"Where Do We Go From Here?"

One of the things we most enjoy doing is making pumpkin pies at Thanksgiving, Christine making the filling while I roll out the crusts. When we were first married, we rented a townhouse that had Formica countertops which I was able to use as a wonderful workplace. From that day to this, though, we have always had kitchens with tile countertops, which has always necessitated my pulling out the breadboard and rolling out my pies on that.

This time round we will have solid countertops. I have been dickering back and forth for some time as to the choice I thought would best fit the bill. One of the most spectacular choices, of course, is granite countertops, especially the upper end granite with that marvelous grain that makes such a pronounced design statement. One of the difficulties with that particular choice, of course, is the cost. Formica has the advantage of being relatively inexpensive, and since I know how to apply it, it becomes a choice that is surely up there.

But what I most want for the countertops is something spectacular, but something too, that looks as though it has my hands all over it, which brings me to the obvious choice, wooden countertops. As part of the blogs I have been writing for our sister site cft411.com, I have explored a great many topics for kitchens and bathrooms, and one of the things that has most intrigued me is wooden countertops. There are a number of companies that are making countertops that can only be described as spectacular, but in the end, because wood is actually my medium, I believe that I will tackle the wooden countertops myself.

The sink will be a single-basin farm sink which will eliminate one of my pet peeves—all of the grunting and straining that is necessary to wash large pots and pans at Thanksgiving. The faucets have been chosen to complement the look of simple elegance we are striving to achieve, and also to provide us with a separate sprayer that will help with cleanups and filling large pots.

All of the existing appliances will be replaced. The new choice will be KitchenAid, a choice we have made for the product line’s reliability, practicality, and affordability. There are a number of reasons for this choice.

First, the available room in the kitchen immediately eliminates anything but a range, as there simply is not room for a separate oven. Also, we are relegated to a range no wider than thirty inches, for the same reason. Finally, we neither have, nor wish to acquire, enough electrical power to drive anything but a gas-powered range. So, many of the more exotic choices have already been lost to us.

Beyond that there is the issue of what kind of kitchen appliances we actually need. We are not, as has been previously stated, gourmet cooks, but even if we were, I really do not understand the attraction of the pricier line of appliances which have, as a sort of center attraction, 15,000 BTU burners. A short order restaurant cook, which I once was, does what he must to get out the largest number of orders in the shortest amount of time. He can put that excessive heat to good use. I’m not so sure the rest of us need that sort of thing. Certainly, we do not.

We have cooked in the current kitchen for almost sixteen years. Prior to that every other kitchen we had was no more than average, when it came to appliances. And there is also my Army experience. I have cooked for hundreds of men under some outrageously primitive conditions. While stationed in Berlin I cooked for five hundred men in a company-size mess hall designed to serve no more than two hundred. Those years are long since behind me, but in memory, they are evergreen, and ever influential in what I regard as necessary to a kitchen. Just damned near any burner will do fine for me. So beyond the look of a coordinated line of new appliances, we are just not willing to spend so much for what is essentially aesthetics.

We decided on KitchenAid because the side-by-side refrigerator is quite a bit smaller than the one we currently have, while losing just one cubic foot of storage space. We’re not sure if stainless steel is in or out, but we mean to coordinate it with a more traditional kitchen that will use nickel-plated hardware. As Christine always says, "If you stick with the classics, you won’t grow tired of them."

Sadly, these plans, like the plans I have already discussed for our bathroom, are still some time away from completion. As I pursue my many options, though, I will be sharing the results of my research on CFT411. One of the things that has most amazed me since my partner and I took it on, and I began writing the bulk of the blogs (he does the software; I do the writing), is the incredible amount of design ideas that are available, especially in the field of appliances. I have no trouble at all maintaining an air of genuine enthusiasm for my blogs, because what I have found often astounds me.

So, in a way, I am unhappy that I will not be able to get right to work on our new kitchen, but on the other hand, I have to believe that I am certain to find something new and different that will be just the thing—even for a kitchen as small and limited as ours. Perhaps you’ll care to join me in my search for the new and different on CFT411. I can promise you a journey that is never boring.

Joseph

"Cabinetry"

Cabinetry is often described as the most important facet of a kitchen, but that axiom is particularly true in our case. For reasons already stated, the kitchen is much too small and will remain so. The counter we love so much takes up quite a bit of room, and in order to fit it into a much too small space, the original homeowner held the base cabinets in his counter to a depth of only twenty inches. After much analysis, I can do no more than bow to his wisdom.

I was once going to move the sink, split the counter, and install fake beams and custom-made lighting, but this design, though much more innovative than what I feel obliged to go with, creates as many problems as it solves, mostly because of its reducing the one substantial counter we have from a 31" depth to only 20".

Given these many restrictions, the only thing I can think to do with these confined quarters is to make of it a jewel box. It need not be overly ornate, but it must, to my mind, be highly crafted. My first thought was Greene and Greene, but as our plans have evolved, I have found myself yearning for less. In designing our cabinetry, the one thing I found myself consistently writing in the margins was "simple elegance."

I believe this kitchen should have as much "wow" as I am able to provide for it, but that this "wow factor" must come from cabinetry made so well that even the least sophisticated will know at once that no factory ever produced such work. But, even so, the cabinetry must quietly do its job. To achieve this I will avoid raised panels and elaborate crown molding and opt, instead, for Shaker-like panel doors which I will hang on unadorned butt hinges set into cockbead in such a way that the hinge knuckles almost disappear into the wood. To latch the doors I will use rare earth magnets which I will hide in the wood in such a manner that only another woodworker will ever be able to figure out what in heck keeps the doors closed.

I do not like, and will not make, cabinets with adjustable shelving. Studies have shown that well over ninety-five percent of those who are obliged to use such cabinetry arrange the shelves one time (usually to industry standards) and then never again. But they are obliged to look at a row of holes they will never use. It costs more to make cabinets with fixed shelving (time being money), but the result is a stronger, more aesthetically pleasing cabinet. Also, I have decided to change the concept of having to cover shelves with Contact Paper of some sort, as it is often an annoying process, which is why, no matter how badly it subsequently deteriorates, people rarely replace the shelf paper. Therefore, as a note of unexpected elegance, all of the interior shelves and all of the drawer bottoms will be covered with Formica.

Freed of the necessity of making my own lanterns, we have opted for lighting we will purchase and install ourselves. Despite the regulations now being promulgated for kitchens, we still find Fluorescent lighting to be a flickering abomination that does little more than give headaches to those obliged to work in it. We have decided upon incandescent lighting. I will also design, build, and install my own hood, which will include stained glass inserts for a source of ambient lighting. For as long as we have been married, the first thing we do each day is to turn on the hood light in the kitchen, and it remains on until we go to bed. Now we will make of this light source a bit of magic.

Finally, I will replace the existing pass through doors into the kitchen with new doors of my own design.

Joseph

NEXT WEEK: "Where Do We Go From Here?"

Joseph and Christine’s

Amazing Technicolor

Dream Yard

PART THREE OF THREE

This is a close-up of the area in front of the gazebo. Our soil is very hard clay that drains poorly, and the many structures I put in the yard increased the drainage problems. Rather than try to plant stuff in dirt not much different than concrete, we elected to put in a lot of decorative rock (eight-and-a-half tons of rock, as it turned out!) and then use various pots for our plants. But we did not want to just put in a bunch of the same clay pots. We varied it as much as we could.

I’m standing on the gazebo looking across the yard to the reading porch. That’s the storage shed on the left. The back panel of the storage shed has been deliberately painted to look like that on the end of the casita, which makes the end panel of the casita look even more like just a design detail. More on that in a minute.

This is taken from the gazebo looking down on the area behind the storage shed. In a few places we elected to put trees or shrubs directly into the ground.

The details on the railings don’t show up as well as I would like, but the little cap in the foreground consists of three pieces routed with a bull nose, roundover, and cove. The railings themselves consist of three pieces for the top railing, two pieces for the bottom railing, and all the spindles have coves routed on the four corners.

This is looking toward the rear of the casita. The details of the posts don’t show up as well as I’d like, but they are 4×4s which had coves routed on all four corners. Then I attached 1×2 to the face of the posts which had roundover edges routed on them. The final result looks like a pillar rather than a post. The painted panel on the end of the casita is a wall that can be removed in the event that the spa should ever have to be replaced. My first thought was to install a huge gated door, but I couldn’t see the point of looking at hinges on a door that would be opened only once or twice in my lifetime, if that. Instead, I put in headers across the end of the casita, just as I would have done, had I installed a regular garage door. Then the beam just above the painted area had a lip cut into it so the painted portion of the wall could slip under the lip, thereby ensuring that rain does NOT run into the wall, which would be the way of it, had I not put in a drip edge. The whole thing has been carefully calked and painted and looks no different than the end panel on the storage shed (which IS just a painted detail). If I should have to remove it, it would take about half a day to do so, and another half day to put it back in, but this way I’m not looking at those hinges.

Standing on the gazebo and looking down at the seating area. I made small tables for the outside ends of both the green and blue benches and put a larger corner table in between them, so people would have a place to set down a plate and a drink.

Christine calls these the harmony bells and very much wanted them for our yard. It’s strange how things work out sometimes. I won’t comment on the paranoia of those who arranged things so she had no work the summer we finished the yard, except to thank them. That job… But, as I say, what could have been a bad situation ended up working out beautifully for us! After a while the work all runs together, so it’s hard for me to remember all the things Christine did, just that I know I would not have finished that year without her. Also, thanks to her not having a job that summer we had plenty of time to pick out the pots and plants together, which was a very fun thing to do. And now we have the yard to enjoy next year and every year thereafter. So, if that sounds a little smug, well, you just should have seen the people who ran that department! But they got their pound of flesh, and we got our yard. Bless them.

Joseph

Joseph and Christine’s

Amazing Technicolor

Dream Yard

PART TWO OF THREE

This is a good view of the casita. The portion to the left without windows is the storage area, which is accessed through the back door of the casita, which is shown in an earlier photo. To the right, in the area behind the windows is the spa. I designed the casita myself, but I had quite a bit of help from Don Davis, my contractor friend in Las Vegas. He poured the slab, directed the framing of three walls and the rafters (we worked on this together, but I worked at his direction), did all the electrical work, and showed me how to roof it. Later on I had other professionals do the stucco work. I made the doors and windows myself and did all the other work, including the interiors. This is the structure I had the most help on, and it was also the one that took the longest to complete. It took me one solid year to get this damned thing done. Since then, though, it’s been all peaches and cream!

This is at the rear of our house. I painted the whiskey barrels the three primary colors and the three secondary colors. Those by the raised planter are turquoise.

The barbeque area.

Altogether, there are four redwood benches, all of which have routed designs on them. Those farthest away have cloud lift designs.

This bench is attached to the front of the planter. This bench, like the other three, is cantilevered over the bricks, so if I ever have to replace the bricks, I won’t have to tear up my benches to do so.

Joseph

Next: PART THREE (The Conclusion)

Joseph and Christine’s

Amazing Technicolor

Dream Yard

PART ONE OF THREE

I have discussed the impetus for this yard on our sister blog CFT411.com, so here I thought I would simply post some more pictures of it, for those who may be interested. I won’t repeat what I already said in the blog on that site, except to say here that all of the work and all of the designs (with just two exceptions which I will discuss in good time) are my own. I worked on this yard for part of the year every year for ten years, except for the casita which required an entire year of my labor to complete. The detail pictures and their captions follow.

This is a picture of the “long and winding wall” and a picture of the back door of the casita, which leads to a small storage area. There are some four hundred stones in this wall, each of which weights 23 pounds, a total of four-and-a-half tons. The wall is 110 feet long, and there are flowers running the entire length and the sixteen additional feet beside the covered patio (which is not in this photo). At the far right in the right photo, beside the blue whiskey barrel, is the corner of the house.

I’m standing in front of the door for the storage area of the casita and looking at the reading porch. What looks like solid panels in this photo is actually panels of ¾” spindles. Altogether there are 166 spindles, all of which were installed with mortise and tenon joints, a total of 332 joints.

This is the storage shed, which we purchased as a prefabricated unit. Christine and I still had to put it together (took us two months to do so), but the design was done by others. She had the summer off that year, which came right in the nick of time, really, as without her help I would definitely have been looking at another summer working in the yard. As it was, we finished late in the year, but we did finish THAT year! I deliberately chose this particular shed to match the casita I had already made.

This is another view of the reading porch. The detail is very poor, but there’s a stylized cloud lift routed into the top of the reading porch.

This is a view of the walkway in front of the casita. The planter is on the far right. You can also see a portion of the seating area and a portion of the gazebo.

This is a view of the gazebo. It is really a raised deck, but when we first discussed it, it was going to be a traditional gazebo, and it eventually evolved into this. The portion to the right of the awnings is raised up one step from the main deck under the awnings. I’m standing on the reading porch.

Joseph

Next: PART TWO

"A Cocoon of One’s Own"

One of the things I promised my wife when we got our house was that I would customize every room of it, starting with the master bedroom, where I made an entertainment center to her specifications.

As you can see from these pictures, the master bedroom is actually a two-room suite. The vanity I’ve described elsewhere is in the sitting room, and when I was designing the entertainment center for her, I noticed that the first thing she did each morning was flip on the radio in the receiver (which was on small table at the time). Entertainment centers of this style almost always consist of an unbroken façade of drawers and doors, but I wanted to make this as user-friendly as possible, so I put the receiver on an open shelf, so she wouldn’t have to fumble with doors to turn it on and off. (For more on entertainment centers, go to CFT411.com.)

But the main reason for a custom piece was not that open shelf so much, as it was the challenge provided by the site. It was difficult to take the picture I wanted to show the relationship of this entertainment center to the bed, as it is in one corner of the room, which was all the space we really had for it. But that illustrates why a custom project is more than an indulgence at times. Nothing I could have purchased and brought home ever would have fit into that corner with the precision of a built-in cabinet.

Looking at the molding around the base now, it looks like a perfect fit, which it is, but it took an awful lot of work to make it so. That particular corner of the concrete slab this house sits on was not poured well, and it slopes front to back and side to side. The only way to correct that problem was to install a separate toe kick. The finished cabinet sits on the toekick, and the whole of the base has been covered with the base molding that makes it appear as a cabinet that just happens to perfectly fit the space it resides in.

Also, because the cabinet itself is eight feet tall, it had to be attached to the wall, but the unit itself is a simple rectangle spanning a corner. The solution to that dilemma was triangle-shaped supports in back, the legs of which were screwed to wall studs, and the cabinet itself was then screwed to the hypotenuse side. The gaps that would have appeared between the cabinet and wall with a purchased cabinet are not in evidence here because I made and installed molding on either side of the cabinet to hide the gaps and give the piece a more finished look. Finally, I should point out that this is not a "walnut-finished" piece. It is made of black walnut, which I finished with a hand-rubbed oil finish.

One of the people we showed it off to was very short, and looking up those eight feet, she mumbled, "Boy, that’s sure a lot of walnut." What Christine most likes about watching TV back there, though, is that it’s cool in the summer, warm under the covers in the winter, a cocoon of her own anytime.

Joseph

"A Discourse on the Original Kitchen"

This house was built in 1971 and has a kitchen from that era, which seems a somewhat pretentious way to describe a time within my own memory, but in "kitchen years," especially with the fairly recent phenomenon of two and three hundred square foot kitchens with all the accouterments, including islands and high-priced appliances, our kitchen really is from a different era. That said, the 150 square feet of the existing kitchen, if differently arranged would have been more than sufficient. But during the "era" this kitchen was built, people tended to eat in the kitchen, so all of the appliances are crowded together, and there was almost no counter space at all in the original kitchen, that there might be room at one end of the kitchen for the table and chairs.

The original home owner designed and built an add-on that almost doubled the size of the house (it continues on the other side of the south wall of the family room—an addition that doubles the size of the master bedroom), and when he did so, he made an arch where the sliding door to the outside had been and added an L-shaped counter to the kitchen, which provides the only workable food preparation area this kitchen possesses.

The good news about the room addition is that the original home owner was a wonderful amateur architect and carpenter. Not only is the work done quite professionally, it is done in such a way that it seems always to have been a part of the home.

The bad news is that, like many carpenters, he was not a very good cabinetmaker, so the workmanship of his cabinetry leaves a bit to be desired. The countertops are glazed tile and mismatched, the newer counter being topped in a different color tile than that in the original kitchen. Also, where the two countertops butt together, he did the best he could with counters that differ about half an inch in height. And the Douglas fir used to rim the new countertop, because that particular wood is soft, is not a choice I would have made.

The flooring, which was once acceptable, is now some twenty-five years old and needs to be replaced. Also, the appliances, although still in working order, are old and mismatched.

Finally, and this is the part that most grinds my soul, the original cabinetry, which they actually installed in a brand-new home, is unbearably cheap. They used veneered particleboard throughout, and compromised on every possible detail, in order to line their own pockets. The raised panel doors are, in fact, cheap veneered imitations that are edged with finger pull molding (thereby avoiding the expense of knobs) and hung on cheap, self-closing hinges. The drawers are finished with simple butt joints and employ plastic slide glides (attached to the drawer box with staples!) that, even thirty-seven years later, can be purchased for less than a dollar.

The obvious solution to our kitchen woes is to expand the size of the room, but for reasons already stated, we have decided not to do so. Neither will we move the plumbing, stove, or other items. All of the plumbing and electrical lines will remain just as they are, except moving a ceiling light a few feet and adding a water line to the new refrigerator. However, we will completely demolish the existing kitchen and replace everything within it.

Joseph

NEXT WEEK: "Cabinetry"

"You Shore Is Ugly!"

I promised myself when I set up this blog site that I would not just write the same damned thing as everyone else, and one of the things I most wanted to do was to simply tell the truth about furniture, cabinetry, working methods and designs. And, yes, there is a truth to design that needs to be discussed, especially in regards to the two rooms that get the most attention, namely kitchens and bathrooms, but mostly, I think, kitchens. We have seen so many fantasy kitchens featured on TV and the Internet that we’ve come to believe that anything short of that has simply missed the mark altogether. I do not believe it. Certainly, I do not believe it for our own kitchen design, which is the example I will use to try to prove my point.

One of our biggest dreams for this house is a new kitchen, and it is never far from my thoughts, especially whenever I walk into the kitchen, which face it, all of us do every day of our lives. This kitchen has so many problems I hardly know where to begin. I’m not going to reel off the "40 Guidelines For Kitchen Planning," but I can tell you that our kitchen breaks over half of those rules, and even after it’s finished, will continue to break many of the rules. Looking at the picture I chose for this blog, a line from the movie "The Color Purple" immediately popped into my head and takes its place as the subtitle for this blog.

Beyond anything else I do for our home—and I have been working on it pretty much for as long as we’ve lived in it—the one thing I most want to complete is the new kitchen. But the one virtue of having so long a planning session for our kitchen is that the plans have gone through a great many drafts, from the very complex, to the not so complex, to what I now hope is a touch of just the right kind of elegance.

I will be discussing our plans one blog a week for the next month or so, as much of it is still in the gestation period, and also because there is a rather involved project now going on that must take precedence. But I thought I might discuss some of our plans, in part to share my own thinking on kitchen design, in larger part, I suppose, to simply put my thoughts down in permanent form, that I might better assess what works and what does not work.

Any kitchen design that calls for a demolition of all that has gone before, as ours does, is going to be expensive, but from that it does not follow that the sky is the limit, either in budget or in plans for the remodeling itself. Sometimes you just have to be realistic about things. We have certainly tried to do so.

First, we know that our kitchen is much too small. We have discussed various ways of enlarging it, but we always run up against the same problem. Enlarging the kitchen will necessarily shrink adjacent rooms—and we are not willing to do that. The kitchen is definitely the heart of our home, but we are not gourmet cooks. Neither do we spend hours and hours each week making special sauces and the like. We live like most childless couples. During the week we warm soup in the microwave oven or (gasp!) have popcorn for dinner. The only cooking we really do is on the weekends, and it is often simple fare. I’m an old Army cook and have made some elaborate Thanksgiving meals, but other than that and the occasional pull-out-all-the-stops dinner party, I honestly think we could get by just fine with our coffee pot and a hotplate. That being the way of it, we are just not willing to reconfigure the house to accommodate a large kitchen that will be used so little.

Secondly, all of the design will revolve around practical considerations. It breaks one of the principal design rules for kitchens to leave a blind corner in a base cabinet, or worse, seal if off, thereby making it a dead corner, but our small kitchen and our advancing years leave us little choice. I never played it well, but I once played basketball, a sport my deteriorating knees will no longer permit me to enjoy. And it gets worse. Now, when I drop something, I tend to wait until I’ve dropped several other things before squatting down to pick up the first item! The thought of kneeling down in front of our stove to root around in that blind corner is frankly repulsive, so the base cabinet in that area will have a bank of drawers and a dead corner.

Finally, the design of the kitchen, and the workmanship in the cabinetry, is intended to complement the work in the family room, which we have elected not to shrink, as this is the room we actually use. I am currently working on an elaborate home theater for this room (made of solid mahogany almost throughout) which I will be describing in some detail in later blogs, but I wanted to set down some of our kitchen plans before getting into the home theater.

I am well aware of the kitchen design guidelines and have, in fact, found them most helpful in correcting as many of our kitchen’s problems as possible. However, the end result of this particular project, like the most inadequate kitchen it replaces, will still break many of the design guidelines, the most glaring being a work triangle that is absurd (the legs are two feet, two feet, four feet!).

It’s a kitchen that would never pass a Certified Kitchen Designer test, but perhaps there is some merit in designing less than that, because only a very few of us ever find ourselves in a circumstance of being able to make the large fantasy kitchen we all drool over. Perhaps I can carve out a niche for myself by designing for the rest of us!

Joseph

NEXT WEEK: "A Discourse on the Original Kitchen"

"Dial 911"

There are so many things wrong with this bathroom design that I hardly know where to begin, but what I dislike most about this bathroom, I suppose, is that it’s mine! Almost sixteen years ago my wife and I fell in love with this house and bought it, but the three burrs under the saddle have always been the kitchen and the two bathrooms, all of which are in serious need of remodeling. And, just to compound the problem, enlarging these rooms is out of the question, because it would require a major remodeling that we are not willing to undertake. All I can do, I told my wife, is make of these rooms a jewel box with my cabinetmaking skills. The actual making of these jewel boxes, though, has proven to be something of a problem, which brings us to the subject of this blog.

With any 911 call, the first thing the police or firemen do is assess the damage, so let’s do that. Because of the size, or more precisely, the lack of size, everything in this bathroom is on top of everything else. The sink vanity is by the toilet is by the tub/shower. But that’s just the beginning.

It was almost impossible to take these pictures because the light bounced off the walls, and because I couldn’t really get the angles I wanted, so you’ll just have to take my word for it when I tell you that the vanity has no drawers at all, just a pair of doors that opens on a space under the sink. This means, in turn, that the paraphernalia any bathroom needs (or is that accumulates?) is jumbled under the sink in a catch-as-catch-can hodgepodge. And, to add insult to injury, the manufacturers of this particular vanity cut more corners by giving it an eight-inch toekick, thereby requiring less material for the doors (hollow-core, of course!).

The countertop is porcelain old as the house (37 years) and looks it, having begun to craze. The porcelain-clad sink is chipped, and there is no place to put a hand towel or tissue holder. The tub/shower is preformed plastic of some sort that has been in there much too long, and the shower curtain gives me the heebie-jeebies. The mirror over the sink vanity is the absolute cheapest available, as is the medicine cabinet.

Finally, there is the issue of the dimensions of the existing pieces, especially the sink vanity, which is only 37" long. The wall behind the medicine cabinet is actually the back wall of the hall closet, which means that I am stuck with this truncated vanity. Well, not this particular vanity, I assure you. That baby is going straight to the dumpster. But what I am stuck with is the actual size of the unit, as I cannot exceed these dimensions with anything I eventually design for the space.

With all this to work with, then, the question now becomes, how in the world am I going to remodel this bathroom and make it look, not just refurbished, but luxurious? I bring that up because many of the readers of this blog have the same problem in their own homes. Yes, they’re willing to remodel. No, they are not willing to go to the expense of a "tear-down-the-walls" remodeling that will expand the size of a minuscule bathroom. So, what does one do with such a space?

Well, to be honest about it, I don’t know myself at this moment. But what I do know is that I do not want to replace this bathroom with a new vanity and new appliances that look pretty much like the old, the only difference being that they’ve just come out of the box. I want to do something different, something better, and because I’m only going to do this once, I want to make very certain that what I do is the best that can be done for this space.

Well, that decision is some time off, because as I said, I want to be sure of myself before I proceed. In the meantime I have been searching the Internet for bathroom ideas, in part for my own bathroom, in larger part for anyone’s bathroom. There is an astounding wealth of ideas these days, and my partner and I have been exploring them on our sister site.

In time I mean to make of this disaster the jewel box I promised to my wife, and when I do I will share the details of it with you on this site. Between now and then, though, you may want to join us on CFT411. No matter what you’re looking for in a remodeling of any room in your house, we will eventually cover it because we’re cabinetmakers. That’s what we do.

Joseph

Those interested should simply click back to the original series of articles I wrote on this subject, but to compress it here, let me just say that Lazy Susans have come to be THE solution to blind corner woes. Those who pay enough money for them are almost always pleased with the results. So much so, in fact, that in doing some of the preliminary planning for the kitchen I hope to make for the wife and me later this year, Lazy Susans was my first choice. In checking out websites used by professional cabinetmakers, though, I was astonished to learn that a fair number of them do everything they can to talk their customers out of them, on the grounds that they simply do not add to the storage space in a kitchen.

I did my own homework on this and eventually came to agree with them, and I speak as one who has a wife who was just salivating at the thought of a Lazy Susan in that damned corner! But once I saw the math, I showed it to my wife, and she immediately made plans for something more practical with that money.

Later, of course, I wrote the blogs that are now the subject of debate between my partner and me. Joe’s contention is that, even though he knows Lazy Susans to not be worth the money (the kitchen he recently made for himself uses drawer banks in the blind corners), he has to give the customer what he wants.

I respectfully disagree. I know, I know, that’s polite debater’s language for something a bit more pungent, but in my case I know this man personally and have the highest regard for his integrity. So when I disagree, I do so respectfully.

I have a general contractor who has, over the years, become a close personal friend because of the work he has done on my house from time to time. I pay him for his time, so the technical relationship is employer—employee, but his standards are the highest, and whenever I ask him for his advice, he tells me what he honestly thinks. Let’s face it, if I had his skills, I wouldn’t need to pay him—and I wouldn’t. But there’s quite a difference between carpentry work and cabinetmaking, so I’m always glad to have his experience when I begin a major remodeling project.

I do know that the number one thing people want for a project for their homes is someone they can trust. They want someone who will charge them a fair price and who will do all the work as promised. Once a joint is glued up, not even another cabinetmaker can tell if it has been strengthened with biscuits, dowels, mortise-and-tenon, or not strengthened at all—just a butt joint! So having someone who can be trusted to do the work is paramount.

I also believe people want someone they can trust to tell them the truth about Lazy Susans or any other project they may have in mind for the same reason I value my contractor’s opinion so highly. He’s the one who knows. Why would I not take his advice?

Just recently I broke a screen door and broke the frame round a sliding window. I called the window people and the screen door people, both of whom offered to simply repair the unit. I took the window guy’s offer (saved me over $600!) and explained to the screen door guy that I wanted a heavier duty door, because of the traffic it had been getting. I’m pleased as punch with both items, but if, for the sake of the argument, the screen door guy had said the door I had in mind was too heavy for the track and would require hundreds of dollars more—and still not do the job as well as simply repairing the lighter weight door I had, I would have taken his advice. I say that, because before I let anyone work on my home, I do my damnedest to get a feel for his integrity. If he’s a square shooter, then he gets the bid—and I follow his advice.

I do not believe the customer is always right. And when he’s wrong, I believe we should let him know the error of his ways. For something like a Lazy Susan, the reasons for not installing one are so compelling that all we really have to do is give people the benefit of our knowledge. Most of the time, you end up with a grateful person who uses that money for something a bit more useful.

There will always be, of course, a handful of clients who will loudly assert that they are, by God, right, and that my job is to shut up and do what I was told. But I can happily get along without them in my life.

Joseph