Mark Mitten 0:04 Your Kitchen Designer putting 10 pounds of sausage in a 10 pound casing. What? He hasn't even come out to measure yet. You better call Paul. Paul McAlary 0:31 Vicki, can you hear me? Vicki 0:34 I can. Hi, Paul. Paul McAlary 0:35 Hi. Welcome to better coalport. So I'm looking at your plans. You were making some comments on our blog or asked some questions. And you were considering such a low capex, right? Vicki 0:47 Yes, that's the one of the brands that my kitchen designer recommend. Yeah, I and I love their their stain. That's Paul McAlary 0:59 why I have very nice colors. They do? Yeah, yeah. First things. Do we want to talk about your design? First, I guess. Yeah. Vicki 1:09 Yeah. Because every time I come home and stand in my kitchen and try to imagine where this island is going to be it, it just doesn't feel right. Paul McAlary 1:19 Well, there's a bunch of things. As far as the dimensions of everything are concerned, when you have a rectangular room, turning anything at an angle, doesn't save you any space, it actually eats up a lot of space. So your table should never be at an angle, the most effective way for your table to go is going to be vertically up and down. And then you'll know exactly the amount of dimensions that you have everywhere. But it never works. Putting something at an angle. And the same thing is true, really with islands as well, that if we put somebody's Island at an angle, it just has to be that much smaller, because it's a rectangle, essentially, at some point, something's getting too close. So you have to make something shorter because it's gotten Vicki 2:08 Yeah, the corner sticks out. Yeah. And normally, we do have that table on a rectangle perpendicular to the wall. We just had it on an angle here lately. So that's, that is totally Paul McAlary 2:19 you can have it as an angle, when you get a really big, you probably don't have a really big island. Okay, right. So when you put the island, and maybe what you want to do when you're trying to envision this, you can put tape on the floor. So you can sort of see where your island is? Well, I mean, we'll talk about the design itself, the design itself had some problems with it. But you're certainly going to want four feet between the cooktop and the countertop and back of the cooktop, I think but there's, you know, where's the refrigerator? Yeah, I mean, generally, we don't want the refrigerator in back of a sink, or another appliance, right? You know, it's pretty much the worst place you can put it. And the reason is that people go to the refrigerator all day long, right, and they want to route around, didn't stand in front of it, pick stuff out. And if someone's trying to work and cook, you've now brought this person right into the smack dab into the middle of the work area. And even if you left yourself four feet between the refrigerator, and the cooktop, when you go to open the refrigerator, the refrigerators 36 inch wide, each one of the French doors is 18 inches wide. And then when you open the doors and step back, you're taken up another couple of feet. So you're a person that was at the cooktop would have to get out of the way for a person to open the refrigerator. Right? Vicki 3:44 Yeah. And it's actually worse for us because we don't have the French doors yet. We just we got a new refrigerator a few years ago, and it's just a single door. Yeah, eventually, the French but yeah, Paul McAlary 3:55 that sweeps everybody out. That's the first thing that tells me that I'm not a huge fan of your designer, right? They're doing something that we're trying to avoid, right? We're trying to avoid your refrigerator being a backup your cooktop, in your design, probably the best location for the refrigerator would be over by the doors, right? When I was more and then then and if it was me, and I did that and put the refrigerator by the doors. If you do the table as a rectangle, you could maybe even move it down a little bit away from the doors. So it's not so close to the doors because you're trying to go in and out those doors. And those doors, sliders. Yes, they are. So you could probably get even closer. When you put the refrigerator down there. There's probably a light switch. You can have the panel on the side of the refrigerator, start right after the light switch and then have the refrigerator possibly if there's enough room, maybe even a small pantry, then the dishwasher or If there's not enough room for it, but you're probably going to have enough. But if you didn't, you just have the refrigerator a panel than a wall cabinet. And then you'd have your sink there. And then now once you've done that, I think it's way better to have your stove on the other leg of the kitchen. You know, you can keep the stove in the island if you want, but then you have a hood hanging down. And it also gets very difficult to vent it outside. But I'm looking at the distance on the room. Is there a wall that's being taken out? Now? Vicki 5:31 It's a half wall, is it current, currently is a you and it's only a half wall with a bank of cabinets hanging from the ceiling over that half wall, where the island is now, right? The distance that your waist will run perpendicular to the island there, their tenants joy. Paul McAlary 5:52 And they run perpendicular to the island. Yeah, so that means that what's in the back of the refrigerator. Vicki 6:00 Oh, I'm sorry, no, they run parallel to the, to the island, I'm sorry, they run, Paul McAlary 6:05 they run parallel to the island, though, that's incredibly long, right. So there has to be a beam somewhere Vicki 6:12 there is a beam that will be right about under the head of the island, like where the Paul McAlary 6:19 stairs are, okay. And that's going to be put into the ceiling. There, it's Vicki 6:23 in the basement underneath this floor. Paul McAlary 6:26 But it's got to be must be in the ceiling to that. So that if it's if it's in the floor, then it must be in the ceiling. And that's how the joists get the run that so then that's good. So then you can vent it out, then you can vent that foot outside pretty easily. Because the choice of going in the right direction. But you know, looking at how long the room is, I know there has to be a beam in the ceiling, because the joists couldn't be that long otherwise, right? So there's got to be a beam in the FCO and there's a beam downstairs. So they just duplicated the same thing downstairs that they did upstairs, I guess. Oh, okay. So if it's me, I put your refrigerator on the end by the doorway. And then if you put your stove on the other countertop, now you'll have an island that doesn't have anything in it. You could even put a second prep sink in the island if you wanted. But you'd have all this continuous countertop between your sink and your stove. Although if you didn't want to have your, your stove in the island, you know, you could, it's just that if you put it on the wall where the refrigerator was, you just wouldn't have a hood any down in the middle of the room, Vicki 7:33 that would be an improvement, we're going to have an induction top top considering not getting a hood at all. But I feel pretty uncomfortable about that. Paul McAlary 7:46 mean the thing about the hood and not having a hood at all is it's not going to poison your family. It's just going to make the house sticky. Because every time you cook all the grease and everything else, so it's going to be sort of like becoming a missed and then spreading out on all the surfaces on all the cabinetry, like people that don't have hoods, a lot of times when I come to their house, and I even touch their cabinets, everything is so at stake. So how much ever cook it's not going to happen. But if you cook a lot, then you want to have a hood. Because you just want to get rid of all the smoke and the grease, and the smells that get created when you're cooking fish or whatever it is. But then that would be you know, if you did put it on the wall and you didn't move the refrigerator, then you can easily vent it outside by going into the ceiling or you could go over the tops of the cabinets to get it outside. And then yeah, that was desert, and you'd have a big island, right, that wouldn't have anything in back of it. You know, the cooktop, you wouldn't be in back of it, you could turn around cut chop work at the island. And if you put like even a prep sink in the islands, you'd have a little prep sink there or non because you have the sink right over in the other place. And then you could be working at your island and just turn around and put the vegetables and everything you just cut and chop right onto the stove that's in back of you. And none of these appliances then will be interfering with each other. Vicki 9:12 That would resolve an issue because where the refrigerator is now it sticks out so much. And the little cabinet to the right of the refrigerator is bumped out seven inches because there's a bump out in the wall behind that cabinet. So it's very uneven along that line. That leg of the of the room and it's hard to figure out how close can I get the island because it's going to be so far away from the main counter in order to be far enough away from the refrigerator. Paul McAlary 9:48 That's interesting that you have that seven inch bump out what that Vicki 9:55 something from the basement? Where's the water pipe from up maybe or I'm not really sure. Paul McAlary 10:01 But when you're redoing this, when you're redoing this, you know, especially you're getting silo cap Shiloh cabinets, I mean, it's not an inexpensive cabinet brand. So you're spending a lot of money to get this brand. If it's a plumbing pipe, it might cost, I don't know, $1,000, to move it into the corner, so that you didn't have to have the bump out, go all the way across that old cabinet. It could just be in the corner of the room. And you could have just the corner of the cabinet notched out, you know, and that might be $1,000, at most. And you could by changing colors, or door styles, or finishes, or these, I don't know how I haven't asked you my next question. But some of the other questions that we asked, those kinds of differences can be huge, right? I mean, your foot is going to cost $1,000. When you put your stove against the wall, it won't be what's called a peninsula hood anymore, it will be a less expensive regular hood. And that actually saves a bunch of money. So I mean, it's all the same money. And usually the construction stuff doesn't cost as much as a lot of the other things like you'll pick a color that you love. I make our cup kitchen designers tell all the customers, well, you know, that color you pick is an upcharge of 30%. Right? So you're spending 30% more for that color green. If you like this color blue, it's 30% Less, well, I don't like that blue as much. But 30% of my kitchen is $6,000. I'll go blue instead of green for $6,000. Right? So you want to have all of this stuff. So that brought to your attention. And also that little area that you have next to the refrigerator. Now it's so narrow. It's very hard to work at it just a bad space there. Vicki 11:46 I see. Yeah, I see what you mean there that that is going to be like a little male to play. Paul McAlary 11:52 Yeah, so you have a little jungle error or, like other people are trying to get rid of junk areas, right. So when you have your refrigerator over to the other location by the door, you'll have no junk areas everywhere will be function. So that will be another bin, Vicki 12:10 there's always the danger that the junk will go on the island. Paul McAlary 12:15 Well, I don't think that junk goes in your kitchen. When you give people a place to put junk. They put junk, when there's no place to put junk, that maybe they put it away. Or you can have it in a drawer or you know in a cabinet. The other thing is is how high are your ceilings Do you know Vicki 12:31 their standard eight. So Paul McAlary 12:36 So here's another thing that worries me a little bit is when we have a customer that has eight foot high ceilings, we would never sell them 39 inch high wall cabinets, because nobody's ceiling is level. And there's no way to level the ceiling. Without that being a huge production. It's very difficult to level somebody's ceiling. And this designer as far as I can tell. These must be 39 inch cabinets. And they've got three inch crown moldings on top that are just perfectly touching the ceiling. So when your core contractor goes to put the cabinets in, the cabinets have to go in level, there's no way for him to put the cabinets in an angle, or to have it as your ceiling goes in and out a level. So he puts the cabinet's in level. And then at one point in the room, the molding is touching the ceiling. And then in another part in the room, the molding is like half an inch away from the ceiling, if your ceilings a half an inch shadow. So when you're designing somebody's kitchen, you never put 10 pounds of sausage in a 10 pound wrapper, you have to leave yourself a little bit of play. So we would always sell somebody 36 inch high wall cabinets, which will come six inches away from your ceiling. And then we'd have a six inch flat molding. And then a three inch crown molding between the ceiling and that flat molding. And the crown molding would rise up and down on the molding as the ceiling went in and adult level. And doing it that way is the standard way people that are knowledgeable design kitchens and people that tried them to use 39 inch wall cabinets in a eight foot high room. It either they're revealing their ignorance, or I don't know if they're connected to the contractor, then maybe the contractor knows this thing is going to level your whole ceiling. But that's not the case. You would have a laser level on your ceiling to confirm it was within an eighth of an inch or a quarter of an inch of level everywhere. avenues are going to be able to really do this. Vicki 14:45 As a matter of fact, I just measured my contractor doesn't know how tall my ceilings are because they haven't measured here yet. They're not AC they're seven feet and I Something like how much? How many? Nine inches? I think Paul McAlary 15:06 seven feet nine. Vicki 15:09 Yeah, yeah. Paul McAlary 15:10 So seven feet nine is three inches less. So now we've got 36 inch cabinets with a molding on top. I'll bet you these are 36 and not 39 inch cabinets that does a kitchen designer measure. Vicki 15:24 Oh, they haven't come to my house yet. Oh, Paul McAlary 15:27 that's another bad sign. The first step and really working with anybody should be measuring. Because all this work that they just did designing a kitchen. If they haven't come to your house, and they're assuming that the ceilings are eight feet. They also gave you a 39 inch wall cabinets, which like I just finished telling you, it doesn't really work. But in a lot of cabinet companies 39 inch wall cabinets are a big price job. They're 20% More expensive than 30 Six's. So you might be paying 20% More for these 39 inch cabinets, and your ceiling isn't even high enough to accommodate them. Vicki 16:04 So right out about that. That's that's definitely has to change if those are 39. So 36 should work so Paul McAlary 16:15 well. If you're going to use 36. Now you're back and you have seven foot nine inch ceilings. Now you're back to the same issue. But it's a different issue really is that you you don't want to probably go down to 30 inch cabinets, which is the next step down, you'd have to go down to custom sizes, but shallows, sort of pretty custom, you could do 33 Or they might have 33 inch cabinets, and then you could use 30 threes, and then a flat molding and other molding or your contractor would have to level the whole room and use 30 Six's in a moment. But it's very important that somebody figure out how level your ceiling is. Because generally nobody's ceiling is level. I guess you have a split level house. Vicki 17:03 Yes, we do. Paul McAlary 17:04 So a split level house is less likely to settle. And is it built like in the 60s or 70s or something? Vicki 17:12 Actually 1995. So let's Paul McAlary 17:15 good. Now that it's 9095, it hasn't had that much chance to get out of level. So maybe he can use 36 inch cabinets. Or maybe even if the contractor has to level the ceiling. It's not that much. He's only got to like, maybe feather some plaster down to get rid of a couple of bows or bumps in the ceiling. But once you're doing this, let's say getting 36 inch cabinets, and then putting the three inch moldings on top to reach the ceiling. Once you're putting 10 pounds of sausage in its wrapper, you don't want to get to the end and find out how off your ceiling is. There's no play in your design. That's the most important thing on your project is to have somebody figure out how they're doing it and that it's going to work. Okay, and it will probably be 36 inch cabinets, and it will probably be a three inch molding on top. And I would say to the kitchen designer, how high are the wall cabinets in my kitchen that you designed for me? I would ask them that question first. And if he says 39 inch cabinets, then you're gonna go down to 30 Six's, and in most cabinet companies, that's going to be a big price decrease. Vicki 18:30 That's fantastic. Because that's what I want. Right? But Paul McAlary 18:35 the thing is to is, I don't know how many places there are in your area. But I don't like your kitchen designer. I'm not a huge fan of first they're recommending Shiloh. And I think that they improved how they make cabinets that you can really you know, they're okay. And they have nice colors. But there are other brands too, especially if you're gonna get 36 inch cabinets, what kind of colors will you pick? What kind of Vicki 19:01 light stain just No, no paint. Paul McAlary 19:05 So if you're like a light stain like a light maple stain or something like that, there'll be lots of cabinet companies that will be like way less expensive. I mean, Shiloh does have some really nice colors, but there'll be other cabinet companies that are less expensive. The fact that you need 36 inch cabinets now instead of 30 nines, you have to be in an expensive cabinet brand to get 30 nines. Like if you're in a like a medium price cabinet brand, or higher price cabinet brand that is not custom. They might charge you 20% More for the cabinets with a wall cabinets to make them 39 If you're in a custom cabinet company, they will hardly charge you anything to make them 39 Because it's a custom cabinet company and they'll do anything. However, if you're in a custom cabinet company, you don't need to be now right? Because you're getting a standard a cabinet which is 36 So suddenly, right could be in a less expensive cabinet brand and maybe getting light wood and saving yourself some money. So, yes, we offer Vicki 20:06 J and K cabinets also, but they don't really offer any stain. Paul McAlary 20:12 No, because they are an important brand. So the only stain that you might like that an imported brand has is a brand we carry, which is called fab you wood has a timber color that you might like, if you go on fabulous website, you could look at their timber color, it looks even better in the picture than it does in life. But it is a really nice color. But that timber color of fabric wood kitchen would be around less than two thirds the price of a Shiloh kitchen. And they're actually better. Where Vicki 20:45 do I find that? You would if my if my kitchen dealers don't sell it? I don't know if it's sold in my area? Well, where are you located in Dayton, Ohio area, Paul McAlary 20:57 Dayton, Ohio. So you're actually in a good area, because there's a lot of cabinet companies that are up in that kind of area. So there'll be other brands that will do colors that you'd like to that would be less than Shiloh, you'll have lots of choices, you'd have to look, I mean, we could take a look and see if we could find another dealer that had other brands, I mean, I'm not a huge fan of this designer, but only because he's they kept they didn't do any design work, right? They did all this computer work and put everything on the computer and left the refrigerator and back of the stove. And they took a bad design and just redid it so well. Vicki 21:33 Because I said just leave all the appliances where they are. Yeah, but you know what everybody says that took me a while to know Yeah, to know, everybody Paul McAlary 21:43 says that, because the kit that the homeowners don't know any better. So they don't know, it's going to actually save them money moving these things. And they'll get a better kitchen out of it. As designers, it's our job to teach them to educate them that here I'll design it this way. And yeah, I'll move the electric and the water line for the refrigerator, which will cost $200 or $300. But now it's a way better kitchen, and the cabinetry and the appliances are less. So you know, you actually save money by moving some stuff around. And it's a way better kitchen. So it's our job to be watching out for all of these things. And to make sure that the ceilings are level, and really to do anything. We can't have an intelligent conversation with somebody about a kitchen, until we've come out and measured. So anybody that puts drawing on the computer without measurements, and really finishes them, I'm not a big fan of they're doing work that may not even get done, if they do a good job, they'll come out and measure and they'll make some discoveries. And they'll realize that your ceilings are an eight feet tall. And that, you know, maybe ceiling has to be leveled and you know all kinds of things will be discovered that will change how they're going to decide to design it. Vicki 22:59 Yes, to your point, I see your point Paul McAlary 23:01 about being professional, do it the way that they did it, right. It's just being a salesperson, and not being a professional designer. So they're just trying to sell cabinets, and you're telling them what to do. And they listening to you. They're not even gonna check the measurements, they're just gonna sell you the thing that you picked, and try to get in and get out fixed. But you know, we could look on hours or see if we could find a company to take a look fast. Vicki 23:25 Sure, yeah. Paul McAlary 23:29 So I'm gonna walk you through how we do it. So you can sort of do this on your own. house.com is a website, that all will all be listed on, right? So I'm just going to go to house, and then I'm going to go on their website, I'm going to look for kitchen and bathroom designers. So I'm going to click that category. And then I'm going to look in a location that's somewhere near your zip code, which is what is your zip code Vicki 24:02 45387. Paul McAlary 24:05 So we type 45387 in and then it comes up with companies that are within 50 Miles will maybe start we'll see if we can find somebody within 25. So you Vicki 24:17 have to choose low to mid or mid to high. What do you mean price and quality on when I'm doing this with you? And oh, Paul McAlary 24:24 I'm doing it first I did was I click Kitchen and Bath designers. And then I went to location and I went to radius 25 miles and then location. And then you know you don't have to pick anything. It's going to list them all. Okay, so the first one that comes up is called Kitchen place. And they also advertise what we do is we look through the pictures that these companies put online, just to so that if somebody puts a kitchen online that has mistakes in it, then we sort of know that they don't know what they're doing, we can score to skip those companies. So I'm just look Can do, I'm gonna look at the kitchen place first. I think they have good reviews, they have 4.9 reviews, although we never checked the reviews on house. Because everybody get if you don't get good reviews on house you have horrible. The way that you get reviewed is you request the people to review you. It's much better to look at Google, look at the Google's reviews for a company, because Anytime somebody's annoyed or whatever, they'll review them on Google, but they won't review them on house. So Google is a better place to look for reviews. So like we have 4.9 5.0 on house. And I think we got 4.8 or something like that are 4.7 on Google. But there's other companies that are 5.0 on house and 3.0 on Google. So let's so kitchen place, so looking at the designs, portfolios, so they look totally competent. 59 reviews are the first company that's coming up, we can look at their website, and we can see what cabinet brands that they carry. Vicki 26:02 I have looked there, I believe they have medallion. And I know they do have Shiloh also, so Paul McAlary 26:09 KraftMaid. And now, when a company carries KraftMaid it's a really good sign. Right. And the reason that it's a good sign is that KraftMaid is sold at both Lowe's and Home Depot. Right. So if people were picking KraftMaid, and this company, the kitchen place was outrageously expensive. They couldn't carry KraftMaid because someone would take the design and go to Lowe's or Home Depot and get it priced out. And they would write a bad review and say this company is a rip off, they gave me a price of $100,000 for a kitchen that Home Depot charged me $50,000 For 10,020 $1,000 school. So we know when they somebody sells a brand that is also sold that a home center that they're competitively priced. So here you got KraftMaid, which is a good cabinet, and it's a good cabinet brand. So that's another thing that we do is we look at the brands that the kitchen company sells. And we can tell from the brands that they carry, if they know a lot about kitchens, they don't care if they carry plain and fancy, which is an incredibly expensive, very nice custom cabinet company. They carry medallion, which is a higher end brand. They carry j and k two, they carry KraftMaid they carry a clips, showplace aspects, some other inexpensive brands, I think they would be a better company to work for. And let's just check Google. I mean, they got a ton of reviews. They're selling cabinet brands that home centers are selling, so we know that they can't be overpriced. And then we'll just check their Google and it's in Xenia, Ohio, because that's close to you. Right. That's close. Yeah. So add them to our list of people we recommend, since we've just added them. Assuming that. Vicki 28:03 Yeah, that's cool that you're able to just add them on to your list. Yeah. Paul McAlary 28:07 So they get 4.7 in the Google world can make everybody happy. And anybody that's unhappy is going to complain. So I'm going to look at like, they got all five star reviews. And somebody's going to have given them a one star review. We'll see what that one is. Oh, they just got no, they got all five stars and a couple of fours that are lowering Vicki 28:25 them down. Oh, wow. Great. Yeah, that Paul McAlary 28:29 seems like a much better place to start. They got the better reviews, you could also Google the name of the cabinet company that you're working with, and see what kind of stars they get. You know, okay, we won't mention their name. I don't want to dis smirk somebody on a podcast. But personally, if you look at it 4.7 is pretty good. It's pretty, you know, it's hard to get. And then if you have negative reviews, that's telling, and I'll bet you any amount of money, that before they put any designs on their computer for you. They're going to want to come out and measure. Oh, all right, that so definitely. So I think that's a better place to start. And then you can mention that, you know, see what they say, or you can give them my ideas on the design. But if they're good, they should, they should be directing you towards that anyway. So like really, designers, there's a lot of different designs, but there's only a few good designs. If I give you a kitchen to anybody in my company, they're all going to come up with the kitchen I described to you just because it's the most sensible use of the space. Vicki 29:35 Okay, that helps me a lot because I just couldn't figure out how close to get the island to the wall with the refrigerator because the refrigerator sticks out so far. So this will solve that problem. Paul McAlary 29:49 It will it will solve that problem too. And then when you're budgeting yourself, I would budget myself maybe for you got to full depth refriger radar, probably that sticks way out, I would leave space for a counter depth refrigerator. And even if you don't switch right now, you can be getting a much less expensive cabinet brand. Probably you'll get prices I'll bet that are less than the Shiloh. When you go to this place, I'm hoping at least I know that competitively priced. And then if you have enough money left in your budget, then you can get your counter depth refrigerator with the French doors, and then it won't be sticking out so far. Vicki 30:29 Oh, KraftMaid. Do you reckon? Yeah, Kraft makes a good cabinet brand. Paul McAlary 30:34 So then KraftMaid will have lots and lots and lots of colors don't have as many colors as Shiloh, I don't know if they're quite as nice. You'll be the judge. But they're going to be very, very similar. They have tons and tons of colors. They'll probably also have some other I forget the brands that they carry on medallion. Day J K is an expensive, showplace II vo i don't know showplace that. Well, Vicki 30:58 okay, well, Paul McAlary 31:00 I have to look up looking how we rate showplace. Vicki 31:03 Um, I can't remember if they're on your list. Paul McAlary 31:07 They are, they're a big company. I just can't remember how we will review them. So showplaces a four A and we give them good reviews. showplace will be a tiny bit less than KraftMaid. Me, but you can ask the designer, they'll know which is. And you can look at the colors of both probably you got a lot to change. And once you get the thing designed, and you get close to ordering it, if you want to read it to us again and call into the helpline Feel free. Vicki 31:35 Okay, hey, there was one more little thing that I wanted to ask. The island is going to stick out a little bit in front of the stairs. And I can't decide is that okay? I think that's fine way from, Paul McAlary 31:54 I think it's fine sticking out a little bit in front of the stairs, because it's also going to be four feet away from the stairs. Okay? Because it has to be because it's got to be for you really want it to be four feet away from the countertop that's going to have your stove added. Or even if you don't do your stove and you keep the stove on the island, you want to be able to have somebody stand at the stove and and somebody else may be making a sandwich on the countertop and back or something. So usually we try to keep that around 42 inches, and that's a ton of distance. 42 inches, plenty of space from the front of the staircase. Vicki 32:30 Okay. Okay, awesome, great. Paul McAlary 32:34 And then you you're gonna you're worrying about the staircase, because it's, you know, it's sticking out a little bit and it's not really lining up. But you only really have that perspective of how far it that the island is going in front of the staircase, if you're looking at the staircase perfectly head on, and sort of straddling the staircase like a referee, you know, when you're at an angle or other parts of the room, you won't really be able to figure out how far the island is going in front of the staircase. It's only when you got one view that it's really obvious, right? Vicki 33:04 Well when I measured it, and it's it's going to be like as much as eight inches sticking out. Yeah, Paul McAlary 33:11 but even eight inches if let's say it was even with the staircase, and then you would have stand over by your sliding doors. it from that angle it will look like it's a foot and a half in front of the staircase. Vicki 33:24 But I'm concerned about coming down the stairs and Paul McAlary 33:26 yeah, so that's why we don't worry about because when you're coming down the stairs you'll have four feet so you'll have plenty down and then the only thing that be concerned about is if it's running out the staircase does that look funny doing that it doesn't really bother me only because it from most different angles. It's not really that apparent. Okay. And I'd rather have more countertop. Yeah, that's especially if you if you keep your island you don't want to be making the island much smaller. No, but if you move a cooktop to where the refrigerator is, you can make the island a little bit smaller and it won't be so important because it will have continuous countertop Vicki 34:09 and if I moved the refrigerator well right by the doorway. I think that will require the island to down a little bit because only because Paul McAlary 34:26 much case you leave out does it stay there. It says they have 41 and a half inches. So cabinet cap. So if you believe in 41 and a half inches, yeah, you're gonna want your island to scoot down a little bit. And then you can just have it scoot down a little more in front of the stairs. Or if you're moving the cooktop, you can put the cooktop and putting a cooktop where the refrigerator was. Then you can also make the island a little bit smaller. And there'll be no problem. Vicki 34:53 They'll have a big island. Okay, you still have Yeah, that's a good Paul McAlary 34:56 point. Either one of those things. It just everything works a lot better with refrigerator in that location. And same thing to that when your refrigerator is there, people go to the refrigerator all day long. So I mean, people will be sitting at your table and then go to the refrigerator. And if they went took a straight path, they'll go right through the sink, right past the cooktop, bowl to get to the refrigerator. So every kid and every person that wants to go to the refrigerator disrupts anybody that's trying to work. Whereas when you put the refrigerator on the end there, people can be sitting at the table, they can get up, they can go to the refrigerator, get something, they can get something from a refrigerator or a beer and then go outside into the backyard, they can get a glass of milk, and then go into the living room and sit down. And they'll never interfere with the people that are working in the kitchen, cooking and washing dishes and everything else. Because the refrigerators on the end, and it's not in front of and back of anything. Vicki 35:47 Awesome. Yes. Yes. And then I can maybe put the microwaves in the island. Yeah, Paul McAlary 35:54 that would be a good place for the microwave too. So when you if you move your cooktop to to the wall, and you put your microwave in the island. As you're separating all of these things, the way I evaluate how well a kitchen is designed, is you shade the countertop, according to how often it's getting used. The countertop is getting used every year, in a really badly designed kitchen, you're only working at one place at the kitchen a lot of the time, because all the other places are inconvenient for you because of that. So like when you move your refrigerator down, you'll have all the countertop, the countertop on the left of the sink is where you're going to keep your dish rack or any dishes or anything else that you want to put out of the way that go to the left. Now you'll have continuous countertop all along the wall. And on both sides of the stove, you'll be working at that countertop all the time. And then the countertop on your island. If you put the microwave in it, somebody's using the microwave and taking something out of the microwave and maybe making a sandwich or something else can be doing and working at the island. So all of your countertop will be getting used. I look at this kitchen, everywhere in the kitchen isn't really being used very much. Except when you're cooking, the countertop to the left of the cooktop will be used a lot. And then there'll be a little piece of countertop to the right of the sink where people will be trying to work sometimes, but the refrigerator door might be opening and hitting them and being in their way. So really the best place to work in this kitchen is probably on the island to the left of the cooktop in the way it's designed now. Whereas the way we're doing it everywhere will be a good place. Vicki 37:34 Fantastic. Okay. All right. Paul McAlary 37:37 All right. Well, if you go Good luck, and maybe we'll hear from you. Thank Vicki 37:41 you. Paul McAlary 37:44 Alright, thanks. Bye bye. Mark Mitten 37:46 Thank you for listening to the mainline kitchen design podcast with nationally acclaimed 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 mainlined kitchen design.com Transcribed by https://otter.ai