Mark Mitten 0:03 Are you planning on putting in French doors that are going to block everything and ruin your dining room and outdoor space? You better call Paul. Paul McAlary 0:16 All right. Hi. Hi, Eric. Welcome to calls with Paul. All right, I'm going to, let's see if we can look at your design. And then let the we have our alright administrators, office administrators sitting in on this on this call. So they're going to be looking at your plan with me, and maybe hopefully gleaming some information or helpful design information from what we do. Yep. And what ERIC 0:43 I've sent her four images, one is a sort of top down arrow aerial view. One is a perspective design view that sort of shows you what it would look like if you were standing off to the side i The two pictures and in one of my my challenges is that I have a U shaped 10 by 10 Kitchen. And that I'm with another room that is sort of open up to that I want to incorporate into the kitchen to make Paul McAlary 1:16 our dining room or ERIC 1:18 it's like a kind of a small ish den. Okay. Fire of large brick fireplace in the corner. And which is making it very hard to or challenging to do. Hey, Paul McAlary 1:37 we're getting all kinds of emails coming in. While we're waiting for yours. Do you have any questions while we wait for this? Are there any questions you have on cabinetry or anything else besides mine? ERIC 1:48 I'm going with a an all plywood KraftMaid Okay, is the designer I'm working with and picking I want to a very low maintenance countertop. I've looked at we've looked at something a product called Dekton I mean that's very expensive. It's very expensive and I didn't Paul McAlary 2:14 realize that color does not go through the countertop right? Then it's only on the top surface. ERIC 2:22 Right What is the like on a certain tile floor tile, like like a non porcelain tile? It becomes very like a white color underneath the right if you chip it. Paul McAlary 2:35 Of course when you have a countertop right what's that gonna be like? Yeah, but Eric It's not going to be on the front edge of your countertop. So whatever the pattern is you have on the top of the countertop will not be on the front edge. The front edge of your countertop is going to be black or some kind of solid color. So what kind of color are you looking to do? Is it a white color or something? ERIC 2:59 It's a very dark colors of matte black color. Oh, Paul McAlary 3:03 so if it's a matte black color, then the front edge is going to be matte black won't just get us won't matte just won't absolutely match the top. But my question would be is if that if it's a matte black color, I don't know why you need that at deck top. So there'll be courts colors that would be much less expensive that would be probably very similar lucky. ERIC 3:25 And that's part of what I'm you know I don't need to pull the trigger on the on that. Yeah, the courts. You know, the information I get is so varied you read them the more you read the more confused you get ultimately at least I have regarding the the maintenance required like on certain things I know granite is more likely to stain quartz is not so yeah granite Paul McAlary 3:54 is harder. And but some of the granite colors it's like absolute black, which is an absolute which is an absolute black finish. It's going to be shiny, you wanted a dull finish. You want a matte finish, ERIC 4:12 it's a matte sort of slightly, it looks almost like a little bit like sounds crazy but almost like a leathery. Like it's not a shiny it's it's almost a little bit irregular, but there's no pattern in it Paul McAlary 4:26 is the surface itself sort of bumpy like a leather a little bit. So then you can get absolute black in a leather finish. And certainly that end. There will also be other colors that when they're leather in Granite will be less than half the price. The deck time I think most times we use deck ton or whenever I've had a customer get deck con. It's for outdoor kitchens because it doesn't, you know it can't stain. You can put any thing hot on it. You're not going to Learn it. And it's not going to, you know, the quartz colors could never be outside, they would fade over time. Whereas the deck Tom doesn't. So inside a customer's home deck Taan is just a more unusual thing, because it's so expensive that in a lot of times, it would be you'd be doing an unusual design that would require it and the color that you're getting doesn't really seem so much like fat. Okay, it depends on your budget. But, you know, it's all the same money, but tectons probably going to be $120 a square foot or something like that. Whereas a brushed, absolute black granite countertop might be half of that. Okay, in granite, and then in quartz, some kind of black dough countertop and Silestone or something like that might be 80 or 85, or maybe something like that. Okay, so the big, big number differences. ERIC 5:58 There's a big difference. And I'm, I'm just blown away by the cost of things right now. Paul McAlary 6:04 What What kind of door style is it that you're getting? Is it like a shaker? Is it it's a two recess panel or ERIC 6:16 a recessed panel? That's in that I guess, in the shaker sort of general style? It's got full overlay. It has just truly describe it. I'm looking at it, but it's full overlay. It's a recessed center piano with with a little bit of the of a Paul McAlary 6:43 trail, kind of a profile on the inside profile. Yeah. And then how high is your ceiling? A foot? And then what kind of colors this is? The color of the cabinet's Is it white is it gray is ERIC 6:55 it is a two green, orange tour, like more grayish green, then KraftMaid. It's called Banzai maple. Okay, Paul McAlary 7:08 so that sounds like a kind of color that you're not going to get in a less expensive brand. You mean you're in KraftMaid, which is a more expensive brand, that your ceiling height is a very standard ceiling height. Well, you don't want colors that weren't greenish, that were just grayish or white, or navy blue. Those would be colors that would be easier to get in less expensive cabinet brands, even though those brands would be still constructed just as well as craft me. But once you get to that greenish kind of color, you think you've you've steered a far from the least expensive brands. So you're always going to be ended up being in a brand that's going to be similar in price to craft to get that kind of color. And then you know you have, you're also going to have other options and KraftMaid that you'll be able to take advantage of I don't know that are necessary. You know, just that color, if that's a really important color for your kitchen. If you could do that kitchen in a gray color, let's say you could be in a brand like fab you would that's just really as well constructed pretty much as graph made. And her kitchen would be 40% less. But it's not going to have that greenish kind of tint to it. KraftMaid has lots and lots and lots of finish choices that you could be doing. Is it even a stain? What's it called, and I can look up graphics, ERIC 8:34 it's picked it up. It is painted. It's called Banzai suede. Paul McAlary 8:38 Banzai sweet. So let's take a look at that. It's not a curiosity. ERIC 8:42 And the reason why we have gone towards the Green was something that we've been researching, like 95% of kitchens are white or white, gray, and I didn't, I didn't want a big, heavy wood feel. I've gotten a lot of wood in other parts of my house. didn't love that. And a white just seems to be to me, it was looking very generic. Paul McAlary 9:05 So that's why I say it's a very nice color. If you could be happy with a gray finish, then if your job gets over budget, you'll be able you could switch to a cabinet brand. That would be 40% Less. Yeah, that just wouldn't have that kind of greenish tint to the bonsai suede. But I mean like fab you would, for example, has a color called nickel. That's the color of a nickel, but it's definitely I think, okay bronze I suede is a nicer color KraftMaid does have nice colors. So that's one of the advantages. So let's see if we we still have not gotten your stuff. I want to try texting it to me. Okay. Now we're cooking. Now we got everything. Got a floor plan first. ERIC 9:57 attempt the floor plan I put some dimensions on. Paul McAlary 10:00 And that's the fireplace location there. Yeah. So I got the just go to the top view again. Yeah. So one thing that you've got going on here is because of the layout that you've done here, you're not really eating in your kitchen. So I mean, you you got you have an island in your kitchen. You have no table and and so where are you going to have dinner with your family? It is ERIC 10:30 right off of the table. When you look at that. There's this arrow that says to the dining room, I have a dining room. Okay, Paul McAlary 10:36 that's it I have that goes to the dining. Yes. ERIC 10:43 Right there, we have a beautiful table we eat there every night. Paul McAlary 10:46 So I would tell you that customers do this. And you know, it's our job to be more negative, I think more than positive, because everybody gets more used to different things. And that to them, it seems normal. But in general, people like to be able to be having their dinner, they like to have formal dinners. But if they're, if they're having their daily dinner every night, they'd like to be in the room that they're cooking it. And, you know, if you're going to your refrigerator, and you're standing at your refrigerator, or your at your sink, or you're at your stove, in this design, and you're working, and everybody else is sitting in the dining room table waiting to be served or waiting for food to come in. You can't have a conversation, you can't ask somebody a question. You can't ask Susie, if she needs help with her homework, she's sitting at the table and the tables in another room. So by keeping your dining room in a separate room, you have this breakfast area that you have for your kitchen where somebody can sit at the island. But I always say that, you know, if you go to a restaurant, and you ask that to sit down, and the restaurant says, well, we only have seating at the bar, right now you can wait a half an hour for a table, everybody will wait for a table. And they all like to be in the kitchen. If they're having their daily dinner, I'm designing your kitchen to sell your house, this actually hurts the value of your home, you have what we call no communication between your dining area and your kitchen. So ERIC 12:21 the even though there's a pocket door there, that that open, just to give you an idea from that. If you're standing sort of just inside the kitchen there. You're four feet from my table. Paul McAlary 12:38 Yeah, no, no, I understand. Yeah, I see the doorway. It's not particularly a wide doorway. You have you have all the things that we consider not not having communication between the two. So yes, okay, fair enough. The solution, there's two solutions to that. One would be to have a formal eating room, an eating area in your dining room. And another area in your kitchen, that would actually function better. Right now your refrigerator is sort of by the fireplace, which sort of ruins that's a nice area to be sitting. And the refrigerator in that location is sort of hurting it. So you know, in my mind, the place where your refrigerator should really be is over across from your sink, in the gap between the island and the other countertop, then people can be going to the refrigerator, then going into the dining room, they don't have one mile to walk every time they want to go to the dining room table. And then if they're in their kitchen working, they can go to the they can go straight from the sink straight to the refrigerator. And then your island can shift down a little bit if you want. And then the people sitting at the island are sitting into the open French doors. And are those actually French doors that open into the room? Or are they French style sliders, ERIC 13:56 there are going to be doors that open in Paul McAlary 13:59 I would tell you that's not a great idea either right now, right now it's a window, right. So if you want to make that a door to the outside, don't make it a French door that opens into the room. Because first you can't open that door and and have a breeze come in from a screen or something without the doors being open and blocking the pathway. So what you what would be much nicer is to get a French style door and have it be a sliding door so that you could slide open that French looking door that could be divided light, but it wouldn't be the doors themselves wouldn't be jutting out into the room. And by the same token when you open the doors with a French door. If you want to have a screen on your doors, they're going to open out onto the backyard and that onto the deck and they could be interfering with where you're trying to walk. Whereas if it's a sliding screen, it's just going to slide out of your way both areas on the outside of your house. So now the inside of your house are more functional. And you don't have this, you know, architects constantly designed things with French doors. It's what people think they like. But it destroys the inside and the outside space for utilization purposes. Okay, so French, for design for designers, French doors are a luxury that usually most people's homes can afford. So and then if your refrigerator vacates from that area, now, if your island comes down, you could have, you could have a big bowl, but the end of your island that people could sit on three sides of it doesn't you're not sitting into the refrigerator anymore, and then you're sitting by the fireplace and you're sitting by those French doors, it's a better place to sit. But you could also give up the ghost to move your refrigerator to where I was talking about before, directly across from the sink, and then just put a table against the wall where the refrigerator is at, that would sit five, and then that table, if it's against the wall could sit five with their back to the fireplace, I mean Tuesday to with their back to the fireplace to with their backs to the door and one on the end. And you wouldn't have an island anymore, you're come all the way down with the cabinetry of forests from the sink where the refrigerator is, you'd have a very open space with none of these type distances, and you'd have an eat in kitchen. And so if you had that, we would then have an eat in kitchen in a formal dining room. And that would be very attractive to a lot of people. And the flip side of that is if you really want to have the dining will be the place where you eat every day is then I take out the wall between the dining room and the kitchen, so that I can have communication between the two rooms. And you could keep your peninsula that comes off of there and maybe even have seating on the back of that Peninsula or no seating on the back of the peninsula. But then people could be looking into the dining room. It D formalizes your house, and makes it less formal. But yeah, you know, I don't know how old you are. I'm an old, I'm an old person, I'm 63 years old. So people in my age bracket even now want less formal homes. I mean, even though we might have gotten sterling silver, for our wedding gifts, it's all just garbage now. And anybody that young doesn't want a formal dining room anyway, they'd rather have an office than a formal dining. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's that's my sobering whatever input on the design that if it's me, I open up that wall, and D formalize your house, so you have communication to the dining room. And then if you do that, now you can move your refrigerator to the other location, have your big island with like a bulb on the end with people sitting in front of the fireplace and sitting in front of the sliding French doors, that's a better place to sit at. You can also be sitting there when you have a party people can communicating with the dining room, it's a less formal utilization of the space, but you haven't really lost hardly any cabinets or anything else. ERIC 18:13 Just a couple of clarifying points. If I start at the sink, you're sitting on the opposite wall, that's where the fridge Paul McAlary 18:21 so strictly, if you're standing there sitting at your sink, looking at the back window, you have directly in back of you should you should be your refrigerator so that the refrigerator doors are opening in and you're standing when you're at the refrigerator, you're opening into a walking space, right is being used by the people going into the dining room, and by the people going over to the island, and by the people going to the safe. So the refrigerators or you know, if you're cleaning your refrigerator, you can kneel in front of it, and be you know, scrubbing and doing things and you don't have anything pressed up against your back. Whereas you've got 40 Is that nine inches or 940? What is it 40 ERIC 19:07 Is 4049 and a half? Paul McAlary 19:09 I mean that's totally sufficient for a distance from the front of the refrigerator to the to the island if you're sitting there. But you couldn't I didn't look at your dining room. See, look, look at your dining room, your fireplace again, one second. So yeah, I mean, you could if you ended up if you ended up putting your refrigerator there and scooting your whole island down. You could scoot your whole island down and if you really wanted more cabinetry, you could put some 12 inch deep cabinetry on the wall on the side of the fireplace if you liked. But yeah, if it's me, I think I just scoot my whole island down and make that whole fireplace area, sort of like a bigger place to sit. So that you if you decide that you're going to open up the wall and combine the two rows. ERIC 20:05 And a question for you on that, that the island here, I'm planning on being able to have three or four seats, as it is you're suggesting, like, if you move the fridge, you've got a little more space slot. The two options one is is to is to slide the the island towards where that where the fridges today, slide, slide that down and enlarge it. The second is to Paul McAlary 20:38 well also either way, I think I want to find your refrigerator limit. So table in, right, yeah. So if you're if you if you wanted your cake and eat it too, then you sort of get, you know, I can't really tell how is that island 24 inches deep in this in the shallow part of it? ERIC 20:56 Yeah, it's about 20, I think it's, it'd be 2427, something like that. Paul McAlary 21:02 So 24 is the cap those 24 inch deep cabinets that are correct on the part of the island that don't have an overhang. So I mean, the other thing, too, is that island, when you look at it from the side, is never going to be very attractive, I mean, we can dress it up and put panels on the side of it. But it's always going to be skinny, and sort of not very, not not that great. And then you can never sit on the side of the island into the stove, you're only leaving 38 inches between. And you know, I'll just also mention that whenever people give me dimensions, or when like designers from other places, give me dimensions, I'm gonna grab a calculator real fast. Well, it's 144 inches, so you got 144 inches you got I'm gonna want to do the math for me. So 144 minus 2025, and F minus 26. Minus, and it looks like he got 12 inch the cabinets, I guess, on the right and back of the aisle, minus that's a 12 inch countertop there too. So that's got to be a 15 minus 15 with a countertop minus 18. What does that leave us 7777 and a half, which is 3536 3738 and a half, okay, so that then you have read a lot you have given, in fact, you're the only person that's ever given us measurements that actually accounted for the overhang of the countertop, almost every person to the power of positive thinking, they go directly from cabinet to cabinet, thinking that they're leaving themselves 38 and a half, but you have to subtract three inches. And so they're really only leaving themselves 35 and a half. But I'm surprised to see that you've got the more realistic dimensions. But you know, even with that 38 and a half, it's still really, really tight. So that when your dishwasher door comes down, it's coming out 30 inches, you only got eight inches in between the dishwasher door and the countertop, and you certainly can't sit at the island, with your back going into the stove. You imagine your daughter or wife has long hair, they could be your cooking at the stove, and you vacate the stove for a second. And they start laughing and lean back, they could set their hair on fire. So you're so close there that you can't sit on that side of your island. So on your opponent's on your islands, so you're only going to be able to sit on the back and the side south. Yes. So really, in this design, you got one, two, you're really going to sit three people through this right now. However, once you scoot down past the end of the past the end of the cabinetry that you have there, we could really have people sort of sitting at the at the bad side of the island, if you made the thing a little bit wider, because at least they wouldn't be going into interrupting the use of the countertop they'd be blocking the entrance from that area to the kitchen. Right but they wouldn't be they wouldn't prevent people from actually working or standing at the countertop that you're working at. ERIC 24:24 So Paul, if if I'm following you, let's take the scenario repeatedly you move the the fridge over and out. Paul McAlary 24:31 And now you can you can make it deeper there. Right? You can make ERIC 24:35 that island at that point. It can be a little bit deeper because you're past the counters, you're past the cabinet. Paul McAlary 24:41 You're gonna shift everything down and all those cabinets on that side. You can have your refrigerator be a counter depth refrigerator. Yeah, I would do it and then make everything 24 inches deep on that wall. ERIC 24:52 So I say that that yes, we're the fridges. So this would be Yeah. So when Paul McAlary 24:58 everything gets deeper than err, and the whole thing becomes built in. And then if you want to have a little bit of countertop on the end of the refrigerator, on the left hand side, I guess you could, and then the island just starts, you know, almost at the end of that wall, and then goes into the, the fireplace, you could also embrace my design, but not all my advice and still eat in your dining room. But it's still a better kitchen. Right? ERIC 25:26 Right, right. In. Yeah, because what it what I'm trying to do is integrate that into the fireplace. And maybe that by having the island moved further towards where the refrigerator is today, if it becomes a little bit larger, and you can legitimately put four or five seats there, you've got a, you've got better, Paul McAlary 25:48 you're embracing, you're making now the aisle at the end of the island that we're everybody's sitting, you're taking advantage of your fireplace, and you're taking advantage of the doors. And if you don't have them be French doors so that they're opening everything and blocking everything, then they're not in the way. And then everybody sitting around here is sitting in a really nice place, they have the fireplace on one side of them. And they have a nice view at the doorway on the other side of it like this. But if you do, if you did do that, and you also opened the you'll lose the wall cabinets. But if you open the hole, take out the wall between your dining room and your kitchen, you'd lose the wall cabinets, but you could also put bottom cabinets on the backside of your Peninsula, that opened into the dining room to sort of make up for that. And that would leave you with about the same amount of cabinetry total. But that would be what young people and that you know as time goes by, we get less and less formal. That would be the thing that if you were doing this to sell your home, that would be the design that would be the one people would like the most that the two rooms are combined, they can you could be at this nice island in front of the fireplace and be with the door on one side. But also, if you're all eating facing each other in your dining area, you can still be looking into the kitchen and talking to people that are preparing dinner and and doing everything in the room. Got it. Very helpful. You only lost the three cabinets on In fact, you lost three cabinets on the wall, but the one cabinet that's next to the sink, that cabinet can grow and could get a little bit bigger, especially if you put cabinets on the back of the peninsula facing into the dining room. ERIC 27:31 cabinets on the back. Paul McAlary 27:33 I don't. Yeah, so let's say you take out that wall between the dining room and the kitchen. That was say five inches thick. Yeah. So if now that that five inch wall is gone, if I put 12 inch deep cabinets on the back of the peninsula, and then just put countertop, I now have 37 inches of countertop 38 inches of countertop advice to use because that wall was five inches thick, I'd only be going 13 Really minus five. So eight inches or nine inches, eight and a half inches into the room. So you could maybe even correct that, you know, everybody's dining room table is always the light fixture is always centered in the room. Because that's how architects design homes. That's where the electricians put the light fixture. But you could take that light fixture and move it away from your kitchen more towards the back wall farthest away from your kitchen. And your whole dining room table can shift that way. And if it shifts that way, that way, only eight inches, if the light fixture only moved eight inches, then you'd have the same distance between the wall and the the cabinets that we have put on the back of your Peninsula. Got it and you'd be able to serve from your Peninsula, right right into your dining room, you'd have three feet of countertop you're serving right there. You could also if you could move your I don't have the picture of your dining room table. If you had more room in your dining room and you're able to shift that table even farther away from the kitchen, then you could have an overhang of countertop and have people sit there too. With or without extra cabinets on the back. And then it's going to be very convenient to serve from the kitchen into the dining room with that countertop and that wall gone. ERIC 29:25 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I see that. Paul McAlary 29:29 And then I would tell you to that in the kitchen world. Yeah, the our mantra is, it's all the same money. So you know you're getting KraftMaid cabinets, which are really nice and very well constructed in a nice, really nice color. But if when you're doing this, if you're if you liked that design more and it costs an extra $3,000 or $4,000 to take out the wall and to maybe do some flow ordering repairs and some other stuff that you might have to do. I mean, it can't really be much more than three or $4,000. But if that ruining your budget, I would rather have the better design and backtrack to a cap that brand that maybe didn't have that beautiful color green, and just go with a gray, and savor myself $7,000 on cabinets, and then have another $3,000 to spend on something else, and not get the color I really wanted. Gotcha. You have to decide, we just give you the numbers. And we sell eight different cabinet brands. So sometimes our customers have smoke coming out of their ears, trying to decide on what they want, and what's worth it. But always I think that the better design is the most valuable thing. And then you splurge to get the cabinetry, the countertops and your appliances. I don't get a deck on top until I've maximized everything else. ERIC 30:58 Got. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. And that's why it was like designed first and then Paul McAlary 31:03 everything. That's our website, that's what we try to we try to browbeat into everybody that's on our website is designed first, and then stuff. Second, ERIC 31:14 I read that I read every one of your blog posts your the question, there's back and I took a lot from that. So Paul McAlary 31:20 yeah, well, you know, you're the only person I've ever has given us the right measurements for the distance between them up. So you took something from it. So you're, you know, you took your your, you took realism from it. I mean, that's part of it, too, is, you know, you want to plan and think out all these things, and be really considering the actual dimensions that you're ending up with and the actual problems that you're getting. Because no matter how we design your kitchen, it's got issues associated with it. And you just have to, you know, our job is to bring them to light, make sure you understand which problems you're going to be living with. And then you pick those problems based on, you know, on the input we give you. Because nothing is perfect. We can't we can't do perfect. ERIC 32:07 Darius is no perfect, but yeah, it's never perfect. But it's all it's all trade offs. And yeah, give me really good things to think about. Alright, is Paul McAlary 32:17 there anything we were able to work out? Or I'm just curious if you ever came through? Let me just let me see if we ever got your email. Now we never came through. So there's something that's fascinating. There's always something back in a million years ago, when I was in college I graduated with well actually, I didn't graduate. But I finished my whole everything but my, my senior project in computer engineering, and there's always you know, there's always some little thing gunking up the works, that when you're writing programs or doing anything, there's it's always the last little thing that's preventing something that is the hardest thing to figure out. So who knows why we're not we're not can't email between each other. I'm used ERIC 33:03 to doing that off my phone. I sent it and I'm wondering if with the zoom on my phone, the whole thing that somehow as soon as I hang up, they're gonna come through. Paul McAlary 33:14 That's a bit yeah, that ERIC 33:17 preserves bandwidth presume I don't know. But, Paul, very much. Paul McAlary 33:22 Okay. Thanks, Derek. And if you ever you know, same thing if you if you have somebody rework it, and then you want to come back and revisit and call in another time, we're happy to give you our input. Thanks for reading our blogs and it was a it was a pleasure having you on the call. ERIC 33:35 Well, thank you very much. Bye. All right, good talking to you. Mark Mitten 33:40 Thank you for listening to the mainline kitchen design podcast with nationally claimed Kitchen Designer Paul maxillary. This podcast is brought to you by Brighton cabinetry, high quality custom cabinetry at competitive prices. For more on kitchen cabinets and kitchen design, go to www dot mainlined kitchen design.com Transcribed by https://otter.ai