Finished Kitchen

The kitchen is now complete!


There were a few glitches with a couple of things along the way. I think they were partially due to our inexperience coupled with some miscommunication between the designer, kitchen builder, the home builder, and ourselves.

The last 4 weeks before closing we were out of town several times for work so that made it difficult as well, as we weren't always on site as things were happening.

In the end we decided to just go with how it turned out instead of delaying closing to go back and change anything.

Nevertheless, it's a beautiful kitchen. My favourite part is the island. I love it so much that sometimes I wish we had done the whole kitchen in the dark stained maple. But I suppose if we had, the island would no longer stand out as a focal point.

Cooking in this kitchen is a dream. After unpacking every kitchen related item from our old house I still have empty cupboard space. And I had a lot of stuff in our basement, including seasonal and decorative serving ware, as well as several appliances such as our bread machine, large roaster, slow cooker, rice machine, blender(s), food processor, electric grill/griddler, deep fryer, etc.

I'm looking forward to many years ahead of making lots of good food and memories in this kitchen. After all, it's where I will be spending about 50% of my time every day.

Kitchen Day

Today I went to finalize kitchen details at Woody's. Joanne (the designer) and Shawn (from Woody's) were there, although Scott wasn't able to make it due to some last minute things that came up at work.

Now that I've had a few hours to mull over the samples I brought home, and digest everything else we picked out, I'd say it went well overall. But the meeting itself was a little stressful. Mostly because we had to make so many choices in such a short period of time.

We started with going over cabinetry details, including stain / paint colours and accessories (hardware). The stain was easy. Paint was a little harder. I followed the designers suggestions with regards to which shade of paint (we ended up using the same as the trim colour so that it will match perfectly). I hope to get some samples soon to take home and match to other things.

We discussed some minor changes in cabinetry, specifically in regards to some drawers in the kitchen and the main bathroom upstairs. Shawn said we can finalize island size and placement on the site when the framing is done.

I was a little disappointed that we didn't keep a running tab of what was included in the standard allowances and what were upgrades. Shawn and Joanne wrote it all down, but I came home feeling like I wasn't sure exactly how much over budget we were going to be. Shawn will send us a summary in the next couple of days. Hopefully it will be reasonable.

Next we picked out countertops. The solid surface samples were beautiful. So many great choices. The bathrooms and laundry room were a little trickier. I was somewhat disappointed in the selection of laminates. But to be fair, I think it was more a reflection of my bias towards other counter surfaces, and not so much Woody's lack of selection.

I love the counters we picked out for the basement bath and the boys' bath. I wasn't 100% sure about the selection for the girls' bath and the laundry room, but after bringing the samples home to look at a little more, I think they will be great too.

Joanne was really helpful in mentioning things that had never been discussed at Woody's. She pointed out choices in cabinet crown moulding, light valence, drawer / cupboard organization, and counter top heights. I was glad to have her point out those details so I could see the options.

I am learning so much during this process. It has been very educational and eye-opening.