Kitchen Design

Here is the latest on the kitchen design. I've spared you the interim details, but this has really been an iterative process, with lots of outside input.

First up is the floor plan. It shows the kitchen, as well as the family and dining rooms. Windows B1 and B2 wil be sliding windows. We've made a couple changes to the floor plan since Eric drew this, most notably moving the oven to the right of the fridge, increasing the overhang on the dining room side of the peninsula to 15", shortening the length of the peninsula cabinets to allow 3'6" between the end of the peninsula and the wall, and adding a 15" overhang on the short end for additional seating (at the expense of a cabinet, but I think it's worth the price).

Here's what we're putting in:

• 48" Sub-Zero with stainless steel doors
• Wolf 30" L-series double oven
• Wolf 36" gas cooktop
• Wolf 36" downdraft fan behind the cooktop
• Wolf convection microwave
• Miele Diamond G dishwasher

The cabinets are fully custom built, and will be made by Scherr's Cabinets and Doors in North Dakota. The door fronts and the box sides will be vertical grain douglas fir with a clear finish. Here are the cabinet designs:

Originally we were going to have the same setup we have currently, which is the same 36" gas cooktop, and a 36" electric oven beneath it, like so:

We don't like the big vent hood, so we opted for the downdraft. Unfortunately the downdraft needs 7" in front of it, so it won't fit well behind the oven (which takes up the entire cabinet box). Our choices would be to let it sit 7" behind the cooktop, or move the cooktop back 3.5" and then have the fan 3.5" behind it. Neither of these is ideal. What would work nice is if Wolf allowed the vertical part of the downdraft fan to be reversed, so the 7" would then extend beyond the fan (and behind the oven). The oven cabinet box would then be 7" deeper, but that would be somewhat hidden by the 15" overhang (although your feet would hit it if you sat there). Our interim idea was to put the oven to the right (which is what you see in the floor plan above), but the double ovens look great, and should look good next to the giant fridge. We gave up 30" of counter space to do so, but we have ample with the long peninsula.

More details to come later, including updated drawings of the kitchen.

Let The Permits Begin!

Yesterday we submitted the first Design Review for our house: Removing a window. For something this small, and not adding anything (subtracting is OK), you only need Administrative Design Review [ADR], which takes 1-2 weeks.

So why are we removing a window? As you'll see in the plans below, when we remodel the main floor bedroom and bathroom, the new closet will be smack dab in the middle of that pesky window, so we need to move it.

Remove it? Move it? Why don't we just get a permit for moving the window? Because that requires Staff Design Review, and takes longer. So if we just remove it now, we can add it later, when we replace all the windows, which is an even bigger project.

With all the work we're doing, why should the first request be to remove a single window? Two words: math and timing. The big big big plans are to replace all the windows and build a deck, similar to our deck in Redwood City. Replacing the windows isn't necessarily a difficult task, but our new home has aluminum siding that with flashing that butts up against the original single-pane steel casement windows. Removing that flashing would be difficult because it is nailed to the wood siding directly, then covered with the outer aluminum siding. So how to replace the windows without making a mess of the easily-bent siding? Easy (sorta) -- remove the siding. All of it. We're not thrilled with the aluminum siding to begin with, so putting something new up will make the house nicer anyway. We can also get to the electrical and plumbing inside the walls, and add modern insulation, vapor barrier and sheathing.

Now for the math. Deck + Windows + New Siding > $75,000. When you cross that threshold for a single job on the outside of your house (or for a collection of jobs that have not been finalized by the city) in Piedmont, you're going to the planning commission meeting for your review. We're not doing anything exceptional, and not asking for any variances, but when you spend this much on your house, the review process is a bit more extensive. Assuming we can get our plans complete and the request filed by July 12, we can go to the August 12 meeting (the commission meets once per month). The earliest we'd get a building permit is sometime around September 1, and windows take 4-6 weeks to be delivered (and we don't want to order windows until we have approval). We can begin the deck immediately upon issuance of the permit, but the soonest the project will be complete is late October.

How does removing a single window fit into all this? This is where the timing comes in. The kitchen and bathroom remodels are, except for the window changes, entirely interior, and only require building permits. If we get approval to remove the window, we can remodel the bathroom immediately. Before we finalize that permit, we'll get approval to replace all the windows, which will include the new (i.e., moved) bathroom window.

Why are we moving this window anyway? The front bedroom on the first floor has windows on the west and south sides, and both windows have trees and the up-slope in front of them. This makes the room somewhat dark, especially compared to the other main floor bedroom, which has a 9-foot run of windows facing directly east, and unobstructed morning sun. To bring more light into the front bedroom, we're removing the closet and adding clerestory windows on the east wall. The bedroom needs a closet, and the current bathroom configuration of enormous powder room plus adjacent room with tub and toilet is not a good use of the space. At 32 square feet, the powder room is big enough to be a bathroom on its own, yet all it has is a sink and about 12 linear feet of counter. You can see the new layout in the proposed main floor bathroom and bedroom plan.

So that's the math and the timing that led us to requesting a review to remove a single window. If we can start this project in early July, we should be able to remodel both bathrooms and the kitchen by late August or early September. This allows us to move in when Jeffery starts preschool, but then we'll be living in the house while the other big projects are going on. At least one of us is looking forward to that!

Here are the proposed and existing plans we are submitting to the building department later today. I'll talk about the changes in the kitchen and master bathroom later.

Main Floor Bathroom and Front Bedroom -- Existing

Main Floor Bathroom and Front Bedroom -- Proposed

Kitchen and Dining Room -- Existing

Kitchen and Dining Room -- Proposed

Master Bathroom and Closet -- Existing

Master Bathroom and Closet -- Proposed

Before...

Here are the photos from the listing...

View from the street

Front patio. The garage is on the upper left, which is the street level. This patio is sloping downwards towards the far corner in this picture, thanks to improper draining. Adding drainage, and redoing this patio, will be an early project. I imagine summer movie nights out here.

The french doors beneath the garage lead to a family room which was built out when the kitchen was remodeled by the previous owners in 1989.

Fireplace in the front patio. This is 1 of four!

Front patio, and you can see the front door. The small window to the right of it opens into the original "powder room."

Back upper balcony, off the living room. This will be replaced, and expanded.

Downstairs "social room" (as it was called on the original architect's drawings). Yes, that is a wet bar in the back corner.

The social room, as with all the finished downstairs spaces, has lots of knotty pine and custom cabinetry.  On the lower portion of the left side of the far wall are cabinets for speaker, record slots, and a pull-out turntable, complete with rubbery-tipped spring mountings to prevent skipping.

Downstairs bedroom. The far door goes to the unfinished basement area, beneath the kitchen.

Main floor rear bedroom. The view out the windows is beautiful: tall redwoods, and morning sunshine.

Master bedroom. It is at street level, above the main level bedroom.

Living room, with the dining room beyond. The door on the right opens to the balcony.  Expect major changes on this wall.

Family room, looking towards the front patio. That's fireplace #2.

Dining room, with the door to the kitchen. Imagine this wall gone, and that window replaced with a door to the new deck.

The kitchen was remodeled in 1989. I like the skylights. Originally there was a window on the left wall,  but gone for the sake of cabinets.

Kitchen again, looking towards the family room. The beam in the ceiling marks the original wall. There was a closet and storage in that area before the remodel. The ceilings throughout the main floor are 9 feet, except in the family room, where they are 8.

More kitchen.

Fireplace #3 in the family room.

The family room extends back around towards the dining room. I'm unsure if the wall there will remain.

Family room french doors leading out to the front patio.

There are no pictures of the front bedroom, any of the three bathrooms (one on each level), the unfinished basement (understandably) or the back yard, which is beautiful.