2008_06_13 Outside doors now green, kitchen cabinet disaster being repaired

We didn't want the doors to be left their "natural" color which was almond since they just looked too bland. There are a lot of doors in this side of the house and they are very noticeable. So, we decided to have them painted green outside to match the Pella windows and also the green metal roof. Inside we had them stained dark just to contrast with all the pine logs and the reddish Bolivian Rosewood.


The picture below is too dark, but you can see the darker color of the doors as compared to the pine walls.

Ah, now to the kitchen disaster (or nearly so).

We originally planned to have a downdraft vent in the middle of the cook top. The woman at Lowe's designed the cabinets for that. Then we later changed our minds and decided to have the downdraft vent be one that is at the back of the cook top (as opposed to in the middle of it).

We told her of the change and she then re-designed the cabinets to allow for the additional depth required for the downdraft that is behind the cook top. She made it so that the front of the cook top portion of the cabinets angled out about 3 inches further than the rest of the cabinet.

However, when the granite man came out to measure for the granite template, he noticed almost at once that although the depth at the center of the cook top was enough Lowe's had failed to account for the fact that the front corners of the cook top would still stick out over the angled portion of the cabinets. In other words, although they could play with the depth and make it deep enough for most of the front they could not fit the cook top itself in the cabinet because the corners of the cook top obviously could not be chopped off or angled. That would leave the cook top corners sticking out a little bit over the portion of the cabinet that angled out.

This was compounded by the fact that when Lowe's designed the cabinets they made the cook top portion slightly more narrow than they should have. That meant that the angled parts could not be made wide enough apart to prevent the corners of the cook top from sticking out over the angled portion. Had the cook top section been wide enough then the angled sections needed to get the added depth would have been completely to the side and not caused the problem that they did.

So, a few days went into what to do about the problem. It's hard to describe at all and there were too many changes back and forth to mention, but they involved moving the knee wall further backward about 2 inches(which we did) and had to squeeze about another 3/4 of an inch in width for the cook top section of the cabinets and restructure the inside of the cabinet as well for reasons related to not only the "fit" of the cabinet, but also due to the requirements related to how close the interior walls could be to the heated elements.

After all the planning and re-drawing and running the revisions by both the builder and the cabinet installer and me a plan was devised and work started. Lance (who installs for Lowe's) finally got the cabinets taken apart, re-cut things and use some cherry pieces left over from when he initially built the cabinets to do what he needed to do.

Anyway, it all worked out and the cook top and downdraft vent fit and the cabinets look just fine.