. So you might want to give up some of these beautiful views just to have some wall cabinets in your kitchen. If that maybe means that you get rid of either side of the hood over the cooktop. You put some wall cabinets that will just connect to the refrigerator built in refrigerator. You'll lose the two windows that are there, but you will at least have places to put plates and glasses and food Didn't cooking oil and spices and things next to the stove. But you have to just I'm just giving you that observation. I tell you that the most expensive kitchens we do are completely and totally impractical. It's just as miners, you know, we have to warn people

Unknown Speaker  15:16  
you should know, I mean, that's a good criticism that we're definitely big cooks. I mean, we're definitely going to we've got the 14, so and we're going to use it a lot. So we definitely use that a lot. So we'll, we'll, we'll definitely look into that. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, me, well, we just got short sighted of what we wanted to look like, rather than how it would function. I mean, it looks

Paul McAlary  15:42  
better, it looks better this way. It just that when you go to cook in this thing, and you go to get a glass of wine or something like that, or everything, all the glasses and everything else are not inconvenient and add in a convenient location. Although, I mean, the one thing is, is you have a butler's pantry, you can put a lot of this stuff away. But that's the reason that a rich really rich person, I bring this up because I got several customers that have $200,000 kitchens, you know, in $10 million homes, and you have to go to this butler's pantry to get everything because their kitchen is just all windows and they're looking out at the mountains in you know, Jackson Hole Wyoming or someplace at their beautiful view and their ski lodge that they're flying to in their jet plane from wherever they don't care that somebody else that's making them dinner needs to go across the into the pantry to get everything that they need. So you just just think about it and it's beautiful, but if you suck it up and you put it cabinets along the stove wall instead of the two windows, then you'll have cabinets and you'll still have the view that you have on the sinkhole. Okay, and then I guess if I move on to other things I would say so you know overall the the layout is definitely is definitely fine. The one thing I'd say is the area that the way that it's done around the refrigerator. Did you do that so that you can someday get a wider refrigerator instead of a 36 and get a 42 or something or

Unknown Speaker  17:18  
refrigerator to smack the wall.

Paul McAlary  17:21  
So the way to do that is not to have the lower cabinet not to have the cabinets over the refrigerator go all the way across and then have the lower cabinet on the side. I think the way to do that is to have that narrow cabinet go up to the ceiling and in the cabinets over the refrigerator stay the same size as the refrigerator that just looks a lot Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  17:43  
It was a Yeah, I 100% agree. Yeah. This is that was a change that we did sort of a little more later and this is the front the plug volumes but yeah, I agree. I think I think I think it looks lousy. Yeah, making the side to a cabin on the side. That can be sort of one of the you know, pull out something

Paul McAlary  18:07  
things on the side of the cabinet too. Is that when the whole cabinet pulls out in the kitchen world everybody loves gadgets but gadgets don't really work that well. So like this nine inch cabinet if you pull the whole thing out when you're pulling it out what happens is first off because Sebastian because you're an architect, you're probably thinking about getting frameless cabinets and not frame cabinets Is that correct?

Unknown Speaker  18:38  
Well you know I haven't decided on that because the last one when I when I fell down since kitchen we got a really nice cabinet assembly company that had wood framed cabinets and they're really beautiful Soup very high quality so I wouldn't I don't I don't necessarily I don't know how I stand on either one yet honestly. Okay, so the only reason I bring it up is not now I'm like I don't really know actually. So what maybe give me

Paul McAlary  19:10  
yeah, just say that frameless cabinets are on not going to handle stress as well as framed cabinets. Because with a frame cabinet all the hinges and the tracks and everything else are all attached to the front of the cabinet. And the front of the cabinet is all solid wood and on a frameless cabinet, the cabinets either particleboard or at best plywood, but all the screws and everything else for all the hinges and everything are attached to the side of the cabinet that's at best plywood and so they're a little bit more easily damaged. And so once you take a really heavy pantry pull out and you put this big tall thing in a cabinet especially if it's a frameless cabinet over time. The frameless Cabinet will never handle the stress so it will last For a few years, maybe even a decade, but it's sort of just a problem waiting to happen. And more than that, for any kind of gadget like a pantry pull out, it's cool. But it's really not as functional as actually individual prolapse would be. So when you pull out this whole thing, now, every shelf that has a shelf above it, because the whole thing pulls out together, you have to lift the spices, or whatever they are, you have to lift them up, get them above the rail that's holding everything in, turn them sideways to pull them out. And as you get lower and lower, you have to squat down to see what's on the lower shelves of this thing that pulls out, and then lift that thing up and turn it sideways and pull it out. And it's sort of silly, if each one of these shelves just pulled out individually, it wouldn't have anything above it, you could see everything that was on that pullout shelf, take whatever you want it and slide it back in. And not only would you put in the cabinet under way, way less stress, but it would be more convenient, it just wouldn't be cool. I would say that, you know, most of the times the gadgets that we put in customers kitchens aren't to make it better. It's if you have a really big kitchen, it's sort of just whatever maximize the cool factor. But you're always sort of losing function a lot of the time for some of these devices. And some of them like a pantry pull out that's really tall. Just put the cabinet's under a lot of stress. And if you do choose by the way to get rid of the windows, I would even make that cabinet on the side of the refrigerator, maybe a little bit wider, because now you don't have to try to fit all the windows in there. You could make your countertop maybe a little bit narrower on one side of the stove, and then have you know, the pantry be 15 inches wide, just six more inches. And then you can have rollouts in there, you get a ton of stuff in there, it will be even more functional. And it wouldn't be you know, the other thing about a really narrow door is it's not that attractive. So when you have a nine inch door, if you look at that door, it doesn't really look proportional to the rest of the doors in the kitchen.

Unknown Speaker  22:10  
Okay, hey, what's your opinion regarding in the corner, like blind corner cabinet was lazy to the cabinet?

Paul McAlary  22:18  
Well, there's no question that the best way to access a corner is through an easy reach door. So an easy reach door is the double folding door that people don't necessarily like. Because it's sort of weird the way the door double folds. But that's the easiest way to get into a corner. And then if you put a lazy susan in the corner, then now everything's accessible. Everything spins up to you. If you get a blind corner, then that's how you end up getting things like LeMans is and they're called Magic corners. They're again, very sort of cool devices that allow us to access the corners in the back of blind bases. But again, they're cool if you have a really big kitchen. They're great because they're sort of make it interesting to be utilizing that kitchen. But as far as function goes, they're really a much worse use of the space. So always the most boring things like rollouts, and lazy Susans actually access the highest percentage of space with the greatest utilization. So you have to decide the one thing about the blind corner is the blind corner if you got one would have to go in the direction towards the sink. You can't do a blind corner that would open on the side of the stove, because they don't tell you this. But those if I mean I'm talking about any of the mechanisms, the magic corners are the LeMans is these things that look like a peanut that swing out of the cabinets. You've probably seen them I would think Sebastian, which might be why you're you're asking about the blind corners, right?

Unknown Speaker  24:06  
Yeah, so I mean, I began to really not like lazy Susans I have we have one here. And it's like things just roll off of it. It's just a hassle. And I realized that maybe this isn't big enough, maybe just a blind corner and I just like maybe I just forget about using the back that quote, maybe it's just wasted space, which is kind of is anyways and just I don't know, just like I don't know, I just like for filling that space. And I'm happy with that.

Paul McAlary  24:31  
Well, the lazy suit if you get the easy reach cabinet with the folding door, you can have shells on the inside. And then you'll you'll be able to get into that corner. If you put the Lazy Susan in the corner. It's not like the Lazy Susans in the past where there was a bar and you had plastic shells or something like that or even wooden shelves that rotated. There'll be a solid shelf on the bottom of the cabinet on on the second level and the Lazy Susan will be a wooden Lazy Susan in almost every granted I know of, and the Lazy Susan will spin on that shelf. So you won't really have things falling off and falling down anymore. But if you really wanted the biggest use of this space is make it a folding door cabinet. Because if you make it a dead corner, you have to leave three inches of filler so that the other cabinets are going to be on either side open. And when you do that, you really create something like two and a half square feet, what five square feet of storage space, you count how much square footage of storage space you have in your whole kitchen, not including the refrigerator. That's a lot of space. That's a regular two foot deep cabinet. So you're giving up a 30 inch long drawer base, or a 30 inch long bass cabinet by making that corner dead. I would think the best thing is make it an easy reach if you hate Lazy Susans, and then you can put tons of stuff in there that you don't use all the time, like a walk or a breadmaker or who knows a lazy Susans, when you look at them and you go to the kitchen showroom, you might not pay them as much as normal just because they're there'll be wood and there'll be on a shelf.

Unknown Speaker  26:10  
Okay, so your, your prep a lot of the sort of like this double articulated door which you know, ends up being on the face, like 12 by 12. Right, that's usually what

Paul McAlary  26:19  
on the face, it's 12 by 12. And then the one thing that you want to do with these doors, if you can remember this, you have your contractor countersink the handle screw. And it's just hard to remember but what happens with these cabinets is the doors fold, you have the ability actually because it's a double folding door to drag the back of the door across the cabinets that are next to it on the the side that that the hinges in on

Unknown Speaker  26:49  
so you don't scratch the face

Paul McAlary  26:51  
so you don't scratch the face of the of your doors and your cabinets next to you. A lot of times if you go to a kitchen showroom and you look at their Lazy Susan cabinets, you'll see that the sides of the cabinet next to the Lazy Susan, all the drawers are all scratched up with the screws from that the back of the handles. So if the countersink the handles, that doesn't happen, but it just something that a lot of you know a lot of kitchen designers forget about and you realize it as soon as you start damaging your kitchen.

Unknown Speaker  27:20  
Okay. Sorry, can I ask you one question about Ireland? If we were to take a foot off of it, which end would you take the foot off of like it's okay, if it's not in line with?

Paul McAlary  27:31  
Well, I think the easiest way to take a foot off is you have the panel on the one side, right. And you have to take off a little more than a foot really, you got to get it down. So the countertop is 10 feet, or maybe a tiny bit less than 10 feet, that I see that you wanted to have a waterfall. Yeah, you have a wall on one side. So they have to miter that countertop edge to make the waterfall. So you're probably going to need to make it like nine feet 10 and a half inches long or something like that, for them to be able to get the miter and everything to work. If you got rid of most of the countertop that's on the end towards the stove, and made it another waterfall if you wanted to, or made it a panel or something that will be one way to do it. I don't know that it matters that much.

Unknown Speaker  28:27  
I just wonder where we wanted the additional floor space like if Would it be too big of a gap between the stove and the end of the counter if I took it off a foot that way? Or do I take it off and just

Unknown Speaker  28:38  
write by leaving,

Paul McAlary  28:39  
you're leaving yourself enough space everywhere because the room is really big. So maybe you split the difference. And you leave yourself just a little bit more space six inches of more space or seven inches more space on the one side and seven inch more space towards the stove. The alternative is to change how the islands done and you know make it like a two level or something like that. Then you can have it as long as you want. But I think you're not going to like it if it has a seam in it. If it's two levels that won't be bad if it has a seam but if it's one level with a scene and that's your like a lot of people and you're picking quartz that looks like marble and you're getting very distinctive graining having a scene where they'll have a real hard time matching it up.

Unknown Speaker  29:23  
Okay, can I ask you Is it I seem to be we seem to be seen less of the waterfall and is that is that a trend that is a passing a little bit

Paul McAlary  29:36  
um you know, I I think it depends on where you are that you know the waterfall edge is definitely a more contemporary thing. If you're downtown Philadelphia and you're in a condo or a high rise, almost all the jobs that we do down there, the customers are selecting contemporary cabinetry A and then waterfalls are as popular as they ever were. If you're out in the suburbs here, very few people get contemporary kitchens, they may get a Shaker door style, but it won't, it will be more transitional than it is truly contemporary, they'll maybe make things a little bit modern looking, by taking a Shaker door style and getting a chimney hood and getting bar pull hardware and do some other things, maybe glass backsplash tile, but they won't go all the way to slab doors and making things totally contemporary. And so I think that when the kitchens aren't totally contemporary, that there's less waterfalls, in those cases, but in the truly very modern kitchens, those kitchens, waterfalls are just as popular as ever. Okay, the one thing to remember though to is that you have to have outlets in your island, so somebody has to plan on where your outlets are going. So when you put a waterfall on the end, I hate it. If you put an outlet on the waterfall, that, you know, we I see that all the time, because don't nobody planned out the cabinetry for there to be a good place to put the outlet. So there's no place that the contractor can do but that the put it in the waterfall.

Unknown Speaker  31:18  
Yeah, we're actually thinking pretty hard as a possibility of doing one of those pop ups from the from the venue, just pop it in comes up.

Paul McAlary  31:28  
You know, I like I like that. And you'll probably look

Unknown Speaker  31:31  
like that I thought, we think that might be worthwhile.

Paul McAlary  31:37  
Yeah, I liked the pop ups, you'll need for the length of your island, you'll need to outlet sources for building code. So you can have one pop up or two pop ups, or one pop up towards the waterfall. And then on the other end, you could have an outlet on the side of a cabinet or something like that, like right now you have it, it's I think it's convenient, you have the Cabinet Doors opening out towards the stove, which is very convenient. I mean that outlet, I mean that the cabinetry opening towards the stove, which is convenient, but something's got to go for your you know, to make your island smaller, okay. And then the other thing too is it sits five in your design. But even though islands are much more attractive, when they're the only, there's only seating on the back, I don't think that you're ever going to find more than four people sitting like ducks in a row, you'll find that once people, even three people sit at the back of an island, they sort of turn their chairs so that they can face each other. So it's it's ambitious thinking thinking that if you can squeeze five chairs in there that five people will ever sit there, even if you did a waterfall on both edges, that it's still probably you would never get the five people in there. And even four would be probably unusual. If you have an overhang on another side, then one person, but the person that sits on that end, for two people sometimes can sit on that end. And they can be sort of a focal point between the other people sitting on the other end of the countertop. But when everybody sits facing the same direction, it just you never really get that many people all sitting there.

Unknown Speaker  33:21  
So you think we should ever overhang for one point,

Paul McAlary  33:26  
you have to decide one way looks better. One one way, get one way looks better, the way you've got it now looks better. And if you if you got rid of your waterfall and you put the overhang, you'd want the overhang on that side. And then you could move the whole island to be the four feet that you have away from the stove. And then that person because the island is shorter that sitting on the waterfall side, that person wouldn't be sitting into the doorway. So you'd actually be utilizing all the space. And then you really would sit five, four people on the back and one person on the side. But it wouldn't have maybe as dramatic a look. But it would be more functional. If you're really thinking about people eating, if you're serving. You know, it's like, if you go to a bar, we always you know, I always equate this is some people want to have kitchens without any table. And I say, Hey, if you go to a bar, and they tell you, you have to wait a half an hour for a table, most people or a restaurant, or you could sit at the bar, most people wait to sit at the restaurant, right? They don't they don't want to go sit at the bar. And then if they're gonna sit at the bar, they try to find a corner of the bar where they can be facing each other. The last thing they all want to do is have four people sitting like ducks in a row. So when you create that in your kitchen, it's definitely the nicest look and can be the most dramatic, but it definitely takes a little bit away from the function and the conversation ality and if you're entertained a lot, then people will sit all around the island when you have seating on two sides when you only have seating on one side People might stand there, but they probably won't sit down as much. Okay. Anything else that I see? No, I think, you know, the only other thing I would think is where's your garbage can going in this design

Unknown Speaker  35:13  
I were. So it's somewhere in the, just the way that the cabinets are laid on the island are not necessarily what we do is block floor floor area, we're thinking of having some sort of like, pull out that can combine that you know, and say, Look, that's the biggest one that we can have, so that it's practical.

Paul McAlary  35:40  
So if you get the biggest prolapse that you'll be able to get would be, you only need a 21 inch cabinet for them, there won't be a drawer on top, and you'd be able to get to 50 cord prolapse, if you get the smaller size pull out. And this is where the the pullout will have the 250 cord. garbage cans will be one, it'll be in the front and one will be in the back. People use garbage on the front, and maybe recycling in the back with your kitchen. It's also very convenient to have trash can next to the sink. So you might want to consider putting it there instead of the island, or maybe both having one trash can in the island for when you're cutting and chopping and working there. And then the trash can next to the sink. So you could scrape something off into a trash can and then put it into the dishwasher.

Unknown Speaker  36:36  
Yeah, yeah. But you think the then having just a built in garbage? Sort of cabinet. It's better than just then then, you know, the traditional then on the outside, right?

Paul McAlary  36:49  
Yeah, no, I don't think you I don't think you know, even if people even if people object to having garbage in their cabinet, it's especially if you don't have a drawer on top of it. And if you did have a drawer on top of it, I wouldn't keep my cutlery in there. But if if you didn't have a draw on top of it, it's getting your trash outside of the kitchen, and just clean out the cabinet, the cabinets, all urethane and everything else on the inside, it's not going to hurt the cabinet. It has a lid on it, too, they can have lids on it, and they're inside a cabinet, it looks nicer and is better to have an inside a cabinet. Yeah. And then have you picked out any kind of sink that you want. Now, in this design, you've got a very unusual thing, you got a double bowl sink, that's 36. And that's a 42 inches long, which isn't really a suitable standard size, I would just say that if you're looking for sinks, the thing that was popular years ago, was to have one big sink and then a small second sink. Whereas nowadays, one really big sink is much more popular. Because then everything fits in it. If you have one really long sink, you can put pots and pans, and cookie and Turkey pans and everything. There's nothing cutting boards, there's nothing that won't fit in in your sink and be sticking up out of the top of your sink, if you try to put it in the sink before you wash it. And if you get when any of these sinks that's divided in two, then unless you're kosher, it's not really helping you in a lot of respects, you'd sort of be better off just getting one big thing. And then there's if you want to get fancy, there's lots of sinks that are one really big sink that come with things that slide across the top of them and, you know have other kinds of contraptions that will allow you the ability to drain things on top of the sinks and some other things. But, you know, a lot of times like in the program software that we use, and everybody uses any big sink is a double bowl sink. And they don't even have really big single bowls things in the programs. But because the program that program designers don't know any better, but a big single bowl thing most people find to be more more convenient for them.

Unknown Speaker  39:14  
And that's the reason we have it. It's just like that's what Revit had and we just want to locate a thing not we definitely haven't decided on the thing other than we would probably that we want one and would probably there and it probably should be largish. That's a that's that's as much as we

Paul McAlary  39:29  
figured. And I would I would also center it under the window to so in this picture, it's not centered yet. So you want to center it in front of the window. You know, those are the design things that I think you need to consider. And then what were the some of the other things you were talking about color?

Unknown Speaker  39:47  
Yeah, we were just not really sure where to go the design I feel like the design of a kitchen is constantly changing and I feel like kitchen look like you can kind of be like oh you did that. This year, based on the colors and design, and I want a timeless kitchen, that people aren't gonna be like, Oh, you built this kitchen in 2022, I was really set on kind of doing Navy at one point, I love that color. But that those 2019 Now to do well be lowers.

Paul McAlary  40:18  
The rule of thumb, I think is if things are more conservative, they tend to, they tend to always be in style. So as you get more dramatic or whatever, if you're doing a kitchen and you did it very ornately with carved legs and corbels, and things like that, that were popular, maybe in the early 2000s, those kitchens were in style for a short period of time, they went out of style, because they're so dramatic, and then they were identified with the period. navy blue is definitely a color that sort of popular now, I'm sure going into the future won't be as popular as it is right now. But if you did your island and navy blue and not your whole kitchen, it's not so in your face. And then having an island a different color is always something that's going to probably be popular, you know whether that island is gray, or wood or navy blue will change over time. But there still will be people picking those kinds of colors for their islands in the future. And so your kitchen will be more timeless, if it's just the island, if it's all navy blue, or if you did the bottoms of the cabinets, navy blue, and the tops of the cabinets a different color. Well, that's sort of in your face. And that's just something that's definitely you know, people always say the word timeless isn't as timeless, it will have a popularity, but then people will lose interest in that thing and move on. But like white shaker cabinets have been popular for 10 straight years, I can't imagine 10 years from now, if they're still as popular as they are now. However, they'll still be a lot of people buying white shaker cabinets, even if they're not as popular just because they're so simple. And they're universal. And they're sort of timeless, their shaker cabinets have been around for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. And getting white cabinets is always going to be a popular color. So the combination of the two will always have some kind of attraction to people, I can't imagine it being as popular as it has been the last 10 years, but 30 years from now, they'll still be some contingent of people that will be getting them. The one thing I will say though, is not having moldings on top of your cabinets, reaching the ceiling is definitely less popular, and will always be so you don't it depends on how contemporary you want your kitchen. But leaving a gap between your cabinets and the ceiling is pretty undesirable. And I don't expect that will ever come back. That unless you're getting slab doors and you're being very contemporary people are going to want the cabinets not that necessarily the cabinets to reach the ceiling, but that it'd be at least some flat piece of wood that closes in the distance between the top of the cabinets and the ceiling. So you're not collecting dust up there, and that the cabinets look more built in. So if you wanted that to be a two piece crown molding that reached the ceiling, that would be more traditional, it could be a cove molding, which would go with a Shaker door style. But if you want things to be more modern, you could just have it be a flat six inch piece of wood or something like that, that would go from the top of your cabinets close in your cabinetry over the ceiling, but just leaving the cabinets on the wall with nothing on top of them is very old fashioned.

Unknown Speaker  43:53  
Okay. And what would you recommend for lighting over the island? Like how big should we be looking and how many?

Paul McAlary  44:02  
Also, as far as your lighting goes, you have your beans that are coming across the room and you're still doing that? We're thinking about it. Are they not structural there just were there.

Unknown Speaker  44:16  
It's just it's a it's a high ceiling. And it's just just, you know, we we thought it would be something that could add a little interest and sort of frame up a little bit this space.

Paul McAlary  44:26  
There's lots of things that I would do. I don't want to rain on your parade. I mean, there's lots of things that I would do with my ceiling to make it more decorative. That wouldn't be Beans, beans are sort of 70s ish, and especially if they're not really structural. And if they're going to be like a wood or something like that. We actually had a company we have company meetings on Friday. And we actually had a customer that had a beautiful kitchen. And there's one beam going across the room that the customer really wanted. And when the designer brought up the picture in the meeting all The other designers sort of went like, oh, you know, we also have that beam. And it's, it looks better when it's more than one, right? When it's only one, it looks a little lonely. But I just said, listen, that's a beautiful kitchen. But we can't send photographers out to take pictures of it. It's a white kitchen, with a gray island with white marble, quartz, looking countertops, all things that are sort of very popular now. And then one brown beam going across the room. So things that you could do with your ceiling, because it's high. Like things that I like, you could create like a tray ceiling, I don't know if you know what a tray ceiling is. A tray ceiling is you build soffits, like, let's say, just six inches down from the, the top of the ceiling, around the whole perimeter of the room. So these soffits go around the whole room, you know, around your pantry area around your foyer area, so that you're just going to be creating this whole central area. Or you could even make the ceiling come down over the eating area and line up with your foyer area. So you create a almost a complete rectangle. And the ceiling is just six inches lower in your dining area. And that has some recessed lights, lighting that area, and then the rest of the room just has a two foot deep perimeter around it where the ceiling comes down. And then in the middle of the ceiling, now you have in the middle of the ceiling, you could have the beams going across, that wouldn't go all the way across the room. So they'd be restricted to the middle of the room. And that would be interesting if you actually took those beams and made them you know, not just straight beams, but like beams going one way. And the other way that well that's actually called a coffered ceiling, where the ceiling is divided into squares in the middle of the room. But the perimeter of the room is a tray that goes around the perimeter of the room, you could even go to our website. On the first picture on our on our gallery page on our website, the first pictures that appear on the gallery page, there's an interactive virtual tour you can take of kitchens, and the first kitchen on that virtual tour, you have to click where it says tour now or linked here, that kitchen is offered ceiling. So yeah, it's very traditional, I don't think it's your guy's style. But you could just have the beams going across. But that see how the perimeter of the room is all closed in. So the perimeter of the room gets closed in, and only the middle of the room gets that done. And that sort of connects things a little bit more, makes it all look a little bit more like it belongs when the perimeter or the room and then the cabinets if the cabinets go up to the ceiling, they're going up to the ceiling, but you don't have beams running through them. You don't have that is a way for the moldings to stop and die. But you could even just put a perimeter around the room. And then I've had customers wallpaper the ceiling with relief wallpaper that looks like tin so that they paint over it. But it looks like they have a tin ceiling. And then on the inside of the whole tray, you can have again some kind of crown molding, simple, even angled crown or any kind of crown you want, just around the perimeter of the tray. And it just is an added feature makes the middle of the room go up a little bit higher. And it's not you know, not as sort of 70s as a brown beam. Right. I think we're I'm very proud something that you haven't figured it out yet. Yeah, if you can weather the storm, take what you want from my input and discard the rest.

Unknown Speaker  48:58  
I think it's good.

Unknown Speaker  48:58  
No, I mean, getting but I mean, I we you know, there's other parts in the house that we've considered doing something naturally not that different than that. So maybe we will try and follow that through here because I think it's Yeah, I mean, just looking at the damage is you know, you do exactly what you said it takes us a very regular shape and create a nice logic and instead of a sense of peace and it allows us spots for for lighting on the perimeter that is recessed in the center. You have a couple Yeah. And then

Paul McAlary  49:29  
now you don't have the problem the like with the pendants and your beams, you're gonna sort of have a problem with trying with the beams right? With the beams coming through your it's gonna be weird if your pendants you're going to want to be centered over the island, and then your beams. If one beam is close to one pendant and the other not close to the other. You're creating a problem. So if it's going to work, somebody's got to think it through so you don't sort of have a weird thing going on with the pendants over the island and the beans Ending up there being a beam where you would have wanted to put up ended, or one pendant ends up being on a beam, and the other pendants are far away from a beam. And another pendant ends up being close to a beam. So it can create problems.

Unknown Speaker  50:16  
Yeah, no, I mean, you know, the beans are clearly like, based on the windows. But now this logic allows us to make make a grid that actually works with what's happening outside the room.

Paul McAlary  50:31  
And if you're looking for beans to beans in your living room, where they're going to be would like some kind of rustic wood or something.

Unknown Speaker  50:38  
No, they're just

Paul McAlary  50:39  
gonna be some kind of dividers, then yeah, maybe you do a coffered ceiling or you want to think it all through, like even my customers even those are my customers that add the coffered ceiling in the picture. There's no question that a lot of people aren't going to like that coffered ceiling. And if you're asking is that ceiling really timeless, it will always be attractive to some people, but not a big majority, it's going to be too much for a lot of people almost any particular decade you pick if it was a symbol or tray ceiling, probably everybody would have liked it.

Unknown Speaker  51:15  
Okay, do a tray ceiling? Would you put like some wood in the tray? Like, would you do a wooden ceiling or no,

Paul McAlary  51:22  
you could, you could have that you could have the whole tray, have some kind of like molding that matches any molding in the room. And then the top of the tray itself could be some kind of wooden planking to make the whole ceiling some kind of wood, that would probably be very attractive. You can make it some kind of planking and then have it be distressed. Or if your island was gray, your planking could be stained the gray on your ceiling, or even if the planking was stained gray in the island, wasn't it sort of, I don't know. So it has sort of a like a night sky, or a kind of sky feel to it. But and all that kind of stuff, ideas I'm throwing out. But to make it work, things look better if they're thought through and you're coordinated a little bit. So you do the planking. If you decide to do it like a natural wood color, then that's safe and easy. If you've decided to stay in it some kind of gray color, like I just said, well then that gray color better go with other things in the room. And you should want to coordinate them. I'm very conservative. So that's the conservative approach. But the conservative approach is also the thing that keeps things sort of timeless, the more in your face. And the more eclectic you become, the more that your kitchen could be really attractive, but it might wear thin on you over time.

Unknown Speaker  52:58  
Yeah, eclectic is not the look we're going for in the kitchen at least maybe maybe the powder room. But so what what size pendants should we get? Or how many pendants should we put on a 10 foot? Well, that kind of stuff.

Paul McAlary  53:12  
It's all depends on how big they are. If you got giant pendants, you'd only want to if you got some kind of teardrop pendants, then you definitely want at least three depends on really the size of the pendant. But the one thing that you want to know about pendants is the last pendant on each end should be like a foot away from the end. And I mean the outside of the pendant so that when you're walking past either end of the island, you don't have a pendant near your face. So then if you had a 10 foot Island, and you had a pendant that let's say you got a pretty big pendant that was one foot wide, then you'd have one foot off the end of the island on each side. And then you'd have a one foot pendant from there. So each end of the island you'd have eaten up two feet on each end of the island. If it's a 10 foot Island, that would now leave you six feet between the appendix so if you got another one foot pendant, then that would leave you with two and a half feet in between the pendants. So I think that that's okay, but you I don't think if it was the pan that was any bigger than a foot, you'd even want three pendants. Okay, you have to sort of pick out the pendant. If it's really thin and narrow, you could fit four but probably most people are going to want three but if you really got big pendants, it will be busy with three and you're better off with two

Unknown Speaker  54:42  
okay. It also depends what we do with the ceiling. So for example this you have to depends what you do with the ceiling. So here you only have two which appears to work well but I don't know if this kid in Ireland is quite attentive. It might be closer to a I don't know

Paul McAlary  55:03  
what your island is 11 Feet Two inches now right now.

Unknown Speaker  55:07  
The picture from that from your website?

Paul McAlary  55:11  
Oh, no, I'm sure that's a 10 foot Island. Okay, but almost everybody that has a big room wants a big island. And when they want a big island, then 10 feet is the magic number, right? So because you can't get the granite to be larger. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's a 10 foot. They have exactly nine feet, nine inches of cabinets. So their island is exactly 10 feet. But it's also pretty deep. So that countertop is probably 50 inches or 50. At least 50 inches deep. Your island right now is 39.

Unknown Speaker  55:55  
Narrow,

Unknown Speaker  55:55  
narrower. No, it's not 39, the island is 42.

Paul McAlary  56:00  
Oh, you have an overhang of one foot five inches, I'm sorry. So the island is 42. You know, you can make your island deeper. If you want it, I think 42 is fine. It's closed in on the side. If it wasn't closed in on the side, it would look terrible with just a 24 inch cabinet on the end. Which is why if you did decide to sit people on two sides, you have enough room to probably make it a little bit bigger. And then you'd make maybe the island three feet deep, at least in cabinetry. So you'd have maybe another row of cabinets and then have a one foot overhang for seating. And then you could see really two people on the end of the island and you know, four or five, four people, whatever on the other back of the island, if the overhang with the island is going to be 36 even 42 it looks nicer when you close it in so that you're not looking at such a narrow island, like this island is closed in all the way across. It's like 48 inches without the overhang. Okay, so you been your

Unknown Speaker  57:07  
maker, either.

Paul McAlary  57:10  
To make I think you have plenty of room to make your island deeper, if you want it to, you're not really coming close to anywhere. Kitchen designers, we freak out about things getting too close. That's the one thing is almost every plan I get, the cabinetry is way too close to everything. And you didn't have any of that you leaving plenty of room everywhere. With cabinet space, it was only the table that you had a little bit of a problem with. But cabinet wise you have plenty of room because you know if you did go in front of your refrigerator where you reach to the edge of your refrigerator that's still four feet away. So it's not like you'll be interfering with anybody over there. And if your island has to get a little bit smaller to then you'll be that much farther away from the refrigerator anyway. Yeah, you have a really big space between the table and the island so and even between the pantry edge of the pantry in the islands so you can definitely have your island expand in depth.

Unknown Speaker  58:08  
Okay, yeah, I'm just I'm just doing some momentum and yeah, if we were to make it four feet the countertop itself that would still leave us sort of circulation by the by the pantry like four, four foot eight. So that's, that should be ample. Yeah. Okay. All right.

Paul McAlary  58:31  
All right. So if you get farther along and you want to have any questions, feel free to call in, you know, most Fridays it's me.

Unknown Speaker  58:40  
Great. I do have one final question for you what, as far as time goes, because I feel so paralyzed by starting what do I start with you start with floor color cabinet color lights, like where should we start with the design.

Paul McAlary  58:55  
Start with the stuff that's the most expensive and the stuff that you're going to pay the most money for changing how much your cabinets cost can change by 100% based on the color you might pick. So you pick out the color of the cabinets. If you picked out navy blue cabinets, you're going to be relatively limited in the color navy blue that you're going to be able to get. So you might force yourself into a much more expensive cabinet brand to get an unusual and unusual finish. And you don't have to spend a lot of money to get well made cabinets. But well made cabinets that are inexpensive, are only going to have a very limited amount of choices. So you if you pick your cabinets first. Then when you get to picking countertop, second, then countertops you'll have it will cost more money for some countertops over others. But the difference in cost won't be dramatic. Like if you said you wanted black cabinets, we know that generally your kitchen is going They'll go up in price 70%, or something like that, to get into a cabinet brand, that's going to do a painted black cabinet, automatically, you're going to be spending a ton more money. Whereas if your countertop color changed, you could go up a couple of price levels, and it might be a couple of $1,000. But this kitchen, I looked at this kitchen and it looks to me like even in an inexpensive brand. If you're counting the pantry cabinets, you guys $20,000 in cabinetry or maybe not quite because you don't have any wall cabinets in the one side. But if you add the wall cabinets, and you add maybe cabinets on the back of the island to make the island bigger, you could easily be at $20,000 in cabinetry. Could be less but never that much less. Because you got pantry cabinets in there too. And that's the least expensive if you change colors, and suddenly you're in a more expensive cabinet brand, that $20,000 can suddenly become $35,000 really fast. I think you pick out the cabinets that you like that maybe you compromise a little bit in color or door style to get nice cabinets that you like when you start picking the other things, you know, flooring colors, not really going to change the price of the flooring. If you've got hardwood or whatever, you could stain it any color, it's not going to probably change the price. If you got tile, then you know one kind of tile, if it's porcelain tile, one type of tile over another could be a little bit more expensive. But once you pick that tile, they probably have 15 colors that it comes in or 10. And every one of those colors is the same price. It's good to pick the things that are the most expensive and coordinate around them. Because you like your backsplash tile is going to be a few $100 Probably. So picking your backsplash tile who worries get the most expensive backsplash tile in the world. It's only a it's a small charge. And it can even be a dramatic statement. Splurge on that. Go and splurge on a subtle color difference that makes your cabinets 20% more expensive.

Unknown Speaker  1:02:03  
Okay, that's good. But when I was growing cabinets first, you know

Paul McAlary  1:02:07  
especially are you thinking about any kind of white cabinets?

Unknown Speaker  1:02:13  
We go back and forth. No, I do. Why not?

Paul McAlary  1:02:15  
Well, the only thing I'd say about the white is anybody that gets too obsessed with white with which What's the color white that I'm getting, needs to understand that even the light bulbs, you're going to be getting LED lights in your ceiling. And even the bulbs that go into these LED lights are going to dramatically change any white color to anything that you want. If you get LED bulbs that have kind of a yellow tint to them or a natural light and suddenly your cabinets are going to be much more creamy. If you get some kind of Stark kind of bluish LED light, suddenly your cabinets will be more of a stark white, the color of the cabinets when it's such a bland color like a white changes a lot simply by the bulbs that you're getting. So if you're really fixating on the color of the cabinets, you really better be also fixating on the color of the lighting that you're getting, just to make sure you're it also is leaving you with the color cabinet that you want. Okay, that makes sense. So let me go. I was great talking to you both. And if you want to call back again, feel free.

Unknown Speaker  1:03:26  
Great. Thank you so much for your time and

Paul McAlary  1:03:29  
talking to us and nice talking to you, Sebastian.

Unknown Speaker  1:03:32  
Thank you so much. All right. Bye.

Mark Mitten  1:03:35  
Thank you for listening to the mainline kitchen design podcast with the world's greatest Kitchen Designer Paul maxillary. For more on kitchen cabinets and kitchen design, go to www dot mainland kitchen design.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai