Life of Brian

Yesterday we visited the Aiken Lowe’s to see what kind of kitchen cabinet displays they had setup. We also wanted to get some ideas about counter tops and floor tiles to coordinate with our already selected back splash tile.

So the first order of business was to head to flooring and pick up an example of the back splash tile we feel in love with at the Lowe’s in North Augusta. When we found it, it looked dull and lifeless, then I peeled off the plastic wrapper and the look dramatically improved. It was like they were two different sets of tiles.

Over to the Kitchen Cabinet area and maybe the third display we see, we both go, “That’s it.” We found what we wanted & liked. All of our cabinet questions were answered. Style: Breckenridge, check. Wood: Maple, check. Finish: Spice, check. Hardware: Satin Nickel Flat Pull, got it. We even liked the counter top, it was something quartz, might have been this or something close to it. The whole setup even looked nice with the bare concrete store floor leading us to pick out some gray tile with brown accenting.

The only fly in the ointment was our favored back splash choice looked way out of place in this setup. The standard 4″ counter top material back splash looked just fine. So I walked over to the shelf where we had found it and put it back on top. About three steps away I heard a crash behind me. The tile had slid right off the shelf and self destructed on the floor, I kept on walking.

Today when I called the cabinet designer at the North Augusta Lowe’s to set up our follow up appointment I was excited to let him know we had picked the cabinets we wanted. When I told him what the style was he said, “The flat front drawers in that style are also available in a 5 piece option. Plus this month, you can get the premium Coffee Glaze as a no-cost option.”

Will the choices never stop?

We spent an hour or so with the contractor discussing the kitchen remodeling on Friday evening. He talked us out of rash and radical knocking down of walls or opening doors to other rooms which would have been expensive and of real little value. He did talk us into granite counter tops, tile floors instead of wood and moving the refrigerator to the back wall. He left with a sketch and measurements with the promise of an estimate in the future.

We spent almost 2-1/2 hours in Lowe’s of North Augusta on Saturday afternoon, broken up by a brief lunch break, with a guy designing cabinets. He had already worked some stuff out after having talked to us, but because we opted to move the fridge, that wall had to be redesigned right off the bat. Then we had to change all the other walls because of the moved refrigerator and he had something to the left of the stove that we didn’t want there. When we were almost finished Donna realized that there weren’t any real draws anywhere, so we shuffled a bunch thing around all over again.

We worked from a default style and color to build the layout and at the very end we tossed some semblance of a counter top on the thing so we could see a computer generated rendition of our new kitchen. Exhausted and with our heads spinning we left it with the designer going to send us a screen shot of the design and we promised to come back later next week.

Lowe’s carries about a half dozen lines of cabinets and we were building from the Shenandoah catalog. They have about a dozen styles of doors to choose from and each style can be made out of 4 kinds of wood. Each kind of wood has anywhere from 6 to 12 finishes. Hardware is included and there must be 10 or so styles of pulls and handles each available in 4 finishes.

Add to that there are about 15 color/styles of granite to choose from and then there is something on the order of a hundred color/styles of tile for the floor. How does one choose from all that?

The contractor said pick the granite counter top first and build from there. The design guy says pick the cabinets and work from that. We have chosen the color glass tile we like for the back splash and are trying to match up the other stuff from that…