Just When You Think You Have It All Figured Out

When we were planning our kitchen design we decided we didn’t want upper cabinets except to frame around the refrigerator and the microwave above the range. But as we have moved further into the remodel we have started making more tweaks along the way.

Here is the kitchen before any upper cabinets.

The thought was to have floating shelves instead of upper cabinets but as you can see there isn’t much space widthwise to have long floating shelves since there is a massive window smack dab in the middle of the wall. So we debated adding a cabinet on the left-hand side near the dishwasher. We already bought an upper cabinet for the microwave, which is on the right-hand side of the room for above the stove. If we bought the upper cabinet we could save money on the backsplash tile but then there is the extra expense of purchasing the cabinet…decisions, decisions.

Another thing we had to consider was crown molding. For a more modern look we could have the cabinets go all the way to the ceiling or we could add the crown which gives the cabinets a more polished look (IMHO) and is a little bit more traditional. So we went with the crown molding. As much as I want this house to be modern that is not what I gravitate towards.

Back to the remodel. Next, we installed the microwave above the stove and the cabinet above the microwave.

So it looks kinda crooked in the picture but that is probably an operator error by the photographer (me).  So, I’m really proud of Adam for getting the crown molding installed. He has attempted cutting crown molding in the past with little success and we had one hiccup during the first cut today but he figured it out. Whew, thank goodness because there are so many intricate cuts and I have no idea how I passed geometry in high school so I was ZERO help in that process.

So back to that cabinet idea on the other side of the room…well we decided to buy the upper cabinet.

Remember when you were growing up and you would go into your friends  parents formal living room and they would have plastic on their couch or porcelain collectibles, well that is what the plastic on the cabinets remind me of. No worries, we will remove the plastic eventually.

Here’s another shot. Those cabinets in the middle of room form the base of our island.

So let’s talk about averages/standards. Google says the average distance between the countertops and bottom of upper cabinets is 18 inches. Well, who really follows averages anyway. With the addition of crown molding,  which added about 2 3/4 inches to our upper cabinet (on the left), our average distance is 16 inches. So I did some investigating (I checked my own kitchen) and found the distance between the countertop and cabinets at my primary house are 18 inches on one wall and 16 inches on another wall. So I don’t think it will be an issue not having a “standard” distance between our cabinets and countertop. If it is an issue, just move over to the island.

What we will need to work through is how far up to have the tile backsplash go. I mentioned before I wanted it to go up to the ceiling but now that we have upper cabinets we could just run them up to the bottom of the upper cabinet. The problem is the length between the stove and microwave is different than the distance between the upper cabinet and countertop on the left-hand side of the room. So the tile wouldn’t end at the same height on the left and right-hand side of the room. We are still working through how to solve this problem.

Hopefully, we’ll get our countertop installed next week. Notice I didn’t say countertops. We are getting a quartz countertop on the wall with the window but we are trying to decide what to put on the island. Adam wants butcher block but I’m not sold yet. Stay tuned to see where we end up.