Kitchen Make Over.

[AlittleSalt]

And that is why you build it yourself with pride.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by AlittleSalt

And that is why you build it yourself with pride.

Salt I am going to make the most unorthodox cabinets anyone ever saw.
So much so I am not going to talk about it here and get made fun of.
One thing will be for sure a full grown gorilla can climb on them when I am through.

They will look nice and there wont be anything like then I have seen yet.

I went to Home depot yesterday and at least one lady that worked there asked me if she could help me.
I went to Lowes today and two old goats that worked there ignored me and I didn't find anything I liked.
They didn't even have real stone on display.
One was talking to another guy about football the whole time I was there and didn't say a word to me.
I was dressed nice my hair was combed I had taken a bath and brushed my teeth.

There is a place down the road I am going to tomorrow.
On a side note I looked at a high end kitchenAid counter top gas stove and wasn't impressed at all at least for the unbelievable price that was on it.

Worth

[Worth1]

Years ago I was sent to a house that cost well over $500,000 in the mid 80's to take out a wine rack.
The place was brand new and we had built the cabinets for it.
The place was torn completely up all the fancy wood work was trashed.
The dog had eaten the 4,000 dollar front door and there was a brat in the house about 5 years old.
While I was on my knees doing something the brat clubbed me in the back of the head with a big 2 liter glass coke bottle.
While his mother watched him do it.
Oh he is just a baby she said he doesn't know any better.

[Adriana]

It even has a bread proofing feature that I can use and really wanted plus it is convection.

I had 2 kitchenaid ovens with convection and proofing functions and loved them! The second one I got on Craig's list for $125! In addition to proofing you could also dehydrate.

[dmforcier]

Salt I am going to make the most unorthodox cabinets anyone ever saw.
So much so I am not going to talk about it here and get made fun of.
One thing will be for sure a full grown gorilla can climb on them when I am through.

Back in the dark ages my mother and I helped my uncle and cousins convert a school bus into an RV. We did everything, including the plumbing, wiring, cabinets, and molding the shower floor from concrete and fiberglass. The motto was, "It's not good enough if you can't shake the bus with it." I know exactly where you're coming from, though don't try to shake the house.


KitchenAid, like Monster and Bose, seems to think that everything they build was [expelled] from God's [nether regions]. Unlike Bose some of their stuff is good, but the result is artificially high prices in the product areas where they compete.

[AlittleSalt]

Cabinet work is one thing I find very interesting. So much you can do with them and so many materials. A revolving corner cabinet with a Lazy Suzan, or lighted glass shelf cabinets...mirrored backs, rustic, refined, elegant - I've made them out of masonry. I personally, am more interested in this part of your kitchen makeover.

It was fun looking at stoves. I have a Tappan pre 1993 stove with an oven dial that the numbers washed off of in the first year - I cut grooves in the knob that show where 325, 350, etc. are. It still cooks a fine meal. It would be nice to have a new stove with all the improvements though.

[aclum]

Hi Worth,

I haven't been following this thread too closely - although what I have read has been very interesting.

I just have one suggestion at this point. If you can, make the kitchen at least minimally as ADA compliant with enough room for a wheelchair or walker to get around easily. Ideally, it would be fully ADA compliant, but that might not be possible or desirable right now for whatever reason.

Right now it looks like a pretty tight squeeze getting around that island. Maybe you could extend the wall out into the family room even more and/or move some of the pantry storage to another location to open up more floor space. I recall you mentioning a breakfast bar - can that be lowered to serve as a work surface as well as a spot to eat or whatever?

Maybe you could post your most recent floorplan with the bar area moved out?

Anyway, as a wheelchair user living with a walker user, ADA (or similar)compliance is about at the top of my list for kitchen design features.

Anne

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by aclum

Hi Worth,

I haven't been following this thread too closely - although what I have read has been very interesting.

I just have one suggestion at this point. If you can, make the kitchen at least minimally as ADA compliant with enough room for a wheelchair or walker to get around easily. Ideally, it would be fully ADA compliant, but that might not be possible or desirable right now for whatever reason.

Right now it looks like a pretty tight squeeze getting around that island. Maybe you could extend the wall out into the family room even more and/or move some of the pantry storage to another location to open up more floor space. I recall you mentioning a breakfast bar - can that be lowered to serve as a work surface as well as a spot to eat or whatever?

Maybe you could post your most recent floorplan with the bar area moved out?

Anyway, as a wheelchair user living with a walker user, ADA (or similar)compliance is about at the top of my list for kitchen design features.

Anne

Anne I will answer your post with pleasure.

The island will be on rollers and I will make the place as ADA compliant as I can and I will tell you why.

Not only have I had to put stuff in ADA compliant for many reasons, fire alarm systems for one..
My wife was shall we say confined to a wheel chair and walker her last days with us.

I was infuriated as to how this house was not disabled friendly at all.

The doors were too narrow and I had to put little ramps up so she could get in and out of the house.

I beg of anyone looking at this thread if you are building a house think of this have all of your doorways 36 inch openings.
Yes you can get through smaller ones but you have to be just right.
Think of this before you build.
Think of which way the door swings and above all things of how fast you will be able to get out of the house.
Think of the bathrooms.
It just might be you in the wheel chair one day.

I remember back in the 70's when the Vets were coming back some in wheel chairs.
They would struggle to get from the parking lot to a business like a bank.
People would look at them like they were some kind of freak.
I was a teenager and I would ask them if I could help.
Not one time was I ever refused.
The guys were about ready to cry just to get over a curb.

Don't even think about saying government waste of money to me about ADA I will come unglued.

So yes Anne I have thought of all of this it might be me one day.
Worth

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by AlittleSalt

Cabinet work is one thing I find very interesting. So much you can do with them and so many materials. A revolving corner cabinet with a Lazy Suzan, or lighted glass shelf cabinets...mirrored backs, rustic, refined, elegant - I've made them out of masonry. I personally, am more interested in this part of your kitchen makeover.

It was fun looking at stoves. I have a Tappan pre 1993 stove with an oven dial that the numbers washed off of in the first year - I cut grooves in the knob that show where 325, 350, etc. are. It still cooks a fine meal. It would be nice to have a new stove with all the improvements though.

Salt all I can tell you it is going to be an exercise in mistakes I have no other way to put it.
The corner where the pantry and the refrigerator is are killing me.
They are messing up everything I come up with.
Which means the refrigerator is going to find a new home.
I have one shot to get it right an by darn I will if it kills me.

At one time I had a wild plan of building a new kitchen where the living room is and then gutting the kitchen and opening it up.
That would involve plumbing with a concrete slab.
Not gonna happen.
Maybe I could put the fancy eaten table in the garage by my tool chest and drill press.

All my life we ate in the kitchen even when we had a dinning room in the one nice house.
Memory takes me back to when I was a wee thing and my dad cutting up a deer on the kitchen table.
The great gas stove fire of 62.
The cake my mom baked my brother that they couldn't hammer a chisel through and how the neighborhood dog got his teeth stuck in it.

All of the canning and preserving that went on.

Worth

[AlittleSalt]

poor dog

[Rockporter]

Worth, I have been following your thread and I have to say your description of your house is just like mine. Not ADA complaint/friendly with the front door 36" but the back door on the side of wall in the teeny tiny little hallway between the bedroom and the kitchen. This door is only 32" wide and we cannot get our friend to the back patio without taking her from the front of the house and pushing her through the grass side yard. The door from the living room into the laundry room is 36" but the door leading to the single car garage is only 24" wide. The bathroom doors are only 24" wide, the bedroom doors are only 28" wide.

Our kitchen is tiny too, and we have been doing a few things to make it more user friendly. One of which is we moved the pots and pans from the one available 24" base cabinet situated to the right of the stove/oven to the wall cabinet above by hanging them and a couple of skillets in the 12" wall cabinet to the left side of the stove/oven.

I have smaller pots hanging at the top of the 24" wall cabinet and the larger stock pot sits on the floor of the wall cabinet with a couple of taller small burner pots.

The 12" cabinet holds a couple of skillets hanging and a couple of my small 6" cast iron griddle/skillets on the bottom of the cabinet.


It's perfect this way because it opened the bottom 24" cabinet and 12" cabinet to storing food items. We built sliding drawer/shelves to store foods and make it easier for me to get things out.


Here is a link to a pull out cabinet pot rack, maybe your pots and pans could live above the new wall ovens. This is not the style we have.

http://www.amazon.com/Roll-Out-Pot-P.../dp/B00AEDPOOU

Ours my husband made using some heavy duty hooks he bought at Lowe's and hung in the upper portion of the wall cabinet. He took a 1/4" thick board and placed it on top of the wall cabinet to provide stability from the weight. The cabinets are just builder grade.

He secured the hooks by drilling holes into the board spaced exactly where I needed the pots to hang. Then he secured it to the top of the cabinet and drilled through the holes and into the cabinet so he could screw in the hooks.

He used a washer and nut inside and washer and nut on top which secured to the threads of the hook. He also had to cut a portion of the hooks off to fit them through the pot handle holes. I have all clad cookware and all fit in these cabinets except the lids to the skillets and small pans and my very large skillet. These items are stored in the deep cavern pantry with only 15" door. I hate that too, lol.

He made something similar to this link below, but as described above. It was this which gave us the idea. I wasn't able to find one small enough for my two cabinets so we made our own. It was far cheaper too.

http://www.shelterness.com/15-creati...ictures/18674/


Here are the hooks we used (well at least I think they are), I know they are very heavy duty.

http://www.lowes.com/pd_446278-37672...Ntt=screw+hook

We have quite a few things we have done to make life easier in our small kitchen. We put sliding drawer/shelves in each lower cabinet and we hung all my cooking utensils inside the door of the pantry. This opened up the tiny 12" counter space I had between the pantry wall and the stove.

Good luck, I'll keep watching this thread because I am excited to see what you do. We will build cabinets at one point and redo the layout of our kitchen as well in the future.

[Worth1]

I have all of my pots and pans hanging up.
That last link has to be a miss print on the price I have some of those hooks.
Yep the door to the bathrooms are skinny the one in the hall is 24 inches.
The door going into the garage is like 30 with the trim on it.


Here is the tile I am looking at to use for counter tops.
It just so happens to be one of the cheapest tiles they have but that isn't the reason.
I like the color I like the idea it is porcelain I like it is high gloss the tops are dead flat with no bevel and I can use sandless grout with about a 1/16th grout line.
The pictuer doesn't do this tile justice.
Price is $1.07 a square foot well within my price range.

The tiles are 20X20.

[salix]

When we built our house 20 years ago, I designed it with 36" doors everywhere. Lever handles instead of doorknobs (easier for arthritic hands). Wide stairwell to accommodate a lift if necessary. Wide hallways as well, in the event I do progress to a wheelchair. Actually made a ramp on one side of the garage in front of double doors to a basement room to eliminate the usual step up (like for our usual entry door from the garage.) This room is directly below the dining room - if necessary, an elevator could be installed very conveniently. After all, we don't use the dining room all that often - it usually has a quilting project or some other project on the table...

Worth, hope you make your cabinets all the way to the ceiling, I think it is a much cleaner look. More storage and lack of dust bunnies is a bonus. Lots of counter space is a real luxury, especially on each side of the cooktop. And at least on the "open" side of the refrigerator for loading and unloading.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by salix

When we built our house 20 years ago, I designed it with 36" doors everywhere. Lever handles instead of doorknobs (easier for arthritic hands). Wide stairwell to accommodate a lift if necessary. Wide hallways as well, in the event I do progress to a wheelchair. Actually made a ramp on one side of the garage in front of double doors to a basement room to eliminate the usual step up (like for our usual entry door from the garage.) This room is directly below the dining room - if necessary, an elevator could be installed very conveniently. After all, we don't use the dining room all that often - it usually has a quilting project or some other project on the table...

Worth, hope you make your cabinets all the way to the ceiling, I think it is a much cleaner look. More storage and lack of dust bunnies is a bonus. Lots of counter space is a real luxury, especially on each side of the cooktop. And at least on the "open" side of the refrigerator for loading and unloading.

I am never going to replace another door knob with a door knob.
I will use levers and latches from now on for so many reasons.
Not only for folks with arthritic pain but oily greasy hands.
Even hand lotion makes it almost impossible to open a door with knobs.

Someone once told me they had a tax in England on door knobs but not latches.

I have no idea if this is true or not.
I do know they had a tax on windows and a brick tax at one time.
As for the cabinets.
There is about 15 feet of space that has the dreaded furdowns I hate furdowns.
The other spot might as well have them as it is a support beam.
The wall where the stove top is going doesn't have furdowns but the vent hood will be there.

Now for the stove top and oven.
When I ordered it it said free shipping and had a delivery date of the 16th of this month.
For some stupid reason I thought that was this week not next week.
I have no idea if I could have gotten them sooner I tried to up the date and it was going to cost me ten more dollars or something.
I didn't call because when I called about the card not going through I ended up in the Philippines .
I couldn't understand a thing that gal had to say and I am good at understanding folks from all over the world so I just cut the conversation and hung up.
The reason my card didn't go through was because the bank thought someone was robbing me.
I had to call them and get my card unlocked but thanked them for doing it.

I want my stove top and my oven here in my grubby hands so I will know what size to make things.
I have the drawings but I do not trust them, been there and done that.

Now for the sink.
The idiots that put it in used almost 99% glue fittings and not slip fittings.
In other words I am going to have to cut everything out and start over.
I will not change out the sink basin it is stainless and there isn't one thing wrong with it.
But I will change out the faucet.
The cabinet below the sink is two single doors not one pair of doors.
Let me explain for those that dont know.
A pair of doors doesn't have a face frame in the middle the doors come together to close the opening.
Singles have a face frame in the middle.
This part of the frame is called a mid style.
What is does in effect is make it almost impossible to work under the cabinet.s
The new cabinets will have pairs not singles or a pair and then a style and then another pair.

[clkeiper]

Worth, what is a furdown? I have never heard this term.