Kitchen Update

"Yeah, I want the tofu spring rolls... except I don't eat tofu. So, do you have, like, a tofu-flavored chicken you can substitute in for me?"

Hee! Thanks, JeffC!

So. the kitchen designer and I met. Unlike my previous designer on my bathroom project, this one hated every idea I had. She wants to do a grey kitchen. Not only had I never looked at grey kitchens in all my perusing of websites over the past several years, but I don't really like grey as a kitchen color. It looks sort of like a cinder block prison cell.

Oh, I know it's a very popular kitchen color, just like the white I've been complaining about for a while. Well, I am proud to say I've learned to love white, in lieu of soul-sucking, penitentiary grey.

She thinks I should get rid of the over-the-range microwave, then get a microwave/convection oven and thermal oven to replace my double oven. Sounds like a no-brainer. We had even mulled that thought ourselves. Turns out though, that microwave/convection ovens have the following drawbacks I found on a message board, or two, or ten:

1) Can't use the microwave when the convection oven is in use
2) Can't use the microwave for a while after the convection oven is used, because it is HOT
3) Can't use the convection oven if any morsel of microwave splatter is present, else it bakes onto the surface
4) No self-clean mode, because it's a microwave really, so lots of scraping both oven messes and baked-on microwave splatters

I think I'll stick with a double oven and separate microwave.

I could move the microwave to a drawer, which I think is supercool, but that would be a big jump in the budget, since I'd then have to buy a drawer microwave $$$ (over the range microwaves are only $$) and a hood $$.

Then there is the matter of the cabinets. We originally wanted to stain them darker and get new doors. The contractor had said this would be no problem. At some point, we realized the oak grain would show through on the boxes and wouldn't match the doors, so we decided we could paint instead.

The designer said the stain would never have matched between new doors and existing boxes anyway. So... 'matching the stain is no problem' or 'they'll never match'? Gah.

Then she said paint will show the texture of the grain on the boxes, so to paint, we'd have to buy all oak doors so the paint would match the grainy texture of the boxes. It's a huge waste of money. To avoid this, she wants to stain the boxes and paint new paint-grade doors to match the stain. I think I will hate it with a flaming passion, but I agreed to let her take a door as a sample to show me what this grey stain is going to look like.

I've definitely decided I cannot abide stain on the boxes and paint on the doors, which will accentuate the different woods.

I think we're probably going to keep the existing doors and either stain the whole thing or paint the whole thing white. Not buying new doors will save me some money, and that is always a good thing. Our cabinets are 20 years old, but they don't have big ol' visible hinges or anything particularly dated. I think the kitchen will look just fine with the current doors. With hardware added, they should be even more updated.