What a difference two weeks makes

While we were here for ten days...

Well, we were only at the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel for five nights (the other five in Waikiki). The hotel itself is a wonderful modernist building from the 1960s that is much more elegant in person than it is in pictures. A really lovely place to stay. They have created a really fun microsite for the hotel that starts to get at the groove of the place.

...a lot of stuff happened at the house.

The last time I was at the house was on February 27th. Demo had continued inside in spots and the footings had been poured in the big hole in back.

While we were gone I saw an inspection report that showed the forms for the foundation/basement walls so I knew that things were progressing. But I was a little surprised to see how far they had gotten while we were away. As of this morning, the foundation walls were in place, the framing for the floor, and some of the new structural steel was in place, and there was a pretty big hole in the back of the existing house.

The two deep window wells allow for emergency egress for the bedroom in the new basement.

Basement floor plan for new addition. You can see the egress wells on the left.

New steel header above the old French windows.

 

The open space to the left used to be the exterior wall of our kitchen.

Plan of the first floor of the addition. The blue arrow shows the general view point of the previous picture.

The masonry under the new steel beam will also be demolished.

New steel framing starts to give a sense of he new space. The place where the beam gets shallower is to accommodate the new decking--so that when you walk out of our new master bedroom you still have a slight step down to the surface of the deck. 

Plan of the second floor. The caption on the previous photo referencing the changing height of the steel beam refers to the narrow area of deck at the end of the master bedroom. The master bath in the lower left corner is where our master is in the existing house.

The thing I find fascinating is that there always seems to be stuff going on inside as well as outside. I guess contractors multitask. Duh.

You can see what that new beam insertion looks like from the inside. The window is our former master bath and is about in the place of the new closets in the master bedroom.

Picture taken slightly to the left of the previous picture. The windows are our soon to be former master bedroom. The door frame at the bottom of the picture is from the old kitchen into the dining room. The double windows are where the shower and toilet in the new master bath will be (see plan above).

Taken from our master bedroom looking into the old kitchen and out to what will be the first floor of the addition.

Slightly different view of the same.

  And then there is the new basement.

Its amazing how small unfinished space looks. A view of the new basement bedroom taken from what will be a new laundry and mechanical room.

I'm glad I don't have to understand what is going on here.

A range of ranges

 

So many possibilities.

After my last post about our kitchen design, a lot of people have been asking me about our choice of a Lacanche range. Seems Lacanche owners are fanatics. That bodes well.

Our selected finishes. Matte black with brass knobs. The brass looks good all shined up and even better when it gets a patina.

As we thought about our kitchen design we were pretty convinced we were going to buy a 48" Wolf range. We had heard some jibber jabber about technical problems, but Wolf seemed to have a better track record than most upscale ranges. When we went to a Wolf showroom a few years ago we were struck by how bulky the knobs looked on the dual fuel ranges (gas burners/electric ovens). They seemed almost cartoonish. The knobs on the ranges with gas ovens were much more elegant. I really wanted an electric oven, but we couldn't stomach the big knobs. So we decided to go with the gas range and put in an electric wall oven. Seemed a little crazy, but what cook wouldn't want three ovens?  (For more on changes to Wolf knobs check out Appliance Dude's blog post about them.)

Bulky Wolf knobs and a whole lot of electronics.

About a year later when we were looking at the work of a potential contractor we were in a kitchen that had a really beautiful range which turned out to be a Lacanche. Both of us were drawn to it like moths to a flame. As much as I liked the look of it, I was resistant to the notion that it might be a choice for us because in my mind I kept conflating it with La Cornue which I hadn't found all that attractive. (I think they are a little over designed.) I soon got over that because the only ornament on the Lacanche is functional. The knobs and the handles are the only real decoration. I liked that simplicity. As we learned more about Lacanche we were also drawn to the simplicity of the technology. It seems pretty basic. Gas plus spark equals heat. I did worry a bit about the somewhat smaller size of the oven but after measuring the Thanksgiving turkey I got over that. Plus, ding dong, we were planning on having a wall oven anyway.

La Cornue. Way too much detail for me.

But then price. Surely the cost of a range from France would no doubt eclipse the cost of our 48" Wolf. Turns out, no. They are almost evenly priced once taxes and shipping are figured in. Granted our Lacanche is about five inches narrower so it isn't completely apples to apples but close enough for us.

The Lacanche we wish we had room for.

So after much consideration we embraced our budding love for Lacanche. We visited the showroom on a trip to New York, we tracked down online reviews, we chatted at length with Elisa, the lovely east coast Lacanche rep for Art Culinaire, and then we ordered our very own. (You can see our chosen model and configuration by scrolling down to the next post.)

I can hear some of you already: AGA!, What about AGA? I can appreciate many things about AGA, but I can also appreciate that it would not suit my lifestyle and way of cooking at all.

Not for me.

My favorite Top Chef personality (well maybe second favorite, I think I like Gail Simmons better) enjoying her Lacanche.

I will have much more to say when our Lacanche gets installed. It is set to land in the US sometime in June I think but not sure when it will be installed.

Kitchen past, present, and future

   

I have happily cooked in much smaller kitchens than the 90 square foot box that has recently been demolished. And Deb Perlman over at the glorious food blog Smitten Kitchen has done amazing things in her 40 sf kitchen. But a few features of this particular shoebox made it the most annoying kitchen ever. I have already mentioned the awful tile counter with its edge lip and the drop-in sink which made collecting crumbs one of the most difficult tasks ever. And I might have already mentioned that eleven inches between a range and sink is not enough room to be even remotely practical. To maximize storage in a small space earlier owners installed the tallest upper cabinets they could. Not only did this mean that there were high shelves that even my long-armed 6'2" frame had trouble reaching, but it also meant that they came down so low over the counter top that there was only one narrow space next to the sink where I could use a stand mixer or food processor. In previous small kitchens, the space above the refrigerator has always been a go to spot for setting things out of the way--something that needs to cool, a serving dish you aren't quite ready for, etc. But in this kitchen the cabinet mania meant that there wasn't one square inch available on top of the fridge. Arrrgh.

Right before demolition started. Notice the accursed edge lip on the tile counter and the drop in sink. No easy clean-up here. Benjamin Moore's Smoky Embers is painted on the cabinets under the sink. It is kind of my favorite at the moment. BM's Revere Pewter is the second drawer down and is also in the running. The darker Rockport Gray, although very nice, has been nixed by all. Even our two front runners are no certainty. We intend to enlist professional help to figure it out. The slab of Carrera marble is grayer than what we will choose, but it has been a handy work surface for me over the past 11 years in various kitchens.

This is what it looked like a week or two ago. You can see a bit of the shallow open pantry shelving in the upper left of the photo. A god send for storage, but a little shallow to be really useful.

But that was then. This is now. (SE Hinton anyone?)

The same view on February 19, 2014.

Show us something pretty!

Okay. Let's take a walk through the new kitchen. Not everything is in final form. The design of the drawers and cabinet fronts will change a bit. The layout of the case work won't.

Not only do I gain 70 square feet but the number of 'doors' has gone down from three to one. I am chuffed to bits that I will have four feet of counter flanking each side of the range not to mention the rather spacious areas next to the sink.

This will be my viewpoint out into the backyard. I deliberately put the dishwasher to the left of the sink so that anyone needing to get into it won't get in the way of the cook prepping food on the right between the sink and range.

How beautiful is this Barber Wilson faucet in unlaquered brass? The only problem is they don't offer this model with a sprayer. They have one with a separate sprayer that is close, but we love this one so much we are 99% sure we are going to live without a sprayer. We will also have a filtered water spigot to one side of the faucet.
(Image from Remodelista)

I became a big fan of the big kitchen drawer in a rental we lived in several years ago. The thing I loved particularly about them was that they were so much more accessible than cabinets. I filled one with all of my baking staples. When I wanted to bake something I opened the drawer and every thing I needed was accessible. And so much easier to keep organized than an upper cabinet.  Speaking of upper cabinets, you will notice we opted for open shelving. Not surprising given the inspiration images I showed in my last post. 

Our Lacanche range as it has been configured for us. I will have much more to say about this range in the future. I am already envisioning a whole post dedicated to this French beauty. The warming cupboard can also be used to proof dough. [emits uncontrollable squeal]

This is the wall that will be least visible to the Family Room and from other points of the house. A lot happening here. The cabinet above the microwave/oven combo will include vertical storage for sheet pans and such. I managed to sneak in a cookbook shelf above the fridge. The cabinets that meet up with the counter will be used as an appliance garage. I had some push back on the height of the oven/microwave but after some consideration I think this a good height. The oven is slightly higher than a range oven which is handy and the microwave is slightly above counter height. I think it is a win/win.

The appliance garage to the left of the oven will be similar to this.
(Image by John McDonnell from The Washington Post via Remodelista)

36" Subzero with glass door. Friends of ours have one of these so I have been able to observe how this functions and looks in a real house. I can see myself arranging things inside just for fun. The good thing is that the light turns off when the door is closed so it isn't like there is always a show on.

I'm not sure our Jenn-Air will have that picture display function. I'm planning on ordering the one with the fewest bells and whistles. I did a bit of  info crowd sourcing on Facebook to see if a convection oven was worth the expense. Based on that feedback I decided I didn't want one. The upper oven is the microwave.

We don't want a dream kitchen

   

What is not to love about this? It is warm and cozy. It is functional. It looks like it might be in a cabin or an apartment in France or Italy. And so, so, so, not right for our house. Le sigh.

Well, we want a dream kitchen, but really didn't want a typical dream kitchen. You know, the kind of kitchen that looks like a kitchen designer designed it. (Scroll to the last image in this post if you want to see what I am talking about.) We didn't want everything to look perfect. We also wanted to keep it from getting too far away from the fitting in with a 1934 Colonial Revival. (I don't think anyone wants an actual 1934 kitchen--but I sure wish I could see what it looked like then.)

BUT...

We also realized we couldn't really have the kind of kitchen that we think of as our dream kitchen. Not only would it be hard to achieve the layered look we like so much, but it really wouldn't be right to put in the kind of rustic kitchen we are so drawn to. The fact that the new kitchen was going to be open to the family room also made us realize we had to make it slightly more polished than we would have done otherwise.

Truth be told, of all the images I have seen of kitchens, this is the one I love most. Like the best of a commercial kitchen looking really fabulous in someone's home. I even love the clock on the wall. And the juxtaposition of the ceramic pieces on the lower shelves above the utilitarian stainless steel mixing bowls. Well, it just makes a boy's heart flutter.

One starts to see a few themes emerge. Open shelves, utilitarian, mix of finishes and textures, casual, layered, looks like a kitchen designer was nowhere near the project.

In reality, this one wouldn't be a dream kitchen for me. But soooo many things are right about this kitchen.

The idea of a non-island island begins to emerge.

This one captures some of the joie de groove of the others but has more polish to it. I am a sucker for wood counter tops.

We've actually had the privilege of sitting and cooking in this kitchen on many an occasion. Belonging to my husband's cousins who have lived in the 1830s Greenwich Village townhouse since the 1960s, this is one fabulous, cozy, lived in kitchen. It has an old commercial Garland range that was there when they moved in and still works like a charm. The counter is a humble but very pleasant and efficient Formica. And the table, the table. I so want a table in the kitchen instead of an island.
(Photo by Paul Rocheleau from the wonderful book The House of Greenwich Village by Kevin D. Murphy.)

This is part of the large kitchen at Hillwood Estate here in Washington. That stainless steel island is the bee's knees.  (Photo from the blog Casey O'Brien Blondes)

So what did we learn from all of that inspiration? Utilitarian, function over form, layers, warm, open shelves, prefer table over island, if we have an island we want it to be an open one not one with a cabinet base, natural wood, stainless steel...As I mentioned earlier, most of our inspiration photos aren't right for our space, but we have tried to incorporate as much of what we like about these as possible.

Future posts will go into detail about the design we settled on.

Not greater than the sum of their parts

And then there were kitchens that had many of the elements we like, but the execution made them not quite what we would want. And others that had just one or two elements that provided inspiration.

Overall this one does nothing for me. But I do like the portable island.

The table and chairs help make this white kitchen cozier.

This has a very nice warm feeling to it, especially the wood counters. But the kitchen as a whole is a little too polished for my tastes.

My other half has always liked this image way more than I do. My main beef is that it feels cold. And I hate that island with a passion. I did like it for the windows over the sink. Windows like that, I am happy to report, will be a feature of our kitchen.

My scribble on the image kind of sums it up. "Too cutesy, designed, precious, ye olde"  I think its the work of  Thomas O'Brien.

Again too cold for me even though it has many elements we like.

There is part of us that considered really dressing it up. But we think we may leave this kind of glam for our butler's pantry / wet bar that will be near the dining room. (More on that in a future post.) I particularly like the contrasting red on the inside of the cabinet.

And this is what we didn't want

This is the kind of over-designed, everything is too perfect, kind of 'dream kitchen' that does not appeal to us.

This is by no means an unpleasant kitchen, but I don't want my kitchen to be elegant. Don't the like the ersatz furniture feel of so many islands. Lights are too fancy. The type of marble is too glamorous, would prefer a  more workman like Carrera. Upper cabinets on left too designed.

I could make a list a mile long of what I don't like about this kitchen. Headline: "Designer runs amok with too big a budget"