Beautiful traditional kitchen design in Saguaro Highlands area of Scottsdale.
LocationScottsdale, AZ
Zipcode85266
Year Completed2015
Kitchen DesignerJosh Hunt
Description
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Full Description
Warm traditional kitchen design with a full Travertine wall to set the overall tone. We wanted the cabinets to pop, so we kept the granite, floors and back splash light, and used sage with black glazed custom cabinets and darker glass tile for contrast.
Why
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Why
Once upon a time, two married, middle-aged, working professionals came home to kitchen completely flood from a broken pipe. Of course, they weren’t happy about this, but money wasn’t an issue so they decided they’d make lemons out of lemonade by completely remodeling their kitchen.
How
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How To Start
Because the damage was so extensive, they needed to replace everything (cabinets, countertops, floors and backsplash). They had a few ideas of things they liked but had no idea where to even begin.
Our Process
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Our Process
Within five minutes of our first meeting I knew what our first priority needed to be. We needed to help the Benson’s take a deep breath and realize that getting a new kitchen should be fun- and that it was all going to work out. Our next priority…prove it!
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- Identify Constants & Changes – The potential changes include: cabinets, countertops, floors, appliances and backsplash. We need to know what’s changing for replacements and we need to know what’s staying the same so that the replacements match. If the floors aren’t changing it really doesn’t make sense to pick cabinets that don’t match the current floors. You’d think this should be obvious, but you’d be surprised.
- Define Style Genre & Design Preferences – That sounds like it would involve a series of complicated questions which require a design degree to answer accurately, but not so. We can learn everything we need to know by helping you make just two simple decisions.
- First, pick a cabinet door style. This tells me volumes about your preferred design genre.
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- Second, pick a cabinet color. This sets the color palette for the rest of the project.
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- Knocking out these two choices helps us hit the ground running and makes every other decision easier because they all build upon one another. We carry five different manufacturers ranging from import cabinets at very competitive pricing up to fully custom cabinets (best quality, but at a much higher price). Each manufacturer is chosen to fill a specific need and together they allow us to offer the full range of what is available in the marketplace.
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- The goal is for every client to find their dream kitchen, regardless of budget constraints.
- In the Benson’s case there were no budget constraints so they quickly skipped over any budget options and went straight to semi-custom (mid range pricing) and full custom (high end pricing) cabinets.
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- Eventually we narrowed it down to two different doors. Their tastes were very traditional so both doors were raised panel, warm wood tone with dark glaze. In fact, both doors were so similar they were even difficult to tell apart; that is, until you examine the cost. The full custom kitchen cost about $10,000 more than the semi-custom.
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- Their next question is exactly what yours would be: Is the full custom really worth paying that much more? The short answer is yes, but they weren’t asking a yes or no question, they were asking a value question. They were asking: Is full custom really better for me? The answer to that is a much more subjective one. The unique thing about this project is the fact that money was no issue.
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- The
price for both custom and semi-custom
- were both well within the client’s budget, so their choice wasn’t whether or not they could afford the upgrades, it was whether or not they valued those upgrades enough to pay $10,000 more for them. In the Benson’s case the answer was no. They could see the custom nicer, it just wasn’t $10,000 nicer to them. (pic: different doors, josh in design meeting)
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- Build a Design Board – Once a cabinet door and color are picked we have a foundation to start building on, so the next step is to build a design board…(a fancy way of saying choose floors, counters and backsplash that match cabinets and lay it all out for the client to see).
The Bensons picked the Savanno Drift Wood with Glaze, semi-custom door; a very traditional choice.Now finding floors and countertops is simply a matter of focusing on only the materials that fit well with that cabinet.With traditional that means warm, rich colors and natural stone. For countertops we focused on granite and travertine for floors and both were picked inside of 10 minutes. Once the dominoes start it’s amazing how fast they fall!
- Do the Design – Now the design board is built and crucial decisions have been made; now it’s just a matter of plugging it al into the design.
- Virtual Walkthrough – Show the design from every angle and virtually walk through the entire project so the client can see/choose their dream kitchen without needing to use their imagination.
- Build a Design Board – Once a cabinet door and color are picked we have a foundation to start building on, so the next step is to build a design board…(a fancy way of saying choose floors, counters and backsplash that match cabinets and lay it all out for the client to see).
Conclusion
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Conclusion
We don’t run into many projects where money and/or budget isn’t one of the major decision making factors. That lack of financial concern kept the clients focus 100% on the value/quality of the product alone. You’d thing that, all things being equal, most would take the nicer product simply because it’s nicer, but the Bensons didn’t do this. Instead of just opting with “nicer,” they went with a product that gave them everything they wanted and nothing they didn’t…what more could anyone ask for?
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