Yipekayay, Meredith’s Texas kitchen has arrived!

Alright, there’s really nothing much Texas about this kitchen, other than the fact that it is in fact in Texas.  Turns out, in traditional Texas design, Waco style, they like to put that lone star flair on EVERYTHING,  and everything tends to look distressed and countrified.  A lot of rough hewn if you get my dift. 

 So, since Meredith and Pete are a bit more urban than that, we went clean and contemporary with a bit of color to happy things up a bit.  I think our decision to use IKEA, heretofore a relatively unknown alien institution in Waco, might have caused the builders to curse us three ways until sundown (I just made that up….it sounded Western), I hope you’ll agree that it all turned out in the end.

Now when you see the before pictures, you might think, “gee Leslie, that’s actually a cute kitchen. Why’d you tear out those period appropriate cabinets?”  Let me point out a couple of things….this kitchen basically has one stretch of countertop and that countertop is 22” deep (customary counter depth is 24”); that depth includes a raised edge.  If you look stage right of the sink, you’ll probably be able to decipher why the owners used to call it the Jenga kitchen….everything had to be stacked, and woe to you if you needed something at the bottom or at the middle of that stack.

You also have to know Pete and Meredith….these people are major cooks.  They cook with utensils I’ve never even heard of before and I’m no stranger to the kitchen if I do say so myself.  This kitchen was becoming a major buzz killer and was not necessarily conducive to including their toddler boys into the cooking space.  The space was also cut in two, with half of it serving as a sort-of breakfast room.  I say sort of because the room wasn’t deep enough to allow you to pull the table away from the wall, only allowing you to seat three. 

A word about IKEA kitchen cabinetry….I have to say, I’ve worked with some of the best and most high falutin’ (keeping with the Western theme) cabinetry on the market, and I think I’d choose IKEA over it in a heartbeat.  First of all, you don’t have to take out a second mortgage to buy the stuff, and the quality is good people!  There are definitely some things you need to take into consideration though, and if you want a good, polished end product, you need to keep your eye on the process and your builder.

A few things to consider….really pay attention to your use and placement of fillers and panels.  Fillers are those pieces that take up the 1 or 2 inches of space between the cabinet and, say, the refrigerator.  Panels are the pieces that you frame the refrigerator in so that that big ugly black textured refrigerator siding doesn’t belie the stainless steel look you paid so much for.  When you get a custom kitchen, these filler pieces can be custom ordered so that all sides are finished.  When you use IKEA, you’re pretty limited as to the sizes you can get, so you end up cutting pieces on the fly and oftentimes the pieces don’t cut all that pretty!  A lot of the finishes don’t really lend themselves to matching finishes with veneers or paints, so you have to be pretty crafty about these unfinished edges.

For a GREAT blog entry about painting IKEA cabinetry, go here http://carolreeddesign.blogspot.com/2010/06/painting-ikea-kitchen-cabinets.html

So, there you have my one and only kitchen in Waco, Texas.  Happy Cooking Pete and Meredith!