The top 10 mistakes that rookie Designers make when designing a kitchen

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[00:00:24] Eric Goranson: And if you skimp on the lighting, it just doesn't look like you thought it would. So we're on the house shows. Brought to you by Pyramid Heating and Cooling. Serving in Oregon, the Portland metro area, and Bend, Oregon, they are your one stop shop for heating and cooling and indoor air quality. To find out more, head to PyramidHeating.

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[00:01:09] Eric Goranson: com. And if you want to give us a call, 24 7 833 239 4144. That number again is 833 239 4144. And make sure to follow us on social media as well as our Around the House Nation Facebook page. Facebook close group. We've got a bunch of stuff going on over there as well. And, uh, we're going to continue to grow that channel.

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[00:01:49] Eric Goranson: Now there's a lot of people out there that are thinking about boy, one of these days, maybe when interest rates get better or you're doing it this year, you're going to remodel that kitchen. And you want to do it [00:02:00] right. And I always say a good kitchen designer will save you money just because they're going to help you with the mistakes that people commonly make when they're designing a kitchen.

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[00:02:26] Eric Goranson: And here's why I've got 30 years in the kitchen, a bath industry. I have been a certified kitchen designer since 1999. So I have designed thousands of kitchens across the West coast, mainly in the Pacific Northwest. So I have trained hundreds of designers. Over the years that have worked for me and everything else, but everybody starts out, including me started out as a rookie designer one day.

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[00:03:15] Eric Goranson: And so it's a great place for people to start out and get it figured out because they're not on commission, whether they sell or not, they still get a paycheck. And what happens is, is when you get into more successful kitchen design situations for designers is they'll make two, three times more. Not working at those home centers and actually making a commission and making sure that that project goes smoothly and smoothly means you have a better looking kitchen when it's all said and done.

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[00:04:06] Eric Goranson: Trained designers. Home Depot was great at this back then they trained, they sent off for training, but here's what happened. Home Depot realized that if I train them too much, they're going to leave. They're going to go get one of those better paying jobs, and we're going to be left paying for their training to go sell against us.

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[00:04:51] Eric Goranson: They are undercharging home Depot has to, or Lowe's have to put their Numbers on top of it. So if you start to compare that [00:05:00] against somebody else, you can be paying 30, 40 percent more by the time you get these stacked markups. And so that's something you got to be careful with. But what do you see when you find a rookie designer?

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[00:05:27] Eric Goranson: But that is something where these designers and they've changed the rules around a little bit. So they've got different certifications than they did when I was starting out. The thing is, is you've got these certifications. So now these people have taken a test. That is an industry standard test out there and that they were proficient in that.

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[00:06:03] Eric Goranson: So that's what you're looking for is, That designer that is certified. Are there great designers that aren't certified? Yes, but the ones that are certified, at least that they have passed the test, they've gone through the training, they've taken that test and they know that these guys are better than most.

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[00:06:49] Eric Goranson: To be a good designer until after year two, three in there is where you really start getting going and go, okay, I've got a lot of these things that I understand [00:07:00] because really there are so many things from drafting to design to all these things that you have to put together to get a cohesive project and to fix the design mistakes that were made from the original one that you were remodeling, because clearly things have updated, things have changed.

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[00:07:32] Eric Goranson: Are they charging you by the hour, by the project, make sure they're managing the time wisely and that if you're on a flat fee retainer type thing, I'm okay with paying them by the hour. Just make sure that you get figured out. What, what that payment schedule is and that they're giving you a very, really solid idea of where that time's going.

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[00:08:18] Eric Goranson: So you got to be really careful out there of some of these people out there that are saying they're good. Ask for the certification, find out, do your research and then go from there. So the first thing here, before we go out to break, I want to hit on the first one and then we'll talk about why this is important.

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[00:08:55] Eric Goranson: And as soon as they get the hardware on there, they realized the dishwasher won't open. Or [00:09:00] I won't open all the way. Cause maybe it misses this, but it hits a door handle on a cabin down below. These are some of those mistakes where designers miss where the fillers are. And those fillers, which is where you change right angles.

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[00:09:28] Eric Goranson: And you go, oh no, what do I do? And it's an expensive fix. We'll do that just as soon as around the house returns you're listening to around the house

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[00:09:55] Eric Goranson: So many.[00:10:00]

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[00:10:21] Eric Goranson: If you're just joining us on the radio show. And then we started to talk about not giving enough space around appliances and door and drawer handles. And this is really important on base cabinets. These are those corners that are really going to get you. So dishwashers, little mini fridges. Even refrigerators can be a problem right there.

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[00:10:58] Eric Goranson: They make cabinets in [00:11:00] certain sizes. You're good to go. If you step up into a semi custom cabinet, now maybe you can get a built in style where they've made the, a filler that's extra long on the side. So it's built in. So it doesn't look like a filler. You can do filler overlays. You can do with ways you can do things to make it look like.

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[00:11:37] Eric Goranson: And this is one of the biggest gotchas in kitchen design where I see this happen. Time and time again with designers and homeowners, and it's one of those that can cost thousands of dollars to fix. If it goes wrong, French door, refrigerators around walls, other appliances, and of course, tall cabinets or cabinets.

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[00:12:34] Eric Goranson: So be super careful out there guys, when you're designing kitchens, whether you're a homeowner or you're working with a newer designer to make sure and read the specs. Some of the appliance companies, especially the ones that come in from overseas. Don't do a great job on that. So many times I've had to actually call the manufacturer and have them send me dimensions that aren't in the online spectra anywhere else.

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[00:13:23] Eric Goranson: And the problem with that, and this is where it really causes an issue, is that that can take up another six, seven, eight inches of space on the wall. And that can really. Be a hard point to deal with in the middle of a run like that when it's over there and you can lose six, seven inches of space, nobody wants to lose space.

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[00:14:00] Eric Goranson: And the crispers would come out. Now they're trying to fit more stuff in there. So by having to go 25 degrees farther, that can be a more of a problem for you in that design. So be very careful. That is one of the biggest gotchas in kitchen design out there for homeowners and designers. So be careful there.

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[00:14:41] Eric Goranson: Now the kitchen triangle has been outdated, smaller kitchen design. It works for small kitchens, no question, but the kitchen triangle is the distance between the refrigerator, the cooktop, and the sink. That was the kitchen triangle. And you always had to make sure that those triangle links weren't too far away.

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[00:15:17] Eric Goranson: What are zones? So you have. The sink to one side, you have a dishwasher now over that dishwasher. On top of that, on the countertop is what I call the cleanup zone. Now I don't want to have the dishwasher between the cooktop and the sink. Here's why your prep area, which is your prep zone is going to traditionally be between the cooktop, that cooking surface and the sink.

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[00:16:10] Eric Goranson: Dishwasher there. Cause maybe you're not having unloaded it yet, or you're going to load it up in a minute. So you want to keep those zones separately and in larger kitchens where maybe you have two dishwashers, two sinks, you need to have different zones. And so that's when the triangle doesn't work as well, or you'll have multiple triangles and it can get confusing.

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[00:16:50] Eric Goranson: What are you doing right there? If you've got two prep zones, maybe you need two sinks, or you're going to share that sink, but you need to have a faucet that will swing [00:17:00] around and work in that correctly. And that's a really good way to go. Now, if you think about it, and this is where the mistakes get made.

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[00:17:28] Eric Goranson: Maybe you had the blender and some of the attachments, a basic food processor, but just walk into one of the luxury. Kitchen accessory stores now and take a look at all the different knife sets to tools to all the different things we see steam ovens. We've got all these different things going into kitchens these days.

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[00:18:07] Eric Goranson: So you're getting rid of all those doors and shelves, maybe down below and putting in drawers. Or doors and pullout shelves, because it's much more efficient. You can put more stuff in there. You're using the corners if you can. So these are things that you want to make sure that you're redesigning around.

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[00:18:48] Eric Goranson: Don't change that dial Is[00:19:00]

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[00:19:24] Eric Goranson: We've got a lot of great stuff over on the website and around the house. Online. com and we'll be continuing to add more and more out there. So keep checking back. We've been talking today about the top 10 mistakes rookie designers make when remodeling a kitchen. And when you're out shopping for a designer, this is one of the things you want to make sure that you're getting some of the experience, nothing wrong with the rookies out there as a certified kitchen designer and somebody with 30 years of experience, I was a rookie once as well, but just make sure like we were talking about earlier in segment one of the show, that you Just make sure that you've got a designer that has enough experience or They've got somebody that [00:20:00] they're shadowing or working with.

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[00:20:25] Eric Goranson: Those French doors could be a nightmare. When you have an end wall or a double oven or something next door to it, sometimes you can't even open those things out without having that thing pulling six inches forward, which is a hot mess. Not enough drawers instead of drawers is one here that we're going to talk about here.

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[00:21:00] Eric Goranson: So as let me paint the picture for you, if you've got a 30 inch wide base cabinet that has two drawers, full height, no top drawer. And I put in a three drawer cabinet in there in its space. Traditionally with some nice drawers, that's about double the price of the two door cabinet with a adjustable shelf or two in it.

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[00:21:45] Eric Goranson: I've seen it done on high rises. I've been a part of a project like where we had beautiful cabinets in there and to save budget, they abandoned the space and nobody got to use it. Sometimes in a kitchen design though, that is actually a smarter way of doing it [00:22:00] because corner space is hard to get at. If you use some of the more designer articulating solid metal pieces, they can cost a thousand bucks or more.

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[00:22:43] Eric Goranson: If you've got a, A cooktop there, and I don't care if it is a gas, I don't care if it's electric induction, or just a coil element, that should be a high CFM fan that gets it out of there. That cooking surface, it doesn't [00:23:00] matter if it's gas, gas is even worse, even electric induction, is one of the largest polluters of indoor air quality in your home.

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[00:23:28] Eric Goranson: Those don't work. They just don't. All the chemicals might take a little of the smell out of there. It might grab a little bit of grease, but that is putting all these chemicals and stuff back out of the, out into the air from the cooking process, from the carbon that's being created as you cook. All of those chemicals are coming off.

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[00:24:09] Eric Goranson: Ventilation that's coming in, you have air to replace that. So let's say you have a 400 CFM hood. So that's 400 cubic feet per minute, bloating that air outside. It's pushing it right outside. Now, of course, when they do vent fans, that's right at the hood. So maybe it's only three 50 by the time it goes out with a couple of elbows or wherever it's going.

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[00:24:49] Eric Goranson: So you need to have that balance, but you really need to have that vent fan going outside. I am not a fan of microwave vent hoods. They just don't work. [00:25:00] Just like I'm not a fan of downdraft vent hoods have to fight mother nature. Everything's rising, heat's rising, steam's rising. It's all coming up and you have to have a fan big enough.

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[00:25:27] Eric Goranson: So this is where you need to take your time, work through that process and design it out. So you make sure that that vent hood goes all the way outside of the space and outside in my area here. And a lot of the States around me. That is building code. So if I pull a building permit, it is required, whether I'm in a condo, whether I'm in an apartment, whether I'm in my own single family residence, that has to be taken outside, period.

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[00:26:06] Eric Goranson: It doesn't hurt your view, but as stuff raises up, this is wider as it gets bigger, of course, like any plume of smoke or steam, it has to get bigger. So you have a wider piece it's stainless or painted or whatever up in the ceiling area, and that mounts up there and then vents that outside and it works really well, those things do a great job, but you need to make sure that you've got that ventilation covered.

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[00:26:50] Eric Goranson: So I always recommend if induction cooktop down below. No electric elements, no glass top element, no gas, nothing like that. Definitely not gas. [00:27:00] And that's where I would do that. I would not do a over the range microwave with a gas cooking surface. It just doesn't do good enough. And it's dangerous when you're leaning over to grab something out of the microwave, especially for people that are short children, loose clothing.

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[00:27:36] Eric Goranson: Lighting is such a key place to this. For one, for the people cooking, so you have a workspace. So you have task lighting and of course the room lighting out in the room. So really, designing a good lighting system for this, Absolutely necessary. And we're going to talk about it here. And then we'll talk about it in the next segment here as well.

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[00:28:14] Eric Goranson: So you want to have under cabinet and then of course, can lights up above. And my rules for can lights is if I've got six inch can lights in there, I do all I can to get those removed. Those are the best of the 1970s and eighties. I like to get down to a two or even a one inch, three inch if you have to, but two inch light if you go with a two inch diameter light.

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[00:29:00] Eric Goranson: Welcome back to the around the house show, the next generation of home improvement for joining us on the radio show. Thanks for tuning in. We're in the last segment of our one of this week. So here we've been talking about the top 10 mistakes rookie designers make when remodeling a kitchen. If you want to find out more about us, give us a shout over to roundthehouseonline.

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[00:29:48] Eric Goranson: So I've been doing this for a little bit. Now, here's the one thing that we were talking about here. Lighting and lighting is something that is very detailed. You need to design it out. And it's [00:30:00] especially important for multi generational. Living. If you've got maybe mom, dad, grandparents, and you're taking care of an older family member, they need somebody that is 70 needs twice the amount of light that somebody 25 does on average.

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[00:30:38] Eric Goranson: And so that's really that design. And so you really want to make sure proper can light recessed light placement in that space. And. Like I said earlier in the last segment, I like to go with the smaller 2 inch, even 1 inch can lights and it might take a few more of them, but it really changes the look in the room.

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[00:31:15] Eric Goranson: A beautifully lit room. You can't tell why it's beautiful. You walk in and go, wow, this place glows. It's gorgeous. But a badly lit room, you could have the most beautiful design. You could have bought the most expensive cabinets, the finest countertops, the most high end appliances. And if you skimp on the lighting, it just doesn't look like you thought it would.

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[00:31:57] Eric Goranson: You can do all of those things. You could do a toe kick light for the [00:32:00] middle of the night. There's a lot of different things you can do with lighting and explored. It's not that expensive for good stuff and something it will just elevate the entire cooking and design experience. So I can't say this enough.

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[00:32:38] Eric Goranson: What's got the little spinny trays in the middle on a base cabinet that takes up back wall dimensions, not the front, but back wall dimensions that traditionally takes up 36 inches, three feet by three feet. And then out front, you've got about a 12 inch by 12 inch area out there. And so you've got a, for a L shaped corner, [00:33:00] lazy Susan cabinet.

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[00:33:22] Eric Goranson: We can make that much bigger. We could make that, you know, you could literally make that a much bigger drawer system. Now you're going to have to have a corner filler in there, but you could add nine inches of drawers on either side of that and have something. That's a lot. That's 18 inches of drawer space.

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[00:33:57] Eric Goranson: Maybe you can put a cabinet to the back that you have to climb [00:34:00] under a countertop through Maybe that could be a recess in a in a closet for a safe behind it There's a lot of things you can sometimes do with that depending on the layout of the house But sometimes that can be a really cool space that you don't use and you get more storage depending on What you need for your kitchen so corners You Can be really handy, but they can also be very problematic, especially when you're sitting there and you're looking at it and you've got an appliance close by.

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[00:34:51] Eric Goranson: I am not a fan of the 1980s, 1990s version Of the microwave shelf. You've got a deep microwave. It's hanging [00:35:00] up over the wall cabinets, hanging up there, hanging way out over the kitchen countertops. So you really can't stand in front of that for 27 or 30 inches. And you've got this behemoth of a microwave taking over the space and that place below it on the countertop.

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[00:35:34] Eric Goranson: There are a lot of different places. You can do a microwave built in with a trim kit and a base cabinet, maybe on the end of an Island. There's a lot of different options, or if you've got a bigger kitchen, maybe putting the microwave around the corner in the Butler's pantry. Lot less people using microwaves now in the kitchen, especially when you're talking Steve ovens, combi ovens, all these different things, maybe that microwave needs to go in the Butler's pantry around the corner and many [00:36:00] times building code will not allow you to put that inside a cabinet.

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[00:36:23] Eric Goranson: And I have seen. People have gone in and done kitchen remodels for people that have tapped at one extra zero, walked off and jumped in the shower to have their TV dinner ready when they get out. And then the kitchen's on fire because they just hit the wrong button. So it's one of those things you need to be really careful with.

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[00:37:11] Eric Goranson: My standard is 48 for two people at a minimum. Because here's what happens. You think about it. If you've got a dishwasher that door drops down, that's 30 inches right there. So it's really hard to be able to get around that in a kitchen with the dishwasher getting loaded. You got to have some space. You want at least a foot where somebody could squeeze around that, or you could stand at the end and load things in there.

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[00:37:52] Eric Goranson: So I really want to make sure you've got 42 to 48 inches around that. Now, when you add seating, [00:38:00] that adds a completely different mix to that because if you've got seating back there, you need to have about five feet of space. So somebody can sit there and somebody can walk around behind it. So you see all of a sudden, if you've got 25 and a half inches of space for the countertop on the perimeter You've got a 42 inch walkway.

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[00:38:48] Eric Goranson: Is that I really want to as part of a design process when we have that design hammered out. I love going out into that kitchen space and I used to do it with virtual reality. The most I would [00:39:00] design it out in virtual reality and pick a point in the kitchen measured out when I was measuring it. And I would design it and say, this is what this is going to look like.

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