Mark Mitten 0:04 Are you torn between a hasty kitchen design plan and a pie in the sky architect, you'd better call Paul you Paul McAlary 0:31 Hi, Claudia, can you hear me? Unknown Speaker 0:33 Hi, yes, I can. Paul McAlary 0:35 Okay, wonderful. Welcome to better. Call Paul. Claudia 0:38 Thank you. Paul McAlary 0:39 I have all your plans and drawings that you sent me, and I think before we even start, I just want to understand it a little bit better, because you've got your second and third floor in your home. Claudia 0:52 Oh, right, you know, I meant to put a note in that. Yes, I'm the second floor Paul McAlary 0:59 and it's two separate apartments Speaker 1 1:03 that, yes, they're two, two flats in this building, and I'm the lower flat, and you're the lower above the garage. Paul McAlary 1:12 Do you seldom use the back door going in and out? Claudia 1:16 Nope, I use it all the time. You Paul McAlary 1:18 use it all the time? Okay? Because it's pretty narrow and but that's right, I Speaker 1 1:23 have a bunch of doorways that are 26 inches. We're going to widen what we can, but we don't want to do the back door being structural, Paul McAlary 1:34 yeah, that's hard to change. I think I understand everything. And, you know, looking at the plans, there's some things that are sort of almost impossible, as they're shown. So, I mean, the one thing that's really glaring is, I don't know how you're ever going to get your washer and dryer in and out. The washers and dryers, the stackable units that you have, they're going to be like, 30 inches deep, and you only have 24 inches in front of them, you'll be able to put them in once, but anytime you might want to move them or replace them, you would have to take out all the cabinetry and the countertops on either side and then remove all that Speaker 1 2:14 well, room a couple of things there. One, I because I've been reading that stacking isn't a good idea, so I'm going to do the side by side, so Paul McAlary 2:25 the side by side helps the cause. So that's much better, and that gives you more. Speaker 1 2:30 I mean, there will be, I would think the appliances won't be coming in until, you know, they get a lot of this work done. And so it can come in. Anything can come in. If you're looking at the bottom of the which one is it? The main, I don't know what to call that Claudia 2:54 well, any of these ways. So proposed kitchen Speaker 1 2:58 plan, the the the bottom, as I look at the picture, is a doorway in from the office area, and that's already 36 inches. And then once they start working on the interior and doing their demo the doorway from the kitchen into the laundry area. That will be 36 inches. Yeah, you know, I think we had to wait on a pot some appliances until you wouldn't. Paul McAlary 3:34 It wouldn't matter how big those doorways were, because the depth of the washer and the dryer, if you, if you stack them, you wouldn't be able to slide them down and then get them into the hole because they'd be too deep. So you couldn't really put them in place. You'd have to put them in place before you put the cabinetry in place. However, if you do put themselves, yeah, now it's a much bigger hole. So if you sort of move them down a little bit, so you got one of these units sort of in front of that doorway in the kitchen, you could then slide the one in to the hole, slide it down to the right, and then slide the other one in. No one's thought that through. So the one thing we want, want to make sure it doesn't happen to you is all this stuff gets installed, and then you go to have your washers and dryer arrive, and it's physically impossible to get them into place, right? We have to spend, or you have to spend a little bit of time making sure that that works. And even because they're so deep, you're only leaving yourself two feet in front of them. Speaker 1 4:39 Yeah, I know we talked about that, but, you know, I mean, I Well, that's what I have now, right? That's what I somehow I manage. So if it was Paul McAlary 4:49 me, I think what I might do the closet that's in the hallway and back of the laundry room, the hall closet, I guess you keep coats and stuff like that in there. You. I might recess my washer and dryer into part of that closet so that I had to access that closet from the bedroom, but then the washer and dryer would be even with the other cabinetry, and it wouldn't jut forward. But that's one possible solution. There's other solutions too that you could do. You just have to really think it through to make sure that you can get these things in place and that even when they're jutting out that want to be able to open the door all the way, and you won't be able to stand in front of them when you open the doors, but unless you actually put them on the wall where the doorway is. But that was just one of the concerns that I had. Okay. The other thing is, is you also have so many doorways in so many different places, making everything less functional. There's not a right or a wrong answer, but there's so many good things that would happen if you just sucked it up and you eliminated a doorway and made yourself have to walk around. So if you were to eliminate the doorway, for example, between the kitchen and the laundry room, so that you would have to go through the whole laundry room every time you wanted to go out your back door. Well, what would be good about that would be that you could have continuous countertop in your kitchen between your sink and your stove, and you wouldn't be walking in and out. It would be a much more functional kitchen. That's why I asked how often you went out out your back door, because as you use your back door less often than having to walk around becomes less of a an issue so but you would certainly would have a way nicer kitchen, because then you could be working between your sink and your stove. Instead of walking across the room and turning sideways, sort of to get to the stove. You could also move your stove a little bit down from doorway to if you wanted to, so that when people came in the other doorway in the hall, into the kitchen that they weren't interfering with anybody standing in front of the stove. There's good things that happen, and then there's bad things that happen. You have to walk all the way around, and then you probably have to, if you were going to get your washer and dryer into the room and into this opening, you'd have to get rid of the pocket door, probably, and maybe make it a bigger door that would be big enough for the washer and dryer to come in and then slide them down and, you know, have them side by side, etc, sort of near the front doorway. It's one thing to think about, just because when you have so many doors in the kitchen, it's sort of limiting how well the kitchen sort of works. Speaker 1 7:46 Yeah, that makes, definitely makes sense. Yes, and I'll Paul McAlary 7:50 send you like a version. I'll hand draw very crudely, maybe one way that you might want to think about doing it. But it's not like there's a right or a wrong answer here. What if you never cooked, or hardly ever cooked, then going in and out of the door is the most important thing. If you that's how you're going in and at the back of the house all the time, then it wouldn't matter if you don't have this continuous countertop between your sink and your stove. So you have to be the one that sort of wrestles with that. Yeah. How much? Yeah. I'll Speaker 1 8:18 have to think about that. Start pretending like I don't have that door, and see how I feel. Well, Paul McAlary 8:25 the one thing that's good is, once you start working on it with a kitchen designer, if you can find a kitchen designer to work with, then they're going to be able to show you what it's going to look like in 3d like right now an architect is working on it with you. They're only going to show you what it's like in two dimensions, and they're also not going to think through a lot of these issues, like the fact that the stackable washer won't fit in. That's really not what they do. No one's holding architects accountable for their work. They just draw pretty pictures and then sign off. I Speaker 1 8:56 know I've heard that more often than not, architects draw things that contractors can't build, yeah, Paul McAlary 9:02 so then the contractors are the kitchen designers. That's what we do, is we have to fix those pie in the sky ideas so they're not. Do have Speaker 1 9:09 a kitchen designer, but we just started working, and he did a really quick put something together, just really to give me an idea of what the budget would look like for so it's really not, I think I sent it to my architect, and she said, Oh, there are many, many, many problems and things here. Just a rough, rough beginning. It's okay. Well, you can the guy hasn't even had a chance to to put it all together anyway. Paul McAlary 9:44 So you can always call in again sometime after you get closer to the end, and we can see if you still have some kind of problem, like your washer and dryer aren't going to be able to be moved into the room. So that you mean, that's what it we're good kitchen designers. Those are the things that we always catch. So. So and then, before you pull the trigger on ordering your cabinets, you could always run it through us, especially if you're architecting your kitchen designer disagreed. So you could just call out and get a third opinion, and we could sort of explain to you why it might or might not be a problem. But the one thing I see Speaker 1 10:14 that's incredible. Thank you. I can't believe that you do this. I think this is a wonderful thing that you do. Well, Paul McAlary 10:21 it is wonderful, but if you think that we're I'm an incredible humanitarian and devoting my time completely, it's only partially true. There's all kinds of advantages to having people coming from the podcast and Spotify and all these different platforms coming to our website. That helps us out a lot. It saved us time, and it's making our website more popular. So we're not just doing it because I like to do it and to help people. It's also helping us and limiting the amount of phone calls that we get from people from far away. So Speaker 1 10:54 that's that's good, yeah, although I wish I lived in Philadelphia, Paul McAlary 11:03 you really would wish you lived in Philadelphia, because you actually live in the most expensive place to do a kitchen on Earth, pretty much. Speaker 1 11:10 Oh, tell me about it. You know, I started doing this four or five years ago, and I got a long way on research, and then I broke my shoulder and physical therapy and so forth, and that just pretty much killed that. And then covid came along, and, you know, here I am, but at that time, the prices were so much different. Yes, Paul McAlary 11:36 it's going back down maybe a little bit. Prices skyrocketed when the whole construction industry got so busy right after covid. And now things are settling down a little bit, but at least they won't continue to rise like they did before. Looking at your design too, there's a couple of things that you might want to think about too, and one is essentially the banquet that you have or you're thinking about doing for your seating area. It's really popular, and everybody really likes to have a banquet. And architects love to draw banquets in, because they think it's going to be such a great idea. But there's actually lots of problems with banquets, the problem is, first off, that if it's the perfect situation, they can save you a lot of space. But in this design for the banquette that you have the distance between the edge of your countertop and the cable in the picture right next to the sink side, is really tight, so only a very thin person could even slide onto the banquet from the sink side. So you might have to slide a person all the way down from the door to the office. You'd have to slide somebody in from there and have them slide all the way around to get to the other end, and it only, still only sits four people, Speaker 1 13:06 the whole banquet, right? Yeah, Paul McAlary 13:09 so it's probably better in this particular design to have a table instead of a banquet. And then the good thing is, it also costs a fortune to build a bank head. A bank head is a totally custom thing that the contractors are going to have to build, and even here, it's going to cost you $5,000 I have no idea what it costs in San Francisco. Speaker 1 13:32 I haven't checked myself, but when a friend of mine first heard what I was doing, she sent me all these pictures bank units, apparently that are just already available. I didn't even pay attention to cost, Paul McAlary 13:48 yeah, I mean, they may work. Just let me look here. You have your window height, and you have in this banquet. This is a banquet with an angle. So like these prefab bank catch units, they may or may not work. Typically, they're not going to be inexpensive. And since everybody's kitchen is so unique, if you have a little bit of a tight space or an unusual space, getting this thing to work in your kitchen and not having it custom built sometimes is hard, and then a table cost nothing, or cost can cost very little. And then I Speaker 1 14:25 already have the table. It's a very nice table. Paul McAlary 14:28 So the way that you make the table work is that you have to put it against the wall. Hopefully it's not that wide a table. If it's like a three foot wide table, then that's sort of ideal, because it eats up the least amount of space. And if it's like 60 inches long, which is five feet, then you put the table up against the wall in the kitchen, the wall between the office and the kitchen, and then you'll seat five people at the table, two on each side and one. One person, when you need them, can sit on the end of the table, and then each person. It's Speaker 1 15:05 actually a square, and I think it's maybe three, three and a half feet. Well, that's Paul McAlary 15:11 so you'll only sit. If you put that against the wall, you're really only going to sit three people at that. But you could buy the nicest table in the world that was three feet by five feet, and it will be certainly always less with the chairs than the banquet is going to cost you. Okay, Speaker 1 15:27 yeah, that's bank account. Was the architect's suggestion. I'm not crazy about the idea, because I had always thought that wall that's common with the office could hold a lot of cabinets, a lot of storage area. Paul McAlary 15:43 You have to eat somewhere in your house, right? So that's really your only eating place. You can't put cabinets everywhere, because you gotta have a table someplace. And this will at least allow Yeah, I Yeah, but this would allow send you the picture I drew with the table. It's going to seat five, and in a real pinch, especially if you flip the refrigerator and that microwave cabinet area right, you don't put the refrigerator to the right or towards the office, put the refrigerator closer to the door. And the reason that you do that is just that people open the refrigerator and step backwards and they're getting close to the banquet. They're getting close to the table, if you're doing the table, and it's just better if the refrigerators on the left and the microwave areas on on the right, and then you could even if you want, Speaker 1 16:37 Oh, I see. So the refrigerator actually goes to the hallway Paul McAlary 16:44 door. Yeah, the refrigerator is closer to the hallway door. And you know, it just works a little bit better that way, because the refrigerator, you know, even though, in the picture, it's only coming out if it's a counter depth refrigerator, as much as the microwave cabinet, the doors of the refrigerator are a little thicker. And then when you open this refrigerator, you're going to open the doors. They're each going to be like, 18 inches wide, if you got, like, a French door refrigerator, and you're going to be stepping back like 42 inches from the face of the cabinetry. And so we're sitting at the bank at you'd probably be bumping into people, or the doors would be bumping into Speaker 1 17:22 people. I see, okay, the table Paul McAlary 17:25 is a little bit better, but it's still getting close to the table. So if you just flip these two, the refrigerator cabinet and the microwave cabinet, then now the refrigerators opening into big empty area, part of the room that has nothing, you know, nothing. Yeah, and you can do whatever you want with the shallower area that the architect has for pantry, cabinets and other things that can stay the same the way she's got it or he's got it. Let's see. Is there anything else that jumps out at me? I guess the one thing that jumps out at me a little bit is, I don't know how high your ceiling is. Is not any nine feet. How many feet Claudia 18:04 nine? Paul McAlary 18:07 Okay, you sure you think it's nine and not eight? Huh? Okay, yep, Speaker 1 18:11 absolutely, nine feet all throughout the house, yes. Paul McAlary 18:15 So the way they've got this designed in the plans right now, you have no choice but to be in an incredibly expensive custom cabinet line. And not only do you have to be in a custom cabinet line, because nobody makes cabinets that are eight feet seven inches tall, right? And she's got the cabinets going up to the ceiling, except for one piece of three inch eye or so molding. The only way that ever works is if your ceiling is absolutely perfectly level. In reality, you really need to have some play so that we can adjust the cabinetry and then maybe have a two piece molding, so the top molding piece can ride up and down on a flat piece, so that if your ceiling is a little bit off, it's not impossible for the contractor to install the kitchen. You don't end up with a half an inch gap between the molding and the ceiling. And then also, I think that you want to, I don't know how much you want to spend on cabinetry, but just if you're ordering cabinetry that's in a size that no one mass produces, and the only companies that are going to sell it are custom cabinet companies, you've doubled the price that you're going to spend on cabinetry. So and you didn't really gain anything other than gigantic doors. Really, some of these doors are pretty narrow, like the door on either side of the stove, the doors on the cabinetry on either side of your sink, they look like they're only 24 inch wide cabinets. So that would be such an unattractive thing a door that's 12 inches wide and. Is over four feet tall. So I'm going to send you two blogs. One's about why when kitchen designers design a kitchen, we always leave play. There's no fillers in this design. When you're opening the cabinet doors, like the pantry doors that are up against the wall towards the office, you have to have a filler there so that that door opens and it doesn't bind on the molding that's on the side of the office door, right? You know, the architects don't know these things. They don't think it through. So all of their doors bind. They design kitchens and cabinet sizes that make you spend an extra 20,000 $30,000 I don't know in San Francisco how much more, but they'll certainly be cabinet brands you could buy that would not be custom, that would be half as much as a custom cabinet brand, which you'd have to be in to do these dimensions. Claudia 20:52 Okay, Paul McAlary 20:53 I think one of the things that I thought was really cool and not a warning flag, was you have an anti phone cabinet. Oh Claudia 21:02 yes, Paul McAlary 21:02 that sounds really interesting. Speaker 1 21:04 I'll send you a picture of it as very interesting. Paul McAlary 21:08 We have hanging on the wall in our bedroom in a little like nook area that's like a antique writing desk, and over it is an antique time clock from my wife's punch clock that you know, people would put their time cards in from, like 1900 that the company that my wife's father was working at, he died very young, but it was his company that he bought from his father in law, essentially, and They were still using this antique time clock in 1955 and so it's in our bedroom. It's very and it's sort of cute, but the phone sounds really cute too. Yep, Claudia 21:48 I will send you a picture of that that Paul McAlary 21:50 would be lovely. But the other thing that did worry me is saving the sink that's in the kitchen. What kind of sink it's you know, Speaker 1 21:59 what was shown there originally, the architect and I talked about, I really white like a double sink, but the more I'm reading, the more I think I'm going to go with a single sink so it won't be nearly as wide as it showing there. So I don't know what wisps are going to be like. I have still in the process of, Paul McAlary 22:24 is it like a porcelain sink or something a what is it like a white porcelain sink that you would say? Claudia 22:31 Oh, yeah, 1940 Paul McAlary 22:33 so the problem with that, too, is that that sink, people will look at it, it will look like a farm sink, but it really isn't a farm sink. As kitchen designers, we really can't we use those porcelain sinks because there's no cabinetry that's going to work underneath them, where they're going to come out looking really built in. So even if you wanted a double ball sink, you could do it, but you would never use a sink from 1940 once you work in the cabinet industry, then we know that these 1940 sinks are hollow underneath, and there's no real way to make them look right. The farm sinks that people get nowadays look antique, but they're designed to be built into modern cabinetry, so it comes up looking right. When people try to use these antique things. It doesn't look right. And there's actually a term for it, which is a term that kitchen designers shiver whenever we ear, but shabby chic. So shabby chic, shabby chic is using a bunch of stuff the wrong way and not spending enough money to do things the right way, and ending up with a kitchen that sort of looks like a soap purse made out of a sow's ear. It just doesn't really look right. So Speaker 1 23:46 well, we also consider that the shape of the sinks, they would need to be refinished, etc. So I don't think it's worth the cost to try to sell. Paul McAlary 23:54 You know, anyway, Arias is so many people and so many architects think that we as kitchen designers can work that into our design, that if you want, you can sell that sink online and sometimes get maybe $800 for it. Good, great. I don't know, in San Francisco, maybe even more. Wow, it's people think they're going to use it in their kitchen, and then they come to us to use it, and then we have to tell them we can't. No, it's gonna cost them $5,000 to do it. And then they have to refinish this thing too. So, okay, Claudia 24:31 well, good to know. Okay, Paul McAlary 24:33 anything you can think of that you wanted to ask, Speaker 1 24:38 let's see. I'm, I'm planning to go with for the microwave. I'm planning to go with the what do they call it? Drawer microwave? Oh, Paul McAlary 24:47 okay, Speaker 1 24:49 it sounds more they're the ones that hang off or in the top cabinets. Yeah, I'm. Like to do that, spilling hot something on myself. So, yeah, what else Paul McAlary 25:07 the microwave drawer cabinet too? Just so you know, there's two different sizes. There's a 30 inch microwave drawer and a 24 inch microwave drawer. But if you can remember this, they're actually the same microwave. In fact, sharp owns the pattern the on this microwave. And so even if you got a wolf or a sub zero, a wolf or a Viking microwave drawer, it would still be if you took off the front of the microwave, it would be exactly the same interior unit that's made by sharp so I read Speaker 1 25:47 that they make all of them for all the brands, and Paul McAlary 25:51 the inside of the microwave is the same size, whether you get a 24 inch one or a 30 inch one, the only thing That changes. Speaker 1 26:00 What did they do with all that extra room? No, there. Paul McAlary 26:04 It doesn't get used. It just goes on the front of the unit. So the front panel, front just gets bigger. So because of that, I would recommend don't waste space. Just get a 24 inch microwave drawer. You'll save $100 and you won't have sacrificed a cubic inch of space. It's all the same on the inside. Speaker 1 26:24 Okay, good to know. Thank you. I will do that. I was going Paul McAlary 26:29 to say you're going to have more to think about when I send you the hand drawings I'm going to send you, because not saying to do it this way, but it will just give you something to think about, and maybe the kitchen designer, and you can play around with it, closing that doorway, changing maybe where you might want to put the washer and dryer, switching the refrigerator in the microwave area, switching from a banquet to a table. You know, it'll help give you some ideas. And then you can keep working on it and call back another time after you get a little farther. And then also, okay, if you do switch to it, not a custom cabinet brand, what you're going to end up with is you're going to end up with little cabinets on top, and you weren't going to be able to reach the very top of a nine foot high ceiling cabinets. Speaker 1 27:15 I know you put things up there that you use once a year or something, yeah. So Paul McAlary 27:21 we would just dine your kitchen with 12 inch cabinets on top, and then 36 inch cabinets below. And 36 is a normal cabinet door size, so you won't have these gigantic doors that are so unattractive looking, this very, very custom sized cabinet with these gigantic doors that won't look good, you'll just have these little cabinets on top. And if you want to get fancy, you can make them glass. And then if you make them glass, you could put lights on the top and just put something to display in them. Now, once we do that, the size of your cabinetry will be in the universal kitchen design sizes, so you could be in a semi custom cabinet brand, even an inexpensive cabinet brand that's well made, and you might spend half as much money because you're not in custom cabinets. Speaker 1 28:13 Well with with that whole idea that you're talking about, I I guess I kind of thought, when it comes to whatever that gap is, from the top of the cabinet to the ceiling, can't the I always thought that the carpenters, the contractor could just fill with whatever size he needs to To fill the gap. As I Paul McAlary 28:41 build a soffit? Speaker 1 28:44 Well, I don't know, be a soft I don't want a whole soffit. But I mean, Paul McAlary 28:50 so if you did it eight foot high cabinets is the biggest height that cabinets normally come in. It would just be a really big stop molding on top. But there's something else that you can do too. You know what a tray ceiling is? We do that all the time. That's the least expensive way to do your kitchen. Actually. Do you know what a tray ceiling is? I think I do. I'm going to start your thing on a tray ceiling. A tray ceiling would be, what if we just built a six inch high soffit around the whole perimeter of your room. I mean, everywhere, right? This whole kitchen is square, so we're just going to build maybe two feet out a whole perimeter. It's only six inches high. It's not going to make the room seem so much smaller. And it goes around all four walls, and now your ceiling height in the kitchen isn't nine feet, it's eight feet, six inches. And then the nice thing about the middle of the tray that's going to be nine feet high in the middle of the room. And you can put another molding if you like it, not if you don't like it, you don't have to, but if you liked it, you could put another molding around the hole inside. Side of the tray to give the room a little bit more of an interest. Yeah. Speaker 1 30:04 One of my clients is an architect, and he did that in his home. I remember seeing the pictures chef. Oh, Paul McAlary 30:12 yeah. So then, if you did this, the reason you would do this is it doesn't seem like it makes sense, but it saves you a fortune, because now your ceiling is eight feet, six inches tall, and 42 inches is the standard cabinet height and the least expensive cabinet height for the size. So you can get 42 inch high wall cabinets that will reach up to eight feet. And then you have six inches of molding reaches the soffit. And now you don't have to buy all of those little cabinets on top. So you're only have to build the soffit around the room. And soffits are drywall and some two by fours, and that's way less expensive than cabinetry. So you'll save all of these little cabinetry, and now you're in it. So Speaker 1 31:00 are you saying that in the picture, I wouldn't have any of the cabinets that are essentially above the refrigerator? No, Paul McAlary 31:09 the cabinets in the moldings are going to now go all the way up to six inches from the ceiling, and the soffit just goes the rest of the way, right? And the soffit makes the tray, so you only lose six inches of cabinets up on top. So like over the refrigerator, there's still be a cabinet that's 24 inches high over the refrigerator, 24 Yeah, you'll have a 24 inch cabinet over the refrigerator, so the cabinets would go all the way to eight feet, and that's all you can reach. Anyway, you're never going to reach anything over eight feet, so you're not losing any valuable storage space. And then now you're in, you know, eight foot high cabinet for your pantry cabinets, use 42 inch high wall cabinets. This is probably the most common size cabinets in the world. So every cabinet brand is going to offer them, and now you don't have to be getting the most expensive custom cabinets that come in very, very, very, very unusual sizes, okay? And I would tell you always it's way better when you splurge on expensive cabinetry, which we sell a ton of doesn't make any sense to splurge on expensive cabinetry thinking that you're getting a better made cap. That's not what makes expensive cabinetry expensive. The reason we have expensive cabinetry is because the finishes and stains and the kinds of wood that they use can be more beautiful, but not more durable, just more beautiful, and the sizes and unusual sizes and unusual kinds of finishes, like distressed finishes or rubbed off paints, all those things become available, but most people don't get that. So if you're getting, like a very simple design or simple door style and a simple finish, it's going to probably be available in an inexpensive cabinet brand that you're paying just to have these unusual sizes that you didn't need to Speaker 1 33:08 Okay, well, so far my the designer I'm working with quoted Me craft, craft made. Yeah, Paul McAlary 33:20 so craft made doesn't have cabinets this size. That's in this picture. You'd have to stack them in craft made. And that's okay, and craft made some a medium priced cap or a little bit higher than medium priced cabinet brand, but the design that he did was to eight feet, if he was probably in craft made not to nine feet. Okay? Because craft made doesn't make them cabinets to nine feet without stacking. So you can stack them or have them specially custom done. And the craft mates also alters some things that they do, but they charge a whole lot, so I don't know. I don't think that they would actually do a cabinet that was eight feet, nine inches tall. I don't, but I think you'd have to stack them in craft made, but they could buy could combine the cabinets, but you'd have to ask him, but craft made a fine brand. But once you're making the size of normal sizes and you're stacking cabinets, you could even be in a less expensive brand and craft made. What kind of color and door style Did you like? Speaker 1 34:30 I was looking at two one would be a wood with a very subtle wood grain to it in a lighter so that would be like maple. What I've got is maple, yeah, that's a sample I'm looking at pretty good. And the other is, basically, I would go with an off white. Paul McAlary 34:55 So in the maple, what kind of doors? When the in these brands, oh, it's Speaker 1 35:02 what, it's what's called flat panel, or flat Paul McAlary 35:05 panel. So a flat panel is a much more contemporary kind of cabinet. That's Speaker 1 35:10 also not a dust catcher, that's true. Paul McAlary 35:13 So that's the kind of look that you're going for, a contemporary, kind of modern, yes, in that kind of color, craft made would probably be a good selection, but you're not going to make these gigantic doors, so you'd have to stack the cabinetry to get to the ceiling. However, if you did that whole tray ceiling, now all of a sudden, you'll have eight foot high cabinets with six inches of molding on top and then the soffit, where you make the soffit a little bit bigger, because you can level the soffit because you're building it, you can make the soffit nine inches high instead of six inches high, and have eight feet of cabinet with a three inch molding, and it would look very much like it does here, except that you'd have a nine inch soffit over the top, and then in craft made, you'd be buying eight foot tall cabinets, and your wall cabinets would be 42 which, again, is all standard, and nobody's customizing anything. If you were to do the little cabinets on top and craft made, those little cabinets would cost just as much if you had glass doors in them. They cost more than the big doors underneath. You're actually, in some respects, losing usable storage space, because now you're going to have, instead of a 36 inch cabinet with a little cabinet on top, you're going to have a 42 inch cabinet with just the molding on top. But that's all if you build the tray ceiling. Okay, I'll put some kind of notes, and I'll send you something on the tray ceilings too. Speaker 1 36:40 So, okay, God, that's an interesting concept. I think go to Paul McAlary 36:45 looks really nice, you know? And it's a modern look. You could do something like have the tray go around the room, and then instead of having the corner of the tray being square, like, you know, it's drywall, well, they make something called a rounded corner bead now that it would just make your whole tray going around the room, go down six inches, or something like that, or seven inches, and then the corners of the tray would be rounded, which is more contemporary looking, and then slaughter interesting. You can think about that too, but Claudia 37:19 that's great. Yes, that's fabulous. Paul McAlary 37:22 But the biggest thing is, is when you get down to the 42 inch high wall cabinets and the eight foot high entry cabinets, you'll once you're not stacking cabinets anymore. Now you can be in a brand like graph made, and even if you're in a brand like graph made, you just saved yourself probably $8,000 Speaker 1 37:41 because you're not, I like that, because you're Paul McAlary 37:44 not paying for all these little cabinets on top, and you're not paying for these unusual sizes and everything. Speaker 1 37:50 Okay, fabulous, wonderful. Thank you so much. Sure. Paul McAlary 37:54 I guess the price of your kitchen is probably that will this way may stay the same as the guy gave you in craft made. Because I guarantee you, he wasn't giving you prices with the stacked cabinets. He didn't show you little cabinets on top, did he, Speaker 1 38:11 you know, I don't know right now, and as they say, it was just so hurried. And I think I scared him the first time I said another my architect had another design firm, cabinet firm quote, and they quoted $62,000 Well, Chris, if It's me, Paul McAlary 38:40 well, it's not ludicrous, because if it's custom cabinets in these very, very, very unusual sizes, that's like, not an outlandish number. But that's why, when you suddenly make it not a custom cabinet brand, and you're only going up to 42 you're suddenly more like 30. Speaker 1 38:57 Oh, good. Well, so far, he's quoted, and I don't, I was asked with or without installation, I don't know, but he quoted around 24 ish, Paul McAlary 39:09 that's without installation. What he did was he probably took a quick look, and he did everything up to eight feet anyway, and then he didn't, probably add all the other things that you might want to pick, like roll out trays and some other things, Claudia 39:25 of course, although, Paul McAlary 39:27 yeah, I would make it, but yeah, $30,000 in craft made for this whole kitchen, once everything is fleshed out and everything else, and you have the soft it's that sounds about right, Claudia 39:38 okay, and Then Paul McAlary 39:39 there will be cabinet companies that would be 40% less than craft made. Like we sell a company that's just as well made as craft made, really, and it's called Fabi wood, and they have all these same sizes. They don't have as nice colors as craft made in the slab door in craft made, they don't really have a. Good slab door and fabulous. It's a frameless cabinet, which looks really nice, but then it's not plywood sides anymore, but they have a skinny Shaker Cabinet that's very pretty contemporary. But there will be some brands that will be even less than craft made, and have everything that you want. Okay, Speaker 1 40:21 well, I know I did pull the chart recommendations that you have in various areas, and I did take the one that's in my in the San Francisco Bay Area, okay, and then maybe I should be checking with them. Then the Paul McAlary 40:39 people that you got the quote from and craft made was that at a cabinet dealer or a home center? Speaker 1 40:44 Oh, no, no, no, this is a cabinet dealer. Cabinet dealer, yes, so he used to do installation. He doesn't anymore. Paul McAlary 40:56 So I would tell you that it's really good when you pick a cabinet dealer that sells craft made that they're never going to be overpriced. And the reason they're not going to be overpriced is because both Lowe's and Home Depot sell craft made. So if they were going to be overpriced, they would be run out of business by Home Depot and Lowe's, so sort of picking an independent cabinet dealer that carries graph made guarantees that it's a competitively priced cabinet dealer. From Speaker 1 41:27 what I've read, apparently, the big box stores are some of the most expensive for anything. Well, they have that's not the public image. Paul McAlary 41:39 Yeah, no, not for for cabinets. They're not Lowe's and Home Depot or just average price. There's certainly a lot less than the really expensive dealers that are overcharging people. But if you're a regular outside dealer, we have to compete with those with Home Depot. So we're a little tiny bit less than they are apples to apples, but no one's really a whole lot less. So they're definitely not overpriced, at least for kitchens, the construction is a different thing. The home centers don't do the construction. They sub it out to other contractors. So the contractors, they sub it out to charge Lowe's and Home Depot, and then Lowe's and Home Depot add 30% to it, so they're a little bit more expensive than outside installers sometimes might be. But there's also some installers that are crazy. We have, we know, installers that charge double and triple what some of the other installers that we know would charge. So there's a huge variation, especially in your area. Speaker 1 42:41 Yes, yes. Well, at least I have a very good contract. I've worked with him. Oh, good, yeah. We, when we first bought the building in 2010 we had a lot of huge, huge, some work done, including earthquake, you know, reinforcement and so forth. So, yeah, I'm very comfortable with the contractor. Now I have to get the designer in line. I don't know this. I have a good feeling about this designer, and I think he's a reasonable person, and I think he's an honorable person. Well, if it's craft Paul McAlary 43:27 made, it sort of means that you couldn't be successful on business and not be reasonable. You can't be cheating anybody when you're competing against home centers. That can't be your business model. Your business model has to be to, I'm going to get the job over a home center by my better knowledge and my better customer service, because some people just care about the price, so I have to be price competitive, but I'm going to win the battle against the home centers, and that's a brave thing to do, to carry graph made because you're competing against some Customers that just are only concerned with price, so it's good. He carries Speaker 1 44:03 one other he also represents design craft design. When I went in, I had been looking at the design craft brochure, and I had several things I picked out. And I said, I like this, this, this. But then he started, you know, pointing me to craft made and looking at at those samples, the Paul McAlary 44:30 design craft, I think, if I remember right, is a frameless brand, so it might look a little bit nicer and more streamlined than the craft made for a slab door that you like, but the craft made will be more durable, so, and probably they're very similar in price. Speaker 1 44:50 Yeah, as a matter of fact, he showed me the inside of something, and that was part of his recommendation, Paul McAlary 44:56 especially since he used to do the construction and. Be involved in that a lot of the people involved in the construction are going to favor working with a framed cabinet, just because it's more durable and things are just less likely to fall apart and stuff, maybe they're prejudice a little bit just that they like the better, stronger cabinet. Claudia 45:18 Well, that makes sense. Okay, so Paul McAlary 45:21 I'll send you all this stuff and give you something to think about, and maybe we'll, we'll talk to you again. Speaker 1 45:25 Okay, yes, probably. And so when you send me that, you're going to email it, I'm going to email it to you. Yeah, great. So it'll have your email address. Send you. I'll send you a couple pictures of my little phone niche. Paul McAlary 45:42 I want to see the phone thing. Yeah, that would be cute. That's Speaker 1 45:45 great. All right. Thank you so much for your time and your information. Thank you. All Paul McAlary 45:52 right, good talking to you. Bye, bye, bye, bye. Mark Mitten 45:54 Thank you for listening to the mainline kitchen design podcast with nationally acclaimed Kitchen Designer Paul mcalary, 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