I spent the weekend soul searching, trying to decide whether to continue or not. I've this deadline, you see. In March my brother (hi Ed!) and sister-in-law (hi Jo!) are coming over for a long holiday. I have to be done by then.
What the hell, I thought. If the timeline looks cramped, I'll postpone until April.
After checking around work for referrals, I had several for a place in Sunnyvale - International Kitchen and Bath. I called and got an appointment with the designer for the following day. Already I was impressed!
I met with the designer Julie and explained my project. We crunched a few numbers and realized I needed to order cabinets by the beginning of October for them to arrive in time. That didn't leave much time for design. I gave Julie rough dimensions of the four rooms and shared with her the few design ideas I'd received from the first designer at Expo. We arranged for a site inspection for the following Monday.
Julie showed up with Jack. Jack turned out to be great at fielding my WTF questions. I'm an engineer and I'd decided that ergonomics would be very important in my design. Jack was great in answering those technical questions I had, as well as providing "this will work" solutions to some of the problems I face.
During the site inspection, Jack was able to make some great suggestions:
- Instead of a boiler, use an "on-demand" water heater in the downstairs bathroom. That made more room in the kitchen.
- Increase the size of the vent from the kitchen extraction fan to make it more efficient.
- Pocket doors to make more room in the bathrooms.
Thursday afternoon Julie had designs for all three bathrooms and three alternative designs printed out. We spent some time looking at cabinets and counter tops and I left. I had until Monday to choose a layout. Using string, I was able to get a feel for the various layouts and decided upon a layout very similar to the current one, but the breakfast bar would be replaced with a center island. This would give me better access from my desk and the TV room while not giving up too much storage. The island is designed for two stools, so I still get my bar. I only have two stools, anyway ;-)
On Monday I went back to IKB and choose the cabinets. My current kitchen is pretty dark, so I've decided to brighten it up. I went with a natural maple cabinet and a natural oak floor. To keep the decisions to a minimum, I decided to go with this cabinet style in all four rooms. I decided that granite is the only way to go and we scheduled a visit to the stone place for later that week. I also signed the contract (gulp!).
Thursday was quite the eye opener. Huge slabs of stone for the picking. It was too soon to pick the actual slabs, but I was able to choose the designs:
- Variated brown granite for the kitchen counters.
- Black with gold specks granite for the kitchen backsplash, and master bath counter and downstairs bath sink counter.
- Cutouts in the backsplash behind the sink and the stove will have insets of the counter top material.
- Light brown travertine (sp?) for the guest bath floor and counter and the master bath floor and shower.
- A mosaic of blue glass tiles for the guest bathroom. Four colors starting dark at the bottom and ending light at the top.
- A ribbon of black river rock for the master bath floor. This ribbon will open up to become the shower floor and then wind up the back shower wall.
I hope it'll look good :-)
I also dropped off the first installment - required to order the cabinets. So within three weeks we had made the major decisions. But, as they say, the devil is in the details...
