Mark Mitten  0:02  
In a world where your contractor is handling you by giving you misinformation, instead of working for you, with good faith advice, you'd better cold call.

Paul McAlary  0:16  
Cheryl, can you hear me? Yes, I can

welcome the better call. Paul. I'm we've already received, I got your thank you for sending in all your drawings for your kitchen. And I took a look over everything. One thing is, is we don't have all the measurements. So we're just looking at the, you know, the perspectives and the views. So some things I have to guess that as far as the sizes of things,

Cheryl  0:45  
you asked me? I'll tell you.

Paul McAlary  0:46  
Okay, did you have any questions you wanted to ask first? Or did you want me to edit a critique it? Or, you know, you tell me, where would you like to start?

Cheryl  0:54  
I want you to critique it, the short wall is 11 and a half feet, the long wall is 17 feet. Appliances are in their current positions. That didn't they didn't really move. And they're the standard size. Appliances. Okay.

Paul McAlary  1:17  
I'll just start anywhere. So as far as your design was, certainly we see some designs that are terrible. This is very similar to what you have now. So you're used to it, the certainly nothing horrible or bad about this design. But there's some things I think you might want to consider changing. And the one thing is, sometimes people have absolutely no choice. We just had a customer recently, that had has a multimillion dollar home. And the project got so far along that the architect had designed everything. And there was no way for us to intervene and change the layout of the home. And he had a live with one of the two problems that if there's any way we can get around it, I think we always try to do when people's kitchens and the two problems I'm talking about are one having a bathroom door open into a kitchen. And the other problem is having a washer and dryer in your kitchen. Because one way you're sort of turning your kitchen almost into a bathroom and the other way you're combining your laundry room and your kitchen. A lot of times you don't have any choice. But certainly as people are spending so much money on their kitchen, moving plumbing lines or other things, your washer and dryer in your kitchen is sort of a last resort. That being said, they're there now in your kitchen. You said right.

Cheryl  2:43  
Yes, I am a small ranch, this team has 1500 square feet. And it's a galley kitchen with the look that looks at the dining room.

Paul McAlary  2:55  
Okay, and do you have a basement or are you on a slab or I'm on a slab. So you're on a slab. So then two things happen when you're on a slab one, it gets much harder to move things around. And then secondly, you don't have the basement that we could fall back on and put your washer and dryer, probably the only thing that you really could do is it sometimes people could steal a closet in one of the bedrooms and put their washer and dryer, that's going to be a big pain in the neck and then you're going to lose a bedroom or lose a closet in the bedroom. So let's assume that your washer and dryer is going to at least stay in your kitchen,

Cheryl  3:34  
that I put it behind the door to hide it would that be better.

Paul McAlary  3:38  
I could, you could. But the problem with that too is that your kitchen is pretty narrow. So you have a pretty narrow kitchen, and you can't really put it behind cabinet doors, because they're very deep. And if you did put it behind cabinet doors, either you would need custom cabinets. And then the doors really are to really have a washer and dryer stacked on top of each other. It should be more like a closet door where you would build a wall and put a closet door and then you need the thickness of the wall in front of the closet, which would would make the space across from each other even tighter. So I think maybe you're best off leaving it the way everything is but you're gonna be you know, maybe getting new washer and dryers and there'll be new appliances. There'll be nicer looking. And then if we put it all the way keep it over to one side of the room. That can help too. I guess the other thing in your design that immediately jumps out is that you have your cabinets and then you have moldings on the top, but you're ending about three inches away from your ceiling. So I would tell you that what everybody would do nowadays is stack your moldings so that the moldings you know you have one flat piece of molding that go was up to the ceiling and then a crown molding in between your ceiling and that flat piece of molding. So that over, it's all closed in over the tops of your cabinets, and it looks much better. And you're not accumulating dust, dust mites and everything else on top of your cabinets, and having no way to really clean on top, because you're only leaving three inches away from the ceiling. So you couldn't even get a shot back or anything else in there. So you're, you're never read yourself just three inches away from the ceiling when you're doing it. And once you get more than closer than nine inches, you just go all the way up to the ceiling. So you don't have to get more expensive cabinets, you just have a flat piece of molding first. That's called the riser. And then the crown molding goes on top of that, and it looks much better. So that's one thing that you

Cheryl  5:48  
should do get on, I can get a larger crown molding, I have an eight foot ceiling, all of the cabinets and everything go up to 90. So that left me with only six inches, but I have poor storage from out. So that's why we went up that high. Yeah, I can get bigger crown molding,

Paul McAlary  6:06  
no, I wouldn't get a bigger crown molding, I would just get the riser and then the crown molding for two reasons. One reason is that nobody's house is perfectly level. So if you have the flat piece going up to the ceiling, and then the crown molding is going to go on the flat piece and touch the ceiling. That way as your ceiling maybe goes off of level a little bit, the molding will still touch the ceiling. And you'll just expose a little bit more and a little bit less of the riser, I can send you a drawing of how that's done. For the contractor. Yes,

Cheryl  6:40  
please. Yes, because I'm not quite understanding what you said they have, like a one inch piece that's at the top of the cabinets. And then the crown molding was sitting on that.

Paul McAlary  6:52  
Yes, that's what that's what, but that's not what you have in the picture. Okay, maybe the designer said that's what they were going to do. But that's not what they have in the pictures and the pictures, they have your crown molding right on top of your cabinet without that piece going up. Currently is. And currently you have that now the piece. I mean, that's

Cheryl  7:15  
what they're, that's what they were saying they were going to do.

Paul McAlary  7:18  
Okay, well, they should put that in the picture. One thing is kitchen designers, you order your kitchen off of the picture most of the time. So if you don't see something in the picture, you won't be charged for it and won't get delivered to you. So they should add that usually, if you have six inches, a three inch crown molding and a flat piece that leaves three inches exposed is nice, but I can understand that they were talking about doing that. But it makes it a little bit harder as a designer to stack the two pieces of molding. So maybe the designer was a little bit new and didn't know how to do that. And so they just put the crown molding on top and then just told you they were going to add those pieces of wood.

Cheryl  8:01  
Because they're not building it. I mean, they have a contractor who does their installation, you know,

Paul McAlary  8:07  
even so the contractor that's doing it, if it doesn't appear in the picture, it's a problem just waiting to happen, that the contractor doesn't see it in the picture and isn't paying attention and put your molding right on top of the cabinets. And now you have to redo all your moldings because you didn't stack it, it's a good thing. Just something to be aware of when anybody does something differently than it's supposed to be done in real life. That's a red flag that you just want to make sure everybody's on the same page with okay, it's so hard when you're in a ranch on a slab it's difficult to move things around. But sometimes I'll ask a question like what kind of cabinets are you getting in or what brands of appliances somebody's getting? And they're spending so much money on their cabinets around their appliances that they should be spending some of that money to move stuff around that being said Do you have a brand of cabinets that you're considering or what

Cheryl  9:04  
what well the appliances are will all be about new to and they're going to be LG okay and I had four designers draw me something three of which were rated one was not so but that was like the best rating was rd Henry and was Yorktown superior was one but it was not rated on the on your seat.

Paul McAlary  9:33  
So rd Henry and Yorktown both Yorktown used to be a very inexpensive cabinet brand that got bought up by another company and changed to a pretty expensive cabinet brand. And rd Henry I believe Yeah, so I think for so arty Henry's a more expensive cabinet brand to what kind of color and I see it's a Shaker door style. What kind of color cabinet we have

Cheryl  10:00  
Thinking about it's kind of a cappuccino. Scotty they once one person called a cappuccino, another person called the Scottie. It's like a peanut Brown.

Paul McAlary  10:15  
Okay. And is it a stain? Or is it a paint? Yes, it's the same. It's a stain. So probably that kind of stain is going to be more going to be more difficult to get in the less expensive cabinet brands, the cabinet brands you're looking at? If you're talking medallion and arty Henry, they're definitely on the more expensive side. Like if I look at your kitchen, and I say what would medallion cost around here? A medallion kitchen probably around here for the kitchen you have would certainly be over $20,000 I would think maybe more like $30,000 in cabinetry.

Cheryl  10:57  
rd, Henry is running like 23. And I don't have the York Town estimate yet. Okay.

Paul McAlary  11:05  
So the rd Henry should be a little bit less if we read it or the Henry as a for the Yorktown. I don't know if we moved it up. But Yorktown now should probably be a four and a half or five. It used to be a one or two. I wonder if we made those changes.

Cheryl  11:22  
But the one I'm looking at is the 22 rating. And you gave it a four B plus B plus. Okay,

Paul McAlary  11:29  
so we switched it up. It's a four, but it's probably almost more like a four and a half. So it's probably going to come in if you're already Henry was $23,000, the Yorktown will probably come in a little bit more. And you're upgrading all of these cabinets to all plywood construction, I hope with solid blue tail drawers and soft close everything right?

Cheryl  11:53  
Yes. You know,

Paul McAlary  11:54  
the only reason I'm asking is you are in a little bit more expensive brands, but you also are looking at probably a little bit more expensive colors. In some of the lessons,

Cheryl  12:04  
I could not get those in stock. You up, I have no luck, I could not get the color I wanted in a stock, oh, well, I had to go up.

Paul McAlary  12:13  
So you had to go up. So if that's worth it to you, that's some of the trade offs, just because you might be spending $5,000 more to get the color that of the cabinets that you like. And if you did decide that you wanted to move anything in your design, it wouldn't cost $5,000, you could probably, you know, move the location of your sink for, I don't know, a couple of 1000 hours, maybe something like that maybe two and a half 1000 You could probably move the location of your washer and dryer for a similar amount. And why I'm bringing it up is in this design. There are some things that are better if some of these things move. It's good that you have this right now. So right now you have your refrigerator and your washer and dryer right next to each other. Yes. So you have a full depth refrigerator in the picture. So the whole refrigerator has to come out like six inches from the cabinetry so that you get a deeper refrigerator. But that's the only way that the refrigerator door doesn't hit the washer and dryer. So is that's what's going on. Now you have a very deeper refrigerator that's sticking out father, right.

Cheryl  13:30  
Yeah, so sticking about three inches, that washer and dryer moved out six inches for something in the back, some connection that goes in the back. So it's actually shorter than the refrigerator. But in order for it to look aligned, they moved. They moved it up the washer and dryer, they moved it up, they move forward. Yes. Interesting.

Paul McAlary  13:59  
We have to be very careful with the selection of your washers and dryers and your refrigerator because you must have very very shallow washers and dryers now, so if you were to get any of the stackable washers and dryers that are you know not apartment washers and dryers, but like other ones that you put on top of each other or that can be put on pedestals. Those washers and dryers are much deeper. You might have problems with the washer and dryer hitting the refrigerator. One thing that you could do and I might do is I don't think you're going to have to move any plumbing or much of anything. If you just switch your pantry and the washer and dryer so that you put the washer and dryer on the end with a panel and then put the pantry cabinet that you have on the end of the washer and dryer in between the refrigerator and the washer and dryer. If you just did that, then you wouldn't have to worry about the door. Prior to the refrigerator, hitting the washer and dryer, and then also if you wanted, you could get a counter depth refrigerator. And the reason you might want a counter depth refrigerator is that refrigerator sticks out six inches less. The only thing that sticks out past the cabinetry is the doors to the refrigerator themselves. If it's me, and I'm in a really tight kitchen, and it's pretty small, I think I would just sacrifice a little storage space. And I would get a counter depth refrigerator. But certainly if you do get a counter depth refrigerator, you'd have to probably move your washer and dryer one over and put the pantry between them. Otherwise, the refrigerator door would be hitting that the washer and dryer.

Cheryl  15:43  
Yeah, the refrigerator is 38 inches deep. And the combo is 2736 30,

Paul McAlary  15:54  
whatever. Usually the box of a counter depth refrigerator is 2425. And then the door to the refrigerator comes out from there, you have a standard depth refrigerator. And it's really big if it's 38. So that's a 30. That's a 30 inch box in very deep doors, you know that would be a common thing that customers would do, that kitchen designers would try to discourage you from doing is customers don't realize the space that they're leaving, and the negative impact of the appliances that they pick out. You know, until long after the kitchen is done. Where as everybody just wants the stuff that they want. You're losing six inches of space in your kitchen, for this refrigerator. You have to weigh if that losing six inches and having this thing stick out so far, across from everything else is worth it. And how many people live in your home?

Cheryl  16:54  
Well, currently, it's only me, but I got a bunch of kids and grandkids which is why I got a larger size refrigerator. Yeah, in the holidays or weekends. And they're all here and refrigerators just stuff.

Paul McAlary  17:06  
And do you have a garage?

Cheryl  17:08  
I have a two car garage under two cars.

Paul McAlary  17:12  
Okay, and you put both cars in the garage.

Cheryl  17:15  
I do it I live in a winter climate. Okay.

Paul McAlary  17:18  
So a lot of times people would we live in where do you live Chicago where

Cheryl  17:24  
I do I live in Chicago? And there's snow? And you know, yeah, no want your car to be all messed up after a few years.

Paul McAlary  17:31  
Right? Right, you have to weigh that you have the advantage of having this big refrigerator. But it does stick out really far. And in a small kitchen, it makes things a little, my wife and I and

Cheryl  17:43  
I can change Yeah, I can change the refrigerator. That's not a problem, I just,

Paul McAlary  17:47  
but I'm not saying you have to do it because it's your decision. But you can sort of imagine it if you would, with the refrigerator sticking out essentially six inches less. And if it's six inches less, that's a lot more space. And it also looks built into the cabinets, because it's only the doors sticking out. So that's just something you might want to consider. And then the only other thing is if I was to say, What's the best design for your kitchen, the problem that you have with this design, as it is now is your sink in your stove are so close to each other, we really try to keep appliances not next to each other either. So the fact that your dishwasher was right next to your stove doesn't look so good. The fact that your washer and dryer is right next to your refrigerator doesn't look so good. When we move the washer and dryer down and put the pantry cabinet in between the two, it makes everything a little bit better. And then if everything's not jetting out so far, it makes the room a little bit bigger. And then if your sink were to move, and that would be a big problem, right? You'd have to take out the cabinetry, you'd have to jackhammer up the floor, someone would have to run it the drain line from its present location

Cheryl  19:02  
to $1,000 to go into the slab.

Paul McAlary  19:06  
If someone tells you telling you that that's what it costs, then that's not a contractor I would be very comfortable using because there's something that we know how much work that is. And we do it all the time. And it really should be more like two and a half $1,000 So somebody that tells you something that's astronomical for doing something really is lying to you because they don't want to do it. So the fact that somebody is then lying to me, makes me very suspicious of them. Once contractors start telling me things that I know are wrong, then I'm very suspect of a lot of other things that they might be telling you because you can't trust them once they really say in that because how much work is this going to be no matter what they're going to remove all your cabinets right and once they remove your cabinets, if they were to jackhammer up your slab They're going to have that done before lunchtime to jackhammer up a channel from the present drain location to the new drain location. And the water lines are very easy to move. So they're flexible lines nowadays, so they can be running under the cabinets even. But the drain line is pretty easy to do. And then the plumber has to come and put the new drain line in. But it's really only a day's worth of work. And then somebody has to cement it up. being somebody that knows how to do all of those things. I could probably do everything myself in no more than a day and a half. That's why most of the time the contractors are going to have one person jackhammer it up and the plumber common run the new love new plumbing line, and then somebody else cement it up. And when you do all that it really even in Chicago, it never could get the $10,000 that will be crazy. Okay, that makes me suspicious, the person that's doing the construction? Is it also the same company that's selling you the cabinet's? Or is it a different company?

Cheryl  21:04  
They recommended a company but they were so out of line, I went and got other cost estimates. Expensive as what I want to say. They were like particulates, I don't need custom cabinets. Right. But the company

Paul McAlary  21:21  
the mean, the company that gave you the construction price recommended a kitchen place. Yes. So you found the construction company first?

Cheryl  21:31  
Yes, they were recommended by people who use them. And we're very happy with how their kitchens turned out.

Paul McAlary  21:39  
That's good. So we know that they did a good job. But we also know that they're lay people, and they don't know what stuff costs, and they actually probably aren't capable of knowing if the P contractor did a great job or not. I mean, they couldn't really say that looks good. They don't know that they weren't told that something costs $10,000 when it didn't, and that they were being watched too much. So generally, I sort of want to find the kitchen place that I want to work with. And when people recommend each other, this is not us, when we recommend contractors, we get don't get paid any money recommending them. And we're not in cahoots with everybody. But a lot of contractors, if they recommend the kitchen company, you know, we actually have contractors that recommend us. And sometimes we give them a referral fee for recommending us but the cut, we don't charge our customers anymore. But that's we're very unique in that situation. A lot of times, the contractors will recommend kitchen companies. And you know, one of the reasons the price was so exorbitant was that the kitchen company was jacking up the price to give a whole bunch of money to the contractor, which is another symptom of a contractor that's not being transparent and is not being honest. Generally I try to have people find the kitchen place where they get the best price for the cabinets, and that they like and then have the kitchen place recommend some contractors or you know, you can have this contractor give a bid that gave you a bid for doing the construction, always get at least three bids from three different contractors, just you know, you're there. And the price for the contractors will be so varied and so different. I mean, even contractors that we work with that we know do a good job. You know, one could be for a job your size, one could be 5000 6000 $7,000 more expensive than another one. And it's only that one guy does all the work himself with a helper and another guy is a general contractor and subs everything out to other people and he has a different business model, you can get estimates that are twice as expensive than other contractors. And it doesn't even mean that they do better work. In fact, if you do get somebody that's twice as expensive, a lot of times it's a sign that they don't do good work, that they're really just sort of do okay jobs, but they don't have your best interest at heart. So did they give you an anchor for doing this renovation? I know what a number for doing the construction part of the job?

Cheryl  24:19  
No, not yet. We're meeting next meeting Wednesday.

Paul McAlary  24:26  
So whenever they give you that, I would think that a company that sort of tells me it's $10,000 to jackhammer up the thing, and doesn't give me a price or just doesn't give me any kind of number is maybe going to be the same kind of company that puts you under pressure to sign a contract when they come out to give you the numbers. Whatever you do, don't do it. It's another sign of a bad company. You want to get estimates from three different contractors no matter what you can have these people be one, but when they give you their estimate, just say thank you very much. I'm just going to get a couple of other estimates and I'll give Back to you. And then you know, talk to some other people in the area, see if they had a good experience. Sometimes you can go on Angie's List. One thing about Angie's List, when you're looking for contractors, Angie's List is an interesting company, I hate the way they operate. They sort of once you're on Angie's List, they sort of try to put you in a spiderweb of advertisers that are paying them money. They'll say, Well, what are you doing? Are you doing a kitchen are you doing this and you have to start answering the questions. And then all of a sudden, they tell you, they'll have three people call you. Well, that's really what you want. If you go on Angie's List, what you want to do is leave Angie's List out of it, and look for the contractors, you can look up contractors yourself on Angie's List, and look for the ones that get good reviews for doing kitchens or general contractors. Because the company get really good reviews. The best thing about Angie's List is you couldn't review a company on Angie's List, even if you didn't hire them. If you only got an estimate from them, you could review them. So what does that mean? That means if a company gets good reviews, not only did they do good work and make their customers happy, but they didn't get other people mad at them by giving them crazy expensive estimates. Because if they gave an estimate for like $50,000, and you ended up hiring somebody that was $20,000, you might jump right on Angie's List and give them a bad review and say they're crazy expensive, etc, etc. So if you're really stuck, and you're looking for a company, do some research on Angie's List to find a company that gets a lots of reviews for the kind of work you're doing. Look at yourself. And if they get those really good reviews, you can sort of be sure that their numbers at least should not be that much out of whack. And you can maybe an Angie's List person, this company that you're getting an estimate for. And then maybe you can find through friends and family, somebody else that has a good experience. Or you could also ask the kitchen company, if they can recommend a couple of contractors and use one of their contractors that they recommended. Because usually the kitchen companies, if they're only recommending a contractor, they're not getting paid any money. Whereas if the contractor is recommending a kitchen company, they could be in cahoots and the kitchen company could be giving them money. But that being said, if you ever decided that you wanted to do the best layout for this kitchen, at least the most functional layout would be to move your steak onto your Peninsula. Right now you have your sink and your stove so close to each other, that usually people work from their sink to their stove. So imagine if we just put your sink on your peninsula, and I put your sink, say I put a garbage can cabinet at the very end of the peninsula, then had your sink, and then had dishwasher next and then the Lazy Susan or whatever cabinet in the corner there. Now you'd have, you know, like eight feet a countertop in between your stove and your sink. So you could be working at your stove, on the left side of your stove, having all of this countertop to work at to be washing vegetables to be cutting and chopping to be doing all of those things. I think with the kitchen layout you have now you can tell me, but don't you find yourself working all the time on the tiny little countertop that's in between the sink and the stove.

Cheryl  28:39  
I do, right,

Paul McAlary  28:41  
you go from the sink to the stove, that's what you do. So as a kitchen designer, we want to try to get your kitchen sink and your stove pretty far apart. So they're not interfering with each other. So that you know, you could have somebody go from the sink to the stove, you could even put their dishwasher on the end, then the sink, then the garbage can pull out the you know, you can sort of alternate it. But all the designs that will work the best if you are cooking for a living would be the ones that move the sink to the peninsula. And you know, there's bad things about that too. And the bad thing is just that now you have an overhang on your peninsula that people were sitting at. And now you got to sink pretty close to them. It makes sitting at the peninsula a little bit less desirable, but it does make working in the kitchen a little bit easier and I don't have the dimensions for the rest of the house. The one thing that's good too is once you're moving the sink to the peninsula, you're not going to have the dishwasher in between the sink and the stove. So you can actually move your Peninsula closer, maybe I don't have the measurements but maybe a tiny bit closer to the cabinetry on the other side. The cabinetry with the drawers and everything that you have over by this stove. So if it's not getting too tight, you could move your Peninsula a little bit closer. And then you could maybe even put 12 inch deep cabinets on the back of the peninsula to give you a little bit more storage that wouldn't be so usable. But it would give the people sitting at the peninsula, a whole two feet of countertop space to be eating at with the sink in front of them. So it's just something that you could consider, but you certainly would never consider it if somebody was going to charge you $10,000 To

Cheryl  30:31  
what about moving the sink to the corner?

Paul McAlary  30:35  
Well, you can move the sink to the corner. But if you move the sink to the corner, there's a couple of things like I said, like the the washer and dryer and a kitchen is sort of what we try to avoid bathroom doors opening the kitchens is a no no we try to avoid and diagonal sinks are a last resort to and the reason is, if your sink is in the corner, everything like the dishwasher if the dishwasher was next to the sink, for a garbage can pull out, everything is opening sort of diagonally into you. So it's it doesn't work as well. The perfect sink is one that has like the garbage can pull that on one side area, the dishwasher opening down on the other side here. So you could sort of scrape a dish off into the trash can to load it into the dishwasher. It's actually the best of all would be if the dishwasher was sort of on the end of the peninsula, you could even make the peninsula a tiny bit deeper, you wouldn't have the shelves that you have on the end if the dishwasher was there. But that way, when the dishwasher door was down, you could unload the dishwasher to all the cabinets in the volt itchin. And you wouldn't have the dishwasher in your way. Like when you want to load your dishwasher if you're standing at the sink. Or when you're unloading your dishwasher. It's between you and some of the cabinets that you might want to be putting some things away. And so you know, you can talk to the kitchen designer about that. And I know Chicago is tough because we've tried to find good kitchen places in Chicago. And a lot of the kitchen companies in Chicago, I think look like they do a really good job are also crazy expensive. There's a lot of kitchen companies at least around here that like we sell the most expensive cabinets we have cabinets much more expensive than Jr Henry or whatever and medallion. We have brands that are sixes that aren't fours but sixes but we also have brands that are ones so and that's in price wise. So the lower the number on our our review, the least expensive The cabinets are. And the cabinets that we have that are ones that are stocked cabinets are still solid wood, Dovetail drawers, soft clothes, and just soft clothes tracks, they still have all of those stuff, they still come in a Shaker door style, they still come in all the sizes you need for your design, but they come in almost no choices of color. So you wouldn't be able to get a stain cabinet at all, you'd only be able to get a painted cabinet. But your whole kitchen cabinetry order would certainly be under $10,000. Maybe more like $8,000 when we're designing somebody's kitchen, they're all supposed to be in the mix, we sort of give you the options, and you pick the stuff that you want to splurge on. And you pick the things that you want to save on etc. And certainly it's a very different kitchen. If you did decide to move your sink to the peninsula to cook a lot, it's going to make your life a lot easier cooking wise, when you get estimates more of a contractors get an estimate from the company that said they can't do it when they come out that it's $10,000 Get the number from them for how much they're going to charge you to move the sink just to have it and then when somebody else comes back and says it's two and a half $1,000 to move the sink to that location that will make maybe make you feel differently about the people that told you 10 Okay, you know other than that the design is pretty good. If I was going to move anything else, the only negative thing that you have with your washer and dryer is and this is this is something I wouldn't do because I don't want to spend another two and a half $1,000 But it's really nice if you have your washer and dryer in the kitchen if you have some kind of countertop next to it. Whereas your washer and dryer have the refrigerator in between you and the countertop. So if you wanted to take a basket out and you wanted to put it down. To load the washer and dryer, you just have to have your basket on the floor and you're loading the washer and dryer from the floor and then a lot of people that have washers and dryers if they don't have stacked ones. You can put your basket on top of the washer and dryer when you're loading a washer. But you have no cow what

Cheryl  34:48  
about what about moving the refrigerator to the end and putting the commerce in between the washer and dryer in the frigerator

Paul McAlary  34:56  
you could do that too. Although now we're bringing your washer run dry or more and more into your kitchen. I sorta like it, the more hidden it is behind the rest of your kitchen. It's not in your dining room, it's sort of hidden. The one thing you could do is if you were willing to spend more money again, and I don't think this one is worth it, it looks like that pantry, you can tell me but the pantry across from the washer and dryer on the stove side looks like it's 30 inches wide.

Cheryl  35:23  
It's 27. It's 2029. And the pantry is 27.

Paul McAlary  35:29  
So the pantry is 27. And the space is 29. Your stackable washer and dryer is probably 27. So you could if you wanted, put a three quarter inch panel on the side and push it up against the trim on the window. And you could get a washer and dryer over there. And then the only reason that that would be good is that now you'd have all that countertop if you weren't cooking to the right side of the stove that you could use in a pinch, if you're doing laundry, but I don't think I would do that. Anyway, it's a pain in the neck to move that. And you know, it should cost at least a couple of $1,000, which isn't probably worth it. Although maybe the price goes down a little bit. If they're moving the city decide to move the sink. Now that you're doing the same work twice, maybe the price for the total package is a little bit less, maybe to do both is only $4,000 or something like that.

Cheryl  36:22  
Remove the washer and dryer, it's 27. But the problem is there would be no gas line.

Paul McAlary  36:27  
Oh, it's a gas dryer. Well moving the gas line is also a little bit easier, you can move a gas line up in through the ceiling if you had to. But you can also move the gas line onto the slab if you were doing it. And actually I'm thinking about it, there's the dryer vent outside, no. So that would be an advantage to have moving the washer dryer to the other location is that your dryer could vent outside. Unless it's a condo or something where they don't like event.

Cheryl  36:56  
No, it's my house. So the gas line can go through the ceiling. That's not dangerous. No,

Paul McAlary  37:02  
because, you know, if they're gonna rerun the gas lines, we just run it up a wall and across the ceiling and then down. Probably it's easier if they have to run a drain line for the washer. So the washer has a rain line. So they're probably going to have to jackhammer up the floor. So they're probably easier just to run it through the floor, though, if you moved it over to that location, they would already have to be doing all that stuff. But you know, that's the thing, I want to try to hammer into all of the designers that work for me, I always tell the designers to treat our customers like their family, which I don't mean by that, like you love them, and you are just absolutely Ultra nice to them. The way I treat my family is since we all care about each other, we would give them pretty strong advice. And we would tell them, they were making a mistake, and we would try to protect their money. So if you're spending $10,000 more on cabinetry or, you know getting to get a certain color, then you know, I might say to my brother, if he was doing that, well, you know, Steven, you're, you know, you're spending a whole bunch of extra money on the cabinets you're getting, because that's the color you like. But for that $5,000 Extra you're spending on cabinetry, we could probably move the sink and move the washer and dryer, and you wouldn't have the color you like the best. But you could spend less money on cabinetry. And then the overall kitchen you might like better. So you always want it to be the person's decision. And there's not a right or wrong answer. But it's all the same money. So when you're shopping around for contractors, if you find a contractor that's $5,000 less than you're pretty comfortable that they're going to do a good job because they get good reviews and everything online and everything else. Well that's $5,000 that you save that you could put to something else that can be the money that you save to get the cabinet color that you like, so you have to decide those things. Our job is to give you the numbers and then for you to sorta you know figure out exactly like I said before, what do you want to splurge on and what you want to save money on?

Cheryl  39:04  
Okay, oh, this is a galley kitchen. I didn't want to get too dark of a cabinet. What? I didn't want to get too dark of a cabinet. Light because kids hands on everything.

Paul McAlary  39:18  
Yeah, you'll be able to get in the less expensive cabinet brands. There'll be some stains that you'll be able to get like gray stains are common in less expensive cabinet brands, light gray stains, or fab you would one of the less expensive brands we carry just came out with like a maple kind of looking color cabinet door, but you're not going to have a lot of choices. That's really why the more expensive brands are more expensive. They offer more kinds of wood, and they offer more colors and more finishes. And depends on what your budget is and how important those finishes and those colors are to you. But it's all the same money so customers just have to be the ones that decide what's important to them. So well,

Cheryl  40:05  
you're given me plenty to think about and that I gotta get out and research before he comes on Wednesday.

Paul McAlary  40:10  
Yeah. And when he comes on Wednesday, don't sign any contracts. Right? That's also a bad anybody that that's pressuring anybody. You know, even in kitchen cabinets. I just think sales for kitchen cabinets that have deadlines or trying to force people to make decisions is not in their best interests. So I think the best competence don't really do give people your best price for cabinets and have them decide, you know, sometimes the cabinet companies will have the promotions were that our price increases during the pandemic, we had price increases. We never pressured a customer to buy it. We said there's a price increase that's going into effect August 15. If you you don't have the estimates from your contractors don't buy the cabinet's will give you another month. And we'll just suck it up and eat the price increase before we have you making decisions or signing contracts with people that are forcing your hand. It's not the way you want to go into a major construction project. You want you want everybody to be thoughtful and thinking about it. And anybody that's trying to pressure me, I'm instantly suspicious of. So thank you, okay. Okay, so good talking to you.

Cheryl  41:25  
Thank you. You've given me a lot to think about. And

Paul McAlary  41:27  
if you need the course back again, we're here next week. I know I'm doing the podcast help line, and then I'm off for a couple of weeks because I'm in Europe. Okay, but then I'm back. It was a pleasure talking to you and maybe another time. Take care. Thank

Cheryl  41:45  
you very much. All right.

Mark Mitten  41:47  
Thank you for listening to the mainline kitchen design podcast with nationally claimed Kitchen Designer Paul maxillary. This podcast is brought to you by Brighton cabinetry, high quality, custom cabinetry at competitive prices. For more on kitchen cabinets and kitchen design, go to www dot mainline kitchen design.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai