Mark Mitten 0:05 You call Paul but you still haven't been able to settle on a good design with a competent Kitchen Designer. You better call Paul. Again, what the heck? Call three times? Paul McAlary 0:32 Hi, James, can you hear me? James 0:33 Yes. Can you hear me? Paul McAlary 0:35 I can hear your great, uh, welcome to better call call took the time to just print out what you had. And you showed me before. And I'm just sort of comparing it to what you have now. Let's see. So that's the really big window. What height of the windows? You know, the your countertops seem like they're going through the window. So is that mean that the windows are actually lower than the height of the countertop? James 1:05 So the like, the one by the kitchen sink is just flush. Okay, the countertop? The one? The other one we're gonna raise up. So okay, probably raised just above it. Just put it out there something, okay. Nothing's labeled. Paul McAlary 1:21 All right, hold on one sec. Okay, so is your wife with us to Tokyo? James 1:27 Hi. Paul McAlary 1:29 Hi, Chelsea. How are you? Chelsea 1:30 Good. How are you doing? Good. Paul McAlary 1:32 So I'm looking at the new plans that you've got. And it looks like you've got a new set of concerns you eliminated, but then created some others. So in your design, when we're looking at, because this is the best version of the design. When we're looking at the design, you know, the issues that you've got is, first off, you have the countertop that's to the right of the sink, is just about unusable because you have all those tall cabinets all right next to you, right. So getting the tall stuff away from where you are giving yourself at least enough room that you can stand in front of the countertop, and not trap yourself and everything else is sort of an important concern. You don't have the problem with the cabinets or reaching the ceiling any longer. And you know, certainly if you're doing this design, what I would do is if the cabinets are ending six inches from the ceiling, even though you'd like modern cabinetry, I would just put a flat piece of wood, you know, even with the face of the doors on the cabinets that matches the cabinets up to the ceiling. So you're not creating a space that collects dust that you have to clean. But it will still look modern, because it's a flat, you know, panel. And then you still also have the one issue have we discussed it in? I mean, you're okay with it, I guess of the cooktop being on the island, right? So when we Yeah. James 3:12 So I think we want that. And maybe this is not a big deal. But I think we want that just because then when you're at the tip top, the island is big enough that like, with kids sitting on the island, they would never be able to touch it. You can still cook at the cooktop and look into the living space. And maybe that's a bad way of thinking about it. But that's the rationality. Paul McAlary 3:35 Yeah, so you're just gonna have a problem venting it. If you're either going to have a what's called a peninsula hood coming down, that will be the thing that will work best. And it will, you know, obscure your view of the other room. But it will prevent grease and smoke and everything from coding the whole room. And then the other thing is, you have a very bad relationship between your cooktop and your sink. Like ideally you want to go from the sink to the cooktop, you want them either on continuous countertop together, or you want them opposite each other. And you've got neater here. And you've also done another big faux pa of having your refrigerator directly and back of your cooktop was that you or another customer that had that in their old design to know that wasn't you that was another customer like that's the number one thing that you shouldn't you know this another designer for another person that called into the podcast, I think the same day that you called last time, their designer did this. It's really just about the worst place your refrigerator can be is right in back of either your cooktop or your sink. Because now every time the kids want to go to the refrigerator and get something or anybody else wants to get something, they're right in the middle of your prep, cooking working area. So Do you want us to somehow move your refrigerator from this kind of location? Yeah, so what's the solution to this, I would think maybe the simplest solution would be moving your refrigerator. If we're just going to keep your design sort of as close to the way it is as possible, we take your refrigerator, and we get it off of where it is now. And we put it all the way at the end, near the fireplace. And maybe you put a big tall pantry cabinet first, then the refrigerator, and then a panel on the side of the refrigerator. And that now has removed the refrigerator from you know, it's going to close in your kitchen a little bit. But it now puts the refrigerator on the end, so that kids and everybody going to the refrigerator interferes with no one. And then the other thing is, is we take your double ovens, everybody insists on the things that they want, even if it destroys their design. So you know, if you're gonna have double ovens and a cooktop, then you know, you don't want it to be ruining your kitchen. So really the only place they can go, that sort of makes sense would be where the pantry is on the other side of the other window. And then that's a really good place for them. Because then now you can take something out of the oven and bring it over to the place that it's probably going to go which is the cooktop without interfering with anything and everything else. So the only problem with that design is just that you've lost the bigger pantry in that equation. You have a smaller pantry, and you have the refrigerator, or you have the refrigerator and a smaller pantry. But now everything works. And you have tons and tons of countertop. Yeah. But I'm looking at the design and there's not really a picture on the right side of the pantry. The wall comes back down there, right, thank you. We got rid of on this new one. You got rid of the cabinets that we're returning there. Right, that we're coming down that wall towards the doorway. So it's more expensive, because it's more cabinetry, you know, we have to address the direction of your island and your sink and your cooktop, you know, maybe if you did this version, you could put another sink, you'd have two sinks, maybe once big sink that would be your sink where your dishwasher is, which could be where it is right now. And then another prep sink in front of the other window. Right with all this countertop, that would be good. But the good thing about that prep sink is now that at least will be in the back of your cooktop. And you can go back and forth between that prep sink and the cooktop. Again. It's hard not to break rules, when you don't know what the rules are. Yeah. So it just sort of Yeah, it's not surprising that that's sort of just what happens when you're the design like the thing that I sent you that was sort of, you know, still a lot of cabinetry, but it really solved a whole bunch of problems right the design I sent you had the refrigerator and a big pantry. You know it gave you more cabinets it had you turning the corner where your pantry cabinets are now and then it had either a utility cabinet, you could have a big pantry then the refrigerator, you could make that an oven cabinet if you wanted to it had a range. Or you could do a cooktop and double oven cabinets, but it had a range on the wall. And nothing on the island right the island had no cooktop. So you were venting outside very inexpensively. And I don't know which way the joists run in your room. If I had a guess, doesn't really make a difference. So your cooktop can vent out in whatever direction the joists go. Your cooktop can vent out if you're going to have a peninsula hood coming down in my design, you're getting a an island that people could sit at and you could work that but it had no cooktop in it. So you don't get to face everybody when you're working at the cooktop, but then you don't have anything hanging down either. That's the rub is anytime we get something good. You get something bad with it. And you have to be the ones that sort of choose the you know, what's the problem you want to live with? James 9:27 If you go with the cooktop on the island, and again, I don't know any rules or anything. Is there a downside of doing the like venting beneath and out. downdrafts Paul McAlary 9:39 don't really work? Well. You certainly have to get a cooktop that's like either an induction cooktop or some kind of electric cooktop because you can't really have a downdraft and gas cooktop because the gas cooktop and the suction is going to be pulling right across the flames of your gas cooktop you You'd get an electric cooktop. And then if you're down drifting, again, that's relatively expensive and hot air rises. So it doesn't really work very well. And then again, you have to decide how often do I cook? What kind of things do I cook? In our area. There's lots of people that do ethnic cooking. Indian, Pakistani, Chinese customers that are doing things that create a lot of smoke and have a lot of grease. They won't buy a house with a downdraft because they will know better, they know that their whole house is going to get all coated with grease and stuff, when they're doing the cooking that they're doing if they're doing authentic cooking. So the most important thing for them is to have a hood over the top of the cooktop. So you sort of have to wail stuff, you know, who's in your neighbor, kind of stuff that you cook, how important is this for you? How much do you clean? Are you willing to clean more and rub your cabinets down if your more smoke and more grease is not being captured, but downdraft cooktops definitely don't work very well, you also you have a basement below that would make it easy to downdraft and then get it out. Yeah, there's a basement revenue. But that's the disadvantage of the downdraft and then your choices, either you get a eventing system that doesn't work so well, or you have a hook that's hanging down, and the more it hangs down, the better it works. So you know, ideally, you want maybe 32, at most 36 inches above the level of the countertop, the countertops at three feet. So if it comes down to the minimum, which would really be 36, then it would be if you're under six feet tall, it's not necessarily really in your way, your eyes are low the level of the of the peninsula would, but if you're tall, it's obscuring your view, and certainly, you know, get a nice looking one because it's a central piece of your edge. And James 11:54 yeah, it's the focal point on that point. Right. So they're just like, question that we have, or that I had the call, and it might be a moot point now with some changes that we're gonna make but I feel like I walk into a lot of kitchens now that have part of the kitchen. You know, has the countertop and then it has uppers that basically go to the countertop and allows you to hide toasters, coffee makers, whatever, Paul McAlary 12:24 a two level countertop, is that what you're saying? Well, James 12:27 you have like a you have a countertop and then you have like an upper cabinet that goes all the way to the countertop. Okay, sure. has like a little, you know, door, wherever that lifts up, that then allows you to hide? Yeah, so there's been coffee, yes, Paul McAlary 12:43 it's called an appliance garage, or a Tambour, or whatever, an appliance cabinet, there's a bunch of different kinds, the kinds that roll up or are tambours, their, their appliance garages that, you know, it works like a roll top desk, they go up. And the advantage of those is they're the least expensive. And they don't obscure them. A lot of people don't like the looks of them, and they're not as contemporary. If you got one with a door lifted up. That's the most modern one, it's way more expensive. And when that door lifts up to expose the appliances below, and it will fold back over the wall cabinet doors above it. And so you won't be able to get at those cabinets when your garage door is up. And then there's another kind that flips up, which is really the worst kind. The one that flips up is terrible. Because when that flips up, you can't stand at the countertop and see what you're working at. Because the door is sticking out covering the countertop. Yeah. But yeah, you can you can add those to lots of different locations. James 13:53 Yeah, I just didn't know if you'd be like, Yeah, I think it's worth the cost to have something like that to hide things away. Or if it might not apply, you have lowers right, like so Paul McAlary 14:05 you've got a wall, you've got a wall missing that the designer had in their design. That's the wall that's to the right of your, like the wall to the right of your pantry doesn't exist. But it existed in your other plan. James 14:23 Yes. Yeah, we in this one, we would tear that wall Paul McAlary 14:28 down. So yeah, and where does that go? James 14:32 That goes into our dining space that goes Paul McAlary 14:34 into your dining space. That's a really good one. Yeah. James 14:38 Yeah, so we thought if we pare that down, it kind of opens it up and makes it so that you have a kitchen table that you can actually sit at. Yeah. Yeah, I Paul McAlary 14:45 think that works. You know, they slip when James 14:48 you do lose the wall space that is the most convenient like you said, for the fridge or for a pantry. No, but Paul McAlary 14:55 I think that's more important. So huge thing not to have We call it communication between the the kitchen table and the kitchen work area, right? Your family is not going to eat at the island, the kids may sit around the island and talk to you while you're working. They'll eat lunch there, people might have breakfast at the island. But when it comes time for dinner, nobody's sitting at the island, everybody's going to be sitting normally, at the dining room table, because people want to face each other. So So if everybody's eating at the dining room table, having it be in another room is a real sacrifice, Johnny, do you want to get milk, everybody's running to the doorway, and you know, heaven forbid, you get old like me, then you know, hearing isn't as good. And again, here we are asking you for the next room. And but yeah, taking out that wall, that's going to be your primary dinner area, that's the best thing you can do. That's a good thing. So now we if we choose that as what the one sacrifice that you really have to make, then, you know, whatever else that you've got, you know, you just operate from there. James 16:07 Yeah, and that's how we kind of got this design, we took that wall out. And then in order to get counterspace, he raised the window. And it kind of snowballed. I guess I don't know if this would be like the easy solution to some of your things, you comments about the fridge and the oven. But if you were to just rotate the island 90 degrees, so that the cooks, you know, was right across from the sink, and then you sat facing the sink, I feel like that island might be a little bit more narrow, which is fine. And then it relieves a lot of the things that you're talking about with the fridge and the cooktop and the sink. And the you know, Paul McAlary 16:49 the other thing too, is what's the outside of your house made up I'd forgotten James 16:55 the wall that the refrigerator is on and like a brick, and then the back wall of the kitchen sink is just the like stucco wall anymore. So Paul McAlary 17:03 that the unfortunately, the window that you're raising up is brilliant. So you're going to, you know, either have to put a flower box underneath there, or that window actually went down almost all the way to the floor. So they're doing some Britain, you might open a bigger can of worms. And the really the best place for the refrigerator is not where I said initially by your fireplace and everything and ruining the whole that whole part of the kitchen, the best place where the refrigerator is where the pantry is. But that area is not quite maybe big enough for the refrigerator. And then we haven't figured out where your ovens are going yet. You could also narrow that window. If you narrowed that window to give you more space or something. Nobody ever wants to make Windows smaller because they're losing light. But you're also going to gain light, when you take out that whole wall between the dining room and the kitchen. Now all those in the dining room are going to be flooding light into the kitchen. James 18:08 Yeah, and the other side of that wall in the dining room, there's like a Florida ceiling, nine foot wide window where Paul McAlary 18:15 you move the refrigerator over there. Where the where the pantry was, you have to figure out where your ovens are gonna go. I mean, I don't like it that much. It's better to have your ovens at the end of a run. But if you had your ovens back of your cooktop, that wouldn't be a crisis. Because you're going from one to the other, right? James 18:40 Yeah. Would you say it's more important to have your ovens like that, or to have your cooktop like facing or on the same line as your sink? Well, Paul McAlary 18:53 you could also just put thing over on the other countertop, you know, it can be a really small thing. So that you can go back and forth and be cutting and chopping and doing stuff in Washington vegetables, or whatever you got to do. And then just turning around and then putting them on the, you know, on the cooktop or whatever. That's another solution if you wanted it to be. You could also I don't know it's where does each window face. James 19:24 The one where the sink is now faces our backyard. The Paul McAlary 19:28 and that's the one that you want to be facing the most right? James 19:33 Yeah, exactly. The other one there's like 15 yards, 10 yards and then you run into your neighbor now. Paul McAlary 19:42 You'd have a problem, but I wouldn't recommend doing this if you were doing a downdraft. But if you're going to have a hood over your cooktop, you could make your cooktop slide in range, so that it had one oven underneath it. Yeah You have, and it actually doesn't really cost very much money, because the cooktop that you're going to buy probably costs around exactly the same amount of money as a slide in range. And then you're also not going to be buying a cabinet. And you're not going to be paying for the countertop that would have been there. So it actually saves you a bunch of money. And now you've got one oven in a cooktop. And then if you put, let's say, your second oven, in a tall cabinet that was over by the fireplace, then that oven could be like a speed oven. That was like a microwave and a convection oven combine, it's in a good location, you could be using it as a microwave and taking stuff out and working over there, when you're using it as a microwave, you could be using as a second oven, you could be using it as a warming drawer. But now you got the two ovens and yet eliminated the tall cabinet and at least one of your ovens, you have nothing tall then over where the refrigerator and the ovens are now, now it's just continuous countertop, yes. And then that oven cabinet that's on the end, you're only going to really be losing if it's like a speed oven, and it's 20 inches high or something like that. It's really a pantry with just the middle of the pantry eaten up by a small oven, you know, because it's only one oven. So that's another solution. That's a lot of continuous countertop. But then if you do, the other thing that you were talking about is like somewhere along there, you put appliance garages, maybe in the corner or wherever you decide that you want them, you can get everything off the countertop and sort of hidden. And if your refrigerators down at the end, that's a really good thing. Because one, it's not right in the middle of your living room. And then secondly, it's right next to the table. So if you're getting something, then you're close to the table to get something and then sit at the table to get something and then go to you have the path right straight to the living room. From there, that doesn't put you walking through the working part of the kitchen. Those are good compromises. Yeah. And then the other thing, too, is having a tall cabinet, let's say with the oven in it to the left of the sink, that's not really a bad idea, either. Because that sort of blocks the view of your sink, from your living room, you're not looking at a sink with dishes in it and everything else at least as easily. It's in that location, and then all the countertop that's over there was unnecessary. Anyway, the countertop that's in the back of your cooktop is more, you know, more useful. But I think if I didn't do that design, I would put a second prep sink somewhere in back of the oven. And back of the cooktop, I mean, James 22:46 well, and then it's by the fridge and the cooktop, right. So it's a nice little tropical. Paul McAlary 22:51 Yeah. And then the other thing too is it can be really small, it doesn't have to be big at all. You can even have a cutting board made to be put it put over it if you wanted to. It's very common nowadays to it's a new thing. But to separate the cleaning area from the your dishwasher and your sink area. That's a cleaning area. And now people can be cleaning stuff up. And then you could also still have a sink and a cooktop and ovens and everything else to be working at while someone's working in cleaning. So you have a cleaning station, and then you know, a work and cutting and washing and chopping areas that aren't interfered with by the cleaning area. That's a more contemporary kind of layout. And you got to do like contemporary styles that all works to. Yeah. So you got a new set of things to wrestle with. You thought of the most important thing on your own, which is getting rid of the wall between the dining room and the kitchen. James 23:52 Yeah. Well, I, I, you thought of that. And I just did it. Paul McAlary 23:57 I thought of that I did. James 24:00 Well, you mentioned alcohol. You just said that your dining room when I decided that this was probably the most important thing to get rid of. Okay. Paul McAlary 24:09 Well, we stopped consistent then. I can't remember the phone call. But our podcast engineer was saying that we should have some customer like I don't know you guys are everybody's so much younger than us. But the podcast engineer myself, we're both old. So we used to listen to our talk. I don't know if you know what car talk but it was. Yeah. So like car Car Talk essentially was the first podcast or the first real, you know, popular podcast, sort of, but on cars, they always would have this episode where they go back and talk to somebody after they, you know, they gave you advice or whatever. And then they compare it to what we sort of said before. So he was saying we should find a customer that we can go back in time. And so this is sort of funny, this sort of these words fulfilling the podcast engineers do Rate marks dreams, so and then maybe we'll talk with you after your whole kitchen is done. And then you can tell us tell us if we helped or if we, you know, James 25:15 already, you've already helped a ton. I know it doesn't look like it. This is like my 10th iteration of this kitchen. So I did a lot of iterations of the other designer. We no longer have that designer. And now I'm back to some iterations. And so Paul McAlary 25:33 in some respect, that designer was doing some bad things that it means that they're not really that much help. I mean, if they're doing steaks and doing stuff that, you know, you can make mistakes on your own. James 25:51 I guess that's my question. I don't you know, I've never designed a kitchen, I don't really know what I'm doing. Is there and maybe it's a podcast as you go back and listen to I haven't found that episode yet. But like, how do I go about finding a designer that's worth? Paul McAlary 26:09 Well, we actually have a sort of a podcast that discusses that, but I can just quickly sort of tell you how I do it. In fact, if you want, we can try to find you one. Right now. We have a whole formula. If you've been on our website, there's a whole bunch of kitchen places we recommend all around the United States, we probably don't recommend one near you. But you're going to tell me right? James 26:30 Yeah, yeah, I didn't see one. So we can take Paul McAlary 26:34 a shot at finding it, the formula that we use to find the places that we recommend, we don't know those places, or the designers there were really very much about them. But we can tell a lot by their online presence. So what we do is we go to house.com, you've been probably been there, right? So every kitchen design company, or every kitchen cabinet dealer has to have if they're, if they're any kind of normal company has to have a house paid. And they're going to showcase a lot of their kitchens on that house page. And probably they're going to try to put their nicest kitchens, or at least a lot of kitchens, and most of them really, really nice, at least they should be putting the nicest ones up front. So we go, we can type your zip code into house, and then look at the kitchen and bath designers that come up. And then we look at their house page. And here's the funny thing, we eliminate anybody that shows mistakes, on their designs on their house page. And that makes sense, because you shouldn't be showcasing mistakes, like we have kitchens that have mistakes. And then because the customers insisted on them, either we don't want them house or we bury them and make them the 150 of kitchen. That note you will have to scroll forever to ever see them. But we still get to that location. So it helps us helps customers that are close to that other person find us but we don't put them upfront. So when we use that criteria, 80% of all kitchen companies are eliminated that only 20% of the kitchen companies show kitchens that don't have major mistakes in them in their you know, top five or six designs, you know, now we have a quite a reduced group of designers that we're looking at, then we look then we take that we go to their website, and we look at their website, and we see what kind of cabinet brands they carry. And then we can tell a lot from the cabinet brands if they carry good brands that are well made that are you know, we think are good value, then that says that's another credit for the company. And then lastly, we go and look at their Google reviews. You never want to look at a company's houses reviews, because everybody has good reviews. If you get bad reviews on how is this something wrong with your company? Because essentially, the way people review you on house is you ask them to essentially on Google, or on Yelp, anybody that has a complaint people on Google, you know, we've got some mostly great reviews, but we have some bad reviews. But they're not from customers of ours. There's from people that I got mad at when I told them things they didn't want to hear. So if you can get good reviews on Google, then nobody's mad at you out there. And that's a good so we can do that formula right now. But now that you I've explained it, you can sort of do it on your own. But if you want to go into house, and then just type in your zip code and see if anybody pops up. James 29:48 Sure. It's 63011 Missouri, okay. Paul McAlary 29:55 Oh, looks like you're pretty close to St. Louis. So yeah. Well, the first person that pops up, let's see if they're an ad or not. In the listings, you'll see if you look to the right hand corner of that company, it will tell you if they're coming up what's called organically or if they arrive there. The first person cabinetry by design is sponsored. So they are paying to be there. But they do have 45 reviews, or 43 reviews and they got five star reviews. So that's good on house. But like I said, we we care more about, you know, what kind of reviews they get in other areas, but we'll just take a look at their website now. Oh, here we go from town Homecrest. Quest camp. Okay. All right, they've gotten past two out of the three tests. They have some very, very expensive cabinetry that we actually used to carry Brent M, which is an incredibly expensive custom cabinet company, but they also carry Homecrest, which is an a less expensive cabinet company. And then they have a couple other ones quest, I think might be a frameless, European style that you guys might like, and then I don't really know Kemp, but they might not have the Homecrest has problem with Homecrest is that it's a framed cabinet brand. I really liked it a lot for being a pretty reasonable cabinet brand. But the frameless cabinets are nicer when you when you have slab doors, because the gaps between the doors are tighter. They're not. They're not quite as durable. But if James 31:43 we went I was gonna say from your podcasts, I've learned that if at all. If you are willing, you should probably go frame cabinets or frameless cabinets? Well, Paul McAlary 31:54 it's just that this makes no sense to get frameless cabinets unless you're getting a contemporary door style. Because you're not giving up anything, it doesn't look worse. But with a contemporary style. You might want a frameless cabinet if you really want it to look sleek. And you know, you'll give up a little bit of durability. But if you got plywood sides on the cabinets, and the sides were three quarters inch thick, then you'd have the best made frameless cabinet. And you'd only get a B in our construction ratings on our on our website B's passing grade. It's still okay. Yeah. And it would be a better look. But so this company looks like at least it's maybe a good start their cabinetry by design. Let's just see what they do on Google. They only have three Google reviews. And they've got a 3.7. So let's just see what the complaints were. Well, they have one person that's mad at them. Yeah, I mean, it's not a good. It's not a good review. Yeah. James 32:57 So yeah. So that your Paul McAlary 33:01 next person only has seven reviews. So that's maybe not enough detailed designs by Denise that she's got some stuff going on right on the first picture. Seegers custom kitchens, signature kitchen and Beth. Well, I used to work for a company called so they only got 4.4 on house. That's hard to do. It's harder to get all three areas is harder than you think. So yeah, I can. James 33:46 Yes, like, I'm happy to go off of your biggest mistake on your website and kind of do a analysis of the power Paul McAlary 33:56 grid in cabinetry. Let's see about just try one more Segars custom kitchens. The only problem with a company that says custom kitchens, it just makes me think that they're really expensive. So but it doesn't necessarily mean like our the name of our company is mainline kitchen design. That's a mistake right there too. That frightens a lot of people away because the main line is an expensive area of outside of Philadelphia. But we're not expensive. This James 34:34 that's like my so I went to when I was finding designers I went originally I went to one designer. And then I was talking to my contractor and he's like, Oh, I know them really well. If you want to go there it's going to be double the cost. Like just just timed to what you're thinking. And that seems like really expensive to me and I just don't know what Paul McAlary 34:56 what your contract is they kept the cabinet company was real. The expensive. James 35:02 Well, my contractor just said he's worked with that designer before. And he's like that designer will just make it so that everything's way more expensive. Well, I just don't know, if you're like, you know, you pay for what you get with designers, obviously, but like, Paul McAlary 35:23 well, not necessarily, right. I mean, sometimes the best, the best designers don't work at the most expensive places. Usually the designers that actually make the most of money work for companies that sell cabinets across the price spectrum, which is what we do. So you're going to get inexpensive cabinets, we have inexpensive cabinet brands. And you know what, inexpensive cabinet brands, the design process is much simpler, because they don't make everything, the amount of appointments they're needed are not as many, when you actually figure it out per hour. As a designer, we make very similar amounts of money for inexpensive kitchens as we do on the most expensive kitchens. And by carrying a bunch of different brands. It actually educates the designers in everything that's out there and makes them better designers. So usually companies that carry lots of brands, those designers that work there have to be more knowledgeable because they have more products that they're selling. But they're not pigeonholing customers, everybody that comes in isn't being forced to get custom cabinets. James 36:34 And that I that this lady cabinets are very expensive. And if Paul McAlary 36:40 that's all you carry, that's actually a sign that you're not that good, right, because a lot of times people designing custom cabinet companies and only custom cabinet companies, because they can't paint between the lines, right? They can't make. So if we're good, we can design a really beautiful kitchen and any cabinet brand. And you know, work around it. And then the other thing just to give you some information when you're looking for cabinet companies another detail. If you find a kitchen cabinet company that sells kitchen cabinets, and they sell KraftMaid cabinets. I like KraftMaid as a company, but just the act of selling KraftMaid cabinets means as a company, you're willing to compete against Home Depot and Lowe's. And because they both sell KraftMaid. So you pretty much have to be pretty reasonable, you have to be right around the same price point as the home centers. And so if you find a company that carries KraftMaid, they'll also carry several cabinet brands, as do Home Depot and Lowe's carry bunches of cabinet brands and they won't be very much different. And then generally the designers that would work at that company would be better than the designers that work at Home Depot and Lowe's. Yeah, I mean they can Depot and Lowe's sells good cat will make cabinetry. So it's that's not the problem. It's just that the likelihood you're going to get somebody knowledgeable, there is less. But if you were lucky, and you found somebody that maybe got sick of hustling and was you know, a little bit older and wanted his health insurance and maybe wasn't the greatest salesperson in the world, but as a knowledgeable kitchen designer, there's people that will be working there that will be good. And then KraftMaid cabinets and some of the other brands like American Woodmark at Home Depot and Shenandoah at Lowe's are good brands. I'll just give this one last one a shot. All right. Let's see which kind of review she gets. Ooh finger. Okay. 22 Google reviews and she's got 5.0 She's definitely not as opinionated and obnoxious as me. So So I think that was perspective. So it's called perspective cabinetry and design. Webster Groves, Missouri. That's close to you, right? Yeah. James 39:03 Yep. And they're like cabinets they have you would say oh, yeah, there. Paul McAlary 39:09 They got the cabinets that I like for designs don't have any mistakes in them. She's good Google reviews and good cabinet brands. So she meets the criteria. I'm not sure how many designers work there. But it looks like the different designers maybe even almost have their own house pages. Ship Hall Anna. That designer doesn't have any mistakes on her designs. So she might be a good person to find. And then if we go to prospective cabinetry and designs they everybody gives them good reviews. Yeah, they have a bunch of different designers. So the first one says Patti, Martino, and the rest of the crew, but everybody seems to be happy with the company. And Patti seems like she gets a lot of good reviews too. But it seems like it's a good company to work with. And then this one woman, Paul at least has no mistakes on the designs that she shows on house. Well, James 40:09 thank you for that was above and beyond to help me find a knowledgeable designer. Paul McAlary 40:16 Yeah, so again, maybe your call back or after she's working with you, we'll find out you know, hopefully maybe when you're all done or if you need more help along the way and you want to critique it, feel free to call back in your click and clack project. So all right, good. Good talk with the above nice talking to you again, James in nice meeting at Chelsea. Thank you. Alright, take care. Mark Mitten 40:42 Thank you for listening to the mainline kitchen design podcast with nationally claimed Kitchen Designer Paul Macelleria. 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