Mark Mitten 0:03 Are you getting ready to put in a kitchen with ill conceived ideas with an interior designer that is essentially stealing your money? You better call Paul. Paul McAlary 0:16 Hey, Dan, can you hear me? I can hear you. But I think you can't hear me. I maybe I can hear Dan 0:23 you. Thank you for joining us on for on calls with Paul or better call Paul. And I have your plans that you sent. And I'm looking at them? Do you want me to critique them first? Or do you want? Do you have individual questions that you want to ask me first? Or where they would you like to start? Paul McAlary 0:45 Well, one question I have is if you look at the existing floorplan and you see the dining room area, and you see the kitchen area, which is kind of the middle rectangle, you'll see like, dashed lines, there's like I think he's they use the term sockets. You know, like, it's kind of like a raised area on the ceiling. Dan 1:09 So you see the ceiling there? Yeah. Paul McAlary 1:13 So the dining room has, you know, a large one, which my wife wants to keep See, like the formality, that dining room. And then in the, in the kitchen area, there's that Peninsula, kind of divided in the middle. But on each side of it, there's two other sockets, and they're at different heights. So my wife was thinking that she was going to remove the wall between the dining room and the kitchen area, for example. And so she could put in an island and take out the peninsula. But then because of those two soffits, she was going to try to make them I guess, the same hike. But then, but then I think I read somewhere maybe in one of your on your online site, where maybe soffits aren't a good thing to have in the kitchen. So I wanted your opinion. Dan 2:09 Yeah. soffits in general, are not a good thing, unless you're making tray ceilings, which you've you're doing here. But it says in the middle of the dining room that the height of the ceiling is seven feet nine inches. Is that the height in the middle of the room? Or is that the height over the sockets? Oh, the height is seven feet, four inches on the on the perimeter? And then. So I would tell you that when you have inordinately low ceilings, which you do, normal height ceiling is eight feet tall. So if you can get and what about in the other rooms? What's the height of those ceilings with that the soffits? Paul McAlary 2:54 Yeah, well to that, to the left of where the dining room is on the time diagram, that's our living room. And that has a raised ceiling. So the living room going to the dining room, there's steps, you know, if you look at the the dining room area on the lower left corner, you kind of see that, like there's a little rectangle with a arrow pointing to the right. Those are steps. There's like, I think two steps. So it steps up from the living room going into the dining room, it steps up. Dan 3:29 So hold on. I understand. So your living room is not higher. Right. Now the living room is what at the top of this screen in back of the peninsula right now? Paul McAlary 3:42 No, no, the living room would be to the left side of the diagram, which has been shown Dan 3:48 to me it's after the dining room. I see I see the drawing where you have there's a step up there. Other than that one step there. What's on the the rest of the dining room. Is there a wall there or is that Oh, Paul McAlary 4:05 yeah. So we're this right above where that diagram is where the steps are. That is kind of I think how the term like a pony wall. Dan 4:13 Okay, that's okay. Yep. Pony wall. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good yeah. That's important. Yeah, that's right. Paul McAlary 4:21 Right. So that's there. And then right above the dimensions where it says 10 foot eight inches. There's a there's a door double door there. I forgot what you call that. Those doors. It opens out, you know, to the outside. Because right above there, it's kind of like our backyard pool area. Dan 4:42 Is it a French door Paul McAlary 4:43 that opens in? Yeah, yeah. No, it opens. It opens out actually French doors Dan 4:48 that are going out. So then you don't have any screens on those doors. No screens, correct. Okay. And do you get bugs where you live? Paul McAlary 4:59 There lots of bugs there. So we never opened up that door. So right now Dan 5:04 one of the things you might want to consider doing, because whoever did your french doors, French doors are supposed to open in, but somebody didn't want them opening in, because then it would they would hit the table. So that so they had to have French doors more than they had to do something sensible. So it would have been better if they made those that doorway sliders, then you could slide the door to the side, you could have a screen door there on the outside, so that you could leave the door open, if you wanted to get some air close the door. But it wouldn't be the doors wouldn't be ruining your patio. And they wouldn't be because they're not opening up into your patio, you could have a screen, and then they could wouldn't be opening into the room so that they'd be hitting the table. So I would think that one of the best investments in your house you might be able to make would be replacing those doors with more sensible. But if you ever get it, you're doing some major construction. And every time I see a picture in your picture, you're sending me a refrigerator, that's four feet wide. So that's like a $15,000 refrigerator possibly. So right, if you're, if you're spending $15,000 on a refrigerator, you're way better off spending $3,000 on a refrigerator $2,000 on some sliding doors and pocketing the difference, because your house is going to be a better half. You know, it's always wonderful if people want to get expensive appliances, but fixing the the architectural mistakes that were made, when you're spending all of this money, fix them architectural mistakes first. That's what makes your house valuable and makes it more livable, and more attractive. And then whatever, whatever money you got left, then start throwing money at crazy expensive appliances, and cabinets, we sell cabinets, we sell countertops, all of these things are wonderful, if you want to splurge on them, but getting the best designer really is the best investment that you Paul McAlary 7:05 make. Yeah, this is a, this is a ranch ranch style house. So single story. And basically, you know, long and skinny, you could think of it that way. And so the way this house was constructed, when you go through the, if you look at the kitchen area, and you go to the left, oh, that's on a raised Foundation, the park from the right of the kitchen, that's all a slab. So when they when they built this house, you know, the previous owners, they added on, you know, so right now, the kitchen and dining room that's in living room and one of the master bedroom, that's all on a raised Foundation. And then everything else to the right, of the kitchen is a slab. I was gonna say, Yeah, I was gonna say, where the living room area is, that's not shown. That's like a series of large glass windows that overlooks the pool. So when my wife put in this French door, in the dining room that used to be that used to be just a solid wall there. She put those in, and then there's like a brick, I don't know. You know, it's not a patio, it's just a brick. Here there steps that go out towards the pool area. So she kind of put that in there. I don't know, you know, like you said, it's probably not the best art. Dan 8:34 I mean, I would tell you, I look at your design. And it looks very much like the person doing the design work is not a kitchen designer, the dimensions that you're leaving between spaces, tell me this person. And just even little things like the fact that they're building a wall on the side of your refrigerator, that really hasn't been done in 30 years, you would have a wall on the side of your refrigerator, you would want a panel on the side of your new refrigerator. So I guess the thought was that that was load bearing and it couldn't go away? Is that why they're keeping that wall Paul McAlary 9:09 there? Oh, no, in fact, that wall between the bottom of the kitchen in that that cabinet, upper cabinet office bar area that was definitely not load bearing. I think the only reason you know there was a wall there before. And so when they thought they were going to put the fridge against it, my wife didn't want to see the edge of the, you know, the side of the fridge. That tells me Dan 9:35 that maybe your wife is directing this. And maybe the person that she's working with is not giving her good input. You know, we'll put a wall on the side of your refrigerator you put a panel which makes the makes the refrigerator built into cabinetry. And then also the if you're going to have moldings on top of your cabinets, then the moldings can return around the side of the panel and it looks much more attractive have. So putting a wall on the side of the refrigerator, when you go to open your refrigerator doors, one of these doors is going to bind against that wall, if the wall comes out past the box of the refrigerator, and if your counter depth refrigerator, you don't want to extend the wall out past the box of the refrigerator, that defeats the purpose of getting the most expensive appliance in the world. So when you see some kind of error like that, it means a couple of things, it means that one person, the person directing the project is probably you know, just like the door that got put in that sense, you know, you can't use it because you can't, it's you don't have screens on it. Somebody's getting somebody's input and maybe saying, Hey, if you want to get light here, and you want access out into this area, even though you could get a sliding door that looked like a French door, and then right then and then they gotta have this right or you can have the light. And then also when the door opens, if there's steps there, you wouldn't, you know, if you're trying to get in from the outside, and you're trying to open doors, you have to step back off the steps to be able to. So it's just ill conceived is what I guess I'm trying to say. So what we want to do want you're working with somebody that's going to prevent you from doing ill conceived ideas. Paul McAlary 11:19 Yeah, if I can be honest with you, you know, my wife has talked to several people. And, you know, we've paid for kitchen design that basically have given us some of these informations. So I think like you said, it's, it's hard. It's been hard for us, we live in California. And it's really hard to find a designer. There's a lot of people that say they're designers, but they don't give you the same input that you're giving me right now. I mean, Dan 11:55 well, the P, the designers usually will always be working at places where you buy cabinets. So if you're talking to somebody, even an architect, or an interior designer, and they're not working at a place that sells the cabinet's, it's not good, it's not, that's not good, because two reasons, if you can figure out which place is the place that you want to work with, usually the design time that you're going to use is going to be free, it's going to be incorporated into the price of the cabinets that you're buying. So, you know, some places might have a big deposit that you have to pay, some might have small, some might be you know, you really want to work on really finding the place that you think you want to get your cabinets from, and looking at reviews and things like that, to find this place. Once you're the person that sells the cabinets, that's the person, the most professional, we make more when I sell cabinets, that's where all the money is, right, we make the money when we sell cabinets, if you're just designing things on the side, you're not making anywhere near the money that the people that are selling the cabinets are making. So where you're if you're good at your job, you will gravitate towards the place that will pay you way better. And then the good part is the customer is not paying anything for design, that the design is incorporated into the cost of the cabinets that the customer is buying. So hopefully, if you found a good person to work with, they would be able to help you with that stuff. But that mean, that's also why we have a podcast so that you can call in and we can Paul McAlary 13:37 I was just a no. I mean, the reason we have that large refrigerator is because we had one that same size that used to be on the wall between the dining room and the kitchen. Okay. And basically, our power company was doing some things in the, in our area there and they blew out our refrigerator, the electronics. Okay, so. So basically, we got a replacement refrigerator, which was kind of like the same size of the refrigerator that we had when we moved into the house. And then later once we had that request, and we started like saying, Okay, now we're going to might as well let's try to try to redo the kitchen. You know, my wife wanted to do that and take out that Peninsula. Then we realized that oh, that refrigerator is kind of like maybe a little too big for this space. But we're stuck with it now. So yeah, that's, that's, well, there's Dan 14:35 lots of when you're stuck with a $15,000 refrigerator, that's not necessarily a bad thing. But you want to design around it and certainly moving or making changes to some of the things that you're doing is though that's were much less expensive than then the cost of cabinetry and other things. So I guess some of the other things I look at your design and you know the refrigerator is going to be Closing in all the countertop that's turning the corner may be a better place to build this refrigerator in, is it? Is it stainless steel? Or is it going to have panels on it? What's it going to be? stainless? Stainless steel stainless? I mean, there's lots of different places that it could end up. I mean, before we even figure out that, let's talk about, I don't understand the double oven that you have high hanging out in space. Paul McAlary 15:27 Okay, what's going on with that? What we were told basically, is the refrigerator can either be where it's shown on the proposed plan, it could either be there, or it could be placed. Where the where that door shows on the on the top right of the of the kitchen area. They said it could be either the fridge could be there also, but then if so, then we would have to move the door that goes out to the back door swings out into a enclosed patio. Dan 16:02 Oh, that's not good, then closing that door up? Paul McAlary 16:06 Yeah. So that's why, you know, we're saying okay, so if the refridge goes to where it's shown on the plan, then they said, Where are we going to put these double ovens? And, you know, they they talked about moving it along the right wall of the kitchen, or, and then they couldn't really make that work? Only because they said, you know, if my wife wanted an island, so they put the island kind of word shown somewhere on the diagram. And they said, Where are we going to put the devil of and they didn't really have a solution. So then they stuck it over where it's shown, you know, kind of off by itself over there. Dan 16:47 So that would be that included? That's really crazy, right? So we have to find a better place for that. The floor and the dining room and the floor and the kitchen are all one level. Right? Correct. And do we think that you can take out all of these soffits? Is that possible? Paul McAlary 17:04 You know, would it be possible to keep the socket over the dining room and remove the other two sockets? Because like I said, we have a attic above our first floor. So remove, removing the two sockets in the kitchen would not be a problem at all. But what Dan 17:28 if you're going to remove the soffits in the kitchen, then the perimeter of your dining room is going to be lower than the kitchen? Right? And then this dining room and all the soffits are inordinately short. I mean, you're actually have soffits that are at seven feet four inches, and the middle of the room, I guess is seven feet nine inches. And the normal height room is eight feet. So why anybody if you can get rid of soffits? We don't I don't really know what's in it without looking and it might be duck work. There might be. I mean, I can't even think in my wildest dreams. I can't think of a reason why anybody that didn't have even an eight foot high ceiling would ever build soffits because it's Paul McAlary 18:15 Well, I think, yeah, because they had that pony. I mean, that not only was because they had that Peninsula, you know, before the existing floor plan. I think they had like an interior designer that came in. And you know, she does, like special curtains and everything. And so she put those soffits in morpher looks. Yeah, because those software Dan 18:42 designers are, again, they're the people that don't make any money. They're not that you generally, you know, they're usually people that are working women, usually that are working part time. And they have what they consider style. And this is their part time job to make money as a homemaker or something on the side. If they really weren't that their jobs and knew what they were talking about. They wouldn't be making then we have a Kitchen Designer in that works for us. That makes a couple of $100,000 a year. So interior designers typically aren't you know, and that's in Pennsylvania, you're in California where people make a lot more money. But typically, you know, interior designers are getting paid some kind of consulting fee. And it's not, you know, you sell a $30,000 kitchen, your commission on a $30,000 kitchen might be something like $4,000 or something like that. Again, bad advice. Having you know, once your ceiling isn't eight feet tall, I don't think you really want to lower right. If you had a nine foot high ceiling, all this might be a great idea. Okay, well what if you're a tall person? If you're a basketball player, right Your your soffits are four inches above your head. Jump up, if you're six foot eight or something like that, and you just happen to jump up in the air or yell or something, you're hitting your head on the ceiling. But if you can get rid of them, that would be my first advice. Because not only that, if you keep any soffits, that I don't know how you make the transition from the dining room to the to the kitchen, when the soffits are lower, than you're going to have a thing that comes down that when you sit sit in the kitchen and look in the ceiling will be coming down there, and it won't be attractive. Although if that's a load bearing wall, you might have ended up with a beam going across, but they don't even think from the pictures, it doesn't look like they're thinking that you're going to have a beam, it's just going to be. So if you don't have to have the beam going across there, then it's going to look way nicer and your cabinets are going to be way more attractive. Once you make the ceiling height seven feet four inches, you're going to have 30 inch high wall cabinets. If you went up to seven feet nine inches, if your ceiling was very level, and someone could put a level on it, maybe you could get 36 inch high wall cabinets and have a three inch crown molding or flat molding depending on how contemporary you want your kitchen to look. But you'd have toll or cabinets, they wouldn't be so squat with all the soffits. And then it would be a continuous ceiling from one room to the other. The other thing is the distances that they're leaving from the front of the stove, I guess from the cabinets, probably to the cabinet to cabinet, it looks like they're leaving 33 feet six inches, which means that when the countertop overhangs, they're leaving three feet three inches with the countertop overhang. And then when you include the countertop over overhang in the 36 inch range that you got in this picture. So you got to seven 8000 More dollar range in the picture to your leaving probably three feet of space from the range to the peninsula. So when you include the overhang on the countertop, on the cabinets, that also really isn't sufficient. So you if you're standing at your island, like right now you have seven feet 10 inches between the countertops in the middle of your kitchen with the peninsula. Now you're talking about leaving three feet between the island with the overhang of the countertop and the stove. And so you can't have two people's person couldn't stand at the stove, and a person really standing back to them. Right there would only be at most 12 inches. So you could maybe squeezed by them if they if they move forward towards the flames of the stove. So you know, the next thing is you really probably need to make your distance between your stove and your island greater. And then you can move your island back. By getting rid of that double oven from that location. That double oven is making your islands smaller, but so that you can leave enough space to get by it. It's clog in the works, it's forcing you to leave the inappropriate, inappropriate amount of spaces. I mean, that's really I look at your plan, even have an overhang of one foot 10 inches on the back of your island. So okay, you only can overhang a countertop one foot without having some kind of column or some kind of leg or some kind of bracket. And even if you did that, the whole countertop would tip over it would be so much weight that you'd have to feed a countertop, which is 25 pounds a square foot on one side of your island. And if this overhang was one foot 10 inches, you'd have one foot 10 inches, just a little bit less of overhang on the other side. You got 280 pounds over 300 pounds a countertop that is trying to tip over your island. Yeah, whoever's doing this. They don't know what they're doing. I don't think have you been able to see this thing in 3d? No. So yeah, run defense run for the hills. And this person doesn't have the software to be able to design kitchens. This is exactly the people in our industry that are stealing from people. They're the least experienced. People in the industry. They don't know anything about the products that they're drawing in their pictures. They really know very little about kitchens. You know if you're a secret he was some kind of certified kitchen designer. You have to know everything about all the architecture and all the products that you're selling an electrical plan and all these other things. But even if you're not a CKD, and most of us aren't, we have to learn all of that stuff anyway, when you're selling the cabinets, what the reason that the people are better than the other ones that sell the cabinets is that when you're just drawing things, you have no responsibility, right? someone's paying you to do these silly drawings that you're doing. But there's no repercussions. If you don't like the finished product. If I sell you a kitchen, and you buy all the cabinets, and it doesn't fit, and it doesn't work, and your island tips over and someone gets set on fire, and whatever the calamities that happened to you, after I've sold you the kitchen, you're coming after me, right? You're, you're suing me, you're holding me responsible for this, and you're wanting to return on your cabinets or return your countertops, or whatever it is. So that's why we can't if we don't know what we're doing, we can't really be in our business very long. If we're selling people 10s of 1000s of dollars in cabinetry and countertops. And their experience after they leave us isn't a good one. They would everybody would want their money back. And they'd be calling the manager and or their attorney on us. That's why you want to be working with the places that sell the cabinets. Paul McAlary 26:19 You don't have to be expensive places. Well, unfortunately, I mean, I went on your website, and I found like, kitchen cabinet place designer, which is not too far from our area. But when I looked at their reviews, Deborah was their customers were kind of unhappy with him. Okay, so I was trying to look for an alternative. But then the next alternative was like, you know, maybe two hours away, well, let's, you know, wander north. Dan 26:49 That's, that's really good input for us. So you're really helping us, we will bleep out the name of this place that we're presently recommending. So let's let me just take a look at who we're recommending in your area. And then look at some of the reviews. Sometimes the reviews are telling, like I don't know, I'll go if I'm looking for a restaurant. Right? I look at the reviews, and I look at the bad reviews. And if the restaurant gets four stars, or four and a half stars, and then I look at the reviews. And all the reviews say that the food is too expensive, and that they had to wait too long for their dinner or something like that. You know, that's what maybe young people I'm 64 years old. That's what maybe young people are complaining about, that they don't have as much money as I do. And they didn't like having to wait for a fancy a nicer meal. But no one's complaining about the food. And then the people that have given the place five stars love the food. And the Chef John is incredible, or chef Joan is amazing, or whatever. It's like when all the bad reviews are just the complaints about stuff that don't matter, then that's the best thing of all, then that's the restaurant I want to go to. So same thing can be true for a kitchen place. If you go to art and you're looking at our reviews, we get really good reviews. But almost all of the bad reviews that we get are people mad at me, who called up over the phone. And I gave them sobering advice, which is sort of what we do on our podcast and we do in real life is if you've got a bad idea, I want to make sure you understand it. And they're not people that even hired us or are working with us that people that called up and said I want to do this, this and the other thing, I already have my design, I don't need a designer like you, I just want you to give me prices for cabinets and I say, Gee, that's a really bad plan. I think that I've looking at your plan here that you sent me and it's horrible. And then they'll write a negative review. But that's really good. Because if you're looking for a kitchen designer, you want people that are going to be honest with you. You don't have to like them. It's way better if you like us less, but we prevent you from doing things. If we can push you push you towards better design. We'll never make somebody buy a kitchen they don't want. But the more we can push people towards good design choices, but they never regretted in the end. I mean, we do it for a living. So no one's ever told me, even though I'm brusque and everything else after the fact and said, Gee, I took your advice. And I want you to know that. I like my kitchen better this way. That's never happened in 35 years, people call up crying because I'm so sorry. I wish I had listened to you. You know, this is too short. This is enough space or you know, my island just tipped over right or whatever it is. They call up upset that they didn't listen to us, but very rarely do they. So let's take a look real fast here though. So that you're the place that we recommend that and I can bring up there. I'll figure it out. Paul McAlary 29:53 It was in San Dimas, Dan 29:55 San Dimas. Okay, so let's Yeah, of course the The most troubling thing is, you know, sometimes companies are financially struggling. So if you read a view and somebody says, my cabinets didn't come and they made me pay in full before, that would be the worst thing that someone could say on a review of a kitchen place. Because kicking out companies go out of business sometimes Paul McAlary 30:19 our business correct. Let's see. Okay. Yeah, in fact, one of the places I just went to, you know, they basically, he told me that he was thinking of leaving the business. Because I guess, you know, he said, he's not making very much money. And so, even though, you know, he had a cabinet layout in his shop, and, you know, he seemed like he knew what, somewhat he was experienced with kitchen design. I kind of had second thoughts about going with him because, you know, I don't know if any, anyone that sounds like it just Dan 30:58 yet, isn't he sounds more like he's a carpenter cabinet maker. And he builds these cabinets is that it's not so that's not a cabinet dealer, a cabinet dealer, somebody that like sells, they don't make the cabinets or whatever. They're selling the cabinets. And usually they'll have several brands of cabinets that they're selling, so that they can be selling to customers that are on a budget and customers that have middle price kitchens. So this is California. Where do we sell Paul McAlary 31:32 San Dimas? Yeah, that's that's cabinet plates. I was just talking about it was for showplace cabinets. Okay. They're, you know, they're, they're fairly, I think they're rated like, four on your on your review. And, you know, they seem like they, they had some decent cabinets and but I was just worried about him, because he he's thinking of leaving Dan 32:00 will show these cabinets had a lot of problems during the panel. So that might be part of the problem, why he's not making any money and everything else. But you don't you know, it's a bad idea. If you're a cabinet dealer to sell one brand that cabinets, the way we find people is okay, fine kitchen designers is we do it on free first do it on house.com. Because if you're a real kitchen designer, and you're selling cabinets, you have to have a profile on house. And what's Paul McAlary 32:34 your zip code? 9286 ones. Okay, so Dan 32:39 now I'm looking at individual companies. So the first thing we do when we look at these companies is we don't look at their reviews. First we look at the pictures of their kitchens, just to make sure that they're not showcasing kitchens with mistakes. So if you're showing mistakes, then that would be a troubling thing, right? That usually eliminates something like 80%, or sometimes a little bit less, but it eliminates most people. Well, I'm seeing lots and lots of bathrooms and lots and lots of other projects, but no kitchen. So what that tells me is that that's some kind of interior designer. So now we're gonna go to, I'm going to skip the next one, which is interior design. And we're in the right category, right. Okay, let me show Kitchen and Bath designers. So these are kitchens, claiming that Kitchen and Bath designers. Oh, this looks promising. Let's look at these guys. They got 211 projects, so they're gigantic. Alright, so I've been looking through all of their pictures. Because at least no mistakes. Okay, custom IKEA kitchen. I don't know that I like that concept at all. Paul McAlary 34:03 And I don't know if this helps, but my wife is looking for something she calls it transitional. Dan 34:10 There's a lot of people that will be contemporary kitchens in your area. Transitional will be the kind of kitchen that's more popular in our area. But these guys, I'm gonna go with these guys website. This looks like a pretty big company. But the fact that they're selling IKEA custom kitchens is tremendous. So I don't want to Oh, there's some kind of specialist in custom IKEA stuff. Well, that's a bad thing. It looks like you've got a sort of a tough area out west and sort of Chicago was also tough. A lot of times is very expensive. And not that great designers. This woman's certified. So I'm sorry Rolling through her designs, but I probably don't have to look at too many designs. If you're certified, we don't know that you're great. But we know that you're unlikely to make major mistakes. So, and I have found none. So that's she instantly passes the test for that. Let's go to the next. What kind of reviews does she get? She gets impeccable reviews on house but as we all do, let's go to her business. I liked the name of our business Paul McAlary 35:33 we didn't work with when one company that had a certified kitchen designer when the cabinets that they sold were Shiloh cabinets. And then the quality of those cabinets just didn't seem very good. Dan 35:49 I mean, Shiloh has actually got some nice finishes and everything but the construct we don't wait them well. Just because the construction of the cabinets isn't so great. But a lot of people that aren't engineers wouldn't really realize that. So a lot of kitchen designers might not appreciate that. Paul McAlary 36:06 Okay. I think I like this. Yeah, what? He likes to flush inset cabinets. Dan 36:16 Oh, well, if you want inset cabinets, now you're into very expensive cabinetry. So then your cabinetry is going to be custom. But that's good because this company looks like they're pretty reasonable. The woman that's working there as a certified kitchen designer. She has her own website with many good reviews and everything else but she's working out of a relatively reasonable it looks like it's in place called the kitchen store. The kitchen store is in Culver City that's close to you, right? Paul McAlary 36:53 It's about a it's about a good hour or so. hour. hour and a half drive hour an hour and a half really? Yeah. Well, it might be or might be your best bet. But you gotta you gotta want that. To give her name. Dan 37:16 Yeah, so her name, just bring it up here. Her name is Cynthia Pedigo. She's a certified master Kitchen and Bath designer. Okay, works out of the kitchen store in Culver City, California. And the kitchen store in Culver City, California carries everything from very inexpensive cabinets up very expensive cabinets. And what's good about that is that, that when the kitchen store is carrying name brand cabinets, especially very decor, decor is very nice brand. I think they actually do inset, but I would probably spend a little bit more money if I was getting inset cabinetry. But the good news about decor is Home Depot sells decor. So why that's the thing is, if you're selling a cabinet brand, when they're selling top knobs, if they're selling major things that other companies sell, they can't be overpriced, because they're selling products that Home Depot carries, right, so they have to at least remain competitive. So now you've got a woman who's an expert in kitchen design, working out of a store that is reasonably priced, they wouldn't be able to be much more than 5% more expensive for the products they sell, that a Home Depot sells, because they couldn't stay in business. Everybody would have their kitchen designed and then run off the Home Depot to buy it. Right. So it's an investable world. So I think this is a good find that Paul McAlary 38:57 what what cabinet line would you recommend that they sell for inset, Dan 39:05 so not have to core let's look at all of their brands. They carry a lot of brands, so that's a good thing too. So the more brands you carry, so they got to core omega, so they carry Omega cabinetry that would probably they carry crystal, so crystal and Omega both make inset cabinetry very well. Okay, and the court has to make cabinets very well. But inset, they do do inset, but you'd have to price it out. A lot of times the companies that are a little bit lower than custom decor is not a custom cabinetry. So like we sell Jim Bishop is a non custom cabinet brand that we sell. And then we sell a lot of Jim Bishop, but if we're gonna if someone wants a custom inset cabinet, by the time I upgrade all the upgrades It's I have to deal with Jim bishop to get them that they're really here to the into the pricing, custom cabinet brand. And what they would have been better off just going with the custom brand. Because now I can customize as much as I wanted, it doesn't cost anything. That's the beauty of a custom cabinet company, it's usually not costing you are planning to make a cabinet an eighth of an inch narrower, or you know, to make all the perfectly sized, you just priced to the cabinet to the inch. If you make it a little bit less expensive, you're paying for the full inch. So it's nothing that's in decor, if I make the cabinet narrower in decor, they will do that. But it's 25% more. So the more I'm customizing in a higher end semi custom line, the faster I get closer and closer to the custom cabinet brands, so and then this woman, she's certified a certified master Kitchen and Bath designer, she's had to pass so many tests on construction and everything else. I can't imagine her giving you too many bad advice tips. Why don't you start with that just because really, I think that your design has so much work left to do on it, and so many different things that you'd be so we're off having somebody have worked with her. And then she's another professional like myself, and then you could send me her design after she gets something close to that you're ready to buy. And I can say, oh, you know, gee, Cynthia's doing it this way, have you thought about doing it this way, you know, she's not going to create something that's going to make, you know, I looked at all the pictures of all the kitchens that she's got, she's not doing any kitchens that have any, you know, there's nothing funky going on, there's no mistakes, there's no weird things. So it's just gonna be a matter of personal preference. I like doing something one way, they like doing something the other way, if the customer sometimes I give them my input, the customer then changes to the version I did. Sometimes customers have the other designers that work for me have come up with designs that the customers like much better. Sometimes I've liked them much better, right after I've seen them. Sometimes when somebody does nine tenths of the work, it's easy to do another 10th and make it even better. Right. But to start, what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a link to her, and I'm going to Paul McAlary 42:19 email it to you. Oh, thank you. I saw that on your rating list, there was a manufacturer named star Mark. And you rated five and then quality was a plus and value was a that is a good brand as well. Dan 42:38 Yeah, that's a good brand star Mark is right up there with these other brands. You know, star Mark Day Five is not a rating, the five is a price point. So star Mark five, decor is a five, some of these other brands that they omega is probably a five, although Omega pinnacle is probably a five and a half. And crystals probably a five or a five and a half. Once you get to the good lines, this difference between them. Okay, in fact, once you get to the inset and beaded inset lines, then you can usually always upgrade to a better made cabinet. Except the way Shiloh makes their cabinets. I don't know why they do it. But the colors and finishes I think are very nice. But somebody should get an engineering degree that works there. Everybody. Nobody wants to make their cabinets that way. Paul McAlary 43:32 Yeah, I could I saw that to the way it was constructed when I went to see it in person. Yeah, Dan 43:37 I mean, it's the hanging rail. It just it's you're screwing cabinets to the wall, and there's nothing supporting them Paul McAlary 43:43 supporting it, right. Yeah. Can you Dan 43:47 imagine that, Dan, that you can look at that thing, and figure that out yourself? And that the engineers, people manufacturing that whole brand new cabinets, it would probably cost 2% more to fix that mistake. And it would be an infinitely better cabinet. And they're not doing it right. It's a testament to really, that it's not even worth their time fixing their cabinet. Because people are buying it the way it is. It is it. I mean, it's not that people don't know any better, and they don't care. Well, and they it's probably not even if they don't care. They don't know any better. Paul McAlary 44:28 Right? I don't know if you ever do this. You ever work with people out of the area? Not really. But Dan 44:35 we get so few phone calls. I think we got one phone call. I'll call back once we get off the phone in a minute. But we got two phone calls today. We'll do this for free all day long on a Friday. So you can call them and we'll vet your design. If you're working with Cynthia. You know once she gives you plans and drawings that won't take a half an hour, much less than hour longer to really critique anything. The only ways we'll be able to improve her work is probably with tweaks and things like that. Paul McAlary 45:04 So you might have asked me back, a couple more questions. Sure. On the proposed dimensions or as proposed plan, you know, the island that my wife wanted, right? She was asking like, when you look from like, say, the living room and or dining room into the kitchen, that that island there does it have to be centered on the opening, that once we take that wall off Dan 45:35 once you get rid of I would say, once you get rid of the double oven out of that location, then your eyeline grow if you want it to, and then you can make the island much more substantial with some cabinets on the back, and then overhang a little bit more, because you really have too much room between your table and your island, you could have you know, more cabinetry on the back to make the the islands and it looked from the side very chintzy. So if you got double thickness of cabinets and panels on the sides, the island would would look much more substantial. And then if you made it a little bit longer, you'd have more work area to it, there's a lot of things that she'll probably help you with Paul McAlary 46:17 that island was exactly the way you described it. But then they couldn't figure out where to put the double oven. So when they push that double oven over to where it shows on the diagram, then they use the size of the island, Dan 46:32 you know, I could, I would say you could do something with the double oven like your pantry that you have, that's the walk in pantry, you could take out a corner of that entry and have the oven there, there's lots of different things that you could do with that oven. If you took a notch out of the pantry and put the upper right corner, you just lose a little corner chunk out of your pantry. Now your island can grow and everything else, the oven is actually way closer to the to the cooktop there than it is right there other location, but I don't know that, you know she's she's going to be working on this a lot harder. I mean, you could also take out your pantry, take out a whole notch, one whole leg of your pantry out. And then you could put your refrigerator in that same place and then you'd lose one whole leg of your pantry. But now everybody got rid of the wall. Now you'd have continuous countertop around the whole thing. And then also you wouldn't be dragging people going to the refrigerator wouldn't be pulled into the work area. And the countertop would all be totally functional and everything else, you could then put maybe your microwave over there. And there's so many different choices you have that are good choices, then then the choices you got here. Paul McAlary 47:51 Yeah, and then maybe my last question is that island, right now it's like a double level, right? Dan 47:57 I wouldn't have a double level, the only thing good about a double level is that it hides the sink and the faucet from the backside. But you already have one hole cleaning area. So your sink that that that sink that you have in the island is really just going to be a prep sink. Paul McAlary 48:16 Yeah, that's what it's, that's what my wife wanted a Dan 48:19 prep. And it's probably not best even being in the middle of the island, it's sort of better probably pushed to the left. If it's a prep sink, it's not going to be ugly. So if once you make the island, the second level, first off, schools that you're sitting at, are much higher. So your feet on the floor, when you're sitting on these stools, your feet are pretty high up in the air. And then also, since the countertop isn't all one level, then you can't serve off the back of your island. When your island is kitchen countertop height. Not only is the whole island much more attractive, but you know, now you can surf off the back, you can tuck the stools in underneath the countertop, and people that were getting food, you could put the food all out on the back of the island. And everybody could serve themselves and then go sit at the table. But once the island the top of the island is at 42 inches instead of 36. Now it's too high to serve yourself and even a kid or whatever can't even access it at all. I mean, even adults can't really serve themselves like a salad or something like that, where you have to get the tongs above the sides of the salad bowl, it just ceases to really be functional. And unless it's a gigantic island that's so big that we couldn't make it one level. That's when we make them to a lot of the time. I see when when you can get it and it's just a prep sink that's not going to ruin the look of the kitchen or have dishes in it or anything else. It's so much nicer to have it be a more substantial island with no seams or anything else. Just one continuous nice Paul McAlary 49:52 down to write. Well, Paul, thank you so much. God I can't believe like all the help you've done Hopefully, if chi Dan 50:01 works out for you, then maybe be with her, then maybe you can just get back to us and we'll add her to our list. But I mean, I might even add sight unseen. Most of these companies we add, we've just done the cursory examination we just did with you to find them. So now that we found her, then maybe we'll add her to our list just to help people in your a little bit closer to you. She's got all the tools that you need. Paul McAlary 50:26 Yeah. So again, I appreciate all your problem. Thank you. Best of luck, and maybe we'll talk again. Okay, sure. Thank you. Bye bye. Mark Mitten 50:37 Thank you for listening to the mainline kitchen design podcast with the world's greatest Kitchen Designer Paul McAlary. For more on kitchen cabinets and kitchen design, go to www dot mainline kitchen design.com Transcribed by https://otter.ai