Mark Mitten 0:05 Are you doing a major renovation, including a new kitchen? You are way over budget? You'd better call Paul. Paul McAlary 0:32 Hello, Michael, can you hear me? Michael 0:33 I can't. Paul, how are you? Paul McAlary 0:35 Great. I'm looking at your floor plan. So do you want to start with design stuff first? Or do you want to start with talking about cabinet brands? Because you were considering grayble cabinets, which is accustomed very expensive custom cabinet. But you also mentioned that you wanted inset cabinets. Once you're into inset cabinets, there's not going to be an inexpensive brand. Michael 1:01 Well, yeah, maybe we could just start with the with the cabinet brands. And by the way, thanks for having me here. Paul McAlary 1:07 Oh, yeah, no problem. Do you also, do you happen to know how high your ceiling is? Michael 1:12 standard height 88 feet. Paul McAlary 1:14 So since you have an eight foot high ceiling, it is not a compelling reason why you have to be getting custom cabinets. Other than if you want an inset, the custom cabinet companies are going to be the only ones that do that well. So you really might want to decide how or how important inset cabinets are to you. And then what kind of color and door style and finish were you considering? Speaker 1 1:42 Well, the the door style themselves, I don't think we're going to be anything fancy. But we were did want to do custom colors on both the cabinets and the island. Paul McAlary 1:56 What kind of custom colors? I mean, Michael 1:58 they would be akin to say a Benjamin Moore color. So yeah, Paul McAlary 2:01 so you're gonna be doubling the cost of your cabinetry, essentially, if you're going to get inset and special custom colors, you know, and that will be why is to get the inset and to get the custom colors. And they are painted of a painted finish. So your cabinets and your finishes aren't going to be any more durable probably than they would be with a less expensive brand. You won't be able to get inset cabinets at least unless you're in an in an expensive line. So like if I'm looking at your kitchen, I guess where are you? Are you in? Like, I think when you called us up in upstate New York or lower like Scarsdale or something like that, right? Michael 2:42 Yeah, in New York upstate. Paul McAlary 2:45 So that's you're probably in a relatively expensive area. I'm looking at your plans. And your plans look like in a custom cabinet line. If you were getting this design as it is, you might have 50 to depending on the colors that you're picking and everything else. 50 to $60,000 in cabinets. Speaker 1 3:10 Yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's, that seems to be pretty much it may even be slightly cheaper. I'd have to check the price. But I think the way the pricing is working on the colors is they will do the color there is a percentage of charge, total purchase price. And then you have to test the color first, which you pay for. It gets applied to the cabinet's, which is fair. Paul McAlary 3:33 Yeah, so I mean graybles expensive cabinet brands. So when I say 60 Grable is on the high end of custom cabinetry, so you could probably do the same thing maybe in a high, high end semi custom brand. And I think medallion now does inset cabinets. So a brand like medallion, or fieldstone, or star Mark, those brands will do inset cabinets now, and they would just be the absolute least expensive brands that would probably do inset cabinets, and also custom colors. And so if you went to one of those kinds of brands, you might get into the 50 to 60 number, whereas in Grable you might be at the 70 Plus number because it's such an expensive cabinet brand. Now the flip side of that is if you went to a less expensive cabinet brand and sucked it up and didn't get inset cabinets and got full overlay cabinets, and you pick the brand that had lots of color choices. I mean we carry are just starting to carry a brand called integrity that has lots of nice colors. You couldn't pick your own color, you'd have to pick a color. One of their colors, they'll do custom colors too, and there'll be like a big price up charge. But if you pick one of their regular colors, you might be all of a sudden under 30,000 dollars for cabinets. Right? Speaker 1 5:01 Yeah, no, I mean, for us, it's really weighing the, the the cost and the benefit of keeping the custom color versus not doing that and how much to save first? Yeah. And what kind of custom color areas of the house? Yeah, what Paul McAlary 5:18 kind of custom colors are we talking about? Speaker 1 5:20 I mean, one of the ones a very dark, blue, almost black and one's going to be an off white color. Paul McAlary 5:28 So you know, I would tell you that more spent the off white color. Doesn't make much sense being that picky. Because the only people that would really be picky would be people that wouldn't understand that the lighting is going to affect that color so much. So if a cabinet brand had an awful another off white finish, that wasn't the perfect finished, you happen to like, Well, you haven't even considered what what kind of low voltage lighting that you're getting, that's going to be you know, either cast a yellow gray blue hue on the whole kitchen. And that will change the look of your white cabinets dramatically. And even the things rooms, the walls, the paint, the colors that you paint, the walls and stuff will affect that color so much, that it doesn't make a lot of sense to get too anal about an off white finish. Only because you can address it slightly if this if the color that the cabinet company had, you wanted your white to be a little yellower, you could just get an LED bulb for your fixture that had some yellow in it. And suddenly your cows look yellowy. But to get very, very blue. That will be the challenge. Right? Speaker 1 6:45 Yeah, no, it's it's something challenge. I mean, it actually I think you raise an excellent point, because the offline is more of a, I don't want to say neutral. But it's more of a typical color that I could see not having a problem matching or otherwise taken care of with the lighting. But the darker blue black color is a much more sort of custom color. But it's I mean, really, we're at the, at the point now where we're trying to weigh the potential options. We thought we were set on the, the cabinets, and now we're trying to read let's, let's talk a Paul McAlary 7:21 little bit about the addition. So do you know, I look at your addition? And does this addition include any deck or anything outside or just a landing or how much there's Speaker 1 7:36 just going to be a landing there was a drawing on there for a patio, which we're going to forego do the the cost involved. But, you know, I mean, we have a 1950s colonial house, it's a great house, it's constructed very well, they made it with steel beams if they don't do any more generally, because it's expensive. But like most colonials, the kitchen is small, it's oddly shaped, they're stuck at the back of the house. So the idea is to push that out the back of the house out, and then you'd have room for a an island, and then a dining area. And you'd really have the kitchen become available to be the, you know, the proverbial heart of the home. But actually, you know, my, my wife and I are not the biggest fans of complete open concept, like what you see every day on television, so we actually kind of liked the fact that this would be somewhat open yet separate from the rest of the house. So both can go in other rooms and closed doors and needed. You know, so it I mean, I think the design itself, and I'd like to get your input on it. I think, you know, as far as the project goes, and the prospect of the addition, I think it makes a lot of sense. It's no, we're happy with what was done and the way our architect and kitchen designer sort of work this out. Paul McAlary 8:54 But I'm not, I'm not a huge fan of your design, actually. So yeah, I would we can go around the horn and what issues I think are need to be addressed and things that I would change. I mean, the first thing is, when the kitchen designer, when these people do these designs, if they work for me, they get in trouble when you don't put the table in the room. Right? How does anybody know that? Well, that you're considering fits in the space, the breakfast area that you're leaving, right? And the answer is nobody does? Because it doesn't, right? You're no one's figured out the fact that you're not really leaving enough space for the breakfast table if you want to sit on all four sides of it. So you could put the table up against the windows right Speaker 1 9:47 now. Well, you know, to be fair, I have other drawings where you know, it goes through the depth and the height. You know, I guess the depth of what's going to be there and I think that that breakfast area is going to be 16 feet by 10 feet. So there There wouldn't be room for I think for a decent sized table when I, Paul McAlary 10:05 when I do it by the scale drawing here, 10 feet to the countertop, if that's what you were left with, like I'm using your 48 inch range as a barometer. So it looks like yeah, it looks like you have a little more than nine feet between the table and the wall, if I do it to scale, and if it's nine feet, and that's 108 inches, and you are going to have a regular size kitchen table, and you are going to sit on all four sides, we take 108 inches, to get to push a table a chair back and be able to stand up and get out from the window side, you need, essentially 30 inches, so we subtract 30 inches for that. And then if the table is a standard kitchen table, that's usually 41 inches wide. So that leaves you three feet of room between the table and the island. And so if when someone sits down, they're gonna usually eat up about two feet or a little bit more. So if you were sitting at the table, you wouldn't really have much room to get in between somebody on the island the way it is, if we have nine feet, so it just something you want to put your table on the thing you want to you want to map it out, it doesn't cost hardly anything to make an addition a little bit bigger, you know, let's say you made the addition one foot longer. Now every everything is spacious. And you only have one more foot of roofing one more foot of walls, one more foot of foundation, that not going to be that much different. The first step is when the kitchen designers doing this, they shouldn't really be putting that the table that you're planning on getting into the room and putting chairs and, and you can figure that out. But you know, that's the one issue that I've got. And then of course, if you want to put the table up against the window and sit on three sides, well, you could have a five foot walk long table, very comfortably go five feet, and then sit two people on one side, two people on the other side, and another person on the end or make it a five foot by five foot table. But you'd sit 622 and one, but you wouldn't be sitting on all four sides. So you couldn't play cards at it, but you'd be sitting six, but you don't want to build your addition by your table and be the last person to figure out that write Michael 12:22 that down and then you can never write. Paul McAlary 12:24 So and then the other thing that I look at this design, and I'm not such a huge fan of is one is the big sink that you have next to the stove and the window, just the issue with that is just that when you're at your range, if the only countertop you're going to leave yourself is the bit of countertop that's on either side of the stove. Well, when every time somebody goes to the refrigerator in this refrigerator location, you're going to get a French door refrigerator probably. So that countertop on the left side of the range is not really very useful for cooking, because every time somebody opens the refrigerator, they will hit anybody that's trying to stay in there. So the only countertop you have to work at when you're at the range is the 36 inches of countertop in between that sink in that range, you have a 48 inch range, you're getting a professional range. So you're cooking meals that require all kinds of different burners and everything else, but your primary area is is minute. So the solution to that is to move the refrigerator maybe take so that you have the other side. And you know, generally, you don't want to have the refrigerator in that location anyway. Because people are going to be going to the refrigerator, if they're sitting at the breakfast area and you want to get a drink or something like that putting the refrigerator there drags everyone through the work area. Right? So Speaker 1 13:52 right, you know, it's right. You know, it's interesting because we struggled with where to put the refrigerator in the design. And you know, the designer we had worked with had made the same point. And it's really a matter of trying to find the best slot for if you put it on the right side. You know, we're supposed to have doors that go out on out of the breakfast area into the backyard, into the backyard. And so the other thing Paul McAlary 14:19 I would tell you about those doors, if you've ever listened to my podcast, one of the things that makes me insane is that architects love french doors and they put them everywhere. If I ask a customer would you like French doors? Or would you like a sliding door everybody will say of course they want French doors but that's only because they haven't thought through what the problems with the French doors are going to create. And the problems that they create is one you can't open the door and get some air unless the door is one of your doors. French doors doesn't even open all the way. In fact neither one of them opens all the way because they can't be folded back. The countertop is in the way on one side and the wall is on the way, way on the other side. If so, you'll have these doors jutting out into the room at 90 degrees, and there'll be hitting the wall and hitting the countertop. And if you got French style doors and it was a slider, well, first off, they wouldn't be opening into the room where you're trying to sit and taking up space. And you could leave a door open. So you could get some air and have a screen door or whatever and get a breeze in, etc. But the act of making them French doors is essentially eating up a whole bunch of space and creating very awkward doors that are sticking out into the room that are hitting things, that's the first thing that you should get rid of, is the French get a French style door, and then they're not even opening into your table and everything else, I would definitely change that do. And then I would put my refrigerator in the back of the aisle, you sort of have enough space back there. In fact, the way the kitchen is design, now, you have an unusual amount of overhang on the back of the countertop in the island that you could make that maybe a tiny bit less, especially it would look silly, if it was done the way it is in the architect's drawings, where there's a two foot overhang on a two foot cabinet depth thing, you only can cantilever something, even if you have supports, you only can stick something out 50% of the way that it's going can't really stick out, have a countertop two feet deep in back of a two foot cabinet, the whole thing will tip over. Right. Okay, so you either need a leg to support it on each corner, or you'd need to make it a little bit shallower. And if you didn't make it a little bit shallower, that would work better. So the way that I would probably do the design is instead of making a two pantries on the end, that and then that that creates an unopened area that isn't as useful, I would have the a pantry on the end of end that's closest to the refrigerator. So I'd start with a pantry, then I'd have my refrigerator or maybe even have my refrigerator, a panel on the side, then my refrigerator, then a pantry. And then I would leave myself a whole bunch of bottom cabinets and top cabinets, so that you have sort of like a separate breakfast area that you could serve off of where you could have a wine refrigerator, or you could go to from the breakfast area, you could put your coffeemaker and that kind of stuff on the countertop over there. And it would be much more open going into the breakfast area. Instead of putting all the tall deep things on the ends of that area, closing the thing in in the middle, I would put the total deep things together so that I had an open countertop heading towards the table that I could work at and use and would be make it more functional. And then if you did that, now you'd have all that extra countertop where the refrigerator used to be that you could use when you were cooking at the range. And then all of a sudden, I wouldn't really object with everything. Speaker 1 17:59 Interesting, you know, the way we have this design now, I mean, there's a there's a run of cabinets towards the bottom, adjacent to on the other side of what's the garage, that's supposed to be a coffee bar. And like, you know, I think in grandiose schemes, we have an idea of putting a wine refrigerator in there and then determining the amount of wine we drink and the cost of a refrigerator. Just not worth it. So that's supposed to be the coffee bar now. But I think the thought was, you know, you'd have the pantry is on one side, you could do prep work at the island. And then you know, just switch over to the to the to the range and the sink the mean sink right behind you. But it's it's you know, I mean, it's interesting to hear your take on it because everything you say makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah, I Paul McAlary 18:44 mean, even the coffee bar, all the way down there, that again does the same thing too. It's it's, it's a long way away for people that are going to get a cup of coffee at the breakfast area, they got to go all the way down there. So you know that might be better for pantry storage and stuff like that. Put some pantries down there, you could make that if you wanted to make a wine bar. My wife and I are big wine drinkers. And you know a wine refrigerator. A really expensive wine refrigerator will give you different zones for white and for red. Michael 19:15 But right oh no, no one doesn't like me. Paul McAlary 19:22 We don't even like white wine, the temperature that most people might drink it, we like white wine, refrigerate it right. And so, and then red wine we keep in our basement and we bring it up for when we're going to when we need it. But you could have a wine refrigerator under a countertop. That's a $600 refrigerator and the cat work. It could be a 600 or $800. Nice refrigerator, and the cabinet that you would have gotten from Grable would have been 1000 so it's not really even going to cost you any money if you had a wine refrigerator under a countertop, and then that big wine area that's way better as a wine area over there instead of a brick First area because the breakfast area people are going to get their coffee, and then sit at the breakfast table or sit at the island. But wine, they may very well go into the other rooms, like into the living room into the dining room if there's a dining room into other places. And then certainly the refrigerator too is it's the closer the refrigerator is to the breakfast area. In the perfect world, the triangle that you're supposed to be creating between your range refrigerator in your sink is so much bigger than this, you've created an apartment size kitchen, right? Distance is supposed to be 19 to 26 feet, but you got like 1516 feet. So you're not even reaching the bare minimum of a normal kitchen, because you've got all these things jammed together. So getting your refrigerator out of this triangle, and putting it on the back of the island will just give you a much better work relationship between the sink and the range, give the range enough countertop. And then when the refrigerator is a little bit out of the loop. That's really okay. Because people go into the refrigerator disturb all the people that are cooking. If you really wanted to put the refrigerator over in that bottom area, that would be okay. If you want to put the refrigerator there at least then people could go walk through the back of your your pantry area instead of going through the work area to get to it was me on the island. Speaker 1 21:31 Yeah, no, I take your point. I think it'd be entered for practical consideration. I think you know there's a place to move it would be on the back run with the pantries are the wall where the breakfast area is going to be the room immediately behind that is actually the garage and the wall behind there is masonry stone. So when you start running lines through there, it gets, you know, from a cost perspective expected a little tricky and gets more expensive, but it's a lot easier to you know, to put that trade around on the other side. Paul McAlary 22:07 No, I mean, what lines electric lines? Oh, Speaker 1 22:11 well, there's electric. I think they're supposed to be a built in water dispenser. They're Paul McAlary 22:16 all those things. You would just put furring strips on the wall and run the lines. The water line comes through the floor. And you could have the waterline come up if the refrigerator was first under the first entry that's actually in your basement and the waterline would come up and from the floor would in back of the refrigerator if that was in that location. And if it wasn't it could come up and then run up the wall with if you put furring strips on the wall before you drywall, the room would shrink by three quarters of an inch and you probably don't even want to be putting drywall on top of the brick wall anyway. So you want to be maybe having it have something to screw the cabinet's into right you have a furring strip. And that fair if it was a furring strip, the room would get three quarters of an inch smaller, if you use the stud and turn it on a stud is an inch and a half. And then you would have an inch and a half smaller. And then also you wouldn't have to if you turn the stud on its side, now you the room would lose an inch and a half. But you'd also have plenty of room for box outlet boxes, which are legally going to have to have, so they wouldn't have to chisel into the stone to run the electric lines to put the outlet boxes in, they just put the boxes in and, and you'd have an inch and a half chase to run any electric and everything else that you would want. So that's just my take on the design itself. And you can work on that and take my two bits for what they're worth. Michael 23:44 No perspective, it's great. Paul McAlary 23:46 It will also make when you're looking at it head on, you're spending you know $10,000 or $15,000. I don't know what kind of 48 inch range you're getting, but you're spending a lot of money for your 48 inch range. And they can't really have a nice hood with it because you don't really have enough wall space. So if you got rid of the refrigerator from that location, you could move the range down maybe even a little bit and then have very symmetrical cabinets and or a big nice hood and some cabinets to on either side of the range. Whereas here, you have a two foot cabinet. So you have two one foot doors that open in the wrong direction. When you're standing at the range, the doors will open or you'd have a really big door that would open if it's a 24 inch inset cabinet. You'd have a really big door that would open that wouldn't look very good. Like when we're designing somebody's kitchen we don't want ever want to a door that's that big. We don't really ever wear 24 inch cabinet we always make that a double door and not a single door because it looks better. But if we had just a little bit more space, you could have the proportional size and a proportional hood and everything else that would look nicer. But why don't we talk about the big L I'll fit in the room to is your whole project has been sort of sidelined by the big expensive estimates that you got for construction. Speaker 1 25:07 Right? Yeah, no, it's, it's, this is something we've been planning for a number of years to put on something in this, you know, this scale. And there's other work that will be done, you know, in the house on the on the outside. So it's, you know, my wife and I have been very diligent, we didn't want to take out a home equity loan, and we wanted to be able to save the money to try and do this all on cash, which we thought we had. Now, with the with the cost of inflation and the cost of just general labor and some of the construction materials, we're really sort of shocked at the estimates that we're getting and, you know, we're that's why we're that's why I reached out to you, because it's really the question of, you know, do we try and bring this in using somewhat cheaper cabinets just as one example, or cut back the scope of work? Or do we just wait and save more money. Paul McAlary 26:05 So you mean the one thing, you can definitely save money on cabinets, the thing that makes something a kitchen attractive, even know, I love inset cabinets, and I love expensive appliances, a better design kitchen, it looks better? First, right? That's the most important thing is design itself. And so this design, you know, this design for that some of the reasons I mentioned won't be as attractive as the design that I proposed. If you have the kitchen designer do these different designs, and then you look at them in three dimensions, you would agree, I think two, I mean, the one thing is, is, when I look at the floor plan, I'm telling people, these, you know, this will look better than that. And it just sounds, you know, well, maybe maybe not, it's like, that's why we do them in 3d. That's why you deal with the architect, you deal with the kitchen designer, and then they do the designs in three dimensions on their computer, and you look at them in different ways. And then you go, Oh, that looks so much better. So you could save money on cabinets. And if the design improves, the whole overall kitchen is just worth way more end looks way better, just because the design got better. And then if it also gets more functional, you don't have the doors sticking out, I always say that what we're trying to do with people is de funkified their kitchen, not give them things that sort of are funky. And the French doors, for example, are sort of going to create a funky thing that they're sticking out and they can't be open all the way. And they're sort of in the way. And if we move the refrigerator, then you have more space on either side of the stove, you don't have a hood, and you have more cabinetry on the side, it just all looks to me more proportional. So that overall look, when you're doing the island, you design the island to be attractive, it's very simple right now, but you make an island that is a lot more attractive, and then it becomes a focal piece. And that's sort of our job as the kitchen designer to so you got several estimates, and they all were much more money than you thought. Speaker 1 27:57 Yeah, we got, we got a number of estimates, we got four, and they were all substantially more there was a there was a bit of a spread between them. You know, there was maybe about $100,000 between them from highest to lowest, but they were all in the same relative neighborhood Paul McAlary 28:16 $100,000 between them and they were in the same neighborhood? Speaker 1 28:19 Well, in the sense that we've considered mold to be substantially higher than we Paul McAlary 28:26 think because your addition and your addition looks like $100,000 to me, so just $100,000 plus all the materials that you're getting, like, what's the was the was the exterior of the addition going to be something unusually expensive? Or? Speaker 1 28:42 Well, no, you know, there's and this is sort of my fault because I didn't really share with you though it's Paul McAlary 28:48 a whole lot going on in the house to the house. Yeah, there's, Speaker 1 28:51 there's, there's more there's, you know, just to the right of what I showed you with the kitchen design, there is a there's gonna be a mudroom addition. And there's also right now a garage there and a bedroom above it, which is really useless because it's not adequately heating. So the there's going to be an addition of a mudroom and then the garage has to be taken down and rebuilt. That room above the garage doesn't even isn't level with the second floor of the House on its own. You know, it's basically a useless room that I don't know why they made anyway, they just somebody added on and just glommed it on there. So the the thought would be to raise that up to make it even with the second floor of the house. He had one continuous second floor. So it's the prospect of doing all of those things. But they all then ask the roof Paul McAlary 29:39 then Right? Well, Speaker 1 29:41 just under the system, the system the garage section. But you know, unfortunately for us, you can't do one or the other. For example, we can't do the mudroom but not raise the roof on the garage because the entire garage has to be taken down and then rebuilt with the second floor going up to the correct height. So You know, we're constrained a little bit by, by the scope of the project. Paul McAlary 30:06 How high is it? Is this the room that's above the garage? That's not the same level? What is it? How many? Is it? How many steps down is it? Speaker 1 30:16 It's about a good three and a half, four feet down from the second level and to dormered room. So the sort of be the ceilings in that room are at some places, less than six feet. And it's it's above a garage, it was never insulated properly, so it's cold. And when I say cold, I don't mean a few degrees cooler than it should be. I mean, unlivable. It's basically storage space, and it's attic space. So it's an unusable room. So it's, it's one of those things that when the wife and I bought the house, we said, Okay, we're going to have to fix this eventually. But it was, you know, I shouldn't really, you know, I felt like I'm complaining, but I shouldn't, because that's one of like, one of the reasons why we're able to get a good deal on the house is because people said, what's the deal with this room, I'm not paying for this. And how Paul McAlary 31:04 do you get into that room from stairs from the outside of the garage, you Speaker 1 31:09 have to walk there, there are stairs, you actually think you can see them on the on the original on the drawing that I sent you are we chose the the kitchen as it is currently, there are stairs that go from a from the kitchen into that room. Originally, those stairs lead in from the garage to the kitchen. However, the previous owners in their infinite wisdom actually took those stairs out leaving from the garage to the house. And then plop this second Puppis bedroom on top of the garage, and then made the staircase go up. So now I have a garage that is attached to the house, but does not have access to the house, you have to go into the garage to park the car, close the door and then walk out to the front. And one of the things that this addition will solve is create the mudroom. So you'll be able to walk from the garage into the mudroom, and then into the kitchen. So it's, you know, it's more complicated than Yeah, I Paul McAlary 32:13 mean, one of the things I think, if somebody broke out, what making that a bedroom, even with the rest of the house, what that's costing you, if they broke it out separately, and instead maybe solved the step problem. And some of the other problems, if you didn't try to capture that room as a usable bedroom, you know, and left it a storage space or left it as a work area or sort of heated it, not raise it up and do all the things that you're doing. That's an incredibly expensive extra room. Right, it's costing you a fortune. So Speaker 1 32:53 they know it is but you know, it's something though, I think the families kind of need it. We're you know, Paul McAlary 33:02 I mean, if that was permitted to do that, certainly, because you're changing roof lines and everything else. So I mean, that could be $100,000, right? Or maybe that's an expensive room, if you're going to give something up the cabinets that you like, is $30,000 or $35,000 that you may be can save, but that's a huge amount of money. So I mean, if it's that important, it's all the same money. So you decide what the things are that you want to splurge on. Speaker 1 33:34 Right, no, that's exactly it. And you know, we're sort of looking at all options along the same lines, it doesn't make sense to go with, you know, less expensive cabinets, does it make sense to leave part of a project unfinished, so we could continue at another time. You know, for example, building the shell and having it insulated, but that actually finishing the room off. You know, obviously that would be cheaper. Paul McAlary 33:58 Doesn't say that much money, though, because it's the big money is the whole roof line and raising it all up. But one thing I'd say too, is that if you're getting contractors and you're getting estimates from contractors, the more expensive contractors don't necessarily do a better job. So if you can get reviews or go online, or see what kind of reviews contractors get, or there's no correlation between what a contractor charges you and how good they are, or how satisfied necessarily that customers are, and then how you're arriving at contractors. You always want to try to find some contractors on your own. Certainly not for the architect, right. So sometimes people are in cahoots and you don't realize it. So Speaker 1 34:46 we did get one really good bid from somebody who has done work in the area. And one of our neighbors is actually very nice and took us through their home and sort of pointed out all the things they did We were able to witness the quality and the craftsmanship they had firsthand which was, which was good. And they put in a one of the better bids. So I mean, so Paul McAlary 35:08 that's a good bit. Yeah, that's a good way to use the people that the architects a lot of times recommend, even if they're not in cahoots, the architects design things, independent of how much they cost, they're having a creative experience. And you're not really thinking about how much it's going to cost you in the end. And so even the contractors that work with them on a regular basis, maybe have sort of almost the same kind of outlook, they're getting business and recommendations from the architect who has a vested interest in his own design, because it's expressing himself in some way. And they don't want to rock the boat. And so you're better off using your neighbor's Person A lot of the time. Speaker 1 35:56 Right, yeah, no, it's it's been a interesting experience to see how the different contractors when they came to assess the project and take a look, look at everything, to see how they reacted to some of the the, the issues that inevitably come up, because you know, some of those things are going to be issues, regardless of who does the work. So it's interesting to see different folks. Yeah, I Paul McAlary 36:21 mean, that's a great thing about was definitely bringing contractors in is that you're getting input from professionals, and it's not costing any money. And one person will catch something that the other person didn't get. And then you're got you got all that input from all those four different people. It never hurts you. So yeah, you know, that's my take on your layout or whatever. And, you know, if you want, I can take your plan, and hand draw quickly, in where I would put the refrigerator and stuff and what you might want to do with this space, and send it back to you. Maybe over the weekend sometime. Speaker 1 36:56 Yeah, if you wouldn't mind doing that, that be terrific. I'd really appreciate that. And Paul McAlary 36:59 then yeah, and then get it done by the kitchen designer, so you can see it in 3d. Oh, and also your island. I can't see how long your island is. But it looks like it's a little tiny bit more than 10 feet long. So I think it's, Michael 37:13 I think it's nine, I think it's time. So Paul McAlary 37:17 six, so as long as it's under 10. That's how long the slabs of granite or quartz that you're getting come in. So you'll always want your island to stay under 120 inches. You don't want to see him on your island. And you don't want to go into a very expensive specially extra large slab. Right? Yep. Like what I did was I took your sink, if I was assuming your sink cabinet was three feet, and that your dishwasher we know is two, almost six. So it's very close to 10. In cabinetry. You want the cabinetry to be like nine and a half feet and then you have a little bit of overhang on each side. But I'll send you that and then if you want to give us a call back another time another time. We can we can go over it again or give you a few change it give you input on that. Michael 38:08 Okay, great. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it. Paul McAlary 38:10 Okay, good talking to you, Michael. You too. All right. Take care. Mark Mitten 38:15 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