Well, the fun begins I suppose! This post will outline what's happened in the 6 months since I started the build thread.
Much has changed in the design since August. Several folks (LOML included) expressed concern about not enough room around the island, or too narrow island. Having spent some more time living with a mockup, it became clear that this wasn't going to work. I also still had to put the garage shop together, having just moved in.
You'll recall from the images in the top post, it was an L shaped space.. If only that corner could be removed! (Which LOML said from the start but I kept pushing back against)
Well, I hemmed and hawed and finally agreed it would be nice (the bathroom behind the corner will be reconfigured later.) Unfortunately, due to the design of the house, both of those corner walls are load bearing and so sometime in the next 6-8 weeks I have a crew coming in to cut out the walls and install a pair of large beams (an 18' beam comprising 4 @ 18" LVLs held up with two new 3" steel columns, and two 12' @ 9.25" LVLs perpendicular to the main beam, all so that in removing the corner walls we don't have to keep a vertical support column in the middle of the space. Fun times! More $$$ but in the end it'll be worth it I think. I paid an architect to come do load calculations and spec out the structure. I sourced the LVL's on my own and have them stacked under plastic in my back yard, as the contractor was adding ~$200 to the cost of each (!!!) over what I knew I could get them for. He was cool with that, means he doesn't have to go get them and bring them here.
Once we decided on that, it became clear that the OTHER wall between the kitchen and the dining room wasn't supporting any load and had no HVAC or water in it and so, "hey, let's pull that out too! wouldn't it be nice to have it all open".
So, my 2nd post in the thread outlined how I scanned the space and used a 3rd party freelance design service to come up with some renderings. I didn't want to go back and forth paying somebody for new renderings of the new space, so I took some time to learn "VRAY" which is an extension to Sketchup allowing the photo realistic rendering. I'm doing OK with the software, enough for my purposes, which was good enough now that the free trial period has run out!
All that being said, here are latest pix.. These renderings are my own from my own SketchUp plan, taking the essence of the original design, adding much more natural wood, and removing some of the "cool" design elements which we decided were more pretty than practical (like the open pot rack below the range)
SketchUp x-ray of all wood components for the carcass and drawer/door faces.
Various renderings I made (I still don't know how to do much with lighting other than "sun from outside" and don't have actual appliances rendered)
That last rendering is a view from standing in the back of the dining room looking out into the kitchen - which would be completely closed off with the wall in the way. Also allows for a "peninsula" of sorts and a nice pass-through for plates or whatever between the kitchen and dining area, plus a bank of drawers on the dining room side will be nice.
This new design allows for more than 4' around all sides of the island, which can now be a full slab width (~55") meaning plenty of space behind the range to where somebody might be seated. (The original design, the island was barely wider than the cooktop itself.)
That little breakfast nook/banquette/round table thing next to the wet bar is still TBD what exactly we'll do there.. If not the built in banquette, maybe just a small round table and 2 small chairs..
All base cabinet elements are either drawers, or dual pull-outs behind a door and all will be on soft-close undermount slides. All pull-outs and drawers will be solid maple sides and 1/2" maple plywood bottoms and I plan to dovetail everything. It's not shown, but the base cabinet to the right of the sink, under the built in paper towel holder/drawer, will be a pull out trash/recycle bin.
The "knee wall" area of the island with the slatted design, I intend to mount a series of oak slats to a piece of plywood which I'll probably stain dark, and cut that into 4 equal door faces, to hide 4 open cabinets on the back/seating side of the island.
As I mentioned, wall removal won't happen until late march, at which point I'll have to fill in ~60 square feet of the red oak flooring and then probably have to refinish the whole floor. As we wait for that, it's time to start the build. No demo has taken place yet, that will have to be carefully executed and planned so we can still live here.
First I had to build out the shop to a point it can start working.
I slowly sourced all the plywood, MDF, hardwood, veneers and most hardware I should need. I found a local sawyer and got a really nice pile of 4/4 rift oak.. sold as 4/4 but it's all at least 1.25" thick.
There's some poplar in there for painted face frames and 5/4" maple to be re-sawn for drawer box sides.
All boxes with visible faces will be 3/4" pre-finished maple plywood and some boxes will be 3/4" birch ply where no face is ever seen or it will be painted (like in the appliance wall)
All base cabinets will be faced with rift sawn white oak F&P doors and drawer fronts. The panels will be made of 1/4" MDF veneered on both sides with 1/16" rift-sawn white oak veneer bringing the panel thickness to 3/8". (sourcing rift white oak plywood, or hell even QS, was proving difficult and costly and I enjoy the process of veneering panels, especially with a nice 1/16" thick material).
The finish on the white oak will be Rubio Monocoat "Natural" finish which leaves the oak with a good protective finish but no ambering/orange color. The counters will be quartz
Given the "busyness" of the plain sawn oak floor, I wanted rift sawn for the simple clean lines, and as much as I love QSWO, that would be too busy in this context with all that ray fleck everywhere.
I've come up with a very detailed cut list to optimize parts layout (carcass only at this point), and will slice up and label all of the plywood components for the whole space before assembling anything (some parts left oversized until assembly).
This starts by ripping each sheet once or twice and carefully labeling and organizing things. As I write this, here's where I'm at, all rip cuts done, cross cutting is next.
