Life's a Stitch

Not that I’m planning on starting another kitchen from scratch. Nope, I’ve had the good fortune to say I’ve been there done that. Twice. Each time is a learning experience and there are inevitably things you’d do differently. Maybe, if you’re planning a new kitchen you can learn from  my experience.

Most of the issues involve the appliances. I’d pay more attention to details next time. We had the opportunity to purchase a builder’s package at a substantial discount so we went for the step up to the JennAir line, Kitchen Aid’s fancy brand. Here are my issues, admittedly gold plated. 

1. Wall oven – the temperature can only be set in 25 degree increments. No such thing as baking at 365. Your choices are 350 or 375. Here, wall ovens only come in electric. I miss my gas oven, particularly the speed at which it preheats.
2. Cooktop – we thought we were upgrading in size by purchasing a 36” cooktop, which is gas. Only issue is that the controls are on the right, instead of in front, so the resulting six burners are on a surface the same size of a standard stove. 
3. Panasonic microwave – not the one we chose, but substituted when our original choice was discontinued. This one is quite attractive with infuriating controls and is clearly a case of form over function. It’s mainly knob driven and can mostly be set in increments of 10 seconds. The knob is turned until you reach your desired time unless use a programmed button. Pain in the neck.
4. Dishwasher – have again gone for the third rack on the top expressly for cutlery. Highly recommend this design. A little preplanning while loading lets you scoop up your forks, spoons or knives all at once when unloading. Have to laugh that we carefully planned the height of the wall oven so as not to be bending to lift heavy items in and out, but the bottom of tall tub dishwasher is nearly on the floor. Didn’t think about that.
5. The kitchen sink is under mounted and very deep. It’s also quite flat on the bottom requiring extra spraying of water to coax stuff down the drain.
6. Don’t know how it happened, nobody asked my preference, but that darn corner cabinet has a clumsy bifold door. Not that I would have spent the hundreds extra on a “magic corner,” but I don’t mind a regular door with a deep cupboard.
7. Could have probably done without the pendant lights over the island. I’ve never used them. They are much too bright and pot lights would have been as effective, easier to clean and less expensive. We’ll need to add a dimmer to make them work.
8. I’d skip the Shaker style cabinets, particularly the darker painted ones. The little rim, technically called the rail, requires constant cleaning/dusting. C says we had a choice of a 45 degree angle and we chose the 90. Was I at that meeting?

But bottom line, it’s a great kitchen cooking-wise and isn’t that what counts? And it’s probably one of the only aspects of this rebuild that came in on budget.

On the theme of do-overs, I’d change nothing on recently finished painting #2 from my workshop with Lian Yuan Zhen.