Seachest Project, Chapter One

We are on deadline at Sam Clark Design. Todd and Steve are getting a massively renovated schoolhouse ready for the owners to move back in in mid-June, That very day, I have to meet the ferry to Nantucket with a truck packed to the roof with a complete load of cabinets for a house named Seachest. Brad and Marcia's dad built the house in the 60s, and now it's getting a major renovation.

We've been talking about this project for about three years or so. Now the contractor is doing the heavy lifting, and Ian and I are working to get the cabinets done in time, trying to make sure we haven't forgotten anything – it's not that easy to run back to the shop from Nantucket.

Here is the floor plan.  We looked at several different layout ideas, and there were many versions of this one, adjusting the size of the passages around the island, the depths of counters, the centerline of the window and sink, trying to get as much storage and workspace out of the layout as possible, while leaving a very open feeling. I'm guessing there were fifty or more emails just getting this layout right. The first time around, this drawing looked great. After repeated erasures, it's looking tired. But it tells us a lot about what is going to be built. During all these discussions, of course, we've been talking about the “work centers”, what work gets done where. The area left of stove is the “primary prep area.” The sink (with its stone counters) is cleanup. The area by the fridge will be dish storage, small appliances, coffee making, and so on. The wood counter right of the sink is a secondary prep area.

Seachest plan: after fifty emails and 4 major revisions

But we're just getting started. Our projects use lots of drawers, and often open shelves. So next is to figure how each run of cabinets will get divided up in detail. For example, here is the fridge wall.

The fridge wall, after many revisions:

 

If you look closely at the drawing you can see the shadow of two or three previous versions of this run of cabinets. The middle bay is a pullout holding two large trash cans, trash and recycle. We think a lot about what goes in each drawer. Or, as we have worked for Brad, Marcia, and Marcia's husband Toby before, they have thought about exactly what goes in each drawer. For example, here is the final spec for Cabinet A.

Sea Chest cabinet contents and dimensions (4 May 2014)

Fridge wall

Base A width 17.75”(accuride)

4“ silverware

6” misc., food processor blades, small cans

8” Beans, pasta

8”++ onions, potato, etc. (or pots and pans)

If you take a cabinet that's 30.5” tall, and subtract for the top and bottom of the cabinet, the drawer bottoms and other clearances, you have about 26” of storage space to distribute between the four drawers. Since this is custom cabinetry, it's easy for us to give each drawer just the right interior capacity.

The upper shelves were discussed in similar detail. For example, that gadget on the counter, some sort of spritzer, require 18” clearance. Usually I make the uppers 16” up, but we made an adjustment here.

Basically the idea is for the design to reflect the Founding Truth of kitchen design: storage at point of first use.

We do a similar analysis for all the runs of cabinets. Here's the “sink wall.”

The sink wall: every drawer is sized for its intended contents:

 

This is another fifty emails or so, another four or five revisions, and any number of phone calls.

Why bother? Why couldn't a kichen be designed with only 25 emails and two revisions? This may seem excessive, but we think it leads to a kitchen that functions better, stores maybe 40% more stuff in a given space, and will be more fun and less work to use.

Getting back to the deadline problem, here's a photo of where we were as of the end of last week. We've assembled the L in the shop, so that Pat and Shane, who will make the stone counters, can come to the shop and template the counter shape and details. This is a crucial step. Usually the cabs get installed, then the counter people come to the site, do their templating, and three or four weeks later, as the family is eating their 30th pizza, they show up with the counter. We think it's possible to compress this schedule a lot with a little planning. When we install the base cabinets, the counters are already fabricated, and get installed within a day or two, only four or five pizza dinners later. In this case, since we're on Nantucket, our goal is install the base cabinets Tuesday and Wednesday, install the counters Thursday, then go fishing! We'll see about that! Stay tuned.