Kelly~ Just wanted to say thanks for your advice and inspiration. I just finished remodeling my kitchen about three weeks ago and I wanted to make a point of thanking the bloggers/designers who inspired or helped me through the process (even if they didn't know it). 

Your blog has been a refreshingly honest counterpoint to some of the pie in the sky "if you can dream it you can do it" kind of blogs.  Thanks for your honesty and for really explaining the process and pitfalls.  I know it certainly helped me a LOT in determining what was feasible and what was just crazy for my little 90 sq ft kitchen.  It may not be perfect from a design or functionality standpoint, but I love it and it certainly is a step in the right direction!  Please forgive the OTR microwave, I know I've sinned.  :P  Bri

I was so delighted that I immediately e-mailed her back to ask if I could show it off, and she very kindly agreed. Okay, she was a bit shocked that I wanted to show you all, but why? It's a lovely kitchen, and I think she did a fine job of pulling it all together.

First, let’s have a look at the befores and afters:

BEFORE

Here were her challenges and solutions:

1. Pantry slapped beside the range. Must have been very frustrating to cook; frying pans and anything with a handle wouldn't have enough space, unless you turned the handles inward, in which case,hello hot handles! Now look at the counter space. (The shiny range is pretty good-looking too.)

2. The microwave used to eat up a lot of counter before but not any longer. I could tell Bri had taken some flack for the microwave, can’t you? I did mention to her small kitchen was the reason the over-the-range microwaves were designed in the first place – to save counter and cabinet space. It’s higher than what the appliance people suggest for exhaust (usually 18-21 off the cooktop), but I’ve often thought it was a bit too low at its suggested height anyway. Clearly the engineers never tried to stir a pot of pasta on a back burner!  :P

3. See the soffits above the cabinets in the before? Gone. That few extra inches of space can offer an extra shelf for seasonal items, such as centerpieces or candle holders.

4. I wonder if the garage door (where the white bag is) ever banged into the cabinetry? In a small kitchen with a minimal budget, relocating a door – esp. a garage door – can be a bit pricey. Here’s the clever part – Bri added a hinge stopper to new garage door. (It’s that protruding piece on the top hinge.)  It won’t unfortunately stop an accident if the dishwasher door is open and someone walks in from the garage, but it will stop the door from banging into the closed d/w handle and counter. It’s a small detail, but an important one for this kitchen.

5. The  original refrigerator looks a bit tightly wedged. It was hinged the correct way, but I’ll bet the switches on the wall got banged on by the refrigerator door swing. She’s going to have to be a bit careful again in the new kitchen, but it looks like there’s a bit more room around the new refrigerator. Also, the problem of getting the crispers open in the old refrigerator have been eliminated by adding the new refrigerator.  There is no other space as functional as where she kept the refrigerator.

6. For the lighting, Bri already had the sun tunnels, which I bet made all the difference in the world, but look at the new lighting – especially the undercabinet lighting. This is a perfect example of what task lighting can do for your kitchen.

7. The original wall cabinet between the refrigerator and hood seemed a bit high – did the original owners run out of wood? We’ll never know and we don’t care. Bri lowered the wall cabinets slightly on either side of the micro/hood and added more lighting. I might have suggested the same height wall cabinets at the range for more storage, but sometimes the guidelines are just that, guidelines. Perhaps she’s taller than my 5’4”, she can at least reach that higher shelf, or perhaps she might relocate the Mixmaster to this side so she won’t have to pull it from underneath the wall cabinets to operate it.

8. Ding-dong, the laminated overhang for the garbage is dead! The new peninsula separates the kitchen and eating area. Let’s hope the garbage ran back to another, better hidden location.

This is a small point, but note how the new wood flooring is laid. The flooring in the eating area runs in the opposite direction. There are two good reasons for this – one, installing the flooring width-wise in the kitchen makes the room look wider. Two, it’s cheaper to install this way because it can be butted up against the existing flooring instead of threaded through with the other flooring which usually means more time, more money and more refinishing of the rest of the flooring which you may not have wanted to refinish in the first place.

Best of all, she loves her kitchen. How good is that?

So, nice job, Bri! Thank you so much for sharing and for making my day!

The rules for mixing furniture?

That white tile/white grout, while it looks marvelous, needs more tending than a cranky 2-year-old? (Well, you probably do. I couldn’t resist tucking that in here.)

Elaine Griffin does – and she tells you in DESIGN RULES. See? Pretty cover, 250 pages, on the shelves now for $ 25.00 US, $31.00 CDN.

But YOU can enter to win a copy by leaving an answer to the question below:

“I really wish I knew the design rule for …”

Leave a comment below or go here to read my book review.

All comments will go into the fishbowl and one lucky name will be drawn on  Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 12 noon (PST) . Good luck!

First, let’s get the housekeeping out of the way. I was asked if I wanted to review a copy of Design Rules – The Insider’s Guide to Becoming Your Own Decorator by Elaine Griffin, which hit the book stores this week. I am not receiving any compensation to review this book - all opinions are my own.

Design Rules – The Author

Some background: Elaine Griffin is a New York interior designer, a contributing editor to Elle Decor, and ranked in House Beautiful’s list of the Top 100 American Designers. She has countless articles and magazine credits, which you can find on her website here.

Design Rules – The Book

As the introduction says, “This is the secret stuff your decorator would have told you were hiring one.”  Perfect summation – and it’s true.

         The good:

In an epiphany that will shock no one -- Elaine has very extensive knowledge and experience and it shows. I give bonus points for the simple explanations everyone can understand.

Design Rules discusses everything from how much space you need in the laundry room design to fold your clothes to letting your bathroom footage determine the sink style. It continually talks about size, scale, and proportion, while giving you numbers you can work with: “Why do people put tiny little lamps on their bedside tables is beyond me! Standard–size (22 to 27 inches tall, with shade) table lamps look so much better!”

My designer mother and I poured over the book, nodding at almost every other page. It’s a nice easy-to-read layout, with pretty illustrations throughout. I loved the section on window trims and wall decoration – not something I get into, yet my clients ask all the time. It’s explained far better than I could.

Also? The tips on the laundry room are worth the price of the book – there’s so little out on laundry rooms and the advice is very good.  (The only scratch-my-head moment I have is on page 180 where it’s stated that most washer/dryers are about 37” wide. I’ve never had a washer/wider than 30” – is this a commercial washer/dryer or perhaps a misprint?)

It’s all here, everything from bedrooms to foyers to bathrooms to basements. Two separate chapters are on the window treatments and color, with a few “break the rules” advice.

 The amusing:

• The regional differences – the foyer as a separate entity. She would cry if she saw the foyers of an average home on the West Coast. Big, separate entities they are not.
• She can level with us: she's never specified laminate counters in her life.*grin*
• Her bio says she’s from Georgia - is that why she keeps addressing us readers as “sugar”? I’ve only met three people from Georgia my entire life. Love the spoken drawl but it feels a tad over the top in print. (I can just hear all the people from Georgia reading this, “Seems normal to us, sugar. What’s your problem?”)

 The could-be-better parts: 

Design Rules feels to me like it’s trying a bit too hard to be all things to all people. Elaine’s not only a high-end designer, she’s a regional big-city designer and some of the tips reflect that.

For instance, page 109: engineered quartz is only half the price of granites. Er, sure - when one is dealing with the exotics and  higher-end specialty granites; otherwise, there is not much difference cost-wise between common granites and quartz counters (assuming same thickness and counter edges).

Her design tip on page 92 - “let a big box store become your bestest friend the very minute your first new kitchen thoughts occur…” and “…if you’re not on a budget (sigh), you can also work with a kitchen specialist” – is…well. She’s clearly never heard you readers in the forums, nor heard us say there’s not much difference in cost between the box stores and many design studios or firms. Again, regional. Your mileage may vary.

You know I was going to focus on the kitchen and bath, didn’t you?

• “Sitting the range next to a tall cupboard…is another don’t—if you can’t spread your arms from side to side while standing at the stove, you’ll feel like the kitchen is closing in on you.” Amen.
• To be fair, she’s covering a lot – but there are a few areas where she didn’t go far enough, which could lead someone to making a mistake. There’s a design tip for using 42” high wall cabinets in a 96” high ceiling. No good if the ceiling is not level, or there’s can lighting trim in the way – a frameless door will bind or scrape across the ceiling – not to mention we’ll run into code issues with a gas range unless the width of the hood fan is wider.  
• “When considering your layout, the first thing to know is the work triangle…is the kitchen’s golden fleece.”  Um, we need to talk. 

The final verdict?

The minor diversions aside, this is a good book to add to your shelf, especially if you’re a beginner. If you’re more advanced, it’s still good -- I’ll bet you’ll find a tip or two that will more than pay for the cost of the book. If you want details on how to order, click on the photo above which will take you to Elaine’s website.  But wait! There's more! (I've always wanted to say that...)

 ***

 WIN A COPY -- THE “DESIGN RULES” GIVEAWAY

The nice publicist for the book said there was a copy of Design Rules: The Insider’s Guide to Becoming Your Own Decorator for one of you lucky readers. (Unfortunately, the offer is limited to the U.S. and Canada only, sorry.)

• Finish the following sentence “I really wish I knew the design rule for …” with your name in the comments below. (Don’t worry if someone has already said it.)

All comments will go into the fishbowl and one lucky name will be drawn on lucky Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 12 noon (PST) . Good luck!

What I want to share with you today is one of the biggest enthusiasm-killers to any project, the shock you get when what you had in your mind doesn’t match up with the actual costs. I’m not talking about when you first start your research, although many of you have emailed with your disappointments. I hear you.

What I’m talking about is additions either during the selection process or during the project. You know the type – you decide to add can lighting to your kitchen. You went online to a box store, added the cost of 4 can lights, 4x $ 20.00 per can (and you weren’t in California where you needed fluorescents at 4 times the cost.)  You’re thinking $ 80.00, maybe $ 100.00.

You get the bill or change order for $ 900.00.

“What?!?” you say. “Wait a minute, I’m not paying for this! It should have cost 1/8th of that.” Now you’re steaming mad, refuse to pay, hop on the internets and blast your contractor for being a crook.

Hold on. Yes, your contractor was wrong, but not for the reason you think.

One of the biggest common failings in our industry is that we have a tendancy to assume you all automatically know what we do AND how we do it. *scratch head*  I don’t know why, but we figure just by talking to us, you have somehow absorbed every aspect of our business. Silly, isn’t it? Then we end up all shocked that you would be shocked, because we actually gave you a discount even though we had to drop everything else to accommodate this last minute change and it put us a day behind at another job and now our other client is upset.

Hurt feelings all around, but really?  That’s our fault. We need to step it up and recognize no, you don’t know:

• the cans you saw online – that $ 20.00 is just for the trim. They need housing and assembly which costs extra. The bulbs are also on top of this. New price: $ 38.00
• the housing looks like this:
• 
• the sheetrock and/or plaster has to be cut for 4 boxes. The ceiling joists weren’t in the right spot and the contractor had to add some framing in the ceiling so that the lights would line up exactly where you want them
• the sheetrock also had to be cut out on the wall for the light switch
• somebody had to go pick up the lights (and Murphy’s Law being what it is, the store was out of stock and there was an extra 1/2 hour drive to another store for pickup. You probably weren’t charged for the extra trip, but when you ask why it’s taking so long, that’s one of the time-killers on any job.)
• you forgot to add in the 2 hours of electrician’s time
• the electrician found a wiring mess buried in the insulation and had to repair it
• someone had to repair the sheetrock
• someone else had to paint the ceiling. If it’s done properly, the entire ceiling was painted, not just 4 small patches(Sometimes it’s more labor taping around a patch then spraying the entire ceiling)
• the mess of sheetrock, insulation bits, and wiring had to be cleaned up

Knowing what’s involved is a big step towards understanding.  Repeat after me: Failed expectations are the sole cause of anger. Ommm.  *grin*

The last few years, I’ve taken time to explain where the costs come from and if I can, in the early stages, so that the adjustments for both budget and expectations can be made. Sure, I still have clients say: “I had no idea there was so much to this”, but at least they didn’t have any surprises.

And that’s my 2 cents for the day.