Renovation diary: December 2014

Tour of cabinet mill and contractor offices

Main offices of contractor in Gaithersburg

Preliminary view of kitchen

The other day I got a tour of the cabinet factory and showroom. This was exciting and kind of anxiety-producing at the same time. I thought I had a really precise idea of what I wanted. When faced with the multitude of competing interests I realize that's not as true as I thought. Also I am a non-committal kind of person in the first place, even for something like a dinner arrangement, so this is really hard for my personality-type. Don't get me wrong - putting in this kitchen is a 10 year dream, we're lucky to be able to do it and I recognize complaining is unseemly. I've never had even a mediocre kitchen as an adult (that would be 20 years), except for one apartment rental for one year in my late 20s. Choosing all my preferred finishes, layouts, arrangements is awesome and debilitating at the same time. It's also ridiculously time consuming at an already really busy time of year/work. It's holiday season and I have two big work projects I've been angling to do for the same 10 years, only now they're actually happening. There is only so much my brain can focus on at one time. I find myself thinking about one project as soon as I try and work on another. Perhaps Aderol would help.

Choices, choices, choices!

I really do love white cabinets and they would look historically accurate in my house, but 1) Dave wants a more natural wood and 2) I'm getting pretty high end cabinets and covering the wood grain with paint so that they're indistinguishable from IKEA cabinets seems like a mistake. I could just buy IKEA cabinets and save a fortune! However I already have a brown room and I really don't want another one. I want a white crisp room. So to compromise we'll have a contrasting stained dark wood island. I think this will look nice. Funny because in all my years of thinking about this, incorporating Dave's taste never even crossed my mind. This is not as horrible as it sounds because a) we usually have the same taste and b) whenever I would talk about "the kitchen" he would get annoyed, so this was mainly a conversation in my own head.

I really had no intention of getting such custom cabinets and I'm slightly uncomfortable pursuing them. It was an unintended consequence of the contractor I chose. We are building two small rooms and taking down 3 walls, including 2 supporting walls, so I needed a contractor I felt really comfortable with and who is used to large projects. That contractor happened to be the one who bought his own cabinet mill. On the plus side I'm getting custom cabinets for about the same price as semi-custom, because there is no middle man. On the other hand I'm now not working with a "kitchen designer" in the traditional, middle aged Bethesda fancy woman sense. Instead I'm working with a master craftsman, who has been building cabinets for 30 years and is kind of a burly, woodsy guy. However between the two of us it seems to be going ok. I'm struggling a bit with balancing storage vs. dining space and how many ovens to buy but that's about it.