Kitchen cabinets and appliances

After making an appointment, Kim and I spent two hours Saturday with a Kitchen Cabinet designer at The Home Depot in Fairfield, CT.

Before we went to Home Depot, we decided to stop off at PC Richard & Sons to look at appliances. Good thing we did, turns out those high end 48" wide ranges and built in refrigerators that I've been dreaming of , actually cost a good bit of money. After I asked the salesman, 'you're kidding right?' about six times, I started rationalizing away the double oven and Kim starting hinting about getting a 'stand alone' refrigerator and embedding it a foot into the mud room so it at least 'looks' built in. Anyway, the house plans now have room for a 48" range, the kitchen has plans for a 36" range, and my head has plans for a Sterno stove.

Photos below from left to right: Dream, Possible reality, A distinct Possibility.

I was able to regroup before arriving at Home Depot, but was dreading what would probably be another mind blowing estimate when all the cabinets were added up. The Home Depot designer asked us two questions about what we were looking for including picking out a style and then went on auto-pilot for the next hour. She stopped once to ask us how high the ceiling was in the Kitchen, but when it was obvious we were stumped, she just moved on. I felt like a contestant in 'Who wants to be a Millionaire' and pleaded to use one of my life-lines to call Wes our architect, but the moment was gone.

Our choice, for now anyway is the Decora line of cabinets, which have solid wood fronts as well as solid plywood drawers. The term 'solid plywood' drawers is a little confusing to me. The cabinets seem like they are very high quality, but I wonder what the difference is in a cabinet that has 'solid wood' drawers. I guess it doesn't really matter, as these seem very well built and at the top of the line of what Home Depot sells.

For the design, we choose Cherry cabinets with their Harmony design and a Brandywine finish. We'll probably mix it up a little on the final design, and it may be a little darker, but below is close to the cabinet we are thinking about.

Our designer really knew what she was doing, and so far anyway, we both would recommend using Home Depot to design your kitchen. The price was less than I had budgeted, so there's a first, as long as we order before the current discount offer ends. We'll probably need to order a month or two before we normally would and store the cabinets in our yet to be built barn.

Below are some images she printed out to help us conceptualize what the kitchen would look like. These are just four of about ten pictures. Some are images like below and some are layout sketches.