Mark Mitten 0:02 Are you building a house that your architect didn't design with how people live and use their space? In mind, you better call Paul you Paul McAlary 0:32 Hello, it's Ron, yeah, welcome to better call Paul. How are you today? Ron 0:37 Thank you. I'm doing very well. Paul McAlary 0:40 Just to catch anybody up that's listening, you sent me a floor plan of your prospective new home. I looked at it and sent you back possible changes, and then you emailed me back. Just a little while ago. You were wondering if you could make the room smaller. You had made the room larger to accommodate this design that we have now, and if it will be possible to make the room smaller and still be able to comfortably have the kitchen as it's designed. Where would you like to start? Do you want to start with the thing I sent you? Or do you want to start with? Where would you like to start with? Ron 1:15 Well, So originally, the plan called, just to give you a little bit of a history. The plan started with a kitchen and dining room. That one big space is about 12 feet wide and about 13 eight deep on the kitchen, about 13 four on the dining my wife and I cook a lot. My wife cooked all the time, and we may have guests over. It could be my son, and we need room in that kitchen to move around with counter space. So when we talked to the builder initially, we said we really would like some more space in that kitchen when we started the preliminary design. So they came back and they gave us a lot more space. But of course, you know that square footage is going to add into the cost of the home, and it's not to say we wouldn't want to do it. But do we it? Does it need to be that wide? Could we shorten it up a little bit and still be able to do all that we need to do? Or do we really need that type of dimension to move around the kitchen. So that kind of world war. Paul McAlary 2:23 Why don't we talk about that first? Although, if you're willing to make it bigger at all, the number that you would need to say, let's say, be the optimal kitchen, right? Perfect would be. You're going to need 25 and a half inches for the cabinets and countertop. That's where the stove is. So that's 25.5 then you really should be leaving yourself 48 inches countertop to countertop. So 48 inches countertop to countertop, and that's so that, even though I know your wife does most of the cooking, that a person could stand in back of her, if she was at the stove, and be able to get to the sink comfortably. And then, if the dishwasher door was down, wouldn't be really that dangerous to somebody you know, right in back of them or right next to them. And then your your island doesn't have to be as big or as deep as I have it, and as the as you had it on your original plan. So if, let's say, you wanted to make the island a size that was not really going to hurt you anything space wise, but just make the top a little bit smaller. You could use 24 inch of the cabinets on the front of the island and 12 inch deep cabinets on the back of the island, and then have a one foot overhang on the back and one and a half inch overhang on the front. So that would mean your countertop would be something like 49 and a half inches. And then what do you need in back of your island? And the good thing about the room is that it's mostly an open doorway in back of your island. Right? Oh, right, yeah. So you can make that tighter than usual. I would think the only thing is, you meaning Ron 4:06 area, the main seating area on the island where you have, like, the four tools laid out, yeah. Paul McAlary 4:12 I mean, generally we want that to be maybe four feet in back of that. And you have more than that right now, but you could make it 42 Ron 4:19 Yeah, okay, because the original the 12 feet wide, my thinking was, people are going to sit at that island, and if they have to back up and they have to move the the walkway between the living room, which is in back of that island, uh, like an egret, or a walkway between the island and the Living Well, we didn't want the couch or or anything in the Living Room coming too cold into the kitchen to create a bottleneck for kind of traffic flow we have, you know, a decent amount of people, yeah. Paul McAlary 4:49 So if someone's sick the island, they generally take up two feet, okay? And if you leave two feet in back of them. So let's say we leave 48 which is sort of, you know, a. A totally fine amount of space. So then we add 40, and that comes to 171 inches, and we divide by 12, so that's 14 and a quarter feet, okay? And that's if you make your island 12 inch deep cabinets under the countertop that you have to crawl on the countertop to get at anyway. So making them 12 inches deep doesn't really hurt you in any way at all. And the countertop is still going to be very big. It's still going to be, you know, 111 inches long. And you could even make the room a little shorter in that the other direction too, really. But I guess that's even porch you're going to want to probably keep that the same. Ron 5:39 So the whistle the island would be what now Paul. Paul McAlary 5:42 The Width of the island would be 24 inch deep cabinets on the front with 12 inch deep cabinets on the back and a 12 inch overhang on the back of the island countertop. So the island countertop be 49 and a half inches deep, so 14 feet three inches inside of the room to inside of the room. Ron 5:42 Okay, and then do you think have enough room for people to get around? I mean, maybe we're jumping ahead here, but the dining room cable, that was our other concern. Can people move around the dining room table and move between the island and the table? Paul McAlary 6:19 Yeah, you have no problem. There you have. If you look at the thing I sent you, one thing is, generally, all the architects, when they design this, everybody puts the windows kind of where they have them, because those are good locations for the windows. But then they center the dining room table on the side windows. And that's just a waste base, because you don't really need to have four feet from the edge of the table to the other windows. In fact, it's even nicer to have less than that, so that you're really closer to the windows that are on the, you know, the top of the diagram. You know, everybody always that's not a designer over estimates, centering and other things that aren't really very important. You mean, there's some things that are really important as far as symmetry is concerned, like that the wall cabinets on either side of your stove the same size, like wall cabinets on either side of a window are the same size that you know, some things are sort of important. It's important that the dining room table is centered in front of the windows that are at the top of the picture, but having them also always centered to the side windows isn't meaningful at all. And the only thing that's important is that the light fixture, if you're going to have a light fixture that hangs down over the dining room table, that that's relocated to the new position of the dining room table, and then that will give you an optimum amount of space in that in the way I've got it designed with a 42 inch table, you're going to leave either 36 or if you wanted to be overly like let's say you had a radiator in front of those windows, then maybe you'd want to lift 42 between the table And the windows, but if you don't have a radiator or anything like that, well I would leave 36 or maybe at most, 39 inches. That allows people to pull the chairs back, stand up, get out, and then the chairs won't even be hitting the wall when they do that. But even if you made it the most space, and you made it a 42 inch space, you would still be leaving yourself 60 inches between the end of the island and the table. And I've got people sitting at two sides of the island, which I generally is a is much more functional. But if you have two people that sit at an island, they never will sit on the same side. They'll want to sort of sit so that they can see each other when they're talking. Ron 7:36 Okay, that's a great point. Yeah, it's really a table that has seating on the back. Is good for design purposes. Looks wise sometimes, but function wise like it's funny, but we have a peninsula in our kitchen, and my wife frequently, I'll frequently sit at the peninsula, and my wife will grab one of the stools and sit, but she won't sit beside me. She'll pull the stool up and either sit across from me or on the side of me where there's no overhang of the countertop at all, because it's more important to her to have to be able to see me and talk to me and face me than it is to actually have countertop overhang. We've never sat together side by side at our peninsula, which comfortably sits three. Really, when you're sitting at an island, generally, if you sit one, it will sit on one side. If you sit two, it will be on the other side. If you sit three, then the two people will be on the long side, and the one person will still stay on the other side, so that you all have a focal point that you're you're sharing a conversation or whatever. Okay, you could even make your island a little bit bigger if you wanted to. Okay, so we have that flexibility, and then we get, if we have to, with the builder, we just cut maybe two feet. Off of the wick and still have enough wheel caught from wall to wall. Paul McAlary 10:05 So 16 feet eight, you could cut two and a half feet off of that, and you'd still be, still be fine, Ron 10:13 yeah, okay, so that that's great. That gives us some options. Then, okay, perfect. right? Paul McAlary 10:18 just to remember you're you when you're doing that, you're also making the cabinets underneath the back of the island 12 inches deep, You know, even in the design that you have, it's funny, but I don't know why architects don't get this, but I've never seen an architect design a kitchen in my life, ever. They'll always give the spaces between things, but they'll never include the countertops and the countertops overhang, right? So they'll have the overhang countertop, but they want to count for it on the front side. So when they make your countertop, for example, five feet deep in the the drawing that you set me that's the maximum depth of a slab of quartz or a slab of granite, generally, is five feet, but they forgot to include the inch and a half overhang on the front. So if you actually installed all of your cabinets first and then went looking for countertops, you would be in a lot of trouble. You'd have to find an oversized top to be able to accommodate the design, Ron 11:22 so the granite would be almost fitting blocked with the the bait you have to have to overhang your cabinets. So they're just forgetting about the overhang. And when they when they give distances, the architects are always leaving too little space, like they left 42 inches between the island and the range in their design, but they also forgot the countertop, so you really need to leave 50 inches cabinet to cabinet, not 42 inches cabinet to cabinet, so that you end up with at least 47 Paul McAlary 11:55 inches countertop to countertop. Ron 11:58 Yeah, my son has 52 from countertop to countertop, right in that area. And it's great. I mean, you can easily get two people moving through there, yeah, three, no problem. That's great. I mean, really, 48 is sort of the minimum. So I moved it to 50 but if you wanted to move it to 51 or 52 or whatever you want to move it to, you know, the more the bigger the better, but not 42 that they have now, okay, perfect. Okay, the only thing about making the room narrower that's a little bit problematic, and it's not really that bad. It's that in my design that I sent you, I moved the refrigerator all the way towards the corner, right you see that? Paul McAlary 12:46 Yeah. So you don't really want a refrigerator where they had it. What that would do if you really put the refrigerator there is it would make everything so close together that with one person came to the refrigerator. And just imagine anybody coming to the refrigerator, if they're coming from the dining room area, you're going to be almost asking them to walk right through the workspace to get to the refrigerator. And you don't want to do that. The refrigerator is being used, not just by the cook, but it's being used by everybody that's in the house. So separating the refrigerator farther away from everything is generally a good idea in your kitchen the with the sizes you have. In a perfect world, I've actually moved the refrigerator a tiny bit farther than is the ideal recommended by the National Kitchen and Bath Association, but that's really okay. It's a three feet your triangle that you get, the way I did it, yes, 29 inches, essentially. I mean 29 feet instead of 26 which is probably ideal for a kitchen your size. But if, if one thing is farther away than the other things, and that thing is the refrigerator, that's really okay, because now anytime somebody wants to go to the refrigerator, all the people at the island can easily get to it, all the people at the table can easily get to it, the people from the living room can get to it, everybody from the rest of the house can get to the refrigerator, and they won't be disturbing anybody that's cooking. And because your oven and your refrigerator essentially switched. When you take something hot out of the oven, you don't have to sort of carry it over to the stove and be bumping into all the people that are working in the kitchen and trying to get into the refrigerator. So we always want the refrigerator, okay, I want the oven cabinet in between the refrigerator and the cooktop. Yeah. Ron 14:40 Yeah. And I noticed the way you centered the refrigerator in the wall up and you could open both of those doors, and you're really it's opening into the lock bait. It's not easy repeating, like you said, well, a counter clock, Paul McAlary 14:51 well, and that's the thing that was about to say that I started. It took me a long time to arrive at the point I was starting to make. That's our engineer complains. About that all the time. Then I start to tell one story or make one point, and then it takes me 20 minutes to get to it. But I started this saying that the problem with the design when you make this room a little bit narrower is that I've got a pantry on the side of the refrigerator, a tall pantry cabinet, so that if you get like a French door refrigerator, or whatever kind of double door refrigerator that you're getting a side by side, or a French door that the doors can open all the way without hitting the wall or going into the opening or anything. When your lane gets narrower, a little part of the refrigerator is suddenly going to have a little bit of countertop in back of it, right? But from the island, because the room got smaller, Unknown Speaker 15:44 okay, but you know that, would I Paul McAlary 15:47 do that? I little bit by Yeah, I'd say you made the pantry cabinet, not an 18 inch wide pantry cabinet. You make the pantry cabinet a 15 inch wide pantry cabinet, then that will still be wide enough for a counter depth refrigerator door to open completely, you'll have less of the refrigerator opening with the back of the island countertop in front of it. Ron 16:11 Okay? So if we lose that, that two feet of the whip, what's gonna probably go away, if I'm correct, is the countertop next to the refrigerator, we would probably lose that. So if you make the room now, or in this design, you're going to lose a bunch of that countertop, yep, if not, if not all of it. Or you could put the refrigerator all the way into the corner without a pantry on the side. Yeah, that door opening going into the living room area there, is that going to have trim around it, or is it going to just have drywall corners? Um, great question. My guess is going to be drywall, but I can't be certain, but I should definitely know back that would factor into you. Mean, like, is it going to have it's going to have also like a header going across, Isn't it Paul McAlary 17:04 correct? Yeah. So if it's going to have a header going across, I guess maybe I just eliminate the pantry and slide everything down, and we'll take the countertop about the same size and maybe go closer to the doorway. Oh, and that's okay that the refrigerator goes all the way down, because the molding on top of these cabinets will die into the header that's on top of the doorway. If the wall is drawn correctly, the refrigerator door will open into that opening. Okay, okay, that's perfect, then. So yeah, some of the other things that I did in the design too, is they had the cabinetry with it, the cooktop is, you know, ending exactly even with the island countertop. And again, that's something that people do because they don't know any better, that they think that symmetry somehow is somehow important and it isn't at all you have more space that you could go down. And I actually put an angle cabinet on the bottom at the end, just to make the whole thing a little bit more interesting looking. So you don't have to do that, but it, it will make you have more wall cabinets on top, because the wall cabinets will go all the way down to the end, and the last base cab that will be at an angle, and that's just for the looks on the bottom and on the top. It just gives you a little bit of a bigger cabinet on the top, versus less capturing on top. Ron 18:33 Well, it kind of tapers off the whole well. Paul McAlary 18:36 What just tapers off the whole thing. It makes coming around and coming into that space a little bit more natural, and you don't have to have these things align. It's funny, but, you know, everybody's so all set with things aligning. But when you align things like the ghost two countertops, the only time you even really realize that they're aligned is if you sort of straddle the kitchen island on the end, like a referee to sort of compare where these countertops are ending. And that just kind of whole thing is that's not what we're looking for. You're looking for more sill in the you want symmetry in the exact size of the doors. So like in the picture I drew on the cabinet that's to the left of the cooktop and the right of the cooktop, I sort of drew in the swing of the doors just so you could understand that, you know, when you're standing at your cooktop, the cabinet, wall cabinet immediately to your left, should be able to open so you can easily get at it and not have a door in the way. And then it should be the same on the right that when that cabinet opens, it's accessible to you, because that's going to be where you're probably going to keep oils and spices, maybe, and other things. Ron 19:47 Sure. Do we have room there all on that, on that wall where the cooktop is, if we wanted to go with a 36 wide cooktop instead of 30, just to give us a little bit more. Paul McAlary 19:59 Woman on the Cooking purpose, yeah, you have a 3061 you have a 36 inch cooktop. It in your design, and in the one I sent you, I made the hood 42 inches wide, which is a little bit less common hood. But when we look at kitchens where the hood is wider than the cooktop underneath it, it just feels more proportional. It makes the hood work a little bit better too, but it just feels more professional to have the hood be six inches wider than the cooktop that's underneath it, but you will limit it. Won't be a crisis if you couldn't find a hood that was 42 wide that you liked, right? But if you could, it's gonna look a little bit better with a 42 inch wide hood over a 36 inch cook time. Ron 20:47 Okay, oh, kind of do the focal point when you walk into the room, Paul McAlary 20:52 and that will make it look a little bit better as a focal point that with the, you know, that's a wider area over the cooktop, with more tile exposed and everything else look a little bit better. And then I've got the oven cabinet and the angle cabinet, it's called an easy reach cabinet that's in the corner there. I have that as an easy reach holding door cabinet that's pulled forward a foot so that the front of it lines up with the oven. And then you would put an appliance garage that was two feet deep, right a cabinet underneath, on the countertop two feet deep underneath, so that the whole oven and all the wall cabinets would all be even with the face of the oven in that corner Ron 21:37 all perfect. So for me, I was thinking that if we could have in our pantry a little countertop to have a coffee maker in there so we could kind of keep it off the countertop in the kitchen. But this seems like it solved the problem where utilizing all the counter space in the corner we wouldn't necessarily ever use, but at the same time, I can hike. If I want to hide a coffee maker or an appliance in there, I can do that, and it's two feet deep. So anything you want to hide in there, gonna have plenty of room. Okay, hurt, that hurt. Paul McAlary 22:11 And then you know, it depends on how often you get coffee. If you get coffee all the time, I think I might have my coffee maker on the countertop next to the refrigerator only because, if I'm getting coffee every morning, I don't want to be pulling in and out of that area and the countertop next to the refrigerators, whatever it's not. It's not a working countertop when you're at your stove. So it's not really in your way. If you put the coffee maker in front of the appliance garage, it will be blocking it. But if you don't do coffee every morning, then, then you can put it away, or whenever you have company, you can put it away there Ron 22:46 light, light. I mean that that really gives the well thought out design. So all right, and we in between the width. And the only other thing is we bought the pantry, and our originals designed the pantry was too small, but I think we're going to be able to solve that by Oh, they removed the bedroom from the floor. We don't need the cub there. So I'm thinking if we put the toilet in the sink down for the powder room, we might gain a little bit more faith if we need it to enlarge the pantry, Paul McAlary 23:20 so you're getting rid of the tub, yeah, because it was originally there, because there was going to be a bedroom down there, but we we have that removed. Oh, okay. Oh, you know, a lot of people like having a tub on the first floor. You can watch the dog there, or something like that. But, yeah, I'm not a huge fan of the bathtub on the first floor, necessarily. So getting rid of the tub, you can make the pantry as big as you want. Yep. Ron 23:47 Do you think the pantry, the way it stands now, is big enough if we're just looking at some appliances in there, paper towels and all our dry food? Well, if you're saying appliances, the appliances are all going to be like, what kind of appliances are we talking about? Are we talking about refrigerator or dishwasher or what? No, no, I would say stuff like a crock pot, any really big pots or pans, some, you know, maybe electric appliances, things that we don't use all the time. Paul McAlary 24:19 Pantry is fine for that. Now, as it is okay for if you started to put, like a big refrigerator in it, or something like that, a second refrigerator, or a big stand up freezer, or something like that, then you might want to make it bigger, Ron 24:58 Yeah, okay, yeah, that's a great option. Paul McAlary 25:02 Then a wine refrigerator or something like that could be below the countertop. And then some even some cabinetry, and even open shelving too, so that, if you had something heavy, 50 pound bag of dog food or something, you could just slide it on the floor. You know, instead of having a cabinet that you had to lift it up and put it in, or whatever, you have just the one countertop going around the L at 24 inches in the back and maybe 18 inches on the side, and then 12 inch wall shelves above it. And then did want to have appliances you could fit one or two underneath the countertop on the back wall of the pantry. Ron 25:37 Okay, perfect. Paul McAlary 25:40 So I was just gonna say, as far as and the sink, you're gonna get a single the architects all just put a double ball sink in their pictures, but you were gonna get a large single bowl, weren't you Ron 25:53 single bowl? Yeah, something deeper. Paul McAlary 25:55 So, yeah, yeah, double ball sinks are from the 50s and 60s, so nobody gets that unless you had an kosher Ron 26:03 we had that worked out then we never used the small the bowl, the second bowl was just too small, though, with nothing that we could you really use it horse all big, single bowl is much more. Yeah, then beer to you, Paul McAlary 26:17 and all your trays and cookie sheets and pans and everything fit in the bottom of the big sink, right? So, and yeah, and also, your stuff doesn't all jut out of the top of the sink. It keeps your kitchen less messy. Like the double bowl sink is just a holdover from a time when people were rinsing dishes and things like that and didn't have dishwashers. Ron 26:43 Yeah. Okay, so, yeah. I mean, the single bowls, you see them, they're so common, especially now a new construction, Paul McAlary 26:51 I think that pretty much covers the kitchen. There's a couple other things I sort of saw that I just wanted to bring to your attention on the house. Overall, great. Lund was in your master bathroom. Yeah. So look at Think about that the way they have the door swinging for their toilet, right? So if you walk into that bathroom, you're going to have to straddle the toilet to be able to close the door right? Ron 27:24 Oh, yeah. Paul McAlary 27:26 So So that bathroom would work. That door will work much better if it's hinged not on the right side as you're walking into it, but it's hinged on the left side when you're walking into it. And I might even have it open out instead of open in, but if it's going to open in, you definitely want it to be hinged left. You want it to be hinged with the hinge from the outside looking in on the left hand side, and definitely not on the right hand side. Ron 27:57 Okay. And then what about the um, the door going into the bathroom itself. Would that be a good candidate for a pocket door? Paul McAlary 28:06 you could. The only thing I'd say about a pocket door is just that, and I don't mind it here, because, especially since the toilet has its own door itself, but pocket doors just offer less privacy, because they're not really feeling when they're closing right. They don't have like, it's called a door stop. The pocket door is just sort of rattling in an open opening, and then it's open on the top, the sides and the bottom. So whatever noises, whatever anything steam, a pocket door functions less like a door than than a regular door does. A regular door, especially if it comes down relatively close to the flooring. A regular door only opening in the door when the door is closed will be whatever the distance between the floor and the door is on the bottom, so it just offers more privacy and steam, which rises and things like that don't float into the rest of the house or into your walk in closets and stuff like that. But the shower is also not right next to the door. Ron 29:10 What about the door wing Paul going into the bathroom? If we don't do a pocket there is that? You think that swinging, and Paul McAlary 29:17 I think most of the time when you open the bathroom door, you'll maybe be going to the vanity, but that's a toss up. You know, that doesn't make blood at the difference. But if it opens that way, it's opening out of the way of all the vanities and everything else, whereas if it opens in the other direction, and you left the door open, you wouldn't be comfortable standing at the vanity, right? Because you'd have a door in back Ron 29:39 here. Or, okay, yeah, I think Paul McAlary 29:41 I'm okay with that. The only other thing that I noticed was, one was the bathtub. But you eliminated the bathtub, the distance that they had for the depth of the bathroom was actually not the size of a normal tub. So I was just going to alert you to the fact that you know you weren't going to fit normal depth bathtub. There, but now that it's not a bathtub, you're fine with that. And I guess the only other thing I just don't notice when I was well, two things or three, a couple more, actually, one was there's no window in your laundry. You don't want one, or you can't have one, or what's going on. It's unusual. Oh no, they we have to have. Oh, definitely on the side wall. On the side, you have a wonder that's trying to even notice that. So that's you have one on the side, and you didn't want one on the back. Um, you mean in the laundry room itself. I mean, it wouldn't hurt to brighten that face up, right? I would, I would think that that's not a bad thing. And, I mean, I think for big room, you have lots of space there. So if you wanted to add a window like in between the sink and the washer dryer, you could, but I didn't even do have the window on the side. But if you wanted to have another window, it would just brighten it up a little bit. And then in your master bedroom, suite two, where's the bed going? In this design, you're thinking the bed's going to go up against the great room wall. Ron 31:04 No, so in the opposite direction in those windows, you see, because I had a concern about, you know, windows, I like the sleep and the dark and, you know, with the neighbor's house there next door, um, we thought about those three windows you see on the left side of the wall would be more square windows that would be higher in elevation in the room, so they would kind of be right ground level. Not sure if that's going to work or not, but we need to have windows on the sides of the house. So I don't think that an option. We need something there. So it was either, um, a window on each side of the bed, or maybe they bought about three smaller windows above the bed. Paul McAlary 31:51 Yeah, so that's okay. So that's a better place for the bed. I was wondering about those windows and where the bed would go. And then if you do the three windows, you want to be able to close them, right? If they're high, you won't be able to close the blinds. And if you'd like to sleep in the dark, you'll guarantee you don't have a dark bedroom if you don't have a way to close the windows up high, right? Because every soon as light out in the morning, you won't have curtains there or anything, and the light will be shining in your window, and you'll be waking up every morning. So Ron 32:23 yeah, and you're thinking the access builder even pointed that out, like, how you know, if they're up high enough, number one, the bed there. Number two, the access to them may be difficult, so we may have to go with maybe a window on each side of the bed, but we'll be, yeah, Paul McAlary 32:39 I think I know on each side of the bed might be a good solution. That way you don't have this and you can close the windows. And then you also, if it's really hot out or something, or you just want a nice breeze or whatever, you can open the window next to your side of the bed, if you like. In our bedroom, we have that. And then my wife leaves her window open all the time, and I leave my window closed all the time, yeah, just because she likes to have a little bit of fresh air always. And then I guess the other thing I just thought of, as far as the master suite goes, is with the other windows on the backside, how high off the ground are you at the master bedroom level? Ron 33:21 How high off the ground? Right? Like we're having It's, uh, we're going to be on a flap, so it's probably going to be, I want to say, maybe three to four feet off of the ground. Paul McAlary 33:34 So the only thing I'd say is, with those windows that are in the master suite, that might be a really nice place to have a door. And then even later on, you could build a deck or put a patio out there off of your master suite. If you had one of those windows, be a door or something, or have make it a patio door, sliding door. But as far as a master suite goes, it's just a really nice thing to be able to go from your master suite straight out into the backyard if you want to. Ron 34:05 Okay, yeah, we kind of thought about that, but we weren't sure. But yeah, you're right for the future. It would and I know we're going to get a patio, so they're going to include a patio. I'm not sure if it's going to be directly out from the rear port, but if we made it on the side there, then that would be perfect for Paul McAlary 34:21 that. Yeah, then you have the best of both worlds. Then you can go right out your master bedroom suite out to the patio. The patio is not jutting out that space right there. If that's where the patio is, it comes out even maybe with the porch, and then it doesn't it leaves you with more of a backyard for, I don't know, playing football or whatever, what. But, yeah, but I just like it if you have a if your master bedroom, when you have this kind of location with everything, it's just sort of nice to be able to go from your master bedroom straight out of your backyard, and then in your rate room, where is your TV going. Ron 35:00 Is it over the fireplace? So, yeah, you know that my wife and I debated this, because the TV is an eye door, but you have to walk TV, though it looked a little. We've seen plans or photos online where the TV is either on the right or side, right or left of the fireplace, and it just doesn't look great. So we were thinking, we're just going to have an electric fireplace. We're not doing gap or anything, and it's going to be probably a longer, more narrow fireplace height wise. So maybe we can get that PV a little bit lower in an eye level that hour. Paul McAlary 35:37 Okay, so yeah. So then the only thing I'd say, if that's where your TV is going, it makes decorating the room a little bit easier, because then you have, okay, what's called one focal point in the room is the fireplace and the TV are both the same focal point, so the chairs and couches and everything else are going to be pointing sort of towards the same thing, the ideal distance from the TV is your couches and your chairs or whatever. Aren't you're not going to want them all the way at the back of the room. You're going to want them up for act of the room. So the doors that they have in the picture here looks sort of like very expensive double slider doors right where they're they're opening the middle. The only thing I'd say about that is that opening location in the middle of the room is not the ideal location for putting furniture in the room, because you might wear something in front of that. Ron 36:41 Yeah. You know what? One of the things we thought about it, it's funny you said that, is that it just looks like you always have to think of traffic patterns to a room. And we wondered if we were better off maybe putting windows there and having the slider where the dining room is so we could maybe get the couch back. But we're not sure how that would look. And we don't need an elaborate flight, or, I mean, a simple flight, or for whether it's in the living room, in the dining room, like I don't need the, you know, the thick panel flyer. We probably won't do something like that. They're filling it, but I'm not sure that we would want to pick up that much wall. Yeah, I think Paul McAlary 37:22 that's fine. It put, you could put the patio door in the dining area. I think that's a great idea. You guys are really smart. You're thinking about traffic patterns and things like that. It's like, I just wish that one architect I could find in the world that would even think about these things. But they don't think about it at all. They don't put furniture in their pictures, they don't do anything. And traffic patterns and where people are walking is determining what if the space is useful or not. You know, there's like a complete Paul brothers here that builds all these homes in Pennsylvania, across the whole country, but people move into the their houses, and because the architects haven't even thought about where the bed is going. There's no place good to put a bed. The bed is halfway in front of a window. They design occasions with the refrigerator directly in back of the sink, so that anytime somebody goes to the refrigerator, they no one can be at the sink. They don't think through any of these things. But yeah, I think your slider there and or if you wanted to have a door in the TV room, you could make it all windows and the closer the door gets to the kitchen, the less it interferes with the furnishings that you might want to put in your great room, the less it interferes with putting furniture on the porch as well. Right when you made that whole sliding door thing opening and closing, not only did it destroy where you would put furniture in the great room, but on the porch, it did the same thing. It made the main travel path right going through the middle of the porch, so that if you people wanted to sit, you really couldn't be sitting in the middle of the porch. You'd have to be like, have two little seating areas on each end, almost right. So, yeah, Ron 39:00 do you think, Paul, we have enough room to put a patio glider in the dining room area there where that window is overlooking that double window looking the rear porch. Let's see if it's but I mean, even if we shrink that boom as we talk to 15, you still have 15 feet width on that dining room. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Paul McAlary 39:20 So those windows right now are at least 3.6 centimeters. So yeah, the inside of those windows, window jam to Window jam is over 60 inches. So is 6364 65 inches. So even if you didn't change the windows and you kept them the same size, they very easily fit a 60 inch slider. And if you wanted to make it a 72 inch slider, you just have to make that area a little bit wider, Ron 39:51 okay, okay, okay. Then that that definitely, I think could work in. The only other thing we thought for that room i White was because. In turn, we're going to have a cream port in that area there, off the great room. But if we put windows in there, you know, we're not going to get a ton of sunlight because of the cream port. But if it is the vaulted ceiling, we might put an eyebrow window up on top to get them light in the room, and then we would be okay, Paul McAlary 40:16 yeah, and it's going to make the porch a lot more functional. When you're entering from one side, right? Then you can have a couch and stuff and chairs all up against the wall, up against the great group wall, right? Ron 40:29 And why we thought of this is because our first home we had the slider opening up into the great room, and right on the other wall was the door. It was just a door to go to the garage. It was your basic colonial builder grade colonial. And you know, we walk four feet of the living room by having that as an egret area. And we're like, if we're gonna go down the path of building a house again, gotta look. We've gotta learn from our mistakes the first time. Paul McAlary 40:58 Well, you know, you're learning from your mistakes, but look at the architects. They do this over and over and over and over again. They never learn anything. You know, it just goes on forever, and it's great that you're thinking this stuff through most of the time. We get calls when people are building a house. We get a call from them after they've framed the entire house and they're getting close to wanting to buy cabinets, and then all of a sudden we see their kitchens, and they're horrible. They're all things that now you can't really change. They didn't think of any of these things before the thing got built. And so you know, now is your chance to make these changes, and it's not going to cost you any, in fact, to get rid of the expensive sliding doors, not only do you have a more functional real porch, not only do you have a more functional great room, but you just saved yourself $7,000 in sliding doors. Ron 41:51 Sure, door. So we kind of hit the no brainer while we really look at it, Paul McAlary 41:54 you know, yeah, you know. Other than that, I think everything is good. And in general, you you said you listened to the podcast. Sometimes, it's quite often the case that, you know, when we do see somebody's drawings, they have way more issues than yours do just sort of tweak things a lot and made everything a little bit better. But, you know, even with the rest of the house, the only thing that would probably have been an issue when you moved in is just like you would have had to change the swing of your door to in the master bedroom toilet. You would have figured that out quickly, Ron 42:25 absolutely. So, I mean, we were going to renovate our old house, and that's when I started what you when I found you on the website, and because who else great kitchen cabinet and better than you guys do. So we never did the redesign. You know, we ended up selling the home, and then when we met with the builder, you know, couple years later, and, you know, we just went into pre construction a couple months ago, and I'm asking them, and said, um, so you have a kitchen designer on your staff, because they could Deacon plays company. And they said, Well, we have the interior designers. And I looked at my wife and I thought, We better call Paul. We need a kitchen designer. Because after listening to the podcast and looking at your designs and really studying it, I mean, that's the place you live in your house the most, and if you make mistakes, you're going to hate it. Paul McAlary 43:17 The other thing too is, what about the cabinet brands that they carry. Because, aren't they? You're getting the cabinets from them, aren't you, Ron 43:26 yeah, so, and that was the thing, when we were big on all the, you know, a couple other builders that we had looked at all we have the cabinet built, you know, custom built down here. And, you know, that's not like you said, always a good thing as far as consistency of the finish, Paul McAlary 43:43 yeah, man, a lot of times that's not a good thing at all. Ron 43:47 Yeah. So this builder uses a place that has a good reputation, and they do have fabulous so I think for us not to go crazy, and I think they had, if it's you'd be Tech, I can't remember. The other brand is the last airspace than Fabi would Yeah, yeah. And then they had another one that wasn't listed on yours that I can't remember, and it was a wood cabinet. But I think to be on the safe side, we're going to go with Fabi wood because of their reputation. And it seems like you guys really like them, Paul McAlary 44:21 especially for the price. How high are your ceilings? Ron 44:25 I think they're going to be nine foot or in the kitchen and dining area. We would have loved to have done 10, but we gotta, we have to see, once they draw up the plan with the budget is Paul McAlary 44:35 going to come out. Yeah. I mean, 10 feet is a sort of a little bit problematic sometimes with cabinetry, nine feet works out better for cabinetry. A lot of times, if I was going to do a 10 foot high room in a kitchen, you know, I could make it a tray ceiling where the whole perimeter of the room was a soffit, you know, around the whole outside of the room maybe nine inches high. You. And then you'd have on the inside a tray with molding around it, and then the cabinetry would all be running up to the nine feet three inches, or something like that. It looks much better if your cabinets go all the way to the ceiling with moldings. Yeah, if you're getting we agreed in Ron 45:17 our third call, in our first home, we had the cabinet, and they crowned them out bought, but they were below the ceiling, and we didn't eventually end up liking them, because they're good duck collectors up there. Paul McAlary 45:30 What you should do then, if you're getting fab you would, is get 36 inch high wall cabinets with 12 inch high cabinets on top, and then a two piece crown molding to reach the ceiling. The arm molding will be a two piece molding that will be six inches, like a three inch riser, or, excuse me, a six inch riser to reach the ceiling, that could be like a furniture baseboard in fabulous wood, and then a crown molding to reach the rest of the ceiling. Then that will leave you normal heights below it, and you could use 30 sixes and fifteens. But I think it looks a little bit nicer to have the molding be a two piece molding. It's a little bit bigger and looks more appropriate for the height of the room. Ron 46:19 Okay, because the builder set the five wall cabinet that 42 inches. But, I mean, everything was negotiable, or Paul McAlary 46:25 can be, yeah, so the wall cabinets 42 inches is what they would do, and then you'd have a molding on top that wouldn't reach the ceiling, right? When you have the same thing you had in your old house, you'd be nine inches away from the ceiling and collecting dust all if you could. It's going to be a little bit more expensive, right, because you're going to have more wall cabinets, but if you stack the cabinets to the ceiling, it's going to probably end up costing you, maybe, I don't know, $4,000 more in cabinets, maybe, or something like that. But then look much more built in, and everything would reach the ceiling. Okay? Ron 47:00 So you're paying a 36 inch wall with a 12 inch cabinet above it, yes, Paul McAlary 47:07 okay, your ceiling is 108 inches high. So a 36 Cabinet will get you to 90, a 12 inch cabinet on top of it will get you to 102 and then six inches of stacked mold and will reach the 108 inch ceiling. And, oh, that's a very common thing. I can just I can send you a picture, but almost all the nine foot high ceilings that we do, that you see on our website, are all that same thing, 36 with unless they're awesome cabinets, and if they're custom cabinets. They might be 30 threes with fifteens on top and then a six inch mold. What are the twelves Ron 47:47 or fifteens on top of the 30 pictor? They usually like a glass cabinet that you see in a lot of uh, Pippin, yes, Paul McAlary 47:55 you can make them glass. The only thing about the glass, little glass doors on top, is just that every one of those that you make glass that little cabinet is much more expensive than the big cabinet underneath it, because all glass doors are more expensive. And then the inside of the cabinet, when you make it glass doors, the inside of the cabinet has to be upgraded to the same color as the outside of the cabinet. Doing that and putting the glass doors in makes the little cabinets much more expensive than the bigger cabinets below. So a lot of times, what people will do is, you know, maybe put glass doors on the top, but maybe just put them up top on either side of the hood, or something like that. I Right, right. Okay, although they're great ideas, yeah, so I think that's, uh, that's everything I can think of, Ron, anything else. No, Ron 48:47 that bit. I mean, I really appreciate you going over the design ahead of time. And, I mean, we looked at the plan and said, well, it looked pretty good. And then, you know, all the changes that you recommend really make sense? I I think if we, we work at this, we're going to have no surprises and be very happy, hopefully at the end. Paul McAlary 49:09 Yeah, and you know, when the kitchen people, when they put all this, when you figure out exactly the width of the room, and they put everything up aprex, you can call up again, and we can just tweak it, something else that you need. Don't be charged. Hold back. We've had a couple of people fall in three or four times, so it's nice to hear from you and hear how the project's going. You too. Ron 49:28 Thank you very much. I really appreciate it, Paul. Have Paul McAlary 49:31 a good weekend and holiday. If it's your celebrated, yeah, and maybe we'll talk again, Ron 49:37 and you do the thing, we will hopefully Okay. Mark Mitten 49:41 Thank you for listening to the mainline kitchen design podcast with nationally acclaimed Kitchen Designer Paul McAlary. This podcast is brought to you by Brighton cabinetry, high quality custom cabinetry at competitive prices. For more on kitchen cabinets and kitchen design, go to www dot main. Kitchen design.com. Transcribed by https://otter.ai