Kelly's Kitchen Sync

A Reader Asks: How to proceed on design?

Hi Kelly,

I loved reading your article; your conversational tone is fun to read and very informative.

We are in process of designing a 540 sq. ft. addition that will be part kitchen and part screened porch.

The working plans for the space are in process…however, my architect is a young fellow who shares that he spends about 3 mins per week in the kitchen and that we wont get much help from him when it comes to kitchen layout.

On my first trip to Lowes, I met a kitchen planner who did some early cabinet layout work and shared that if I had just 4” more on the wall between the kitchen and porch, she could squeeze in a 9” cabinet and make a little more use out of one of the blind corners.

I am a little frantic that this seems to be an odd way to design a cabinet layout…the walls are still flexible but I am unsure if I want to definitely use Lowes and their brand of cabinets. I cant go high end with cabinets, but I do want quality that will last.

We have been in our little split level for 14 years and love the neighborhood. Our goal is to make our main level more inviting and pleasant for entertaining for many years to come.

Any ideas on how to proceed? We are spending a pretty penny on architect fees and it feels wrong to spend more money on design and layout…but I am willing to be convinced if it is the best way to go.

Thank you for any thoughts you might share.  Kathy

~*~

Thank you for your kind words, Kathy –  we’re always up for sharing and fun, which is good because my virtual coffee’s horrible….

I’m convinced your email is my final sign from the universe for me to blog this because you’re not the first reader to email, and I just had the exact same discussion with a former client.

First of all, I sympathize – it would be nice to have an architect who’s also a kitchen specialist, but since you don’t, here are some thoughts and options.

I remember reading a poll this year on remodeling and it went something like this -- if people had to redo their kitchen all over, a good percentage of them would have spend more money on their cabinets. For some reason (major marketing dollars), appliances are perceived as having more glamour, but it’s the cabinets and counters that are the workhorse of the kitchen. Do you have to spend the ultimate on your cabinets? Of course not – there are many decent solid cabinets out there.

So here’s a big insider tip for you:

There are many, many companies that you could go to that are smaller studios, possibly even designing with the same cabinets, who have very experienced/trained kitchen designers and/or Certified Kitchen Designers who will design your kitchen for either the same price or not much different than what you’ll pay at a big store.

Yup. I know this because a) we did it for years with our family showroom and b) our company is doing it now.

There are only two reasons why a comparable price cabinet should be different:

• the company is using them as a “loss leader” – ie. selling next to cost to bring you into the store (in which case, this is a deal for you – go for it.)
• the designer is actually designing the kitchen for you and some of the choices may be more expensive. Let me explain what that means. We get designs from big stores all the time.  The first thing I notice is the 2-step crown molding is always left off the design. The reason?  It adds $ 800.00 – $ 1,300.00 to a mid-size kitchen (depending on amount and style.) Kitchen 101 in how to make a kitchen price "cheaper."

Okay, there might be 3 reasons: overhead might be hefty, yet even then, the cost isn’t going to be loaded all on the cabinets you invest in.

I can’t speak for all designers, but the kitchen designers I know design for the client’s lifestyle, not simply the bottom line. The reasons? Of course it’s our livelihood too, but there’s also professional pride at stake; our reputations make or break our career. Basic, cookie-cutter layouts aren’t our thing – we want to find out what your storage requirements are, where we need to position the small appliances, how we can get the kids making their after-school snacks out of the way so you can work in your kitchen.

Can the bottom line and the lifestyle mesh? Absolutely.

Now it’s not fair to lump all kitchen planners working in a box store – as with everything, it depends; they may be beginning designers, or experienced designer working because the hours fit in better, I don’t know. But I do know the focus of the store is more on getting the price out quickly than getting deep into design.

Also? There are two things that make my ears perk up:  Blind corners, while a cheaper alternative than a double corner unit and sometimes necessary for layouts, should be avoided in favor of something easier to reach, especially with the “many years to come” statement.

So here are some options:

1. See if you can’t arrange some interviews with smaller companies with the same cabinet lines or similar. If you can find family businesses, even better, but I’m prejudiced – a consumer never has to give you grief for something you did wrong, because your family will dish it out even worse. For years. (I’ve heard.) There is either no cost or minimal cost to have the designer work with you if you’re buying the cabinets from them.
2. If you really like Lowe’s, hire an independent kitchen designer. Pay them for their expertise. Get them to work with your architect for the best fit. A good designer will charge anywhere from $ 75.00 – $ 200.00 depending on experience. The more experience, the less hours it takes. (At least it did for me and my clients.) Get the design hammered out and THEN take it to Lowe’s.

You never want look back and say, “If only…”  and while it may feel wrong now to spend all this money on the architect and have to spend more for a kitchen design, you won’t feel that way at all if it doesn’t turn out the how you want. You’re not doing a home for a 2-year turnaround, or something that you won’t be living in as often because it’s a second home. This is it: figuring out your layout is crucial. Make sure the designer you choose is something you can mind-meld with – we only have one life – go for excited mode instead of dubious. Repeat after me: this should be fun!

But then, I’m prejudiced – I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now. Good luck, and keep us in the loop, please?  I’m sure all the other readers’ are like me, “I wonder what she’s going to do?” *grin*

And if any of you have a story to share, let’s hear it!

Kitchens - yesterday and today

Okay, let’s dispense with the tips and soapbox and talk design fun!

There’s two websites I thought you might have fun poking around in. One of them I’ve known for awhile; the other is one Paul from Kitchen and Residential Design urged me to see.

1) RetroRenovation

Do you have a mid-century home? In love with room design from the ‘40s - ‘60s? Want to talk to other fans of O’Keefe and Merritt stoves? Then you need to head over to see Pam at RetroRenovation. What I like about the site is that she’s a big fan of recycling, and she also cautions that it isn’t a DIY-site – more of a place to research for authenticity and meet with others to find retro items. She also cautions you about undertaking a remodel yourself, as a lot of the mid-century homes had their share of asbestos and lead paint (esp. the 1940s homes.)

What perhaps amuses me most is that several of the 1960s rooms look very much like the rooms the 20- and 30-year-old interior designers swoon over. Look at the picture above – that’s not 2009, that’s 1957, ladies and gentlemen.*sigh*  I grew up with it; still can’t get enthused with that style.

But I can about the rest and so might you; enjoy!

2) KitchenClarity

Sarah’s an interior designer specializing in interior design in my neck of the woods. She pokes fun at some of the design trends like the lettering above (which we all need to do occasionally), but she also discusses design in a very straightforward and easy-to-read way. She features many kitchens (some with very poor layouts, and she calls them on it once in awhile – yay!) All around, a nice blog.

Welcome, both of you.

Do you know what you're really getting for your 3 bids?

Sometimes, after all these years in the business, I feel like Don Quixote, batting at windmills. (Does anyone even know or care who Don Quixote is?)  I grow tired (and, yes, a bit feisty) from people over the years who come back to me, saying, “You were right. Can you fix it?” Or posting far and wide that their contractor wrecked their project, only to find with a little digging that their “contractor” was the cheapest fly-by-nighter around.

Yeah, sorry, I’m going to hop up on the soapbox. Bear with me; it’s a short rant, and I hope will give some pause for thought.

I’m going to say it now – you can shop your heart out for the best deal for your sparkly tile, the custom window, or the stainless dishwasher, or the new addition, but if you only have warm bodies to install them with no idea of what it takes to make it happen, you’re asking for trouble. Being in this business takes skill and an incredible amount of knowledge – the same as any other occupation.

I’m not saying go with the highest bidder, I’m simply saying, you’ll have a much better project if you spend as much time educating yourself on the installation process as you do the products. Somewhere along the way, the concept of the skill and the technical knowledge that it takes to make your project happen went away in the general commercialization of “Oh, look at the shiny! Want!”

Saying, “I got a great deal – my tile setter was half the other guys” and not knowing that it’s because your “tile setter” left out the stable membrane between the tile and the wood sub-floor is a guarantee that your tiles and grout will crack within the year and you have to do it over again. But hey, it was cheap.

Part of this is fueled by this excellent post from a couple of professional contractors I know: Building and Remodeling – Is it a Commodity?  One of our pet peeves in this industry is people who’ve never picked up a hammer in their lives, (not my readers, of course *nodnod*) but have watched all the home improvement shows, who think they can dictate how long something should take to accomplish. No, uh-uh.

Kudos for being knowledgeable about products and even how to install something properly, but can you imagine if we marched into your place of business and announced that we've read up on management and the meetings to get our accounts in order should only take 2 hours, tops?  No, of course not.

And yes, I know – there are some of you out there who did your due diligence, who did everything right and still got a raw deal. My sympathies. Sometimes, a project can go wrong no matter what the best intentions are, but I have to say that the true pros and leaders are the ones who take responsibility for it. However, that’s another post…

Tell you a secret: want to get the absolute best deal for your project?

Care.

That's it. Acknowledge and learn to appreciate the skill and talent. Spend as much time searching it out as you do your products. All of us will bend over backwards to make your project the best it can be. You're the people we can say, "Well, they love the arch so we thought it might be nice if we could design a communications center with a charging center for cellphones" or any small detail that would make you happy.

I know there are some of you out there that learned the hard way. I’ll get off my soapbox now.  Thoughts?

A quick note on dinnerware

(Photo: Wikipedia)

If you’re planning your kitchen and looking for a space for Grandma’s dinnerware, make sure you measure the dinner plates first. Some of the older plates were bigger than they are today and won’t fit in a standard 12” deep wall cabinet.

Same goes for chargers.  (That’s the red decorative plate in the above picture. They vary around 13".) Many semi-custom and custom cabinet lines can be ordered up to 15" deep.

While we’re at it, Thanksgiving is coming up -- if you want to actually use Grandma’s dinnerware, Emily Post shows us how. 

Unfortunately, there is nothing in Emily Post’s etiquette on the proper way to throw a tantrum when you realize you spent a fortune on your new kitchen and your dishes won’t fit, so please ~ measure your heirloom dinnerware first.

Thank you.

How the recovery will affect your remodel in the upcoming months

I'm at our local tile shop last Friday. All three of the store’s tile designers are literally running to get samples for their existing clients. There are four sets of customers waiting for help, including my mother and I with our clients.

Five minutes go by. A man clutching a long piece of tile in a plastic bag is visibly upset. “Can I get some service?” he barks at the nearest tile designer.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she tells him. “We’re working as fast as we can.”

He’s not appeased. Neither are the others. When one of the designers was finally free, the man had worked himself into a state. He was the second one to do so in the time we were there. The wait time? 15-20 minutes.

***

Our firm supplies cabinetry and design for contractors and DIY-ers as a separate division of our design/build firm. We used to have installers for that division; we laid them off last year due to lack of work. It was a tough, tough decision.

A client -- in on Saturday -- blinked: “So how am I going to get the cabinets installed?” Fortunately, she had a contractor. For the rest of the DIY-ers?  Unfortunately, they’re on their own. We still don’t have enough work to keep a full-time installer busy for that side of the company.

We’re not the only ones.

***

I’ve blogged about this before, but with the economy recovering and people eager to get on with their remodels, it doesn’t hurt to post a reminder.

You’re not going to get the service you’re accustomed to – at least until companies can afford to hire again.

It’s ironic -- you’re ready to buy, but you can’t get the service. The companies would love to help you but there’s not enough of you buying yet to warrant hiring. And that’s the key.

For us in the field, we’re still cautious in ordering products that need to be trucked across the country. Nothing moves until the truck is full. To you, this means some of the door and window companies have increased their timelines from 3-4 weeks to 6-8.

If you think you’re frustrated, try being a business owner who went from no one in the store to dozens.

The bad news is that this is going to get worse before it gets better. The good news is that this will ease eventually.

Until then --  patience, grasshopper.

How many design books did you buy…

…for your kitchen remodel?

I know I have quite a few more readers than what my RSS feed suggests – I’ve talked with several of you, whether we’ve e-mailed, or you’ve sent me links to your DIY projects.

We designers are guilty of buying quite a few books ourselves.  *cough* I buy them for inspiration and for  new design tricks I haven’t yet tried myself.  My clients are magazine buyers – they walk in with stacks of them, or with some of the picturesque design books in order to show me what they want.

If you don’t mind me asking,

• how many did you buy? (or were they all magazines?) Any favorites?
• were they useful or not?
• what didn’t they have that you wished they did?

Please let me know in the comments.

Gear yourself up for DIY

I found this buried in the PR news releases yesterday (no, it wasn’t sent to me. I have my finger on the pulse. The pulse, I tell you!) If you don’t think that DIY is going to be a growing entity in the next few years, you might want to note this:

Scripps Networks, the leader in lifestyle media, and 5min, the leading syndication platform for lifestyle, knowledge and instructional how-to videos, today announced a strategic advertising and content partnership. The agreement will extend online viewership for the Scripps Networks cable channels by syndicating video content through the 5min network. Scripps will also offer its advertisers new opportunities to reach highly targeted audiences by selling into the 5min Home and Food categories. Additionally, 5min will provide contextually relevant videos from its library to the Scripps online properties. – PR Newswire, Oct. 5, 2009

Yes. The company that created HGTV is going online with how-to videos.

This isn’t something to pass off lightly. I’m also noting home improvement stores gearing towards the DIY market and read just yesterday about a higher-end tool manufacturer aiming its marketing campaign towards “the experienced DIY-ers.”

For those of us in the residential remodeling field, this isn’t cause for alarm, merely a shift. There will always be a market for those who don’t want to do it themselves. Don’t get me wrong – I’m a big fan of DIY – in the right capacity. (i.e. no inexperienced fingers were harmed during the creation of your DIY project.)  While there are a lot of very good DIY-ers, some projects are not as easy as DIY magazines, online websites, and television would have us all believe.

(I shudder at my last tile project. No, you don’t want to see it. Ever.)

A couple came into our showroom on Saturday – both were very experienced DIY-ers and wanted to remodel their kitchen. “We didn’t pick a very good plumber for our last project,” she said. “I had to re-do the angle stops and reset the valves.”

“So why are you here?” I asked. Some people are overly ambitious but as we sorted each other out by delicate ‘how-much-do-you-really-know' questions and had reached the delighted ‘ah-you’re-one-of-us’ stage, I had to ask: “If you can do it all yourselves, why see us?”

They looked at each other and shrugged. “Can’t plumb, not a good electrician,” he said.

“We don’t want to do all the work ourselves,” she said. “That’s a big project, removing walls and all – we don’t want to be tied to the house forever. We can do the smaller projects.”

And I think that’s an important distinction for us in the full remodeling field.

Let's talk zones

So you might remember me stirring the pot a while back with a post on killing the work triangle. If you didn't see it, have a look. I'll wait here and drink my coffee.

Back? Okay. In the comments, I'd promised to talk about them one day, more specifically with my fellow designer Paul Anater of Kitchen and Residential Design. Schedules never seem to work out and then we both took on a fair amount of work. (Plus some people, who are not me, take a LOT of vacations.)

Basically, the concept of zones takes into account there's more than one person in the kitchen at a time, and that the kitchens of today have far more large and small appliances than the 1940s range, refrigerator, sink, and mixer.

Staying to the concept of a work triangle in a larger kitchen with multiple cooks congests the traffic flow and pathways. Give a person the ability to work in one area without much moving around and you have a zone.

I'd get more into it but I discovered last night that the great folks over at Kitchens.com beat me to it and did a wonderful post called Zone Design.

(Credit: Kitchens.com)

One of the notes I'll bring to the table is that I think zones are fluid and can be adapted based on lifestyles and family preferences. There can also be additional zones, such as:

• a homework zone - perhaps a seating area at the island with drawers for pencils and paper.
• a snack zone - with a microwave, warming drawer and beverage refrigerator -- all tucked out of the way of the main cook's working area.

This is perhaps one of the reasons mainstream media has been slow (like a decade slow) in embracing it. - it's not a "one-size-fits-all" adaptation like a work triangle.

Somewhere in my readings, I remember seeing a kitchen that had a snack zone filled with candy containers and/or ice cream sundae fixings. Doesn't that sound dangerous?

Now if I could only get my brain to stop thinking about it. Must be time for brunch...