Help with finding a light for my kitchen eating area and other things
cubby14
2 years ago
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cubby14
2 days agocubby14
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To help others - Things I would do different and things i love!
Comments (21)We've been in for 4 1/2 months now and overall are very happy with how our new home turned out. Things I love: Wood floors - Ours are 4" white oak, site finished in a medium stain color, satin finish(not shiny). Dover white laquer painted woodwork, mouldings, and cabinetry. We have stained cabinets in a couple of bathrooms, and I'm glad I didn't go stained in the kitchen and rest of the house. The stained acts like a dust magnet and washes out the paint color on the walls. But most of all, white wood against painted walls and hardwood floors just makes me happy.:-) Love my kitchen. Thank you kitchen forum! Definitely pay a visit over there if you're just getting started. -It turned out beautiful(white custom cabs, arched hood, wood floors) -Lots of well placed lighting all on dimmers -Functional, large layout with specific work zones -Danze faucets and pot filler -Silgranit sinks(love the big single basin and the round prep!) -Bosch ovens -Dacor 36" gas cooktop -Kitchenaid DW and Fridge -Giallo Ornamental granite -Microwave built into the island -Trash pullout -Tons of deep drawers instead of cabinet doors -Step in pantry Smart Strand carpet - feels and looks great - LOVE IT!!! Love our huge paved, curvy driveway and walkways. Lots of room for the kids to ride bikes, scooters, and play basketball. Huge covered porches front and back Exercise room off of master for treadmill and weights Walk in attic access from upstairs Huge bonus room upstairs Big laundry room with 2 washer and 2 dryer hookups, quartz folding countertop, deep stainless sink, and plenty of storage. Love that the dryers vent right outside, not up through walls and then to the roof like our last house. Makes cleaning the duct a huge pain and cuts down on effiency. Sound system with speakers throughout and on back porch Paint colors - Tobacco Road(main), Dover White(woodwork) Lots of lighting throughout almost all on dimmers Schlage door hardware and deadbolts Love being out in the country on a little land with tons of trees and a pond. Peaceful and lots of room for the kids to play and explore. Things I'd do differently - Insulate wall where upstairs bath plumbing runs downstairs for sound reduction. Put in sprinkler system - On the list to do next spring Wish we would've upgraded to satin or eggshell paint in the bonus and kids rooms. Went with flat to save money figuring we could always repaint later....See MoreLaundry in Kitchen and other things
Comments (16)I dislike having a laundry in the food preparation area for sanitary and aesthetic reasons. Handling worn clothing and bedding leaves your hands contaminated with E. coli sp., not all of which are not benign comensals; not to mention loose hair and skin cells and even occasional intestinal parasite eggs. Not something I like to have around my food. Plus as noted, the issue of sorting and then holding for subsequent loads of dirty clothing needs space. Even if you use a dryer, there's also necessary folding and ironing space required. I see you have a door from the garage noted. Can you figure out how to move the laundry appliances to space in the garage, even if means making a well-insulated closet for them. As a practical matter, don't be mislead by the comparatively small size of the true horizontal-axis, front-loading, European-style washers. These are usually 220V (they make their own hot water, as needed). They are about the size of dishwashers but will easily hold as much as a large capacity washer. I know because I have been using them for more than 20 years and can pack quite remarkable amounts into them. When FL machines first were availale in the US (again, they existed many years ago and then fell out of favor) there was considerable consumer consternation about the size of the machines. I can't tell you how many times I listed the contents of my typical FL machine loads over on the Laundry Forum in answer to skeptical questions about capacity. Nowadays, Miele, the preeminent-manufacturer of high quality Eorpoean FL washing machines has abandonned selling its superb true-horizontal machines in the US in order to pander to the American taste for ginormous machine sizes. The result is machines that are less effective than the smaller ones. LG, Kenmore, Samsung, Maytag and many other brands also make these huge FL's with varying results of efficiency. I believe that Asko and Bosch still make, and sell in the US, true European-style machines. I can heartily recommend the older-style Mieles. They are often available second hand on Craigslist for excellent prices ($150-300 second hand vs. $1800-2100 for new Mieles) as clueless people ditch them in their headlong rush for ever-bigger machines. I also have had more than two decades of excellent work from my Asko machines. Some of the benefits of the smaller, flat-axis machines, are higher spin speeds, lower water consumption and much higher temperature possibilities (if 220v models.) Higher, including very hot (140-200F) temp is one of the lynchpins in avoiding stinky bio-film buildup in a washer. A garage location would also seem ideal for making a doorway to an outside drying yard. Although I have a dryer, I dry all my stuff outdoors, year-round, with great results. (And I live in northern NY where just-out-of-the-washer clothes are often literally freezing as I hang them up.) It costs about 9 cents for the electricity to run a load of clothes in the washer (even counting for the fact that I heat the wash water to more than 150F), but the electricity to dry the same load costs nearly a dollar per load so the cost saving in outdoor drying is very high, plus it yields sweet-smelling, great-feeling cothing and and brilliant whites. Although keeping the machines closed in and under counters looks nice as practical matter to do neglects the need for the washing machine's door to to be left open when not in use. (Not wide open, but not firmly latched shut.) Pictures of these arrangements are often shown in shelter mags even though they don't work as well as you might imagine. Even the dryer needs air access if it is to exhaust efficienctly to the outside. There are dryers - called condenser dryers -which need no exhaust. I have one and I am only tolerably satisfed with it. It does markedly raise the ambient humidity and temperature of the room while operating, and doesn't work well in a confined space. Once the room temp begins to rise the ability of the machine to condense moisture from the dryer-air stream begins to degrade. Luckily I only use it in a bathroom during the winter so the added temp and moisture in the air are welcome things. It wouldn't be satisfacory if I planned to use it year-round for all loads. It also creates a certain amount of extra fugitive lint in the air since it is not externally vented. Give some thought to whether you can capture some garage space for the laundry. Insulating and even heating a small space like a laundry closet shouldn't be that difficult and would add convenience and re-sale value to your house without the risks of a full scale addition. Perhaps you could have the laundry closet extend from the kitchen into the garage. HTH L. (PS: if you have more questions about laundry equipment, the place to read up on that is on the Laundry Forum of this site.)...See MoreGive up kitchen table for island seating? No other inside eating area.
Comments (40)Wow, what a gorgeous place you have there! With the way the kitchen ceiling height changes in dining area to the vaulted, I was not sure if that would look strange in your KD's design that goes all the way across the longer back wall. I just played with my app by cropping things from BB's peninsula plan to move stuff around. Here is what I came up with. You could keep a small prep sink under that one small kitchen window since the plumbing is already there, but I moved the main sink to the pennisula. I moved the couch to the other wall and removed one of the club chairs because I wanted to get furniture away from the slider. I'm not sure if a round table is a good idea or not, but just thought how nice it would be for games and also faces more towards the views and the TV. I am sure it is not to scale either. Oh well, just throwing this out there anyways to spark ideas. :-)...See MoreNeed ideas for my kitchen eating area
Comments (11)Since your kitchen is small, know that a table & chairs for four will make it seem smaller. Consider a table for two. (That has got to be the smallest kitchen sink that I've ever seen! I was hoping it was a prep sink, but then I saw it was next to the DW. Please remove the metal stand near the corner. It screams "I lack storage!") Keep contrast to a minimum to visually-maximize space. Meaning: white/gray matching table & chairs. I understand you just changed your kitchen, but you need MORE STORAGE. Consider a matching table for two and perhaps a free standing cabinet to replace that metal stand. https://www.wayfair.com/kitchen-tabletop/sb1/large-70-food-pantries-c246777-a136259~456277.html https://www.wayfair.com/Andover-Mills-Abrahamic-3-Piece-Drop-Leaf-Dining-Set-ADML1061-L145-K~ADML1061.html?refid=GX174524563568-ADML1061&device=t&ptid=329147101184&network=g&targetid=aud-352581794566:pla-329147101184&channel=GooglePLA&gclid=CjwKCAjwr-PYBRB8EiwALtjbz7ebDFcyW2Dp2I4DsCrokhvfGsvaDoKtR3mNIL1dvOK5u8t266PdnRoCDWEQAvD_BwE This is an inexpensive option: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M0QM2O7/ref=asc_df_B01M0QM2O75502561/?tag=hyprod-20&creative=394997&creativeASIN=B01M0QM2O7&linkCode=df0&hvadid=242037924203&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=14230338749691357554&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=t&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1016140&hvtargid=pla-427913481808 Since you spent money to redo the kitchen recently, perhaps you can find an old wardrobe cabinet for kitchen storage. Just add paint Re: "non-matching table and chairs": Table height and chair seat height can skewed. These items were made to match with another item. When you mix the two, you risk needing a booster seat. This is a fact to consider when shopping - BRING A TAPE MEASURE! Upholstered chair cushions might be firm or "squishy". Either way, the specified seat heights are from the top of the cushion. (They do not factor the sinking that occurs when a body sits in a squishy chair.) It took me a year to find appropriate chairs for my table. BTW I am 6ft 2" tall....and I found that some chairs were simply too short for my table. The search was difficult, but I love my PB Hayes chairs...See MoreMolly
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