The Open Kitchen / Breakfast Room

The kitchen has been a work in progress over the past 2 months. With the completion approaching, I am ready to sit down and tell you all about it.

Prior to even looking at kitchen cabinets and other finishes, we needed to get the area prepared for cabinet installation. The majority of the demo process and prep work we did ourselves.

We did have a beam installed where the wall once stood. Even thought the wall we removed was not load bearing per se, the continuous rafters supporting the floor above were not sized to span the entire kitchen and breakfast area. The lumber in the ceiling is 2x10 and should be at least 2x12 for the span which is what we found in the basement. Better safe than have a floor cave in.

We also had to relocate some of the ductwork we found in the wall. This did alter our kitchen plans slightly as we would still need to conceal the duct work and the space couldn't be entirely open. We decided to design a pantry to conceal the ductwork.

In addition, we had some electrical prep work done before we closed up the walls. This consisted of bringing power for undercabinet lighting, a garbage disposal, and a vent hood. The photos below are what the kitchen looked like before the cabinets would be installed.

Here are the drawings for the kitchen. The bottom right shows the large pantry we designed to conceal the relocated ductwork.

Kitchen Countertop

Shopping for a kitchen countertop was one our favorite shopping experiences for the house. I contacted a tile rep that my office uses quite frequently as they are also a stone fabricator, Elegance in Stone. While they had a several slabs in stock, they suggested we also look at a few warehouses that bring in stone from all over the world. These are essentially giant warehouses with hundreds of 5'x9' stone slabs. While there are several granite slabs that look verysimilar, there are these amazing quartzite slabs. One can't help but be amazed that the earth can produce such beauty below the surface!

After spending several hours at a 2 of these warehouses, we narrowed are selection down and then discussed pricing with our fabricator. Below you can see our selections: Black Soapstone, Sea Pearl, Madre Perola, and Straito Olympico.

Another really interesting part of the process is working with the fabricator once the slab is selected. As there is variations in the stone, we were able to select which part of the slab we wanted to use. Below is a photo of our template laid on the slab before it is cut.

In the end we selected the Sea Pearl, a quartzite from Brazil. It turned out absolutely beautiful and we are extremely happy with the results!