Good people, great kitchen

The saga of our kitchen cabinets started way back in January. I spent two whole days trying to design our kitchen using the IKEA planning tools. I cried. Twice. First when I thought that my full day of work had been deleted from the ethos and I would have to start from scratch. And secondly when I found out that IKEA didn't make a corner unit small enough to fit our space.

Feeling deflated I went to my back-up best friend - Home Depot. They wooed me and told me it was going to be okay showing me a corner unit that (although ugly) would fit in our small space. I began to warm-up to the idea even though the product wan't exactly what I was looking for. Then they told me the price. It was going to cost us over $10K to do our tiny little kitchen! I thought this was going to be the cheap option. I went home, threw myself on our bed and cried for a third time.

After a day or two wallowing in self pity, wondering if we had made the wrong choice by taking on the kitchen ourselves, I decided on a whim to contact the oracle - Craigslist. I typed in 'white kitchen cabinets' and low and behold I was introduced to Terry and Rob. These two own a cabinet company called Heritage West Interiors. They design, source and install kitchen cabinets (and a bunch of other things as well). We hit it off immediately and I felt really good about this company almost immediately.  They came to visit our space and quickly came up with a number of different ideas we hadn't thought of.

Meet Terry and Rob.

Now to back up a bit - our kitchen isn't an easy one. Between the sink, stove top, dish drawer, washer/dryer and fridge all crammed into a 10foot space, there isn't much space to work with. In fact, Home Depot could barely figure out how to get a small bit of countertop to work off of. I knew this was going to be hard but Terry and Rob were up for the challenge. Almost immediately they figured out a way to get a set of drawers into the bottom cabinets. Neither IKEA nor Home Depot could do that. They also showed us how we could build cabinets with drawers on the bottom, again giving us more room for storage. And lastly came up with an ingenious idea for the corner cabinet that had been causing us such heartache.

They also recommended a new product we hadn't heard of - Greenlam - an eco-friendly laminant that was leading the charge when it came to recycling, using bio-fuels and getting rid of nasty formaldehyde and chlorine.  This product also happened to be very affordable and suddenly we were able to get our kitchen done for almost half the price of Home Depot.  And custom designed at that!

With Terry and Rob's fabulous design we placed the order. A couple of weeks later it arrived and our installers Brent and Chris were ready to get it in. Perfectionists at heart, these two guys worked tirelessly to create a kitchen that we could have only dreamed of. They thought of every little detail from capping the top of the fridge cabinets so that from the loft above we would see a seemless white surface; to building out a beautiful box that would hold the washer/dryer in place and extend the length of the kitchen.

Brent working away.

And his son Chris.

There are still a couple tiny things to finish up like installing doors on the far left upper cabinets but even as is, this kitchen looks fabulous! Take a look yourselves. Terry, Rob, Brent and Chris - we couldn't have done it without you. And anyone looking to update or redo their kitchens - give these guys a call.

Stay tuned: In the next few days we'll be posting a video of the whole kitchen coming together...including the elusive Paperstone countertops.