Florida Kitchen Remodel Plan

This is the project we’ve all been waiting for! We’re launching our kitchen remodel, and we’ve roped the family room into the fun as well!

the kitchen

I feel like our entire (almost) two years in this house has been nothing but a rambling, shambling preamble to this very moment.

the kitchen

Sure, we’ve expanded the backyard, planted shrubs and trees, expanded the patio, built a pergola, built a gazebo, built privacy screens, re-landscaped the entire front yard, limewashed the brick exterior, built a fire pit, remodeled the dining room, ripped up all the carpet and laid down LVP, gave makeovers to our son’s room, the guest bedroom and the lanai, reconfigured three closets, organized the garage, made a craft room, rebuilt the pantry and remodeled the garage entryway…but without a kitchen remodel, have we really actually done…anything?

Cast your memories back two years and feast (or starve) your eyes on the Lean Green Culinary (time) Machine.

It boasted all the features one could reasonably ask for in a kitchen – a dirty fridge, a rickety oven, miles of golden turds cabinets, countertops made of what feels like recycled plastic and enough green to host a frog and toad convention.

Now, since the kitchen and the family room share the same wide open space, we can’t very well remodel one and leave the other hanging out in the early 2000s all by its lonesome. That would be cruel and unusual punishment for a family room whose only crime is being boring, outdated, and…green. Feast your green-loving eyes on these realtor pics of the family room.

Ah, the fireplace. That miniature flame-burping ventless wonder. Let’s put a pin in the family room (edit: I’ve been writing this post for two nights now – I think I’ll bump the family room to a separate post!) and get back to the meat and potatoes of this remodel.

We knew before we bought the house that the kitchen would eventually land on the trash heap of time – all of it. Every last scrap of golden oak, laminate and discolored appliance.

What we didn’t know was that the tile floor would be joining it – all 1300 square feet of it. That’s all the tile from the kitchen, family room, Baris’s bathroom and the hallway leading to the two guest rooms.

But it’s like I say when it comes to DIY, renovation and remodels – in for a penny, in for a pound. When my babes has something grand brewing in her squirrely little brain, there’s no time to get caught up in price-taggery.

I don’t say this as someone who wantonly tosses money around like a corn farmer spreads manure (that was OldMe™️, a markedly different beast than the souped-up NewMe™️), but as someone who understands the consequences when The Magnificent Shrimp tries to do the right thing by pinching a penny in the wrong situation. I’ve seen it time and again, and the results are devastating. It’s like inverse buyers remorse.

Nowadays if there’s an option on the table that will make the project orders of magnitude better but also cause mild to moderate bulging of the eyeballs, I do my best to steer Handan into the bulge. The bulge may hurt for a bit, but it’s usually worth it in the long run.

The Floor

Such is the case with the tile floor. The floor that’s there now isn’t horrible. I mean it’s not as bad as falling into the prize-winning vat of honey at a honeybee hullabaloo and then blindly stumbling across the street into a fire ant convention. But it wasn’t great either. The grout was horrid despite a good acid cleaning back when we moved in. And worse, when we start shifting walls around (spoiler alert – some of those walls have already been shifted), and when we remove the old island, there are going to be naked areas devoid of tile.

We tried to find replacements. I mean really tried. We drove all over the Emerald Coast asking every tile shop we could find. We even tracked down the home builders whose kith and kin built these homes back in the Long Long Ago.

No dice.

It appears these tiles never existed despite gracing the floors of nearly every house in our subdivision (including, ironically, some of the new ones!)

Well, you can’t say we didn’t try. We even had our awesome contractor Franklin take a tile and show it to his shadowy network of contractor friends who dabble in the tile black market and the grout underworld.

Not even the whiff of a scent-trail to follow.

These tiles could work for the CIA and the NSA, and neither agency would be any the wiser.

So yeah, we’re replacing 1300 square feet of tile with these faux-marble beauties from Home Depot.

In the end, we’re going to be much happier having ponied up the dough to have the tile busted up and removed like an unruly bar patron. I know that if we found suitable replacement tile and went that route, Handan would always be looking at the floor with a sneer on her lips and regret in her soul until the day her inverse buyers remorse would get the better of her and we’d have to find a way to replace those tiles after putting in a bitchin’ new kitchen!

The cabinets

What a difference four years makes! Or to put it another way – eff you Covid and the damage you did to wood prices! I distinctly recall cacking up a Chewbacca-sized hairball of fear and disbelief when we were told our cabinets for the Georgia kitchen would cost somewhere in the $30,000 range.

$30,000?!? I wanted cabinets, not the mother-loving Taj Mahal!

Oh how I long for that day, now!

Let’s just say things have gotten out of hand since that summer of 2020. I’ll leave it there, and let your mind fill in the blanks.

But in for a penny, in for a pound, right? So bugger the price-taggery! Let’s buy them anyway. We may even have enough left over for a piece of the Taj Mahal!

We considered a few options for cabinets and cabinet installers and settled on some custom cabinets from Marquis Fine Cabinetry – a cabinet maker in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. They make the cabinets right down the street which is fantastic, and their prices were significantly less than we were quoted for KraftMaid for a custom-made product that is at least as good.

Bonus – the owner Nick hails from Iran and speaks fluent Turkish! He and Handan had a nice chat about the motherland while I stood by smiling and not understanding a damn thing.

Story of my life.

Vincent is our point man at Marquis – he’s the one formalizing Handan’s design for our kitchen. He and the team at Marquis have been a joy to work with, and we can’t wait to see what they’re going to make for us!

The 3D renderings you’ll be seeing later in the post were created by a talented interior architect named Asraful who is a master at bringing dream spaces to virtual life. He can help you visualize your interior design, makeover or remodel project for any room in the house for a very reasonable fee. You can find Asraful on Fiverr here.

We’re going for a similar style as we had in Georgia – white cabinets with shaker trim.

You can’t go wrong with a timeless classic like that. And since we only got to enjoy our Georgia kitchen for one year, I’m ready for more shaker!

Trends come and go every 3-5 years. The classics stay relevant for centuries (and sometimes millenia!).

For the island, we’re going for a slightly different look: Modern European style. Island cabinets will have wood slab doors which will compliment the surround cabinets and the family room fireplace wall.

Hardware

Simple is the word for the knobs and pulls. But unlike Georgia, where everything was satiny brushed nickel, we’re pivoting toward aged brass, bronze and gold for this kitchen. But not in an 80s brass-n-glass way. We’re going to be a little more classy about it.

Or so we’re telling ourselves.

Countertops

Remember when we bought a huge chunk of “Terra Bianca Quartzite” for our Georgia kitchen?

On our recent rock-shopping trips, I keep seeing similar slabs with tags saying things like “Fantasy Brown Granite” or “Fantasy Brown Serpentine.”

What the devil? They were obviously all the same rock, but quartzite, granite and serpentine are not. So what the heck is it?

The only person who could untie this knotted conundrum was Señor Google.

It turns out that Fantasy Brown is classified as a Dolomitic Marble. In a nutshell, that just means that is was marble that was subject to high heat and pressure in the Earth’s crust (more heat and pressure than it took to form the marble). This process changes the chemical composition of the rock and yields a denser and more durable stone. Not as dense and durable as granite or quartzite but more so than marble.

Good thing we sealed our GA countertop every other week for the first couple of months!

Well, no Fantasy Brown this time, but we have picked a rock. Handan picked it this time. It’s a quartzite (for reals this time) called Scorpius White, and here it is.

We’re planning on using three slabs of this beauty – two for the island (there will be leftovers) and one for the surrounds. Hopefully we’ll have enough left over to make a backsplash – something along these lines:

Between the range and the hood, I’m planning to install a quartzite shelf similar to the one pictured below.

The continuous hood above makes the stove area feel a little claustrophobic – like you’re boxed in while boiling potatoes. We’ve got a different idea for our hood.

And this leads us to the range.

Appliances

Range

In Georgia, we bought a 48-inch ZLINE dual fuel range. It was my first gas stove, and it was AWESOME! I felt like celebrity chef when I cooked on it, minus the celebrity and chef’s hat. This time, our space only allows for a 36-inch range, but that’s okay. Baris is off at school, and we’re too busy to entertain much, so 36 inches is more than enough for me. Though we looked at pretty much every brand out there, I’m again planning to go with ZLINE – you simply can’t beat the price/performance ratio! If all goes according to plan, I’ll be cooking on this lovely machine!

Range hood

Our Georgia house wasn’t plumbed for venting outside, so the ZLINE hood I had vented into the room through some substantial carbon filters. But this time, I have the roof vent! Instead of a stand-alone hood, we’ll be getting a ZLINE hood insert, and I’ll be building a custom hood cover a little something like this:

Refrigerator

Well, it was bound to happen, I suppose, but not for the reasons you might think. If I told you I was getting a fridge with a big honkin’ touchscreen on it that connects to the internet, you’d probably think I wanted it to play video games while I sous vide. Or perhaps you’d wager I’d be watching football while flipping flapjacks. (Jokes on you – I don’t watch sports and was only vaguely aware that some sort of big game transpired recently). Or maybe you thought I’d be streaming hot and steamy food porn while fiddling with my flan.

Wrong again.

I didn’t want a damn virtual reality session every time I reached for an egg. I have enough devices to keep me stupefied, thank you very much.

But The Shrimp? Well, she wanted it so I could have easier and more constant access to Google Calendar, because apparently I’m a forgetful old coot who can barely remember why he started writing this post.

Besides, who wouldn’t want Alexa, Siri, Zuck, Bill and those two secretive recluses from Google studying my every movement and collating my words each time I open the door in search of a ripe tomato?

Anway, here’s my future fridge. It’s a Samsung, and it’s probably smarter than I am.

Dishwasher

When we moved here, the two things we replaced first were the fridge and the dishwasher. We went with Kitchenaid for both. The fridge we replaced was a grody bucket of slime that now sits in the garage – cleaned of its slime, of course. The new fridge has been a noisy, irksome beast, and for the money we paid, Kitchenaid should stuff rocks in their pockets and run into the nearest lake.

The dishwasher is performing better. It’s probably the best we’ve owned. Certainly better than the loud and messy Cookie Monster it replaced.

So the dishwasher stays – for now. I’m not so sure about Kitchenaid, so I’ve got an eye permanently peeled in its general direction.

Wall oven/microwave

Yes, I’m going to have a wall oven and a range oven.

Why?

Because those range ovens are dinky affairs not suited for roasting much more than a squab or two or maybe a Cornish game hen.

The wall oven will see the most roast in this new kitchen, and since I don’t need three ovens, I’m getting a microwave combo. I’m sure there are people out there who use that infernal machine for actual cooking, but around here it’s pretty much been relegated to coffee rewarming duty with the occasional leftover reheat thrown in to keep it on its toes.

Fun fact: both my current oven and microwave must know their days are numbered. The microwave’s annoying beeper-speaker quit a few months back, and more recently, both units blew their lights in the same week! How exciting!

Fixtures

Sink

It’s amazing how an indentation in the countertop meant to ferry water toward a drain pipe can be so expensive. Then again, kitchens are becoming like weddings and funerals. The Kitchen-Industrial Complex knows it’s got you by the balls, so it squeezes like there’s a million volts running through its arm. So I guess it’s no surprise that the once-lowly drain trough has attained exalted status along with the price tag to support it.

Fortunately, there are sill bargains to be found, and they don’t look like a medieval scupper clogged with boiled cabbage…which is a real plus in my opinion. We’re going for this sink. It’s got a workstation. Handan tells me I need a workstation in my sink. Why do you think that is??

Faucet

Oaky, while we may have gone a little pre-Christmas Ebenezer Scrooge on the sink (bah!), for the faucet, we’re going full-on Christmas-morning Ebenezer. I’m talking fatted goose with all the trimmings.

The two options we’re considering may not look like much, but one has a touch sensor and the other one is touchless, and that is worth a fatted goose’s weight in gold!

Pot filler

I’m American, born and raised, so that means I’m inherently too lazy, stupid and entitled to walk two steps to the sink, fill a pot and then walk two steps back to the stove. Those steps really add up and can cause all sorts of maladies that would require bottles upon bottles of prescription medications!

So to save my health, I’m really left with no choice but to have a pot filler behind the stove. Besides, it just looks cool, so when I’m not filling up a tub to cook a vat of spaghetti, I can point it out to all who pass by in the hopes they’ll think I’m an amazing chef whose so busy when preparing delicious feasts that he simply has no time to turn around to fill a pot with water. 😁

Lighting

In Georgia we went for a bunch of hanging glass orbs over the island. Of course, in no time, they were covered in a fine mist of grease. Having to remove those orbs and wash them every month was an exercise in squandered time and pointless futility.

Well, maybe not so much pointless, but it was annoying as all get out.

This time, we’re eyeballing a lighting solution that’ll not only look better IMHO, but it shouldn’t be the grease magnet those glass orbs were.

Misc

Pantry door

With literally everything getting ripped out and tossed, it’d be a shame if we left the runty little pantry door as-is.

My babes has a few ideas brewing. How about this for a pantry door upgrade??

Of course, we’d have to frost the glass because unlike some folks online, we actually inhabit a world where pantries are filled with a Technicolor hodgepodge of canned and boxed comestibles better left unseen to casual passersby and roving photographic lenses.

Wall work

Before we get to Asraful’s beautiful renderings, let’s talk about some wall reconfiguring we’ve already done. You’ll recall the before of this wall:

We’ve recently walled up the door on the left, raised the window on the left, removed the two little wing walls and the cabinetry between, removed the sliding door on the right, and expanded and raised the opening to be a much grander pass-through.

Over on the oven-side wall…

If you’ve been following along with our garage entry makeover, you’ll remember we re-routed the staircase pictured above and walled up that opening. That’s where the refrigerator will be in the new kitchen layout.

Turn a staircase, gain some wall space! It’s a win-win!

The vision

Okay, you’ve waited long enough. Let’s have a peek at how this kitchen is actually going to look. Words and inspo pics are great and all, but nothing beats the real thing as brought to life by Asraful’s skilled hand.

Current situation:

Vision:

Let us know what you think! Demolition begins tomorrow!