Kitchen Cabinets and Countertops

I've given up waiting for pristine conditions to shoot photographs; dust and protective brown paper and plastic are just a fact of construction. Clean and bright photos probably won't happen until after final cleanup, so here's a post on cabinets and countertops.

To me, the kitchen is the central component of the home, so it merits lots of attention. Options for modern cabinetry are plentiful. At the high end there is a multitude of drool-worthy cabinets from Italian companies like Poliform, ArcLinea, and Scavolini, Bulthaup in Germany, and HenryBuilt here in Seattle. Locally-made custom cabinets, such as those by Seattle's Build or Kerf can also be modern and minimal and beautiful. However, all these options will run you $30k-$60k in cabinets alone. At the low end, IKEA makes terrific kitchen cabinets, despite what many contractors will tell you. However, they have a limited range of finishes, and the sizes can't be easily customized. Also, note that IKEA cabinets are only cheap if you pick up the boxes and assemble them yourself; otherwise the labor hours rack up too quickly. We choose this option for our laundry cabinets, and just had Logan's set the already assembled boxes. (There will be another blog post on this little round of sweat equity.)

In between these options are semi-custom cabinets, such as the Amero line from Pacific Crest. They have a huge range of doors/finishes, boxes can be customized to the half-inch, and prices are low; we spent around $8k for our kitchen and two bathrooms. (Though we have a below-average number of kitchen cabinets, since we have a huge walk-in pantry just behind the kitchen.) We choose the Metro door in black-stained Red Oak for the lowers, and the Jazz door in white gloss for the uppers, wrapped in Oak finish panels. All the lowers are soft-close full-extension drawers, which are much easier to use than lower cabinets. Notice that the uppers actually cantilever out; the boxes are attached to a support beam that was then wrapped in finish panels to hide it (try to do that with IKEA!). Behind the uppers is a staircase to the lower floors. The kitchen island counters extend an extra foot to form a bar.



Along the back wall and wrapped in protective plastic is a floor-to-ceiling bank of cabinets and finish panels that will house the oven/microwave and refrigerator. This bank was supposed to be 30" deep so that it can hold a full-depth fridge; however, it was accidentally built 24" deep. This will be fixed in the next couple weeks.



Cabinet hardware is another easy way to get spendy; Omnia and Linnea make great options. We instead went with IKEA hardware; heavy and long Tyda handles for the lowers and minimal Strecket handles for the uppers.

The other huge choice to be made in kitchens is the countertops; we wanted solid counters as white and textureless as possible, but without the plastic-y feeling of acrylics like Corian. The natural choice is Quartz composite, made using the Breton process. Here in Seattle Caesarstone and Pental Chroma are the most common; however, their whitest options still have a fair amount of texture when viewed closely, and we were afraid our extremely white uppers would make this texture even more obvious by reference. We got a tip that Quantra counters, a new product from India sold locally by Meta Marble, had the whitest Quartz available, and indeed you can see that they're very white! Surprisingly, it wasn't any cheaper than more established brands, probably because it comes in a 3cm thickness rather than the standard 2cm. We're thrilled with how it turned out, though, especially the waterfall pieces extending to the floor!



As an aside, getting these huge 8' slabs up to our third floor was quite a challenge. They ended up renting a lift, and it took six guys to wrestle the pieces.



Our cooktop is a 36" drop-in from BlueStar (well-known in foodie circles as providing the highest BTUs available in a consumer product), and the sink is a double-bowl zero-radius stainless steel model by Vigo (remarkably inexpensive compared to the more common Franke version, which can run in the $1000s).



The rest of the appliances, kitchen faucet, and island pendant lighting still need to be installed to complete the look and function, but overall I think we managed to create a totally hot and modern kitchen on a pretty constrained budget! I will return to the kitchen once it is complete with another post.

Moving along, but nothing to see!

Dear readers: much to my chagrin, it's been almost a month since I've posted. There has been great progress, but this is a challenging period in construction to blog about. Unfortunately, I can never get photos of completed work because it gets covered up almost as soon as I see it, for protection! The stranded bamboo floors are in, and look beautiful, but were covered up within hours of install. The concrete floor on the 3rd level is poured, but they kept it initially covered by wet curing blankets, and now by brown paper because the walls are being painted (I'm very curious to see what, if any, cracking we have). The floating stairs were being installed today, but there is sawdust everywhere so I didn't take pictures. The kids bathroom is tiled, and the master bathroom is partially tiled. The kitchen and bathroom cabinets are in, but there are some issues with the kitchen cabinets that will get fixed before I shoot the pics.

They're painting this week and next, so the house is sheathed in plastic. But be ready for a fast burst of posts on interior finishes right after that!

Exterior almost complete

Progress has been fast and furious. On the exterior, nearly all the siding except for the final stucco coat and some panels between the windows are on. The underside of the cantilever soffit is now wrapped in white metal, which I think gives it a really luminous and lighter look than before.






All the cedar strip siding is on, as well. Between the black aluminum windows we'll be adding black-painted MDO panels, and between the wood windows we'll add panels of fir.



There has also been lots of progress on the inside, but pictures will have to wait since most of the finishes are covered up. A coat of primer has been sprayed on all the drywall, and the second floor stranded bamboo flooring and staircase is installed, but covered by protective cardboard. The third floor concrete floors are poured, and are looking great, but they're still covered by wet curing blankets as they continue to cure. Finally, the kitchen cabinets are being installed! So, lots of action, but pictures won't come until after the holidays. Happy holidays!

Drywall & Sliders

Our sliding doors have finally arrived and been installed, so we are officially "dried-in." The doors' arrival unblocked a logjam, and progress is now fast. Today was sunny in Seattle, so we managed to get some great pictures.



As you can see, the cedar rainscreen siding is now partially installed. We expected the factory-applied stain that we choose ("teak") to be darker, but we are none the less happy with how it looks.



You can see one of the sliding doors in the lower left. The biggest slider is 14 ft long and 8 ft high, and was carried perilously up this ramp.



A view from the inside of the long sliding door.



Drywall installation has started, and will finish next week.





The sun was out so we could get a peak of the Olympic mountains from the living room.



While the house is certainly looking great, a few small things have gone wrong. The Lindal windows are good quality but their hardware is quite outdated.





Brass? Seriously? While the brass door lock is easy to replace, the black plastic handles are looking more challenging to change. We're waiting to hear more after our superintendent looks at them more closely, and calls Lindal.

The garage door also arrived, but the pattern of glass mullions was incorrect; it was supposed to match the pattern in the window wall above. The garage door company went ahead and installed it temporarily, and will swap it out once new ones are made.



The house is really starting to feel real. Once drywall is finished, they'll start on flooring and trim. Since almost none of our interior finishes are custom, it's all going to come together really fast!

Wood windows, Stucco, Insulation

I'm long overdue for an update. The white aluminum siding is almost entirely on, except for the area under the cantilever.





The first two coats of the labor-intensive, three coat stucco process is applied. The final coat must wait thirty days for the second coat to dry and set. What you see now is called the "brown" coat, but the color isn't that far from what we want.



Finally, the wood windows from Lindal are installed.



Unfortunately, the wood sliding doors have yet to arrive, which explains the bubbled and boarded-over areas on the west side of the house.



Lindal makes great windows, but they've consistently over-promised and under-delivered when it comes to scheduling; they've yet to actually deliver their product on the day that they promised. Oh well. The newest schedule is that we'll receive the sliding doors Monday.

Finally, insulation is installed. We ended up going with standard fiberglass batts, though I had my superintendent walk through the house with the sub-contractors and foam anywhere he saw daylight. So, hopefully we're a little more air-tight than usual.





Drywall has been delivered. We've passed framing and insulation inspections. Once the sliders are installed and drywall is finished, the fun of interior finishes begin! I'm also looking forward to the wood siding, which should warm up the exterior.

Some Small Topics

I'll have another progress update soon with pictures, but I want to make sure I occasionally write about some of the smaller decisions and topics that have come up recently. When it comes to building a house, the devil is in the details! So here are a few small topics.

The $500 Shower Drain
Shower drains are not typically noteworthy objects worth much thought. So how did I end up spending $500 on one? Here's the story.

We fell in love with the Xylem tile in Ebony from Ann Sacks, and plan to use it on the floor in both full bathrooms. These tiles are huge at 9" x 36", and have a subtle wood-grain texture; the black version looks a bit like board-formed cement. For the Master bathroom, I really wanted to continue the tile right into the shower, without any curb, for a truly minimalist look; also, the texture on the tile is great for avoiding shower slips on a wet floor. However, the traditional tiled shower slopes radially towards a center-drain, so small mosaic tiles are usually used to adapt to the non-planar slope. How does one achieve a curb-less shower with large-format tiles? A linear shower drain, like this example from a vendor that makes them.



I love the look! For a linear drain, the whole shower floor is planar and tilts towards the drain at a shallow angle. You need to plan carefully in advance, so you can recess the shower area into the floor to accommodate the slope. We actually had our structural engineer include this recess in the framing plans (fortunately, the shower is above the coat closet on the lower floor, so losing a few inches of ceiling height didn't matter). Linear shower drains are quite common in Europe and Australia, but unfortunately, they're considered luxury items in the US and are quite expensive. They're also tricky to buy, with lots of middlemen in the acquisition chain, which I always find distasteful. Fortunately, I found an online shop, myshowergrateshop.com, which custom fabricates them in Canada using a CNC machine and ships them out next day! I spent about about $500, which is actually cheap for a linear drain. Furthermore, our architects at PB loved the idea and went to town making sure the drain would run flush from edge to edge of the shower. They made a crazy drawing to figure out that the drain needed to be exactly 51.375"; I assure you this amount of thought and energy has never gone into a shower drain in a spec house! So, the drain has arrived and once tile work is finished I'll be sure to report back on how it works out.

The $45 Light Bulb
Along the same vein, how did I become the proud owner of three light bulbs costing $45 each? Well, about a week ago the electrician installed three recessed lights in the bottom of the cantilever; they will illuminate our front driveway and yard. These lights are about 20 feet off sloping ground; how will I ever change burned-out light bulbs? I remembered recently hearing that the newer LED bulbs last much longer than regular bulbs or even CFLs; I looked them up, and indeed Home Depot has an LED flood light bulb that they claim lasts up to 46 years!



That should do. The downside is that they cost $45 each. In my scenario I decided that it's worth it, though honestly I can't imagine any other scenario where a $45 light bulb makes economic sense. I picked three up; they are heavy, engineering marvels, and work great!

$600 and Three Inches
A minor annoyance that came up during framing cost us $600 and three inches of ceiling height on the bedroom level. The horizontal steel beam that supports the cantilever lives in the ceiling of the second floor; the beam is 16" high, whereas typical floor joists are 12" high. So, plans were made long ago to "fur down" the ceiling height to cover the bottom of the beam; however; no one thought about the bolts connecting the vertical and horizontal beams that protrude out even further from the bottom of the horizontal beam! Oops.



So, after the ceiling was already dropped by 4", we had to drop them another 3" to cover the bolts, at a cost of $600. Not a big deal, but definitely a snafu. Why wasn't this anticipated? Apparently, steel beams are fairly uncommon in residential construction, and when they are used there are typically only wood beam / steel beam connections. When there are steel-to-steel connections, they are typically welded. Bolted steel-to-steel connections, while common in high-rises, are rather foreign to houses, so no one thought about the bolts. Oh well; we've had more positive surprises than bad, and there will always be surprises in construction.

Friends
On a final note, two of our close friends who were similarly frustrated with the available houses in Seattle decided to also design modern houses with PB Elemental! One is in framing, and the other in permitting. I helped to instigate the first three houses on PB's in-progress page! I wonder what our kids will think as we shuttle them back and forth to BBQs at three crazy modern houses surrounded by seas of Craftsmans!

Aluminum siding & windows

I've been remiss in posting once again, but progress has been good since framing completed. As you can see from this first picture, most of the white aluminum panel siding (done in a rainscreen application over Vaproshield) is on. The wrapped siding under the cantilever has to wait until insulation has been applied. The lower volume will have stucco, and the first stage of wrapping the sides in two layers of tar paper is complete.



The windows in the lower volume are all black Milgard aluminum. I love the graphic pop of the black windows against the white siding.



We decided to delay ordering the windows until framing was complete, because most of our windows are floor-to-ceiling and we wanted to make sure the windows fit the rough openings perfectly. Unfortunately, this choice is causing about a month of delay, and the wood Lindal windows have not arrived, yet.

The master bedroom window was too large to be built as one unit, so it was split into three pieces separated by 2x6's that will later be encased in black metal to make it look more like one.



The TPO roofing is also in, and can be seen on the 2nd floor deck, here. Sleepers and cedar decking will go on top.



Electrical and plumbing rough-ins are also mostly complete. Radiant heating on the first and third floors are embedded in concrete, but the second floor will be heated by tubes running in the joists, with heat transfer aided by aluminum ultra-fins attached to the tubes.



The windows under the floating stair are in, and look super cool; the stair treads themselves are temporary.



Finally, the front door and side windows are installed; the door is 8-ft tall and runs floor to ceiling. We plan to paint it bright red.




The wood Lindal windows are arriving today, but the Lindal sliding doors will take another two weeks. So the plan is to bubble in the remaining openings and turn on the heat to completely dry the wood out; after that, we can install insulation and start drywall, which can take two weeks. Then the more fun finishes, such as tile and flooring and cabinets, can start!

One slightly annoying issue is our gas line. We thought gas was stubbed to the property, but Puget Sound Energy didn't like the stub, for some reason. At first, they told me that it would cost $3k-$4k to run gas from the street. Then, it went down to $2k plus $0.17 per therm for the next 5 years, which should add up to less. After that, our superintendent at Logan's Hammer called them, and the up-front cost went down to $848! So, now we have gas and an unsightly patch in the road, which they say will eventually be replaced. But fortunately the cost wasn't so bad.