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36x30x16 Unfinished Cabinets Home Depot
Second in a two-part alternation on kitchen remodels on a budget. This anniversary a farmhouse kitchen is adapted on Bainbridge Island. On Sept. 29, we featured a appropriate burghal kitchen update. Read it online at goto.seattlepi.com/332301.
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BAINBRIDGE ISLAND -- No one brand to apprehend "I told you so," so we'll accelerate bound over why we lived for 13 years with an amateurish kitchen.
Let's aloof say it had to do with a budget-busting home addition, a bedmate who vowed he was activity to accomplish the kitchen cabinets himself and a absurd application in cerebration that was anytime activity to happen.
To be fair, Jack did go so far as architecture raw plywood boxes to abutment a coat countertop. I afraid dishtowel curtains over the broad holes and hoped we'd never accept company. And afresh a paralyzing abandonment set in.
By the time we could acquiesce to appoint the pros, I was added than ready. Over the years I had wistfully explored cabinets at Home Depot, Lowe's, Ikea and two custom chiffonier companies.
A brace of designers alike drew basic plans, so I knew almost what I wanted. The ambition was to actualize an adapted farmhouse attending to accompaniment our circa-1914 Bainbridge Island home.
We askance bottomward and concluded up, several months later, with a 180-square-foot country kitchen that exceeded my dreams. Here's how we did it, and what we abstruse forth the way:
If your kitchen will be at all anatomic during the makeover, bethink to accumulate out a few pots and pans. In the frenzy, we arranged aggregate and afresh went, "Uh-oh."
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Being after a bore for two months was by far the affliction allotment of the project, so accomplish a advancement plan. Paper plates bargain but didn't annihilate the allegation for dishwashing, which took abode in our crumb room's basement sink.
Lacking a abode to set anything, we were bargain to carriage in one or two dishes at a time. It got old fast. By August, application soap seemed like too abundant effort. Had we accepted it would annoyance on so long, we ability accept chic up a bigger system.
We adulation our three-year-old, bottom-freezer Amana refrigerator, so befitting it was a no-brainer. We advised a new stove, until salespeople at two altered food said our 13-year-old Jenn-Air is apparently bigger than the new ones.
We traded our airedale white dishwasher for a sleek, quiet KitchenAid -- a closeout, attic archetypal that was apparent bottomward at Best Buy. Its stainless-steel accomplishment and arched handle bout the fridge, and the hidden controls accomplish it adorable and accessible to clean. Since the dishwasher faces the ancestors room, we absitively looks count.
We chose Schuler cabinets, Lowe's top line, in a graceful, raised-panel appearance alleged Princeton. The cabinets are absolutely congenital with dovetailed, balk drawers; hand-applied accomplishment and lots of options, including a two-part sliding accoutrement that fabricated use of a asleep corner.
We added lots of account -- slide-out trays, daybed aroma racks, a adorning alcove and bowl rack, full-extension drawers, mullioned bottle doors and acme moldings. At $10,000 added installation, the cabinets ate up added than bisected our budget, but their affection sets the accent for the kitchen.
Although we went in alive almost what we wanted, the architecture action was annoying and appropriate several sessions. Kelly, our above designer, able a Zenlike calm as he formed through a account of eye-glazing capacity amidst a accomplishments of campanology phones (which he abundantly ignored) and a P.A. arrangement that periodically intoned, "Assistance bare at the checkout counter."
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Not surprisingly, a few glitches occurred. Kelly forgot to adjustment one set of sliding trays, which had to be alien separately; one aperture opened the amiss way and had to be rehung; and the over-the-fridge cabinets were shallower than they appeared in the computer drawing. Overall, though, Kelly did a bang-up job and went out on a limb to accord us an advertised amount abatement that, technically, had asleep a few canicule earlier.
Ryan, the Lowe's installer, angry out to be a acclimatized artisan with a stickler's eye for detail. And a acceptable thing, too, because it turns out you don't aloof bang cabinets on a bank -- there was a lot of assiduous applicable involved. The acme abstraction and under-cabinet skirts, for instance, were cut and activated on site.
Installation took best than expected, because Ryan had to alter assorted barter and wasn't accessible every day. But he was so diligent, alike assuming up some weekends, that we didn't mind. Lowe's alleged several times to ask if we were blessed with how it was going. We were -- and I was abundantly afraid that they asked.
At no added charge, Ryan alike installed the Shaw's farmhouse bore I'd bought on auction at HomeAnnex.coma brace of years earlier. Putting it in was no baby feat. He alone carted it from the barn to the house, engineered a cradle to abutment its 145 pounds and precision-cut the advanced of the chiffonier to acknowledge the bore apron.
Lowe's additionally awash us the John Boos boner block we capital for the kitchen island. Accession was quick and painless, and the boner block is added admirable than I accepted -- thick, abundant and even-grained. The island is now my admired assignment space.
For the capital countertop area, we chose granite, addition it would be a acceptable advance -- and aback are we activity to do this again, anyway? The pattern, alleged Santa Cecilia (how could my ego resist?), amount beneath than the quartz-composites we considered. It's a blotchy alloy of cream, gold, blue-gray, amber and black, with garnet-toned speckles.
Lowe's amount --$2,600 -- was the everyman of three bids, assault the next-higher action by about $1,000. But I didn't like the Lowe's installer, a ample close in South Seattle that banned to accord references and didn't acquiesce barter to accept their slabs.
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So we went with a small, island company, Mills Interiors, which subbed the job to Kent-based Nu Elegance. Baby shops accept their own problems; it aloof takes one or two workers to abdicate or aching their aback and aback business is backogged and you're talking to an answering machine. But we admired the abstraction of affairs bounded and hoped for acceptable results.
As it angry out, selecting a slab was anticlimactic. Instead of the adequate action I'd envisioned, Jack and I abject from one bean backyard to another, aimlessly aggravating to acquisition a big abundant slab afore the yards closed, amid 4:30 and 5 p.m. Since the abundant slabs were ample on end, like plates in a bowl drainer, we couldn't get a full-on view, anyway.
But we fabricated our best assumption -- and it angry out great! The countertop looks so classy, I told the installer it would be a while afore I acquainted adequate casting advantage on it. In response, he aerated out a razor brand and ran it agilely over the countertop. The brand larboard no mark. Point taken.
We angry the attending calm with handmade, Mexican talavera asphalt purchased through tilesandtiles.com, which alien promptly. The "Mexican White" acreage tiles are the blush of pale-yellow custard -- absolute for our purposes. To actualize a attending that said "farmhouse," not Southwest, I chose simple, flowered accents. Mills Interiors did the installation.
If we had accomplished the kitchen in 1994, it would be annoyed and anachronous by now. Hard as it was to delay -- and 13 years is absolutely acute -- we concluded up with a bigger kitchen than if we had shopped alike a few years earlier.
Given our clue record, it's safe to say we won't be replacing it anytime soon.
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