Cabinets

From the outset we were happy with the floorplan described in our drawings with most of the rooms in the house, but this was definitely not true with the kitchen. Flora and I both spend a lot of time cooking and both had very specific ideas about what kitchen functionality should be included . The kitchen as shown in our plans just did not have enough space to allow us to incorporate all of that functionality we desired. I also think that in an open floor plan like ours there needs to be some kind of device to define separation between the kitchen and the rest of the great room. We planned to use different floor tiles in the kitchen than in the rest of the great room, which would partially accomplish this, but I really wanted something more.

We were somewhat overwhelmed with the kitchen design task and even went so far as to hire a kitchen designer to assist us. She came out to the house and we described to her what we want the kitchen to do and gave her the dimensions of our space. She came back the next week with a proposal and we hired her. Unfortunately, that was the last we ever heard from her, despite many phone messages and emails.

We took it as a sign that we needed to do the design work ourselves as we had with the rest of the house, so we started talking about it and within a week we had a workable design. We pushed the kitchen space out farther into the dining room and then used the extra kitchen floorspace to expand our main island so that it could hold both a 36" rangetop on one end and a prep sink on the other. We also added a second island that would function as an eating bar and would provide that separation between the kitchen and dining room.

The tricky part of the design though was to figure our the cabinetry. We knew we wanted quartersawn oak in a honey-brown color, but actually defining the configuration and making it all fit the space took several weeks.   Finally, six weeks after we ordered them, the cabinets arrived, all 34 boxes of them.

The entire room was filled with cabinets, including the gigantic oven cabinet, which nearly touched the ceiling.

Once the cabinets along the walls were in place, those defining the main island were placed

Finally, the four cabinets making up the base of the bar were put in place.

Shown here is the final kitchen configuration.

All that was left was to get rid of all those darned boxes!

With the cabinetry in place, it was time to have the granite guys come out and do the contertop templating.