Mark Mitten 00:02 Are you building a brand new, beautiful home? And working with the kitchen designers getting straight A's in Laziness? Well, then you'd better call Paul. Paul McAlary 00:16 Hello, this is Paul. This is Pat Jennings. Can you hear me? Yes, sir. How are you today? Good. Good. Thanks for welcome the calls for Paul calls with Paul. So, yeah, I have your design in front of me, and I'm looking at it. Where do you Where would you like to start? Do you want to start with questions you have? Do you want me to comment on it? Wherever you want to begin? Jennings 00:39 Well, yeah, the main reason and calling, we are getting ready to build this house. And it's a new build. Okay, good. It Yep, it's a new build. And basically, this is the concept that the architect and the Cabinet guy, and kind of all together have come up with, and I wanted to review that with you get your opinions. And then the, the cabinet guy is quoting a couple of different manufacturers. Okay, Mauser and, and shallow and shallow. Paul McAlary 01:15 You asked the question on our, our blog to write about those concerns. So, you know, looking at your design that you have here, I would tell you that this design is a very simple design. So you certainly don't need to be in either one of those brands, to get the sizing and everything that's in this design. This design, if anything is simplistic, so certainly every cabinet company is going to have these particular sizes. But you might, what you might really want to do is first make it a better design, and then splurge on that first, and make the design a little bit nicer, and maybe get a less expensive cabinet line depends on the finish that you're doing. The picture that You sent Me has pretty, you know, it's a sort of a distressed looking very rustic kind of look, is that the look you're going for. Jennings 02:13 That's that's the look, we're going for to get started. So I sent you that so you can see what we're trying to trying to go for. Paul McAlary 02:19 So the only thing I'd say, if you're gonna really get distressed cabinets that those pictures the picture that you sent me, that looks you know, when I'm looking at that picture, and I'm zooming in just trying to see. You know, that picture has ever all the earmarks of actually not being professionally done. It looks like it might have been something where somebody made a rustic kitchen out of cabinetry that existed or something else. But when you're getting Mauser or you're getting any of this Shiloh or anything else, if you're getting any of these kinds of rustic finishes, there'll be probably distressed, they'll look a whole lot better than this. I'll tell you that much. This finish is very amateurish looking. And if you look at the finishes on the cabinets, from both Shiloh and Mauser, they'll look like fine furniture really, more than more than the pictures in this kitchen look like. But the question is, you could probably mean I don't like the finish on these cabinets at all. But you could get the finish, that wouldn't be distressed. That might be a kind of similar color and like a gray stain or something like that. In cabinet brands, that would be half the price of Mauser in the design that you have here. Because this design isn't simple. Personally, I would always rather spend more money on making the design better. I mean, one of the things that's nice about the design that you sent me is the cabinets are stacked, so that it goes all the way up to the ceiling, your cabinets that the designer did within your kitchen. They're just ending a foot nine inches shorter the ceiling, it looks very unbuilt in Jennings 04:14 right Well, part of the reason and that is there are going to be exposed beams in that ceiling. So that was one reason why he did not take on actually all the way to the top he talked about in the Paul McAlary 04:26 I mean if it was me and I was going to have exposed beings. It's looking at all this stuff when it's when the designs aren't that good. And you like the look of exposed beams and the architect is giving you exposed beams. But then the whole project looks unprofessional because there's not one brain that knows how to make things look good helping you. I would say that if you're just going to have exposed beams and then have the cat now that if the beams are coming down, now you got the molding going up the beams and I don't know how far they're coming down but then the molding is going to be Like a couple of inches off the beans, and then the ceiling is up there, it just looks totally unfinished, the way to probably make it look finished, in my opinion, would be to make what's called a tray ceiling. So what you would do, it would bring your ceiling down, maybe say you brought your ceiling down nine inches, or six inches depends on how big you want your beams to be, let's say your beams Jennings 05:29 are probably Yeah, they're probably not gonna be over six inches. Paul McAlary 05:33 So let's say you brought your ceiling down seven inches, so that you had a soffit that went around the whole room seven inches high. And the soffit, that seven inches high, would go around the whole perimeter of the room maybe would come out like a couple of feet like two, two and a half feet, so that all of your cabinets with moldings on top, now we'll totally reach the ceiling. And then your beams will come out of the soffit in the middle of the room. And they'll be exposed and beautiful. But you're not going to be creating these areas with his beams cutting across with his molding on the cabinets that are getting close to the beams in one place not close to the beam in the other place. If you actually go on a website like houses.com and type in a search something like beans, kitchen beams or something like that, you're probably going to find a whole lot of kitchens you really like that have something like this that are much more finished than whoever was the person designing the space. So that integrated these things to make them all look like they belonged. And then that doesn't cost you any more money building soffits down, that's a very reasonable thing. You're building a new house with all new drywall and all new everything else framing out the soffits cost is very, very little. And then your whole kitchen is going to be so much nicer looking. Then I get the less expensive cabinet line before I got Mauser Shiloh and spend a couple of $1,000 to give yourself a tray ceiling. Jennings 07:04 You know, and then I would only need to do it, I would only need to do it in that area where the cabinet goes basically, Paul McAlary 07:10 no, I think don't think that looks the best is to do it. Just come down nine inches on all four walls in the whole room. The only thing that you don't have is the arched area. Look at your arched area. I mean, you got your folding doors, I guess, are going up very high. If you know how houses are built, you need a header. That's pretty substantial. Over your doors, your folding doors, right? Yeah, yeah, that head has got to be 12 inches high. And it looks like in the picture that I'm looking at that, I guess it's maybe they're 12 inches high. If that's the case, and they left it given you a 12 and tie that having a seven inch drop down won't, you know will still leave you a couple of inches away from the trim on the doorway, on the folding doors and on your archway going between your dining room in your kitchen. I mean, I also mentioned to you too, that I don't know if you know this or not. But arches are sort of out of fashion. Now. When you're doing arches, you're replicating a look that was hasn't been popular for 20 years, just so you know that. So I mean, if you like it, and it's your own home, and you're building it, all the power to you, but maybe somebody just should mention it just so that you know that that's a style that, you know, like the arched island with the arched countertop on the island. That's also a style that's been out of style for 15 years. People nowadays, like square things like remember, 20 years ago, you probably would have seen lots of cabinets with arched doors on them. With a door on the right habits were all arched. And then people had houses built and all the windows were arched. A lot of the windows like over the sink and stuff like that. That whole look hasn't been popular for at least well, really probably almost 20 years now. It's 20 years around here. But we're in a an expensive suburb. So depends on how rural and area you're in. Usually rural locations are 10 years behind the rest of us. It's still somewhat popular in your area. It just means 10 years from now, it won't be there's a good reason for it to because it was popular. And then we sort of found out that you can make things sort of look nicer by not doing it that way. Like your island if it didn't have the arch and it was square. You could sit on two sides of the island. You could extend the out the countertop on another side of your island. And then people could face each other when they were sitting at the island. And it would be more useful when they're sitting at the marched back. The reason people did the arch on the back was so more people could sit and they could sort of be facing each other because there was a little bit of an arch, but then you have brackets that are going on the back, and the countertop looks a little bit awkward and that it's sticking out so far. Suddenly, if you make the overhang just 12 inches on both sides, the countertops not sticking out in a weird way so far, and you're now sitting two extra people possibly, or at least one extra person. And now when you're sitting at both sides of the island, you really have a better focal point for conversation. So it's much more likely that you'll end up getting more people sitting at the island, because they'll really, truly be able to face each other. Yeah, yeah, I Jennings 10:35 see what you're saying. Paul McAlary 10:36 If we're looking at your design, they haven't put a table in the picture yet in your kitchen. I mean, there's a lot of things I like about your design. Yeah, this Jennings 10:45 particular picture didn't have one. But there's a real big like 96 inch long table going right there were dining Paul McAlary 10:54 in which way does it go? Which direction? It Jennings 10:57 does. The short end is up against the doors and up against the the I'll call it Butler, Penn butler pantry, for lack of a better term, Paul McAlary 11:08 the wine fridge area, right? It's going so the short, the shorter, narrow end is towards that wine fridge area. And the other short end is towards your folding doors. All right. Okay, so yeah, that's the direction I would put the island. And when you do that direction, you really have more space than you need for your table. If your table is eight feet long, the feet. So according to this, you actually got something like 1415, a little bit more than 15 feet. Yeah, so you've got plenty of room for an eight foot table going in that direction. And then probably the tables not going to most tables are like 42 inches wide. So you'll have to get that made. Unknown Speaker 11:58 If it gets too big. Like if it gets a bigger than 48 inches, then people can't reach the middle of the table. You know, it's like pasture potatoes, nobody can reach it, right? All right, yep, right down and be able to reach the middle of the table. The things that I like about your design is it's one of the only times I've ever seen somebody use the folding doors that like those doors, first off beautiful. And also probably going to cost you 12,000 $15,000 or something like that. They're going to be very $14,000 or 14, if so they're very, very expensive. But you're using you're the first person I've seen that actually has used them correctly, is that you've got the screened in porch, on the other side of those doors. A lot of people get those doors, but then if you don't have a screened in porch, you open the doors, there's no screens on those doors. So you open those doors, and all of a sudden, all the bugs come flying in your house, and you're writing dinner or whatever, and you're attracting everybody, every you know you're attracting everything into your kitchen. And your whole house. Yes. Jennings 13:08 This is gonna look out it's in the mountains. So that whole back end of the house faces that's Paul McAlary 13:13 gonna be beautiful. Yes. So yeah, so you open your doors, now you're totally connected with your screened in porch. And now you have the screens on the screened in porch. So you're not worried about insects and bugs and everything else. It's great to have these doors. It's great to have glass, but you want to have some kind of plan that actually accounts for the reality of the outdoors. People might on our podcast might have heard me once or twice complained about architects. My wife actually likes Frank Lloyd Wright. I am a huge hater of Frank Lloyd Wright, because he would design things constantly that weren't really functional, they would look good. And but they just wouldn't really work. It's a beautiful place called Falling Water and Pennsylvania that has this house built over this stream that's running underneath it. And it's very beautiful. It has all this glass, all the glass doesn't either open that oil or it opens out so that this house that's in the mountains can't have any screens on it. Otherwise, the screens are on the inside. He didn't want to have screens on the insides of the windows. So he didn't have any screens, so they can't open their windows. Otherwise, all the mosquitoes come in that gets right over over running water. When they show tours of this thing, all the windows are closed, right? And you're going through this tour. And if people were really living in the house, they couldn't open the windows and doors and then the whole house is constructed poorly. So they're constantly having to do renovations and upgrades to be able to keep the falling water was the name of the structure from falling down. So it was just the whole concepts were poorly engineered and very poorly thought out. You're using your folding doors perfectly. So you can open this up, you can be part of the outside, and then you're not worried about bugs and everything. I mean, there's a lot of other things I like about your design to just the cabinetry locations, the architects do the designs. And they don't know anything about cabinetry, sometimes the kitchen designers take over. And it just plopping everything with the architects have told them and not really helping you make a more integrated space. That's what I think this thing need, I'll just give you some examples is one is the fact that the cabinets don't go to the ceiling, the easy way. And the inexpensive way to fix that would be to create the tray ceiling. And if you wanted to get fancy, and you really liked the beams, you could make that whole tray have the same front as the beams have on it as it goes around the room. And then the bottom of the tray would be maybe either the same kind of wood or drywall, but just so that the cabinets could go up to it. Some of the other things that they're not really thinking about either, is the tall cabinets that they have in your butler's pantry that you were thinking about. You're there 24 inches deep. And the walls on either side are 24 inches deep. That doesn't really work. Because if you think about it, you're having molding on top of the cabinets, right. So the molding on top of these tall cabinets is going to be hanging out in midair, right because it leans forward. So you need you either need the walls to be deeper on either side of the tool cabinet, or you make those tool pantry cabinets in the butler's cabinet area just shallower. So that the molding when it comes around the top of the cabinet. It does what we call it dies into the side of the walls. Jennings 16:51 You're actually wondering about that we're looking at that in a drawing and was wondering that exact thing. Paul McAlary 16:56 Yeah. So I mean, here you're thinking about it. Well, does that tell you when you thought of it, but the kitchen designer and the architect didn't think of it? That's a bad sign, right? That mean, but yeah, so you got but that's the kind of thing that's happening here is that nobody's brain is really thinking through the whole project to make it all sort of integrated. You know, one of the other things too is it shows a double bowl sink, I don't know if you are going to get a double bowl sink, or if that's just what they put in the picture. Right? Yeah, Jennings 17:30 yeah, that's just what they put in a picture. I'm getting one big, you get one big. Yeah, yeah, like one big 33 or 36, I don't think. Paul McAlary 17:39 So that's what you want works definitely better with one big 36 inch 36 or whatever, 33 inch sink or something like that. And then, you know, the other thing too, is in this kitchen. If it's me, the problem with all of this is you have this island here, that certainly can be bigger and can set people at it. But when you're working in your kitchen, you're usually going in between the sink and the stove, cleaning something washing something cutting and chopping on either side of the stove, well, you don't really have any good countertop on either side of your stove. So if someone's at the sink, then you can't be using the countertop to the right of the stove, you'll be hitting them. And if your refrigerator door is open, and it's a French door refrigerator, which it is in the picture, and I think most people probably would end up picking nowadays, the door to the refrigerator is going to be covering most of the countertop to the left side of your range. So you have this gigantic range. And the only place you can really work is on the island. And the countertop that's really on either side isn't very useful. And then when someone's standing at the refrigerator, which is going to happen all the time, they're also going to be standing into part of your Island area. So a lot of this would be so much better or so much more functional and be much more attractive. If you moved your refrigerator over to maybe where you're thinking you're where you have your what you calling your butler's pantry. If your refrigerator went over there, then you could have your stove centered in the middle of that whole wall. And then you could move your windows you know your window farther down on the left hand side of the stove. And you could even have more wall cabinets may be coming up towards the window. And then this whole hood would be very centered in that whole wall and would be a lot more attractive. This is really like an apartment kitchen in this beautiful house that you're creating because everything is so close together. So that would be what I would do is I would just take my refrigerator and my pantry and maybe move it over on one side and my butler's pantry area and then maybe just have them both On the right hand side, and then just have countertops with my wine refrigerator and everything else all the way down after that, and then just have the whole wall there for my stove. And then it's like really more of a statement kitchen. And the other attractive thing will be now your stove will be more centered in your island. So you'd have to move the windows and make them better locations, but it's certainly going to look a whole lot better. And function wise, it will be more functional. People think, Oh, well, the refrigerator is going to be so far away, while the refrigerator if you make it the first cabinet on the right hand side, it's really not going to be very far, you know, you'll be standing in front of the refrigerator, you can open the refrigerator door, you're not going to be hitting the people at the island, you can make it even one half of a small pantry cabinet down, if you are going to make the island a lot bigger, and you wanted to have the refrigerator past the seating area of the island. But when you take something out of the refrigerator, you can just turn right around and put it on the island countertop. So it's not like that's going to be totally that far away. And then every time somebody goes to the refrigerator from either the screened in porch, or from your dining area, whenever they're going to the refrigerator, they are not going to be interfering with everybody that's trying to work in the cooking part of the kitchen. So the people going into the refrigerator will get stuff out though, go to the dining room, go sit in a screened in porch, they'll go wherever they want to go, go into the living room, and then the people that are cooking will take stuff out of the refrigerator, put it on the island, and then go right back to working at the stove or at the kitchen sink or whatever they're doing. And it's preventing the two sets of people from interfering with each other and making a much more beautiful kitchen by having the wall the longer and then now you'll have a little bit more wall cabinets. In your design, you have three wall cabinets in your whole kitchen. If you moved your refrigerator to the other location, you could turn the corner, maybe move the one window down, you move both windows to the left. And you can turn the corner have a cabinet coming down on the left side, maybe one cabinet on the right side. And you'll end up with 12345 wall cabinets with the two windows and the stove centered on the wall and centered on the island. Jennings 22:29 So do you do you think it'd be the only the only question I have is Do you feel like the refrigerator then would be more in the dining room than in the kitchen. Paul McAlary 22:41 You know, it's all about thing, right? So you don't have a dining Yeah, your dining room was part of your kitchen and your refrigerator was going to be closer to your table, it's true. That's the whole thing is you have more room for your table than you really need. So it's not really going to be that close to your table. Because your table is going to be you know more towards the arched opening really, when you put your table. So you won't be that close and I would make a refrigerator, the first thing they're put you put a panel on the side of the refrigerator, you're going to have to probably the easiest thing to do is just to recess that wall, since you're building the house resets the whole wall back. So it's resets back 27 inches instead of 24. And then your molding will all die the way you want it to. And then if you're going to put your refrigerator first, you're going to need some kind of spacer, so the refrigerator door can open all the way. So you'll have some kind of panel that will be 24 inches deep than three inches down, you'll have the wall that's maybe 27 inches deep. Also that the molding that's on top of the refrigerator cabinet can run into the wall. And you'll just move that whole wall back and that will make your laundry room three inches shallower. It's that's how you did it when you move the refrigerator to that kind of location. But I don't worry about it. The refrigerators closer to the table. Yes. But now it's so much more of an attractive kitchen, because you don't have all of your appliances and everything all jammed together. So now you have this nice stove and the windows. You can also make the windows bigger. I don't know if it's too late for that. If they if they've ordered the windows already. But yeah, too late for that one. Right. At what point I have the framed already. No, Jennings 24:27 I have not framed so the windows Paul McAlary 24:29 are on order, which is fine. So everything I'm talking about is nothing that the building inspector or anybody else is really going to make more work for anybody or need more permits. You can move windows at will and not Yeah, so now is your opportunity. You got this beautiful stove that's 48 inches wide, that's off center on the wall with all of this stuff so close together that everybody's bumping into each other. So I would say make it all more beautiful. And now when you're at the dining room table and everybody's sitting there They have the beautiful view of the wall that the range is on. That's all this tile work with the range with the windows with everything else, and it's all not crowded together. And you'll also have much more countertop in between the sink and the range, so that a person will be able to work on the left side of the range at the countertop over there. without anybody interfering with them, they can work on the right side of the range, without anybody interfering with them, they can have pots and pans drawers on that side of the range to and not have to turn backwards to get pots and pans or other things. That's the more classic design is to spread these things out more, you know, in reality, the formula that we use as kitchen designers is that a good kitchen should have 25, while 19 to 25 feet in the triangle, or the walking distance between the center of the sink, the center of the stove, and the center of the refrigerator when you're standing there. And you don't have 19 to 26 feet in this design, you have 14 maybe feet, so you're five feet short of even a normal kitchen. When I move everything apart, I'm not sure what you're going to end up with. But I wouldn't be surprised if it's something like exactly 26 probably going to be right around 26. Or it might even be a little bit more than 26, it might be 27 or something like that. But if something's going to stretch the distances that you're going, it's really good if it's the refrigerator, because that means that that's the one thing that's sort of you don't want to be bringing in all the traffic from the refrigerator into the working area. Other than that, I like everything. I guess one thing too, that I might consider this was my house that I was building, I might put a doorway, a second doorway in the powder room, so that you had an entrance from the laundry into the powder room besides just an entrance the in the other direction. But that's up to you, you know that just if you happen to be in the laundry, and you want to go to the powder room and go out there get out get out of that way, you're not sort of trapped at the end of the laundry, right? Well, I Jennings 27:16 know we're putting one of those built in like ironing boards in that wall. Okay, so and then if we do that, and then we move everything back three inches, like you said, if you move that wall, three inches, Paul McAlary 27:29 yeah, you can either do that. Or you can could make your box out a little tiny bit deeper where the ducks are on the right. But you might not even have that problem, because depending on how you do it, if you do move the refrigerator over, if you just made the whole other left side, not have that tool cabinet, but just be nice countertops with doors, and make that your bar area and your butler's pantry area and then just have the pantry on the left and the refrigerator on the right. You won't need to make the duct area any deeper because there won't be any molding that won't return. Although if you don't make it a little bit deeper, your countertop will stick out a tiny bit. But that's not a horrible thing. But maybe you want to make it a little deeper anyway, just but you have to think about that. But yeah, I mean, those are the things that was me, I might change. The one thing I mentioned too is like when you're going to have the side by side, washer dryer. Everybody always wants more. But they don't think about what more does to the design. So you'll go shopping for the washer and dryer, the front loaders that are drawn in this picture, and then you'll be encouraged to buy stands for the front loaders to go on. And I would tell you, your life will be way better. If you don't get stands. If you just have the front, Jennings 28:55 we're probably gonna Yeah, we're probably gonna keep the old top load machine, they're gonna be Paul McAlary 29:01 fine. You can put your laundry basket on top of them when you're loading them right. You can be using the top. If you get front loaders and they sell you the stands that the front that goes underneath the front loaders, that's now too high. So you're going to have the everything is going to be in back of you on the floor or on the counters and back of you. Your life is so much easier if nobody ever bought those stands that they put the front loaders on everybody's laundry room would work a lot better. I can email you if you like, print out the floor plan that you have the architects floor plan and then redraw in maybe what I would do with the space just so you can sort of see the great thing and send it to you and you can mull it over. And then if you do make changes in the kitchen design and make some changes, then you can give us a call back if you want. Like I don't love the kitchen designer, just because in our company Are you getting a whole lot of trouble? If you create a design for somebody and you don't put all the walls in, when that the Kitchen Designer in your kitchen, they just put the two walls that had cabinets on it in the picture, without even any other walls. So you don't know where people are walking, you don't know, if you have enough space for the table, you don't know really anything. It's just absolutely, incredibly lazy. So here's this kitchen designer that gets straight A's for laziness. But then he's trying to sell you this really expensive cabinetry. If you're going to sell people expensive cabinetry, you really should be doing a more complex design and be offering much better design advice. Do you have to buy your cabinets from this one place? Or can you go other places? Or are there even other places near? Yeah. Jennings 30:53 Yeah, talk to my builder, because this is basically who my builder uses. Right. So that's how I ended up over there, so to speak. Paul McAlary 31:02 Yeah, I mean, I always think it's better to divorce the builder from the kitchen company. A lot of times the kitchen designer is trying to please the builder more than he's trying to help you. Keeping your kitchen simple and ugly, makes less work for the builder. So he's not working for you as much as he's working for him. If you find another kitchen place, you may find somebody that's, that's more motivated to give you a good design to think what other brands do they have at this place besides Mauser, which is very expensive, and Shiloh, which is attractive, but poorly built? Jennings 31:41 Those are the main two, he had a third one, but he says that he's stopping using them. So pretty much those are the two he uses. Paul McAlary 31:50 Well, I mean, mouse was a good cabinet brand. But they were expensive, but they're very expensive. Yeah. So I mean, there's lots of cabinet brands that will be just as nice and if you could get by with just a stain cabinet. Without it being distressed and everything else your cabinets could be like didn't you told me how much in the in the blog? Yes, wasn't it like 30 something $1,000 for the Mauser 38 or something? Jennings 32:20 30 Yeah, I'd have to back and look 30 It was like 32 and 3832 Paul McAlary 32:24 and 38. So you got spending 32 and $38,000. That's not nothing. I mean, there's cabinet brands we carry that you might be totally happy with. Like we carry Fabula wood, which is the least expensive brand we carry. But they have some gray color stains that are pretty nice. Yeah, it's like even look at the back of your island that the designer did. They don't even have panels on the back or on the side of the island. It's just plywood. So it's just such a cheap look. And then if you start adding the panels to the sides and the back of the island and maybe some matching baseboard. That's how you should be designing a kitchen and an expensive cabinet brand like Mauser. And if you add that stuff, now you're over $40,000 for cabinets. And if you did it in a less expensive brand, and you just didn't get as nice of finishes Mauser has, you'd get just as well made a cabinet. And now you can have panels on the sides panels on the back. The whole kitchen can be redesigned by someone that's a better designer, you could get this whole kitchen for under $20,000. And cabinets, you're talking about way less money, a better design panels on the size of things to make everything look more finished. You could get legs on the island, if you wanted to make that a little bit fancier, have a leg in each on three corners, so that maybe one person sits on the one side and three people sit on the other side, make it look and maybe have a rail connecting the legs in the cabinet. There's just a lot fancier ways. Jennings 33:59 Today you don't want to come down to North Carolina. Unknown Speaker 34:03 But if you sell in Mauser, you should be doing that, right. I mean, if you're selling somebody, if someone's selling your 38 Bow, if we're selling your $38,000 in cabinets, that means we're making and we don't even mark cabinets up as much as a lot of other companies do. The cost of the cabinets is 100% We'll mark it up 60% On top of that, and that's a very reasonable amount of money. Some if you're selling Mauser, some expensive kitchen places will mark it up double. But if you're marking it up 60% Making $14,000 How much work did this guy put in that he's making 14,000 hours? That's a heck of a lot of money. If someone's making $14,000 off or designing a kitchen, I want them to be a good designer and spend a lot of time working on Jennings 34:48 it. Yeah, yeah. Paul McAlary 34:51 So at any rate, you know what I'll do is I'll just we design it in a floorplan it's going to be very rough, but you'll get the idea. Designer Sure. Get Yeah, I Jennings 35:00 think I think I'm seeing what you're saying and everything so far, Paul McAlary 35:03 if you said to those windows and that the range is centered on that wall, you'll be sitting at your table with your beautiful folding doors. And you'll be looking at a whole wall of tile, and the hood and the windows with the range centered on the wall, and everything else, yes, your refrigerator will be a little closer to you. But you got plenty of room for the table and the refrigerator is not going to be interfering with it. Just the whole room essentially will be more functional and more attractive. Unknown Speaker 35:33 I'll send it to you and then see what you think. And if you want to, you know after you absorb it and maybe play around with it with the designer, or if you want to see if you can find a different place to go to where are you located? Jennings 35:48 Well, this is being built up near Boone, North Carolina, Paul McAlary 35:52 with near what boom, like Jennings 35:56 Daniel Boone, okay, like Daniel Boone, Paul McAlary 35:59 so you're not anywhere close to what's it called that Greensboro, Winston, Salem, Jennings 36:07 Greensboro, Winston Salem is about an hour a little over an hour away. Paul McAlary 36:12 Well, that's like that area, whatever it's called to try something or triad, the triad. There's a, there's a ton of kitchen places and cabinet dealers in that whole those whole areas, you know, there's decent amount of money, and there's a ton of people living there. And it's enough to support a lot of cabinet companies. So I mean, if you did want to find somebody different if it's only an hour drive, that might be worth it. We had to have one of our one of our designers for a while moved down there. So that's how I know a little bit about it. I mean, although I've vacation in that area as well, but Right, right, but okay, I'll shoot you an email with just a hand drawing and stuff, see what you think, see if you can work on it. And then if you decide, you know, the Shiloh, the problem with the Shiloh cabinets is that the hanging rail, which is where they screw, the cabinet to the wall, is really bright. So it's like only an inch high. So if they drill a hole, and they screw the cabinet to the wall, it's not really heavy enough, or wide enough to support wall cabinets that are filled with plates, and other things. So, because of that, if you really wanted to get Shiloh, you have to change and modify the cabinet. The carpenter that installs the cabinets has to put his own hanging rail, underneath the hanging rail, that Shiloh supplies, and now you got a piece of wood inside your cabinet. That's really probably not going to look too good. So fixing the Shiloh cabinet is, you know, you'd have to really be know what you were doing to make it all look right. So it just seems a shame to be mean they have a really nice finish on the cabinets. The cabinets are very attractive, just whoever, whoever it was the person that decided how to engineer their cabinets wasn't an engineer. So they just weren't very smart on understanding what you know what supports cabinets and how to make them durable. And then the Mauser has beautiful finishes as well, and is a very well made cabinet. But it's probably more expensive than you certainly need to be spending. And you could, you could probably get KraftMaid or a brand like diamond at a home center, like a Lowe's or a Home Depot. That will have finishes that are very nice. And they will be maybe more like 26 or $27,000. And then they'll also be brands like American Woodmark at a home center like Home Depot or Shenandoah, at Lowe's, that will be probably more like $24,000 or something like that. But there are well made cabinet brands at home centers too. If you can't find something that a kitchen place close to you. And certainly the people at the home center. Get they're not that great designers. But there's nothing that's sophisticated about your design. If you've been working as a kitchen designer for even the one I'm talking about. If you've been working as a kitchen designer for a year or so you should be able to accomplish the designs that we're talking about. Right, right. All right. Well, this Jennings 39:35 has been a ton of all pop appreciate it. Oh yeah, Paul McAlary 39:38 it's good talking to you. Sorry, I monopolize the conversation. But there's a lot of information we're trying to I'm trying to import so and then now it's a Jennings 39:45 little No, no, you. I'm trying to soak it in like a sponge. So Paul McAlary 39:50 when I send you the picture, and maybe that helps, and maybe we'll talk again sometime. Jennings 39:54 Yeah, and like I said, the good thing is we haven't we haven't laid a piece of wood yet. So moving along. All three inches and moving something around is fairly easy. I mean, the windows down, move up a wall or something but Paul McAlary 40:07 me a lot of times people call after, when everything's done and the electric is run and you know, then you're done, you really can't change that change and stuff. Or if you do start changing stuff, everybody starts eating. Yeah. As the the the homeowner, right, you're asking everybody to redo all the work that they already did. But no one's done the work yet. So now's the time. Jennings 40:29 So on the train stealing bit, would you put that are you saying you would put that around the entire dining kitchen, Unknown Speaker 40:36 that around the entire room. And then if you did that, the beams would just be then disappearing into the tray, is there a kind of beam that you picked? Jennings 40:47 Now we haven't even gotten that far. So let's say Paul McAlary 40:50 you pick the beam, and it was a six by six beam, are they going to be really structural, they're all going to be fake? Jennings 41:00 No, they're, they should all be cosmetic. Unknown Speaker 41:04 So they're going to be cosmetic. And I don't know if they're going to be hollow or whatever. But let's say you picked something that was a six by six, whatever that beam was that you were going to use, you could frame the whole tray ceiling with the same kind of wood so that now the you know you'd use a one by six on the inside of the tray, and then you'd have your six by sixes. Either they'd be fake or however running into it and everything would be all staying the same color. And then just the outside of the tray is going to be drywall and that's what your cabinets are going to go up to. And then your cabinets are going to go. Jennings 41:41 So you're saying you're saying like put up like where the tray goes up against the ceiling. So to speak Ron a piece of the the Unknown Speaker 41:53 same. So the same kind of wood as your as your beam so that your whole middle of the room you go like let's say you went 2030 inches around the whole perimeter of the room. So 30 inches around the whole perimeter room, the whole room is six inches, nine inches lower, whatever you decide to make it and then you have a one by going around that whole perimeter of the room. So the whole middle of the room of these beams and this frame that goes around the middle of the room and then your you know your drywall or whatever is you know just coming down for the cabinets to die into on the sides of the room. And then you know then everything then it's closed in between the moldings on top of the cabinets, then it's all closed in I mean you don't have to do it that way. The other way you could just make the whole outside perimeter drywall and then you just make a drywall you would have your beams and then you might need a little tiny piece of trim just around the beam where it runs into the drywall or you'd caulk it and then have the beam run into the drywall. That's the simplest way to do it. But then you have your beams going across. You know I guess the other thing that you could do is if you made the drywall thing nine inches and this whole thing is cosmetic. You could have the drywall the drywall come down nine inches. The thing is all cosmetic and then you can have the beam go around the whole perimeter of the room and then other beams going off of it. So you have a whole beam that's around the room if it's all going to be fake right Paul McAlary 43:28 but what you're doing it's called a tray ceiling because you're making a whole tray in the middle of the room. So the outside Jennings 43:38 Yeah, no I got I got exactly what to say. And we have we have a tray ceiling and house I'm in now in the dining room. Paul McAlary 43:43 Yeah. So the advantage of that when you have a kitchen is now your cabinets. When you have the moldings on top of the cabinets, the cabinets in the moldings now go all the way up to the tray and it makes everything look much more finished. So you don't have the money you don't have the beams. You don't have the moldings hanging out nine inches from the ceiling and then the beams running across the moldings going back to the back of the wall and there being like three inches over there and stuffs dust and everything is accumulating on top of the cabinets and you know it just the whole thing is just much less finished looking. It looks much more to have everything sort of built in. Jennings 44:26 Yeah, and as much as the house is gonna cost spending that little bit make it look like it's Paul McAlary 44:32 like yeah, and it's such a waste to spend $14,000 on the beautiful doors, but then have the kitchen sort of be less than it could be because you didn't spend three it's all the same money you know, whatever you're going to spend this thing on with the house and making the kitchen look as built in as nice as it is. That's the room that you're going to be living in your kitchen and your screened in porch. These To rooms are we spending all this time? making them look the nicest that they can look? is a big deal. Right, right. Jennings 45:09 Yeah, you're gonna spend most of the time in the kitchen dining and you're in your living room, which is, you know, just on the other side of the dining. There has been an absolute ton of help. I appreciate your time. Good talking to you. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Take care. Have a good weekend. You too. Mark Mitten 45:29 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