Coming Along!

The remodel of Jennifer and Ryan's downstairs is really looking good. All of the walls we don't want anymore are down, the plumbing is moved, the wall to bathroom has moved over a few inches and the pesky closet is gone.

 David Getts, our estimable contractor is right on track and doing his best to solve the many problems he found behind the walls. Here is a link to an article he wrote about doing it right and doing it wrong. http://www.examiner.com/article/construction-mistakes-how-to-avoid-ignorance-and-disregard

So let's take a look at the progress.

This is what you see when you walk in the front door now. What a difference, and no closet to trip over. Originally
there was a window in that area, the one that is above the sink in the new kitchen. Look at that light and view.
 

Looking into the new kitchen from the corner by the fireplace and no closet.

Existing window moved to new location above sink. You have to use your imagination.

Standing in new kitchen area looking back to the dining area. Another new window at the back.

Looking from kitchen towards living room. The windows on either side of the fireplace were installed without headers, very dangerous as the load of the second floor was being carried without help.

Missing closet and the only wall with it's original sheetrock still on. Look at the beautiful new beam, instead of sheerocking it as planned we are going to stain it match the floors.

 David and his crew are working hard to keep this job on track. Next time I will be sharing all the finishes the clients have picked out. Hopefully they will be picked out.

 

How we got to where we are now!

In my last blog I said I was going to give a little background on the design of our Sammamish remodel for Ryan and Jennifer. When I first met them they were disgusted with their kitchen, in fact the whole downstairs.

The kitchen was directly behind the living room with a wall separating the two, not the open plan we all like to live in these days. Plus there was huge space off the the right of the dining area that was unused. In the picture below you can see the shape, the living room isn't on the plan but you can imagine it in front of kitchen.

They had been thinking about this for quite awhile and wanted someone to guide them through the design process. Ryan's dad is an architect, Ryan and Jennifer are both designers in their own right and they had talked to some other kitchen designers. They wanted to remove the wall bewtween the kitchen and the living room and maybe bump out the back two feet to create more room.

As a designer working with clients that have a limited budget I try to come up with ways to use the existing space in a more efficient manner before adding more square footage. Here a few different ideas we seriously talked about.

 

After looking at these and a few others we decided that the best use of the space was to have the dining room behind the living room and have that flow into the kitchen. This way you enter the home in it's most formal area and transition back to the least formal. It also allowed us to add a huge amount of glass. The house backs up to a greenbelt that features wildlife and a lovely pond. This way you could view it from the whole downstairs. Here is the design they settled on. The wall is gone and the kitchen is at the other end.

Next time, more about how the remodel is going. It is looking great, the new windows are all in, what a difference.

Demo Day Continued!

Well it is really Demo Day 1, Demo Day 2 and Demo Day 3 with a little bit of Demo Day 4. To back up a bit none of these days would have been possible without this!

How exciting to have one of these delivered to your driveway. Uh, maybe you had to be there. So as you know our ever fearless homeowner, Ryan, has decided to tackle this enormous task all by himself. After the first day we went from this-

 

To this-

See that wall, that is the wall that started all of this. To go or not to go? It was unanimous "It Goes". So now what? More on that in a later blogpost.

A work in progress but we are on our way.

Looking through the wall that is coming down after some electrical and tricky plumbing are rerouted.

Ceilings too.

Can't wait till the closet is gone! Do you think it's in the way when you enter?

The easy way to remove lots and lots of underlayment. David giving Ryan some hints.

The foreground of this picture is where the new kitchen is going
 and the rest of the downstairs will all be open to it.

Old kitchen, new dining room with two sets of French doors and big new picture window at the end.
Now you know why we needed a structural engineer.

He is getting there.



One corner where the walls and ceiling aren't coming down.



 

So now you can see the blank canvas that we need so we can create the kitchen and downstairs that this house deserves. Good work Ryan :)  I am going to start looking back at the design process in my next post so you can see how we got to this moment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Kitchen is finally moving!

 Wow, I have been writing about moving this kitchen from one side of the house to the other for months. D Day is finally here, D is for Demolition. Our fearless owner has decided to tackle this task himself. One very large dumpster delivered to his driveway and lots of work ahead. His task is to remove all the cabinets, appliances, sheetrock on walls and ceiling, trim and flooring, not to mention an unsightly closet in the entry. here are a few before photos.
 

Existing kitchen.

This is the wall between the living room and kitchen, it is coming down.

Here is the unsightly closet!

Now that I have refreshed your memory, let;s have a look at Demo Day One. This was at noon so I am sure we have more to come.

Cabinets and appliances are gone.

This picture shows the demo of the wall that has the
plumbing that needs to be moved so we can
 take the wall down and open up the whole downstairs.

The structural engineer needs these photos to see if we
 can move this wall back 6 inches so we have more
 room between the wall and the island.

Keep watching, lots more to come. You can see the empty living room in the backround. It is so exciting to start this project after all the work we have done leading up to this moment. I have great clients and a true craftsman for a contractor. It doesn't get much better than this!

Sammamish Kitchen Remodel- Do you want to move the kitchen?

We are in the planning stages of a kitchen remodel. The clients are a young and talented couple who bought a house on their dream lot. As the owner likes to say the house is quirky. It is our mission to unquirk the main floor. The main floor consists of the living room pictured above and below, a kitchen right behind the mirror and a dining room/extra space combo. I told you, quirky. The wall with the mirror is coming down so we can open up the whole downstairs into one big space. Happy days!!

Here is the entry closet which is in the middle of the entry and contains the water shut off for the entire house, the "q" word again. Soon to be moved to a better location along with the closet.

The existing kitchen, very small and tight with budget everything including the cabinets and finishes.

Here are a couple of pics, it does have a big refrigerator.

In the next picture you can see where the kitchen is moving to on the main floor, pretty much where all those people are standing. Don't be alarmed the french doors are being relocated. The downstairs will be shadow of it's former self. You can see David Getts, the general contractor on the job, talking to the client who has his back to the camera. Dad, otherwise known as Mark, is in the second picture talking to David.

This a complicated project so there will be lots to see as we proceed. We are all excited to be moving forward on this dream project. Ryan, one of the clients is an incredibly talented game designer and I will be posting some pics of his renderings of the final project as we go along. Back to the home page of my website. www.lweldondesign.com 

Cabinet types, what are they talking about?

So you need cabinets or you are just curious. What are people talking about when they throw around words like inset, full overlay, modified reveal or full reveal. Not to mention frameless and framed cabinets. Even word check doesn't recognize frameless. This a little, not to exhaustive look at this very issue.

First we are going to tackle framed cabinets and the various ways the door is hung. The way the door is hung is where we get the different types. Below is a picture of how a framed cabinet is built.

If you look down towards the bottom of the picture you will see the face frame, this the front of the cabinet and the doors are mounted on this.

Sorry for the poor resolution, the way this door is hung on the face frame is called full reveal or modified reveal. That means that most of the face frame is showing behind the doors. This is less popular than it used to be and I think it is safe to say used mostly by builders.

This style is call full overlay, meaning that the door itself covers all of the face frame. It is probably the most used door style at the moment and the picture above shows it in a Shaker door style, also very popular and timeless.

This style is called inset, for the obvious reason that the door is hung flush with the face frame or in other words inset into the opening made by the face frame.

Here is a picture of a kitchen using inset doors. On to the next issue, what is the difference between framed and frameless cabinets?

The answer to that is that there is no face frame on frameless cabinets. If you just knew what the parts and pieces of the cabinets were called you probably could have figured all this out without my help. The door is actually hung on the box since there is no face frame. The installation tolerances are much tighter so it is best left to an expert. A frameless kitchen cabinet installation and a really cool picture.

To return to my website click www.lweldondesign.com

My feelings about back splashes!

Yes, my feelings. I know this blog is supposed to help you figure out your remodel, but I want to talk about something that makes it fun and gives you a chance to show who you are. Do you wear a diamond solitaire ring or some larger piece of bling? Do you wear pearl studs or long dangly earrings from some emerging artist.

                                               

 When designing a kitchen for most people, it is usually important that the cabinets be timeless in their design and to some extent the floors and counters. After all most people are interested in resale in this market, whether it is sooner or later. They are the big ticket items and conservative may be wise.

 Does that mean everything has to be plain and timeless? Heck no, and here is why I love tile back splashes. They are the jewelry of the project, no matter what type of clothes you dress in, you put your jewelry on last to add the finishing touch. Same with back splashes and let me tell you there are so many different and beautiful tiles that you can find one (or a million) that fits your aesthetic. Plus the good news is, if the next owner of your home doesn't like it they can replace it without having to touch the bones ( cabinets, floors and counters). Yes it cost them some money but nothing like replacing one of the big three. Plus they get to put their stamp on their new house.

So have fun shopping for something that is perfect for you and your house and your taste. I hope you got something out of this post, maybe a little braver. If nothing else you got to see lots of beautiful pictures of tile. Bye the way all these tiles are from Walker Zanger and their amazing craftspeople.