Mark Mitten  0:03  
No Kohler today. instead. Polesworth truly catches a break as Paul tells us all the things that annoy him as a kitchen designer.

Hello, welcome to Medicare. Paul, we have an exciting treat for you today we have Paul mapillary talking about his pet peeves, Paul.

Paul McAlary  0:42  
Thank you, Mark. So I was assembling my pet peeves. And my wife, Julie, warn me that I'm going to come off as a curmudgeon if I have too many pet peeves, but I have so many that I pretty much almost ran out of paper. I've narrowed it down, we'll see how many we get to. If you listen to this, and you're a potential customer, don't think that we don't like our customers just because we have these sort of pet peeves. But when you have, you know, 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of customers over decades of time. You know, a lot of times there's just one question or one thing that comes up over and over and over again, that you've heard too many times. And it's it feels like you're getting a migraine when you hear it for the 17. Familiar.

Mark Mitten  1:26  
Yeah, I've known Paul a long time. And I have to say, You know how some people you don't know where you stand with them. And it's confusing, never once happened.

Paul McAlary  1:36  
So that's part of my design style. Which brings me to one of my first pet peeves, which is the way our relationship starts with a lot of customers are a lot of potential customers is they call, we meet them, if we are working out of a showroom, they'll come into the showroom. But the beginning of the exchange starts with them, usually telling us all the reasons that they don't need us. First, they'll say they know exactly what they want. But that statement is just so patently sort of silly, because without our help, whatever they want is a very uninformed opinion about what they want. So some designers get so tired of people telling them things like that, that they'll start quizzing the customer, just to sort of make them aware of the fact that they have no idea what they want, like what kind of wood Did you want? Well, I think I wanted maybe mahogany, right? Well, oh, so you want to get the most expensive wood, you're looking to spend a lot of money then. Right? And will will not unnecessarily you know, that wasn't what I was saying that goes well what kind of color you know, and they just quiz them and comes rapidly apparent to most people that you know what you need help. That's why you really want to come to a designer.

Mark Mitten  2:54  
You know, I know when you go to a car mechanic, if you say I think I need a new engine, they'll put a new engine in for you. But if you say to him, hey, my car's not running and my turn out, you just need new spark plugs.

Paul McAlary  3:06  
That's very true. To follow up with that is part of being a designer, is actually getting customers to make good decisions. So educating the customers is really part of the process. One of my biggest pet gripes with the designers that work for me, or as having been a department manager or design manager for several bunch of different firms. One of my pet peeves is when the designer is has sold the kitchen, or is giving it to me for my approval. And it's a horrible design, they'll always say the same thing, that it's what the customer wanted. But being a good designer is getting the customer to want a good design. So how do we get them to do that, and different designers have different techniques, Ray, who's worked for us and sadly, has passed away, used to maybe almost shame his customers into good designs by saying, Well, this is very stylish. Do you want it to do what this is the way a person with good taste would do it? And you want to do it? How? So that was sort of his his technique?

Mark Mitten  4:15  
I take it that's not the sort of approach that you use? Well,

Paul McAlary  4:19  
I'm much worse than that. I'm very blunt, and would say, well, here's what's wrong with that idea. Right? And here's how we can do it better. And then why would you want to do it that essentially I'm doing what Ray's doing. I'm being sort of really blunt. We once had a customer when uh, Chris, I always described Chris as a designer is his technique is being just a nicer version of me. So when one time I said to one of Chris's customer who was talking to me and and he was talking about doing something that he thought was a bad idea, and I laughed and I said, Well, you know, that's not a very good idea. You're lucky you're not my customer. It might have been difficult hearing what I said and then he's said, Oh, no, no, no. Chris tells me my ideas are stupid to me. But I'm sure what he said that he was saying, in a very nice way, Chris would somehow express that, whereas I would, you know, be a little bit more blunt. I'm sure that saves time. Well, that's true. And that's one of the reasons why I'm doing it the blunt way, is that it saves a lot of time, it cuts to the chase. And sometimes if it really doesn't make any sense, and you can show the customer why it doesn't make any sense. If they're adamant about doing something that doesn't make any sense. Well, that's a big red flag. It's good to get out of the way quickly. I would say that the one story I always like to tell is the designer, who's actually probably the top selling designer, maybe probably in the United States, he certainly has been over time he used to work at Home Depot, where he was the highest selling designer for the entire home depot chain, and the first designer to sell over a million dollars in cabinets maybe 35 years ago. And then he went to Lowe's.

Mark Mitten  6:00  
Cabinets are pretty expensive. Is that like 10 kitchens?

Paul McAlary  6:07  
Well, 30 years ago, when cabinets were much less expensive. I can't even imagine how many kitchens, it was it was probably way over 100 kitchens. Wow. So in one year, but that's amazing. But his name is Doug Mottershead dog I've worked with for a couple of years. And we work together it was fascinating watching the process of this, the highest selling designer, because he wasn't blunt, and he didn't say things to people, he would make people through the sheer act of patience, make people discover things for themselves. Wow. It would even start before they even worked on the design. They would walk into the showroom. They might say to me, yeah, hi, I'd like to work on my design, I have my measurements here. And then I'd say, Oh, that's wonderful. But the way we really work is we always I want to come out to your house and I want to measure first, then we'll make we work by appointment. So we'll make an appointment, be happy to schedule an appointment to come out to your house and measure. And even as I'm just saying these things, I can see their eyes glazing over. It's not what they want. They've arrived in the showroom, they want to sit down immediately. And then they'll just eyes will start wandering over to Doug. And then Doug would immediately you know, say Hi, can I help you? And they would leave me go right over to Doug and say, Well, I have my measurements, I wanted to work on a design. He'd say, Oh, wonderful, sit right down. And so they'd sit down. And what would proceed would be the beginning of this process where he would fool them into requesting and doing all the things that he needs. So he says, Oh, you have your measurements, let me see them. And then he'd look at the measurements. And he'd say something like, I see that the wall one was 10 feet long. And the other wall is 12 feet long. Now we work in inches. So does that mean that this one was exactly 120 inches and the other was 144. And then you'd see them sort of think about it for a little bit and then decide that they just wanted to proceed? And they say yes. And he'd say, oh, okay, wonderful. That's what a coincidence that is. So now, I see that neither of these walls has a window when it is there. There's no windows in either one of these walls. And then the customer would say, well, there's a window on that wall. And he'd say, Oh, how big do you think it is? And then the customer would hold their arms up. And you know, they'd maybe be three feet apart. And his dog would say, That looks about three feet, should I put in 36 inches? And the customer would say yes. And then Doug would say, does that include the trim on the window? Because as a kitchen designer, we always have to count for the trim. And then the the customer would say yes. And then he'd say, Okay, now where do you think it is on the wall? Is it you know? And at this point, the customer would usually say, could you come over and measure my kitchen? And then Doug would say Mrs. Jones, I would love to visit your home. And then that would be the part of the process started.

Mark Mitten  9:13  
Can I just say one thing? Like, I would much prefer your approach. At some point, even if I'm a moron, I realize I'm being handled as opposed to talk to honestly and I personally I hate that I much prefer somebody be honest with me.

Paul McAlary  9:27  
I'm telling you something. I don't know that his cause Doug's customers. Maybe I'm doing it. I mean, maybe I'm I'm doing it with not with the meaningfulness at where you're at not as believable as he did. But he would go this would go through with his process the whole way through where the customer wanted to do something that wasn't a good idea. And then he'd show it to them. And then he'd say, Well, what do you think? And then they would say, Well, I definitely think it's better that way because I agree. And then he'd go through the whole process and at the end, after you know, maybe three months Later, when some Mrs. Mrs. Jones first walked into the showroom, Doug is now selling Mrs. Jones a kitchen. And Doug says Mrs. Jones as she's getting out the paperwork for her to buy this kitchen. He says Mrs. Jones, you have designed a beautiful kitchen. And I would always lean over to take a look at this beautiful kitchen. And all of Doug's kitchens all had this sort of a signature Mottershead look. And it all looked the same. It was another one of Doug's kitchens. Mrs. Jones had a kitchen that looked like Doug had designed it from head to tail. But you know,

Mark Mitten  10:32  
she designed it and felt good about it. And

Paul McAlary  10:35  
you know, if people really feel part of the process, and own it and feel that they were contributed to their own design, that's certainly the road to them being the happiest, which is, you know, but how much patience does that require requires a heck of a lot more than

Mark Mitten  10:49  
either of us.

Paul McAlary  10:53  
But that's also why the guy is, when I even call up every once in a blue moon, I call the call the showroom where Doug works. And a lot of times the showroom manager slash owner will be the will answer the phone. And the second he hears my voice. He says, I'll let you talk to Doug, but you're not going to try to take them away from us all. And I have to I have to promise I won't I won't try to do

Mark Mitten  11:18  
that. So what's your what's your second most pet peeve? peevish peeve?

Paul McAlary  11:24  
I guess I have a big problem with a lot of companies that are builders. So like Toll Brothers is one of the biggest offenders. So first off builders all will

Mark Mitten  11:36  
have Toll Brothers is a homebuilder. One of the largest in the country, right?

Paul McAlary  11:40  
Yeah, one of the largest home and huge in Pennsylvania, I think they started in this region. So they're their biggest around here. They're notorious for beautiful homes with terrible layouts and terrible kitchens. And the reason is that they want to buy directly from the cabinet company. And they let their architects that design the houses design their kitchens, and they don't want any intrusion by anybody knowledgeable essentially, is what I would say.

Mark Mitten  12:08  
So you got builders building, cheap, standard kitchen with cabinets that they can buy in bulk, at an affordable price without doing a design. That? I mean, what would you add to the design that they're not doing? Well,

Paul McAlary  12:24  
I mean, the designs are just patently terrible. I mean, you know, some of them, they, since the architects that do the designs for them don't know any of the design rules, kitchen design rules, they often break every fundamental kitchen design rule. I know, one whole community had a gigantic kitchen with a gigantic Island, and they put the sink in the island, and the refrigerator directly and back to the sink three feet away. So that means if you're trying to work at the sink, anytime somebody goes to the refrigerator, you have to vacate that place. It's like you have a huge kitchen, you could put anything anywhere you wanted to, if you had to pick the worst place to put the refrigerator, that's where it would be. And then you made it to close on top of it.

Mark Mitten  13:07  
So if Hannah was making dinner, you know, I would have to interrupt her like six times to get a beer and would destroy Yeah,

Paul McAlary  13:14  
that's true workflow. These builders are very resistant to getting help from kitchen designers. And in fact, Toll Brothers was offered by the cabinet companies that they used free design help from them, because they felt bad that these designs were so bad, and they wouldn't take help from the cabinet brand themselves when they're doing their designs. It's a very common thing with builders, and they don't serve as their customers. So not only do they charge huge, ridiculous amounts of money for any upgrade that you might want. So if you wanted to add, let's say, Dovetail drawers to your kitchen, well that costs in the real world. So

Mark Mitten  13:54  
Dovetail drawers a type of joinery where the front of the drawer is, is dovetail down as opposed to like surface now.

Paul McAlary  14:02  
Yeah, or it could be nailed that could be glued, it could be a little bit of both, but without this interlocking dovetails that interlock with each other, so to preventing the draw from pulling apart. And it's the own even the from the least expensive brand to the most expensive brand week every every one of them has Dovetail drawers, but the builders always choose a brand that has terrible drawers that you have to upgrade. And then if you upgrade, the upgrade should cost maybe $50 A drawer, but they'll charge you 1000s and 1000s of dollars just to get this upgrade feature. And then same thing with plywood construction. Same thing with all the things that we carry standard. The builders have the lowest grade of cabinets and then they make their homeowners upgrade into anything significant. In fact, in the last year alone, we had two Toll Brothers homes that the customer bought the home with the least expensive cabinets and the least equipped kitchens, once they took possession of the home, then the contractor came in and rip that whole kitchen out gave it to Habitat for Humanity. Then they installed the kitchen that we had designed. The whole kitchen was just worthless, to me, at least in those customers minds.

Mark Mitten  15:14  
Wow, that's crazy. So builders that don't have good kitchen design knowledge and aren't interested in hiring it or building it internally. That's, that's terrible.

Paul McAlary  15:24  
Well, I mean, that's part of the thing we sort of say, as it's one of our videos that mark that you're on playing the engineer. But on that video, Doug, who's also on that video, who I just finished talking about, says in that video, that people just don't know what they don't know. So when you're a builder, you think you know, stuff that you have no idea you have no idea how bad your kitchen design is, because you don't know anything about kitchen design, and you're resistant to getting any help. And it translates into terrible designs terrible value for people's homes. They don't also stand behind the cabinet. So they buy the cabinets directly from the manufacturer. But if you have a warranty issue with that cabinet brand or anything else, you can't go back to the builder, their responsibility is over once the house is sold, and certainly once a year goes by. So now we get any kinds of cabinets that we carry, like we carry a brand Timberlake that Ryan home sells, Ryan Homes directs their customers to come to us with their problems, because they don't want to have anything to do with them. So it's a little bit infuriating. So the whole builder market is a little bit frustrating for us, which we do another.

Mark Mitten  16:30  
Alright, so we got the customer that thinks they know what they're talking about making it hard to build a kitchen, we got builders who build crappy kitchens. What's the third one?

Paul McAlary  16:42  
Well, I think part of the first one too, we should include the designers that sell the kitchen, a bad kitchen, and then tell me that it's what the customer wanted. Because if they're good designers, then what they should be doing is using whatever technique that is that they use, they're making or helping their customers to make where they want to be blunt, like you're not

Mark Mitten  17:04  
blaming the customer, and you're blaming the design, draft or Batis Jiang a person around a good design that works for them.

Paul McAlary  17:10  
Yeah, you know what I say? When we have company meetings, if one of the designers puts up a design that's particularly poor, I would say none of my customers have a design this bad. And why is that? So how I negotiated was or somehow I found my way to a design that doesn't have any of these problems. So there's, there's a way to get there. Whether it's the patience of a saint like Doug Mottershead or myself being blunt, or a raise, so to shaming people into it, or whatever your technique is, there's lots of different techniques, but the goal is always the same, to get people to pick good.

Mark Mitten  17:43  
And if they if you let them pick a bad design, they're going to figure it out. At some point, they're going to be unhappy.

Paul McAlary  17:48  
Well, no one ever complains when you convince them to get a good design. Right? They only blame you, when finally they realize they're bad design. Occasionally, we'll get the phone call with Well, you're the expert. Why did you let me do this? Alright, which is part and parcel with maybe one of my next pet peeves, which is the reason sometimes that a customer gives for picking a bad design is, well, it may be a bad design, but it's way better than my old kitchen. Right? That standard of comparison isn't supposed to be your horribly designed old kitchen and anything better than that is a good kitchen. It should be here's the best kitchen you can get. Right? And now look at that compared to the kitchen that you have. I thought it was like, Oh my God. It's alright.

Mark Mitten  18:43  
So we're on the air honey. This is having my wife who's Paul's one of his oldest friends from college. Hello. Not lying. You're not lying? If we want

Unknown Speaker  19:01  
all right, goodbye.

Paul McAlary  19:04  
We should keep that in. Yeah, so the standard should never be that you're comparing a kitchen to should it shouldn't be anything better than the horrible kitchen I used to have is fine. It should be here's the best kitchen you could have had. And now compare this bad design to that thing, right. Which brings us to the SR pet peeve of that is customers that want to do a bad design. And we get this all the time. They want to do a terrible design, but they want to buy the most expensive cabinet brands from us, or they want to get the most expensive appliances. So they may not want to take out a wall or move a doorway or even move a window which would totally make the whole design so much better and make their home incredibly more valuable. But they don't want to do that even though that's two or $3,000. They'd like to get custom cabinets from us that are $20,000 more expensive, and they'd like to buy professional wolf Viking subzero appliances that are $25,000 and appliances, they want to spend all the money on that they just don't want to spend the money on the one thing that makes their house more valuable, which is design itself. They can't look past just spending money on things, right? They understand that

Mark Mitten  20:13  
it's a status thing. If you got the Viking and all that, and really super expensive people come over and they know you spent the money and it looks well,

Paul McAlary  20:21  
but then your kitchen will look and function terribly. And unfortunately, even if you're blind to that, probably your neighbors and friends aren't, it just makes no sense at first, get the design to be as good as it can be, and then splurge on these other things as you can afford. But you're certainly not going to break your budget, just with moving things around or making design change set

Mark Mitten  20:41  
on your pockets all the time, like people overestimate the cost of moving a wall or construction things to change your layout are not necessarily that expensive, especially when you're talking about a $50,000 remodel.

Paul McAlary  20:54  
Yeah, and a lot of times, it's not intuitive, but they're free. So like people say, Well, I don't move when I move the gas line, you know, that's going to be expensive. Well, let's say the gas line is $500. There's certainly some contractors we work with that will charge you less than $500. To move a gas line, the plumber is going to come to your house to do a whole bunch of plumbing work, he'll be able to move the gas line probably in two hours. Certainly if you got charged $500 For that it was a profit making thing for the contractor. But if you don't move the gas line, the stove has to stay in that location. And then maybe all of a sudden you end up with a bunch of narrow cabinets all because we can't be designing around where the stove is. And then a bunch of narrow cabinets are much more expensive than being able to just fit a bigger cabinet in its place. And the price of cabinets is so expensive that you might be spending $1,000 More for cabinetry and get a bad design all because you're not moving a gas line that may be question at worst $500.

Mark Mitten  21:50  
And you can't expect a person who doesn't do this all the time to know that.

Paul McAlary  21:54  
And not only that, but it's one another pet peeve I hadn't even written down on my all my pages and pages and pages of MPs. But HGTV makes us crazy as designers because they give people all the wrong information.

Mark Mitten  22:08  
You know I watched this morning HDTV no demo Reno there basically is a redo the kitchen and they're there one premise is that they can't move anything.

Paul McAlary  22:19  
Right. Literally What's that this

Mark Mitten  22:21  
morning? Yeah, it's called no demo remodel,

Paul McAlary  22:24  
which is which is no demo, no brain remodel.

Mark Mitten  22:28  
She is She is charming and fun. But why? Why can't you move stuff?

Paul McAlary  22:33  
Well, you know, and that's the problem with all these HGTV shows is two reasons. The personalities that are on this, when they call us up and they're looking for free cabinets. They call them the talent. But the talent really doesn't have any talents in kitchen design. That's not what they ever did for a living if they have a show. And so with their limited knowledge, they are just creating horrible kitchens that some people think are attractive, and they're only comparing it to maybe what was there before again, and not being able to because they're not kitchen designers themselves to be able to see what a real professional

Mark Mitten  23:08  
because she went with custom cabinets without considering like not custom cabinets, like why why would you go in with custom cabinets unless you have to?

Paul McAlary  23:20  
Well, a lot of times people that aren't experienced get custom cabinets, because they design the kitchen based on sizes that they come up with themselves. And then when they give it to the kitchen designer, every size is just isn't a standard size. So if you only can do this design and custom cabinets, even though it's a terrible design, which is right back to the same thing that drives me crazy, a terrible design, inexpensive cabinetry. So and then the other thing in HTDP, is they always have to have a crisis. That's how they you make the show intriguing. Oh, Mrs. Jones, I didn't realize this was a load bearing wall, you're going to have to reevaluate your budget, it's going to cost us $20,000 To take out this wall. First off a load bearing wall, maybe two or $3,000 to take out. But now you're telling the general public every time I'm talking to customers is like, well, this isn't I'm not taking out any load bearing walls, or because they've seen these things on HGTV. In reality, if I was hired a contractor, and he got to the end of my kitchen remodel, and you start to rip and stuff out. And he says Mr. maxillary, this is unsurprisingly, this is a load bearing wall, and it's going to cost you $20,000 I'd say hey, it's gonna cost you $20,000 More if you didn't know this is a load bearing wall, then what kind of professional are you I wouldn't pay anybody more money because they didn't have the professionalism to realize when a wall was load bearing and when it wasn't.

Mark Mitten  24:41  
So would you recommend a structural engineer or contractor should know that

Paul McAlary  24:46  
any contractor should know that any kitchen designer should probably know it. And usually you're going to need an engineer in the end to do the evaluation and determining how big the beam is going to be. But you don't hire the engineer first. If you design the kitchen with the designer, then you get prices from the contractors. And then the contractor that you decide to hire probably has his own engineer, maybe his brother in law, or somebody that he has a relationship with, that he'll be able to have, do the drawings that you need much less expensively than you as a not a professional person going out looking for engineers first is going to do and heaven forbid, you might even hire the engineer and the engineer might come back and tell you it's not a load bearing wall. So don't put the cart before the horse, do the design work, the load bearing wall and not load bearing wall isn't, again, going to be the thing that breaks your budget, but you want to get the things that you want, and then hire the architects and the engineers that you need to do that project, don't go directly to the end person that doesn't know anything about kitchen design to help you first, that's just wasting their time and wasting your money,

Mark Mitten  25:53  
you have a design and you need to make sure that the floor on top of the kitchen doesn't fall into the kitchen. But you can't envision how to do that until they know what the design looks.

Paul McAlary  26:05  
Yeah, and even like customers of mine that want to do additions, they'll have an architect duel drawings for a whole addition on your house, the architect doesn't even know what stuff costs. So they've done the whole drawings of the thing. And the first time they see me, they want me to design a kitchen in the space. And I'm looking at all these drawings with every light fixture put in every location and light switches. And it's a horrible kitchen, because you don't want to go 10 feet out, you need to go no, maybe 12 feet wide instead of 10 feet out and eight feet out. Or do you need the addition to be a different shape or a different size to accommodate a better kitchen. And then you don't even have any numbers yet. So I'll look at the design. And I'll say, well, the additions looks like it's going to be 70 grand plus, of course, the money that you spend on the cabinets and everything that's 70 grand, well, what was the whole project gonna cost, you know, with the cabinets and the countertops and appliances and everything else and a $70,000 addition. And then you still got to install the cabinetry and everything. So you've got maybe another $15,000 in labor, for running all the electric and all the work that has to go into the house and taken out the wall to do the addition. And then you have maybe $30,000 and stuff that you're buying between cabinets and countertops and appliances and flooring. So you add all this stuff together your projects 120 grand or something. And that 120 grand isn't in their budget. So they already paid to have this architect, do all these drawings for a project that isn't within their budget. So what you do is, if you're working with the kitchen designer, we sort of give you the numbers. And then you say, well, if it's really that much money, I'm not even going to do it. So let's see what I can do inside my house, or $120,000 is good, that's fine with me. Let's design it. And then we design the kitchen, the shape and the size that you're going to need to get you the good kitchen. And then when you bring into the architect, how much less work does he have to do now that he knows the size that's going to work with your particular home? It's just a different series of events, all the same people are involved. But you're going to the kitchen expert first. And then to the individual architects or engineers and contractors that you need second. Make sense? Should we try to tackle another one?

Unknown Speaker  28:17  
Sure. Well, I

Paul McAlary  28:17  
guess this is one that is a pet peeve of mine that we don't really have a problem at mainline kitchen design with because the designers everybody that works for me is professional and would certainly know better. But at a lot of places. Designers first off don't know anything about design and are bad convincing their customers things. And also they have a strange and warped view of the legal profession and how this manifests itself. Yes. So oftentimes customers want to do things that are doing

Mark Mitten  28:53  
well let me get to shrink. So we got customers, architects and builders. Now we're going from lawyers,

Paul McAlary  28:59  
now we're going for lawyers. Well, now we're just going for what the rationale that some kitchen designers will use to sell customers kitchens that are dangerous. So customers come to us all the time. I think a few months ago it was we had a customer that wanted to have their cooktop right on the end of their island. So that anybody walking past the edge of the island, it was a gas cooktop could set themselves on fire. So legally, you have to have at least 12 inches between the end of the countertop and the cooktop so people can't set themselves on fire. But this guy and his family, it's what they had, and they wanted it again. And we said we can't sell you something that's dangerous. And you know, he said, Well, I'm totally willing to sign off that, you know, you've warned me this. And then you know, this is what other designers will do. They think that they're protecting themselves by if a customer is so adamant that they want to do something dangerous. You can't have them sign off saying you've told them it's dangerous, because now if they do such things

Mark Mitten  29:59  
When just admitted liability, it just admitted liability. So if you're

Paul McAlary  30:03  
a lawyer, you're laughing right now, right? Because the designer is supposed to be the expert, if you've warned them that this thing is dangerous, and now they do set themselves on fire. Now, you've already lost the lawsuit, there's nothing you can do, you're just gonna go straight to damages. Right?

Mark Mitten  30:19  
So Mr. Designer, did you feel like it was a possibility that you could catch yourself on fire with this design? Yes. But oh, thank you. No further question. That's

Paul McAlary  30:27  
right. So you can't have a customer sign away. Something that's dangerous, being okay. In their kitchen, it means that as a designer, you've just put your profit ahead of their safety. So you can't ever do that. Sometimes customers will come to us with plans done someplace else. And it will be on the plan that they bring us the sign off that customer has been warned that this is dangerous customer has been one. And it's like, well, we're not selling you have that. Right. So you're laughing about lawyers, there's another legal story that I think is sort of funny, people come to us all the time with these designs wanting us to price them out. And we don't price that other companies designs, because we always want to start the same way. We want to come out to your house and measure after we've measured the house and taken a look at the house, we can then come up with what we think are good designs,

Mark Mitten  31:19  
not to mention what they're doing is screwing the other company. It's a maybe a few dollars on cabinets by bringing you to design and they did all the work. And then they said can you sell me these cabinets for 1%? Less and you didn't spend any time designing it? Well, I guess

Paul McAlary  31:32  
that would theoretically be true. But always the designs are terrible that we get brought anyway. So we would never price it out. Usually, just because we would want them to see a better design. But a lot of times people are adamant. They come to us they say well, we're always on the internet, you got you guys have the best reviews. So I wanted to have you price out this kitchen. Well, that's not how our process works. Well, I have my kitchen design the way I want. Can you price it just out? No. I mean, that's the whole point is we have a whole system. That's why we get good reviews is because we do it a certain way. So that everybody's happy. In the end. We don't just price out bad designs, people have done other places. So one time, I had a lawyer, I guess one of the reasons he might have been a lawyer was because he was a little bit argumentative. And unfortunately, he came to me where was talking to me was also equally argumentative. So we have two argumentative people talking and he wants for me to price out this kitchen. That's a bad design. And I'm telling him why we don't do it. And he's telling me why he doesn't need me that this is the design he wants. And this is the design I want. I will why would you want a bad design? This is the design I want. It's not your business what I want, right. And I say to him, Well, have you ever heard the adage that if you represent yourself in court, you have a full for an attorney? And he goes, he goes, yes. I said, and you probably agree with that. Right? He goes, Yeah. I said, Well, if you design your own kitchen, you have a full for designer. And then he said, I've never been so insulted in my life boom and slammed down. But you know why people would think that that's not the case. I mean, 30 years of experience and design knowledge and cabinetry knowledge has to translate into some information that's going to help you it would make no sense. Otherwise,

Mark Mitten  33:17  
there's a chance that you could go to designer who has been doing it 20 years, and the design will still suck. But there's a zero chance that somebody that never designed a kitchen is going to get it right the first time.

Paul McAlary  33:30  
That's true. And if the design sucks, and the designer is been doing it for 30 years, I will leave this designer nameless, but a designer that I used to work with, right. I know a guy like that I used to work with him. He was more knowledgeable than I am about cabinetry and knew as much as I do about design, and everything else. And he's been doing it since he was 23 years old. And he's my age. So he's been doing it for 40 years. But his kitchens, almost always with terrible designs. And the reason was, is that he's too nice. And he didn't have a good technique for getting his customers to get good designs. He was sort of a little bit of a meek kind of guy and nonconfrontational. And so his customers got the design that they thought of themselves all the time. And so they would, here's this guy that's knowledgeable. If the company that I worked for, they had, at one point, a design house where a multimillion dollar home was built. And they needed to have the most amazing kitchen in this design house. And there were 15 designers that worked for the company. Well they gave it to me, because I'm not going to have to consult the customer who's going to be able to design the most amazing kitchen world. He can do that. It's just that when you put a customer in the mix, he can't control that customer. I just mentioned his name.

Speaker 1  34:50  
Yes. Should he should I can you believe that? Boop, boop, boop. Just use the first name. Yes, I know. But

Mark Mitten  34:57  
so he should get a job with Toll Brothers. A bunch of problems.

Paul McAlary  35:02  
Could be too. So I'm looking at

Mark Mitten  35:06  
just speeding awards, I can leave Toll Brothers. Oh, sure.

Paul McAlary  35:10  
Now we've all been there. So you throw Toll Brothers under the bus all the time, because they do so many things wrong. And you know, my wife, Julie, who is sometimes my advisor will say, I'll say, Julie, can I say this? And she said it was her response usually will be, is it true? And I'll say, yes, she goes, then you can say. So if it's true, you're not really liable. Right? If the thing that you're saying there's a

Mark Mitten  35:36  
lot of people that spend a lot of time in court for century stuff, but

Paul McAlary  35:41  
we have great cabinets on our website, we raised 120 or 130 brands now. And some of the brands we rate poorly. And some of the brands, many brands we don't even carry we rate incredibly well. consumers use our review report on cabinets, something like 10 times more often than they use Consumer Reports. I mean, it's not even close. Why are people use our reviews? I know there's been at least several brands of cabinets that have changed how they make their cabinets. And I know that at least one factor involved was how we reviewed them. Wow, our review analysis of different cabinet brands have certainly helped our industry in making people more aware of how to make cabinets and changing how cabinet companies sort of value good construction of cabinets. Good. I'm looking at my list here. Well, I you know, why don't we make this the last one. And it's a little bit of a pet peeve. And I think it's a pet peeve for all of us as designers, is a lot of customers will come to us. And they'll say, Well, what if I don't want to buy cabinets from you, and I just want you to do the design. And usually, yeah, they'll use us as the designers. But the point is, is that just even requesting that just shows an absolute lack of understanding of what a kitchen designer does. First of all, when you design a kitchen, you have to design it in a brand. Every brand has its own idiosyncrasies, and every brand has his advantages and disadvantages. And even determining what's the brand that a customer is going to get from us, we carry eight different brands from very, very inexpensive stock cabinets, all the way up to the most expensive custom cabinets, but figuring out what's within the customer's budget, which brand has the door style and finish that they want with the best alternatives and the best things, there's so many aspects to being a good kitchen designer that are involved, the simple design, part of it is really just one part of the equation. And you

Mark Mitten  37:47  
would think you could introduce errors just from going from the design to the cabinet ordering if it wasn't the same person because you know, there's 100 parts, well, not even with everything else, but

Paul McAlary  37:59  
not even that. But all the conversations that you have with the customer that created the design, if you're now buying it from another person, well, that person wasn't privy to any of those conversations. So they don't know the why of why you might be doing something. And they might change something with not knowing why, as a designer, you had made that selection, because it's some other consideration that's not there. And then the most ridiculous part of it too is we're not releasing plans and drawings to any customer, which is what you certainly would need the price at out of the places without a customer putting 10% down, right, and we're already a very reasonable place to buy cabinets. If a customer ever put 10% down towards their cabinets, then there is no place that could go in the world where they could get cabinets of equal quality for the same price, because they're going to apply their 10% towards their cabinet order. So even if their brother in law works for craft made or something like that, it won't matter craft may not selling cabinets, they might have some kind of employee discount or something like that, that he can avail himself of it will never equal 10% of the cabinet order that we did. And you will also avoid all those other problems. That is the brain that designed it is the brain that's ordering it right is the brain that's confirming the order when the cabinet company sends it back is the same company that has another person checking that person's order that knows the brand and everything else. And that the brain that designed it is there to help the contractor when the contractors installing it. And to answer

Mark Mitten  39:34  
your question. You have contractors that you work with regularly. So yeah, it's a team that puts it together. You got one interface that you got to deal with the guy that designed it, and the contractor is talking to you and the customer and

Paul McAlary  39:48  
you could have us recommend a contract or you could hire your own contractor. But it's still if it's a new contract that we've never worked with, it's that much more important that we're available to explain to that contractor. Why I, they want to do this install this kitchen this way, and be available to help. That's why we don't sell cabinets and kitchens outside our service area. I mean, we get calls from people in California in all over the country who would love to buy a kitchen from us. But we can't sell them a kitchen that there because if they have a problem, we can't jump in the car drive over and say, Oh, look what you did you installed this wrong or that wrong, we don't have a rep, that we have a relationship with that there's a problem with the cabinet or something could come out and warranty it. And there's 1000 different reasons. But just the asking that question is, would you design a kitchen, and we wouldn't buy the cabinet from you. It's just it doesn't make any sense. And anybody that actually is doing that, since it doesn't make sense. And we would tell them that it wouldn't make sense. And then if they went ahead and did it anyway, they would really get the kitchen that they deserved. Because they it's like some people you just get we have a conversation, we explain all this data, we they pay the 10% deposit, and then they run off to buy their cabinets someplace that they think they're better, you know, might be an Amish guy that builds cabinets in his garage or something that's not a cost efficient way to get cabinets, no kitchen place has a very small carpenter that builds cabinets for them, it's not cost effective, and you don't get anywhere near the same quality in the finish, you don't get the same quality in the construction of the cabinets. Once it's an individual, that guy can die, that guy can retire, you don't have a warranty that has any meaning at all. So whatever it just, it's just a silly concept. And anybody that asked for it, then is not being served. If we were to do it with me, we would just tell them, we don't do that. And we'd encourage them not to do it. But sometimes every once in a blue moon, somebody does it anyway, they pay the deposit, and then they go and get cabinets made someplace else or do something and it's always going to end up turning out poorly for them, I would think,

Mark Mitten  41:53  
well, it sounds like a lot of effort to do the wrong thing. So I have a puppy, can I share a puppy? Yes, because I find that cabinets are not that useful and very expensive. So my pet peeve is actually having kitchen cabinets in the kitchen. So I would always think that the most sensible approach would be to just use eight dishwashers, which are actually cheaper than cabinets. And you never have to take the dishes out of the dishwasher to put them in cabinets are a lot of people doing that. Now I know it's a big trend, you know, in my mind.

Paul McAlary  42:30  
Well, a lot of people watch the video where you play the engineer that does that. But they always laugh and say, well, it's something that said they always say, well, that's so that's an interesting concept. But I don't I don't think anybody really thinks a bit as

Unknown Speaker  42:47  
but I know you do.

Mark Mitten  42:48  
I do. I had Hannah not intervened, we wouldn't have six dishwash.

Paul McAlary  42:55  
What I would say is you haven't worked your way through the fact that when you have eight dishwashers, then at some point in time, every one of your dishwashers has some things in it. So you're going to have to transfer from one dishwasher to the next dishwasher to combine to free up all your dishwashers again,

Mark Mitten  43:15  
oh, well, then you just didn't put enough dishwashers in. Just keep adding this is pretty straightforward. All right, Paul, anything else you want to talk about?

Paul McAlary  43:26  
That's good if we went over most of our most of our stuff.

Mark Mitten  43:30  
Well, I am sure that was very informative. And once again, if anyone is has any questions about their kitchen or kitchen design call in the poll on Fridays between two and four between two and four Eastern Standard Time and what's the phone number?

Paul McAlary  43:48  
610-500-4071.

Mark Mitten  43:52  
All right. Thank you, Paul. 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