Interior Progress

The exterior of our house is almost complete with only the painting left to be finished so we have been focusing on the interior the past few weeks.  Along with the siding, windows, and doors, we decided to order our kitchen from Westside Building Supplies in Lynden, WA.  Early on we made the decision that we wanted a white country kitchen with a big ole farmhouse sink and after looking at a good number of photos on the internet we were sure we knew what we wanted.  After drawing a few kitchen plans on graph paper we started going around to a few of the local cabinet companies which was for the most part a disappointment.  We ran into everything from companies that didn't call back, didn't share our vision for the layout, or didn't know their own products.  

After visiting several companies and not really being "wowed", we came across one company in Abbotsford that told me I should plan for about two hours for the consultation.  I was quite skeptical that I'd need two hours to show my simple layout and explain what we wanted but I packed up all my photos and graph paper layout and headed out.   After wandering through the showroom for ten minutes the salesperson and I sat down, and before I could even open my photos I found myself in the midst of a 2 hour kitchen presentation.  I'd normally be thinking of an excuse to expedite my exit but the salesman brought up so many good points on kitchen design that I found myself actually listening 

to what he had to say.  While I didn't agree with all of his ideas, he did give me some good food-for-thought about how to improve the layout we had drawn.  He also pointed out something that neither Margaret or myself had realized, the cabinets we had admired all over the internet were not conventional cabinets and we could expect to pay a thirty percent premium for them.   What made them unconventional was that they had face frames around the actual cabinet doors... similar to furniture cabinets.   Later that evening when we sat down at the computer and started looking at kitchens with inset and non-inset cabinets, we realized that we really liked the inset cabinets but couldn't justify the cost.

Fireclay Farmhouse Sink

Not to be easily discouraged, I started investigating inset cabinet prices in the U.S. where they are more commonly found.  I found two companies that claimed they built inset cabinets for the same price as non-inset cabinets.  One of the companies, Canyon Creek Cabinets was only a two hour drive south of the border so after getting a quote on our kitchen plan we decided to take a little road trip and check out the quality of their work.  They had an impressive manufacturing facility and showroom and the quality seemed to be inline with what we had been looking at locally and the best part was they weren't much more than locally made non-inset cabinets...

Inset cabinet



Non-Inset Cabinet









When we originally started planning our kitchen, a feature we thought would suit the style of house we are builing was a farmhouse sink.  These are the big, porcelain sinks some of our parents may have grown up with and aren't quite as common anymore.  When we started looking at them we found there were a good number of styles but we decided on a simple white, single bowl version.  We didn't realize it at the time but we wound up designing the kitchen around the sink.   After picking the sink we found that not many modern faucets suit such a sink so we found a chrome bridge faucet with cross handles that had a nice old-timey look to it.

We had originally planned on plain, black laminate countertops which we thought would look nice with the white cabinets and save us some money over granite but because the sink is an undermount sink with the front exposed, none of the laminate companies we talked to were willing to put laminate counters around it because they felt the laminate would be exposed to water on the under side of the counters and eventually start to de-laminate.  In the end we had to either get rid of the sink or go with granite.  We didn't like the extra expense but the sink wasn't going anywhere.  

Our tile guy has started on the bathrooms and will soon be adding a subway tile backsplash in the kitchen.  After the tile is finished the wood flooring will be installed and the small details of the kitchen will be finished.