When you start to think about the kitchen for your new house, visit cabinet dealers, and tour furnished models, you’ll find that it’s easy to get seduced by a look—great cabinets! gorgeous floor tiles! love that granite!—and hard to stay on terra firma and pay attention to the details. In the end, though, the details will matter much more than the look. If the kitchen in your new house is not well laid-out and there’s not enough counterspace or cabinets, you will hate it every day you live there, even if everything looks terrific.

How do you get the right kitchen layout for you? With a custom-built house, you can design it yourself or work with the kitchen designer at the builder’s cabinet dealer. The latter course is advisable because certified kitchen designers know more about kitchen design, cabinets, countertops, and flooring than anyone else in the home-building business—in fact, many architects turn over some or all of the kitchen design to a kitchen designer. Their services will not cost any extra (their design fees are included in the cost of the cabinets), and with their input you will get a kitchen that is tailored to your cooking needs and your aesthetic preferences.

With a production-built house, a kitchen designer who works for the builder’s cabinet supplier will have laid out the kitchen. But it may not suit your needs, and the builder is unlikely to change anything. This means that you must look very carefully when touring model homes, and keep looking until you find a kitchen that works for you.

In either case, the more closely you evaluate your current kitchen and what you like and hate about it, the more likely you will know what you want in your new one. For example, do you have enough counterspace? Is your food prep area by the sink too small? Are you constantly criss-crossing your kitchen to load and unload your dishwasher or to get food from the refrigerator to prepare dinner by the sink?

Moving from the big picture of layout to the smaller one of details such as cabinets, countertops, appliances, and flooring, more functional considerations emerge. For example, do you cook on the run and dispense with a cutting board half the time? A countertop material like granite that won’t scratch might be in order. Is your current kitchen overflowing with cooking equipment? Base cabinets with roll-out trays and a large storage capacity could be your ticket. Do you stand for long periods cutting and chopping or stirring slow-cooking sauces over a stove? A more resilient flooring like wood or sheet vinyl will be easier on your feet than tile or slate.

Of course, looks do count, and you will spend plenty of time canvassing, comparing, obsessing about, and ultimately selecting cabinets, countertops, and flooring.

isitfunctional?

Whether you are building a custom house or buying one from a production builder, the best way to get an idea of how various layouts look and how you would work in them is to visit model homes. Kitchen cabinet dealers will have displays, but very few have complete kitchens. Visiting even two or three models will help you interpret the layouts and sketches drawn by the dealer’s kitchen designer.

When you start touring models, you find yourself drawn to the kitchen like a magnet. Home builders know that a gorgeous kitchen will sell a house, so it will be eye-catching. But, to reiterate: If there isn’t enough counterspace for food preparation or enough cabinets to store your things, you won’t be happy. So take off those rose-colored glasses and give the kitchen a hard look.

First, check out surface area. Is the food-preparation space adequate? If more than one person will be cooking at the same time, is there enough room for two people to work together comfortably? If you hand-wash some items and leave them out to air-dry, is there room on the counter for a dish rack? Or will you have to put away the rack before you can fix a meal?

The best way to answer these questions is to act out in pantomime how you will use the space. If you and your spouse pretend to prepare a meal and find that you keep bumping into each other, the kitchen is clearly too small. Though you may feel ridiculous as you go through this Marcel Marceau routine, the hands-on information you’ll collect will be invaluable.

As you field test the kitchen, make sure your imagined meal preparation includes all the appliances. A kitchen that is awkwardly arranged can be just as irritating as one that’s too small. The stove, sink, refrigerator, and adjacent work areas should be in reasonable proximity to one another so you don’t have to spend a lot of time criss-crossing the room to get a meal together.

A wall oven can be off to one side because you won’t spend much time at it, but a microwave should be convenient to the work area because the cook may be heating, defrosting, or otherwise using it for preparing the meal. The dishwasher should be close to the cabinet where dishes and glasses are kept, which should, in turn, be close to the daily eating area. The refrigerator should be close to both the food-prep area and the cabinet where dishes and glasses are kept. Because of its size, the refrigerator is frequently put in a far corner, causing endless unnecessary trips back and forth across the kitchen.

storage

Storage needs vary with lifestyle, but this will be another sore point if there isn’t enough. If the base-cabinet storage is inadequate, can you hang some pots and pans on the wall? If there isn’t enough wall-cabinet storage for dishes and plates, can you store the special-occasion plates in a dining-room buffet?

Adequate food storage depends on both your shopping and eating habits. Do you go food shopping once a week or every few days? Are your food preferences simple, or do you prepare meals with many pantry ingredients? If the kitchen has a pantry closet, the shelves must be at least twelve inches deep and twelve inches high to accommodate cereal boxes, but a twenty-four-inch depth will be more useful. If you buy cereal in bulk quantities, the shelf height should be eighteen inches.

lighting

Lighting is often overlooked because most buyers visit the model during broad daylight, when windows can flood the room with light. At night, however, you still need to see what you’re doing. Even if there is adequate general lighting, the counter areas can be dark and hard to work in. Under-cabinet lighting will eliminate this problem. If the builder doesn’t install these (and very few do), ask if he will install the wiring so you can add the lights yourself after you move in. A “slim line” type of fixture that fits in the recess under the cabinet box is more expensive, but it gives a kitchen a more finished look that makes the added cost worth it.

counter layout

There are many different types of counter arrangements, but most kitchen designers consider the galley-type to be the most efficient. With a single aisle and counters to either side, you only have to turn around to go from sink to cooking range.

As lifestyles have evolved and become more informal, however, more and more people want a kitchen with an eat-in area. In small houses, the galley-type kitchen has given way to the L-shaped counter. In this configuration, the appliance arrangement may be satisfactory. But make sure that the counter area is adequate for food preparation, especially if two people will be preparing food at the same time. Packing a sink, dishwasher, stove, and refrigerator into one L-shaped counter can also compromise base-cabinet storage, so check this too.

In larger houses, kitchens frequently have island counters. For an island to add function as well as style, it should be no more than forty-two inches from the main counters. If the island is too far away, it becomes awkward to reach, especially if the island has a cooktop. Buyers who want an island cooktop should make sure that the island is at least sixty inches long. With this length, you can get a fifteen-inch counter on each side of a standard thirty-inch range and have space for pot handles to overhang as well as a place to put bowls and utensils.

Staggering an island cooktop rather than placing it directly opposite the sink makes it easier for two people to work in the kitchen at the same time. Turning the island 45 degrees to create a triangle-shaped floor area between it and the adjoining counter also gives more space for two people to work, and is especially convenient when children are underfoot.

yourcookingstyle

The functionality test addresses the big picture. The second test, “does this kitchen mesh with my cooking style?” addresses the smaller issues that must be factored in so that you end up with exactly the right kitchen for you. What is your “cooking style”? The way you organize yourself when working in a kitchen (not the style of cuisine that you prefer).

After observing hundreds of clients work in their existing kitchens before designing them a new one, certified kitchen designer Jim Bingnear of McLean, Virginia, has concluded that there are basically two kinds of cooking styles: Type A and Type B. Type A tends to be more slapdash and cooks on the run, preparing an entire meal at one time—cutting up vegetables for a salad while stir-frying chicken while steaming rice and keeping an eye on dessert in the oven—and cleaning up afterward. The more fastidious Type B, in contrast, works at a slower pace, fixes dishes sequentially, and cleans as she goes, wiping up spills as they happen. The Galloping Gourmet is a classic example of Type A; Martha Stewart is clearly Type B.

Since Type A puts out all the food items, utensils, pots, and pans before she starts and does several things at once, she will require more counter area than Type B. But, Bingnear cautions, Type A will not be happy with ten-foot-long counters—her space needs to be constricted in some way so cleanup will not be odious. Since Type B cleans up as she goes, any kitchen will work, even one with a small food-prep area.

When assessing yourself, it’s important to be honest, even if it means admitting neatness is not your highest priority. Once you’ve determined your cooking style, factor it into your consideration of kitchen layout and your choices for materials, colors, and finishes—depending on your style, some will be more prudent choices than others.

With countertops, anything will work for Type B because she tends to be neater. A scratch-resistant material is not a must because she will reliably pull out a cutting board every time. Staining is not a problem because she cleans up every spill. A heat- and scorch-resistant material is not required either because she doesn’t put hot pots on a countertop.

Type A, however, should be more judicious in her choice of countertops. She is much more likely to put hot pans on the counter and to cut up food directly on the surface. And since she cleans up at the end, commonly used and frequently spilled household foods like mustard, grape juice, and tomato sauce will have already dried and stained.

Type A’s kitchen will look better over the long haul if her counters are made of a harder, more durable material such as Corian or granite. If these are not in the budget—and they can add several thousand dollars to a kitchen price—Type A should opt for a scratch- and stain-resistant plastic laminate such as Wilsonart’s Premium 90 or Pionite’s Crystal. The laminate should be a medium dark color with some pattern variation to camouflage scratches and smudges, Bingnear advises. Type A should ask the kitchen installer to rout out a sizable rectangle in the counter and insert a piece of Corian to use as a cutting surface.

Ceramic-tile countertops and backsplashes look nice, but the grout stains easily, no matter how quickly you mop up spills. To keep the stain problem under control, Bingnear advises using a bigger tile and a dark grout.

Cooking style should also be factored in when you select cabinet finishes and colors. White cabinets will suit neat and fastidious Type B, but the more impatient and messier Type A will not be happy because “the ketchup stains and the place where the tea bag splashed when you threw it toward the trash will show,” Bingnear says. In fact, one of the ways that he distinguishes neat from messy cooks is by their reaction to white cabinets. “When people come to my show room and say ‘white cabinets—I hate them, they show everything,’ I know they are Type A cooks.” Oak, maple, or cherry cabinets with a medium to dark stain are a wiser choice because these won’t show dirt and stains.

The right floor finish depends on both neatness and how many hours you spend over a hot stove. If you’re not going to clean up right away, get something in a medium color with a pattern, Bingnear suggested. If you spend a long time preparing meals, you need a soft flooring material such as wood or vinyl, rather than a hard one such as tile or slate. What’s the difference? Hard materials have less capacity to absorb any impact. Your back and leg muscles will get sore more easily because the floor won’t absorb much impact from normal body movements; also, things dropped are more likely to break. If you like to spend a long time preparing gourmet meals, think twice about that gorgeous Sautillo Mexican tile.

cabinets

When you start to zero in on the details, the first will certainly be the cabinets—the biggest-ticket item in any kitchen, and the one that will have the most impact on its appearance.

cabinet grades

In your initial discussions with cabinet dealers and builders, you will often hear the terms stock, semi-custom, and custom, the three main divisions or grades of cabinets. There is much overlap between them; the only hard-and-fast distinction is price. Custom cabinets are the most expensive, stock are the least expensive, and semi-custom are in between.

With custom cabinets, the cabinet boxes are made with higher grade materials, the finishes are hand applied, there is a greater choice of wood species and stains, and the detailing is more refined. Most of the higher cost, however, is due to the custom factor—custom cabinets are made to order in any size requested.

With stock cabinets, there are fewer choices of wood species for the doors (but they can be stained to mimic other woods), fewer coats of finish, the finishes are machine applied, and less expensive materials are used for the boxes. But some stock cabinet lines now include features that were once the hallmark of custom cabinet makers, such as base cabinets with roll-out trays and solid-wood drawers with dovetail joints and under-mounted drawer glides (these are stronger drawers with a tonier look).

The critical distinction between stock and custom cabinets, however, is the sizing. Stock cabinets come only in fixed sizes, so there is less flexibility in designing a kitchen with them.

Semi-custom cabinets occupy an ill-defined gray area between the other grades. If the semi-custom cabinet is made by a stock cabinet maker, the semi-custom line will offer more wood species and finishes and more sizes. If the maker is a custom cabinet maker, its semi-custom line will have fewer features and finishes and there will be some limitation on the sizing.

Nearly all production-home builders use stock cabinets. Price is certainly a factor, but almost as important is the easy availability of stock cabinets. They can be delivered within one to three weeks of placing an order, whereas a custom or a semi-custom order generally takes eight to twelve weeks, at a minimum. For a home builder on a very tight schedule, as all production builders are, this is critical. If the wrong size or style is of a stock cabinet inadvertently ordered or delivered, the problem can be quickly rectified.

If you end up with stock cabinets, either because you are working with a production builder or because your budget dictates it, don’t feel that you are unduly compromising. Over the last fifteen years, the quality of stock cabinets has vastly improved in appearance, detailing, and durability. In fact, stock cabinets may be the most sensible choice for anybody regardless of budget. Do you really care about the costlier hand-applied finishes or ball-bearing drawer glides that are standard issue with any custom line?

doors

Once you’ve dealt with the preliminaries, you can jump into the fun part: looking at specific lines and door styles. Custom and semi-custom lines offer the most choices in the doors, but stock lines also offer enough to keep you lying awake at night.

Broadly speaking, there are two door styles: completely flat, which is a contemporary look, or with a panel that can be raised or flat, which is a traditional look. In either style, most doors are wood. With stock cabinets, the least expensive wood door will have a single flat panel of veneered plywood; this is the standard door for many production builders. A medium-priced stock door will have a raised panel that is veneered wood over particleboard. The most expensive stock door will have a solid wood panel; these look and wear the same as the others, but you will still know the difference.

With semi-custom and custom cabinets, the wood doors will be solid wood. Their flat-paneled doors can have more panels on the front as well as more refinements that give it particular style.

The flat-paneled door is fine for a bathroom, but in a high-use area such as a kitchen, you should upgrade to a raised panel if possible. The increased thickness of the door gives it more strength and rigidity, a plus for households with small children who often hang on the base cabinet doors.

The size of the cabinet doors will affect both price and appearance. Larger doors and drawers that cover the front of the cabinet box when they’re closed are more expensive. The difference is subtle, but it can give a traditional look a more contemporary feel. With standard door and drawer sizes, the front of the cabinet box is partially exposed when the doors are closed.

Nearly all stock cabinet lines offer oak, maple, hickory, cherry, and vinyl-wrapped white doors. At the semi-custom level, birch and poplar doors are also available, and white doors are lacquered, an expensive process that gives a more refined look; the number of stains, which can affect appearance dramatically, also increases. At the custom level, tropical hardwoods such as teak and mahogany are also possible. Nearly all cabinet lines offer wall cabinets with glass doors, which will add an upscale look if your dishes, cups, and glassware match.

Though rarely shown in model homes or offered by production-home builders, most stock cabinet lines offer accessories such as dental molding that give a stock cabinet a more customized look. You can get these when you order the cabinet or install them yourself after you move in. To check the possibilities, look at the cabinet maker’s website.

Before you make your final decision on the doors, try to see an entire kitchen with the ones you have selected, even if this requires some effort: Ask the cabinet dealer if you can see a completed job of a former client, or ask the builder if you can see the finished house of someone who got them. This is especially important if you want a dark wood or stain, because dark cabinets will make a kitchen appear darker and smaller than you expect. (See Resources for websites of major stock and semi-custom cabinet makers.)

storageandfunctionality

When most people talk about choosing a cabinet, what they are really talking about is choosing a cabinet door style. But the storage capacity behind the doors—and often within the drawers—will matter more in the long run than what the doors look like.

A trip to a cabinet dealer’s showroom will be helpful. You will see a tempting array of gizmos, including a drawer that pulls out to an ironing board, or a door that swings open to reveal a tea cart on wheels. These options mainly serve to liven up the display, since few people ever buy them. Nestled in among the various options, however, you will find some truly useful ones. For example, narrow pull-out cabinets designed to fit in the gaps between cabinets. As you look, check out the drawers and the base cabinets, the areas that deliver the most utility of any kitchen storage element, with recent refinements that make these basics even easier to use.

A drawer is still a drawer, but mounting the glides underneath instead of on the sides can add as much as one inch to the interior width. Multiplied across an entire kitchen, it’s a significant increase in storage capacity. Besides the added utility, many designers think a drawer with the concealed glides looks better. When drawer glide extensions are added to large drawers, they can be pulled out all the way, so large items in the back can be easily accessed.

Base cabinets with vastly increased storage capacity are much easier to use, thanks to roll-out trays that function like pullout shelves. Instead of having to take out everything at the front to get the pot at the back, you just pull out the tray and grab the item. The storage capacity is greater because each tray is the full depth of the cabinet; in a traditional base cabinet with fixed shelves, the upper one is only half the depth of the cabinet.

The roll-out trays have proved to be so useful and flexible that tall cabinets with roll outs have all but replaced that quintessential eighties gizmo—the swing-out chef’s pantry. The swing-out units had shelves that could be loaded on either side, plus shelves mounted in the rear of the cabinet and on the doors. Though it looked like a great addition to any kitchen, in fact many homeowners (including me) complained that the shelving system wasn’t flexible enough for the varied sizes of goods being stored. We wanted to be able to see things at a glance instead of having to swing out one or two units to find that errant can of tomato sauce, and items stored on the doors often flew off whenever the cabinet was opened. Not only do the roll-out trays solve all these problems, they’re also much less expensive than the swing-out chef’s pantry.

The sides of the roll-out trays are usually only two or three inches high, so that everything on a shelf can be seen easily. When ordering custom cabinets that can be made to any size, however, certified kitchen designer Ronda Royalty of McLean, Virginia, watches her clients prepare a meal before finalizing this dimension. “If they tend to yank things, I make the trays deeper to keep things from flying off. And if liquor and wine bottles are being stored in the cabinet, I make a much deeper tray with dividers to keep bottles from clanging against each other.”

Trash compactors, another hot gizmo in the seventies and eighties, are close to being history now. “They get smelly and disgusting and we observed a high breakdown rate,” noted certified kitchen designer Jeff Adler of Los Angeles. His low-tech solution for trash and recycled items: a base cabinet with two hampers on glides. A second recycling cabinet with a newspaper collector can be added, but Adler said he rarely specifies it because it’s not a good use of the space. Most kitchens do not have any base-cabinet storage to spare, and newspaper collecting is one recycling activity that does not need to be near a food-preparation area.

blind corners

There is one place in a kitchen where a souped-up gizmo-laden cabinet is appropriate: a blind-corner condition. This is the area under the counter where the two legs of an L-shaped counter intersect; a blind corner cannot be accessed unless a special cabinet is used. The oldest and cheapest solution is a cabinet with a fixed shelf and a door at one end. In many cases, the only way to retrieve the pots in the back is to crawl in with a flashlight.

A better solution is a lazy Susan cabinet with two shelves that rotate around a metal pole. This type of cabinet is comparatively large and limits the other types of cabinets that can be used with it. Some designers think the pole itself takes up too much space. Functionally, the lazy Susan is better suited to heavier objects such as casserole dishes and mixing bowls. When light objects such as cereal boxes and Tupperware are stored in it, they can easily fall off and get caught in the back of the cabinet box.

In some situations, especially small kitchens, a newer type of lazy Susan with half-moon-shaped shelves will work. These are rotated out and then pulled forward, so that everything on the shelf is easy to reach. This type of cabinet is also more compact, giving a designer more flexibility in choosing the other cabinets and drawers to go with it.

Adler’s choice of a blind-corner cabinet could have been designed by Rube Goldberg. When the cabinet door is pulled straight out, two large wire trays attached to it are accessible. Swinging the door with trays to the side pulls forward two more shelves that were hidden in the corner. Referred to by many in the cabinet business as “the miracle corner,” the swinging-tray mechanism is made by Häfele, a German company, and used by a number of custom cabinet makers in the United States.

Kraftmaid, a semi-custom cabinet line, makes a less expensive and less sophisticated “base blind with swing out” version of the miracle corner. A wood pantry unit pulls out and swings to the side. To access the two shelves in the blind corner, the user has to reach in and pull them forward. (See Resources for information on blind-corner cabinets.)

very narrow pullout cabinets

For narrow gaps between cabinets that would otherwise have been covered over with a fixed filler strip, a number of cabinet lines now offer three- and six-inch-wide pull-outs. Though an intriguing concept, designers generally give these mixed reviews. The three-inch wide pullouts with narrower one-and-a-half-inch-wide shelves are meant for spice storage, but most people prefer to keep spices in a tiered drawer or in a wider ten-inch pullout that will also hold larger items frequently used in a cooking area such as cooking oil, flour, sugar, and even paper towels.

appliance garages

Appliance garages for small appliances are still popular, but further refinements will make these more useful. By installing outlets in the rear of the garage compartment, the chef only has to pull the appliance out to use it. Closing it with two doors that swing open instead of a slatted, sliding tambour door means that no space inside the compartment is lost to the opening mechanism, and thus larger items can be stored.

Despite the many advances in cabinetry, however, kitchen clutter continues to bedevil designers as much as it does homeowners. The unfortunate truth is that no matter how many catch-all drawers you add, there’s always more stuff to store.

drawer bases only

In nearly all kitchens, most of the storage units below the counters are base cabinets. But this is not fixed in stone. In fact, many kitchen designers now recommend a storage system below the counters that consists almost entirely of drawers. The reasons: A drawers-only storage system can be more precisely tailored to individual needs and it is easier to use than base cabinets.

The biggest plus is the convenience. When you pull out a drawer, you can see everything in it at a glance, and you can easily reach the items at the back. With base cabinets, even the ones with roll-out shelving, you need to move things around to get what you want, then rearrange things before you can push the shelf back in. If you don’t push the shelf in all the way, the cabinet door can crack when you try to shut it. Another advantage is the drawers are easier to open and close than base cabinets, which require you to open both doors before you can pull out the shelves.

Though some clients are initially skeptical that the drawers will meet their needs, certified kitchen designer Debby Saling of Beltsville, Maryland, said they become convinced when she demonstrates that a full set of frying pans and saucepans will fit in the bottom two drawers of an eighteen-inch drawer base. Because drawers have so much capacity, she always recommends them for small kitchens.

Another benefit is that the design can be customized to a degree that is impossible with base cabinets, even in a very large kitchen. For example, one drawer can be allocated to Tupperware, one to saucepans, one to frying and omelette pans, and one to casserole dishes. This can be further fine-tuned by adding dividers to individual drawers, creating smaller compartments. For example, adding a divider to a twenty-four-inch-wide drawer can create an eighteen-inch-wide compartment for saucepans or Tupperware and a six-inch-wide compartment for tops or lids. This system is especially useful for casserole lids, often the hardest items to store. For the occasional client who wants a kitchen with no wall cabinets, kitchen designer Jim Bingnear has used dividers in drawers to create square compartments for stacking plates or slots for vertically storing them and smaller “stalls” for mugs and cups.

Even when clients see the increased utility of using the drawer system, some of them worry that the weight of their pots and pans will break the drawer, Saling noted. The affected part would not be the drawer, but the drawer glide and almost all drawer glides are designed to hold seventy-five pounds. A whole set of pots and pans—even a set heavy-duty cast-iron ones—wouldn’t weigh that much.

drawer widths

Though it’s possible to get drawer bases as narrow as twelve inches, they’re not very useful. The inside width of the drawer itself will be less than eight inches, so what you end up with is essentially a stack of cubby-hole drawers for tchotchkes. If the counter width for a drawer base goes to less than fifteen inches, most designers specify a tray-divider base cabinet. Even a fifteen-inch-wide drawer base is not that useful, so most designers try to keep the drawer widths to at least eighteen inches. The upper bound for drawer width is thirty-six inches; if a drawer was wider than that, it could be loaded with more than seventy-five pounds, which could break the glides.

Even with all the utility of the drawers, however, it’s still a good idea to include a base cabinet in your kitchen to accommodate the awkward-sized pot or the one or two pieces of large cookware that you will inevitably accumulate.

Although Saling usually works with custom and semi-custom cabinetry, she has also designed drawer-bases-only kitchens with the same stock cabinet lines that many production builders use. Most production builders have not yet caught up with this trend, but an adventurous few may be willing to consider it, especially if they sense that other buyers may also want it and you are willing to be the guinea pig. If your production builder gives it a green light, you will have to work with the kitchen designer at his cabinet supplier to redesign the kitchen. Your new design will slow down the builder’s installers, because when they install the same or very similar kitchens over and over they can do it quickly. So you may have to pay an additional charge to cover the longer installation time; you will also have to pay a surcharge for the drawer bases, which cost more than base cabinets.

If you can work through all the logistics with your builder so that you get the drawer-bases-only kitchen in your new house, you’ll be happier with the end result, Saling predicted. In her experience, the planning of a kitchen with drawers forces clients to think through exactly what’s needed. With base cabinets, storage specifics do not have to be spelled out so precisely, and something can be overlooked.

countertops

If the cabinets are the first thing you notice when you walk into a kitchen, the countertops are the second. So, naturally, you want ones that look good. There are also practical considerations such as durability and price to consider. But as you wade into this subject, you will find that for each material the number of choices is huge, and each one has its pluses and minuses. If you’re already losing sleep over the cabinets, this could worsen your insomnia.

You can get real stone such as granite or marble. Or the hot new thing—a stone-synthetic composite that is mostly quartz particles mixed with a binder. Or you can get a 100 percent synthetic solid surfacing material such as Corian. There are more than a hundred different granite stones to choose from, at least fifty marbles, and Corian is available in more colors and textures than ever—eighty-three at last count. So far, the manufacturers of the stone-synthetic mix offer a modest selection that numbers about forty.

Many new kitchens these days have open wine racks. But unless you plan to drink the wine right away or you want the bottles just for looks, you’re better off getting another cabinet for general storage in place of this rack, and relocating your wine somewhere else in your house. The quickest way to ruin a good bottle of wine is to expose it to heat for any period of time. This accelerates the chemical reactions within the bottle and causes the wine to age prematurely. The dishwasher and stove put out heat when they’re turned on; a frost-free refrigerator belches it continuously; the sunlight streaming through big kitchen windows to create a cheery atmosphere—another thing you probably want in your new home—also affects wine adversely, hence the dark bottles. Too much heat will make wine undrinkable, in extreme cases turning it into vinegar.

If the kitchen is not a place to keep your wine, where should you put it? Basically the darkest, coolest place in your house. Wine keeps best when stored at a constant temperature of 55 degrees and a constant humidity of about 70 percent. It’s not for nothing that those French châteaux with dank, dark depths produced some of the world’s best wines. With those storage conditions, the naturally occurring chemical reactions in the bottle happen very slowly, and the taste noticeably improves over time.

Without building a wine cellar, few homeowners can approach the château ideal, but most people can find some place that will work. If you live in an area of the country where basements are common, put your wine there. Just make sure that you put it next to the earth and away from the furnace, water heater, or sun-exposed wall, advised wine storage specialist Jim Mackey of San Francisco, who stores his own wine in his basement.

If you live in a part of the country where virtually no one has basements, such as Florida or Southern California, an interior closet will do, as long as it’s not next to a heating duct, a hot-water heater, or a washer and dryer. Since the temperature at the floor level is always cooler, you should put the wine on the floor of the closet rather than on an upper shelf.

To keep the corks from drying out, the bottles should be stored on their sides. The easiest way to store them this way is to repack them into the type of wooden cases they were originally shipped in. You can get these for free at most wine stores, especially during the holidays.

While wine can be kept in a wine cellar for years, how long can you leave it in the basement or closet without ill effect? For a basement, two or three years is certainly reasonable. For a closet, though, the time horizon is considerably shorter. The general consensus is about a year; after that you’re tempting fate.

Wine-storage specialist Gene Walder of San Marcos, California, used to keep a couple of cases of wine in a dark interior closet. This worked well, but he didn’t let it sit more than six months. He now keeps it in a small wine cooler with consistent temperature and humidity control that he installed when he renovated his kitchen. The unit, which is about the size of a trash compactor, fits under his kitchen counter and holds twenty-four bottles. Larger units that hold as many as forty-eight bottles and are about the size of a dishwasher are also available. If you have a case or two of wine in your closet now, you already have a strong interest in wine. So Walder’s solution to the storage issue might be appropriate for your new kitchen.

For further information on wine-storage options, ask your local wine merchant or local wine-storage specialists. (See Resources for website addresses.)

All of these products could look terrific in a kitchen. Price might seem the easiest basis for a decision, but within each category, the majority of the choices fall roughly within the same price range, about $100 to $150 per linear foot of counter, installed (some materials are less than this, and some are considerably more). The least expensive countertop material, by a significant margin, is plastic laminate, but that won’t make the choices any easier. The four major manufacturers—Wilsonart, Formica, Nevamar, and Pionite—each offer more than a hundred colors and patterns.

Practicality might be a reason to pick one material over another, but none of these products is trouble-free. Some of them scratch easily, some require periodic resealing, and all of them will stain if food spills—especially such common staining agents as mustard, red wine, or strawberries—are left to dry for any period of time. With effort, though, you can usually get the stains out. The only fool-proof countertop material that absolutely won’t stain, whose scratches are inconsequential, and that’s a cinch to maintain is stainless steel. But then your kitchen will look like a hospital lab.

If you don’t want the laboratory look and you’re not the fastidious type who will clean up spills right away or dependably pull out a cutting board every time, practicality dictates that you pick a darker color with a mottled surface so that stains, scratches, and general wear and tear won’t show as much, whatever countertop material you get.

granite

The number of granite choices available to you will depend on where you buy it. Home-center stores such as Home Depot sell only about fifteen stones. Many production builders now offer granite countertops as an upgrade, but they need to keep things simple when building ten or twenty houses at a time, so they offer at most four or five choices.

The granite fabricators who cut the large stone slabs into kitchen-counter-sized pieces usually sell forty or more different stones, with a wide range of textures and subtleties that increase with price. For example, Luna Pearl, which is offered by many production builders, is a light-colored stone with large black, white, and gray flecks. It looks the same when seen from near or far or under different lighting conditions, and it is among the least expensive granites; the installed price of a countertop is about $75 a linear foot (on a par with a base-grade Corian). At the other end of the granite price scale is Blue Pearl, a smoldering dark gray stone with large translucent chips that give it depth; different lighting conditions affect its appearance. Blue Pearl runs about $175 to $200 a linear foot, installed.

The color range with granites is wide, but it is a natural material, and there can be marked irregularities within one countertop. The degree of variation will not be evident on a small four-by-four-inch sample, but even the most homogenous-looking granites can have large, dark, amorphous areas of discoloration. To avoid any unpleasant surprises, you should visit the fabricator and pick out your slab yourself. If possible, bring along samples of the flooring and cabinetry you’re considering to make sure that all three work together. You may find that you still like the countertop, but want to rethink the other two. Or you may serendipitously discover a granite among the fabricator’s stock which was not included on your builder’s sample board that you like better, and you may decide to rethink your whole kitchen.

Although granite is regarded by many as simply an upscale look, it is surprisingly practical. It is nearly impossible to scratch or damage the surface with a hot pan. As the literature says, you need to use a cutting board to protect your cutlery, not the granite. Granite is a porous stone, however, and it will stain if not sealed regularly. Even with the sealing, it will still stain if spills are not cleaned up promptly; but the sealing makes the stains easier to remove. The initial sealing will be done by the fabricator who cuts the slab to your specifications. Thereafter, you will need to reseal it about once a year, though in heavy-use areas, around the sink and cooktop, you may need to reseal it more often. The telltale sign it’s time for this is when water stops beading on the surface and leaves a darker spot if you let it sit for a minute or so.

marble and limestone

Marble is softer than granite. It scratches easily, so a cutting board is a must. And certain food spills will affect the finish. A polished-marble surface has a rich look, but common acidic foods such as lemon juice, red wine, and tomatoes will eat through the polish and leave dull patches if they’re not wiped up right away. A honed-marble surface with a matte finish may not look quite as rich, but it will not be affected by acidic food spills. With either type of finish, though, the marble will stain if foods are left on it, and this will show more with a lighter stone color. As with granite, marble must be regularly resealed.

If you’re after an Old World look, another possibility is honed limestone. But it has all the problems of marble: It is a soft stone, it scratches easily, it will stain if food spills are left to dry on, and because it is a light cream color, the stains will show more. Limestone must also be periodically resealed.

Because marble and limestone can be problematic in a kitchen, many stone fabricators discourage their use, and some insist that you sign a waiver before they will install it. Marble countertop prices range from about $50 to $200 per linear foot, installed; the honed limestone runs about $100 to $150 per linear foot, installed.

the stone-synthetic composites

The stone-synthetic composite—Corian’s Zodiac, Formica’s Crystalite, and Cosentino’s Silestone—are all made of about 90 percent quartz particles and 10 percent acrylic or epoxy binder. Some of the composites look like natural stone, but not one that you could identify. Others are so close to real granite that you’re left asking, “Is it real or is it Memorex?” And then there are the composites that you might describe as “improvements on mother nature”: If you’ve longed for the brilliance of quartz and the rich blue of lapis lazuli, Zodiac’s Celestial Blue or Silestone’s Cobalt Blue could be your ticket.

Since the composites are man-made materials, they do not have the unexpected variation of granite or marble. Nonetheless, you should still try to see a large piece at a countertop fabricator’s, because making a selection from a small, four-by-four-inch sample is difficult. When you go, try to bring along the flooring and cabinet samples as well.

The composites do not need to be sealed, and fabricators who work with them say they’re as scratch-resistant as granite. But they can stain if food spills are not cleaned up promptly, says Fred Hueston, director of the National Training Center for Stone and Masonry Trades.

Cystalite and Silestone countertops are similarly priced at about $110 to $160 per linear foot, installed. Zodiac prices are higher, ranging from about $120 to $250 a linear foot, installed. Since all three of these products are fairly recent market entries, their availability varies.

corian and the solid surfacing materials

The most widely available and widely known 100 percent synthetic countertop material is Corian, made by Dupont; but other manufacturers including Wilson Art, Formica, and Avenite also make it. Known in the building and remodeling industry as solid surfacing materials, these are either a pure acrylic product or a polyester-acrylic mix.

Some of the solid surfacing materials are solid colors, but most have flecks that give it a textured look. In some cases the look approaches real stone; in others, especially with the greens and reds, liberties have clearly been taken with nature.

When a solid surfacing material such as Corian is installed, no seams are visible; as a result, the counters look as if they were created just for your kitchen. If you get a Corian sink as well, you get a continuous unbroken surface as you go from counter to sink, and this adds to the “made just for me” look. All the solid surface materials feel like silk, and this adds to their cachet.

The solid surfacing materials are scratch-resistant; if you do get a scratch, you can sand it out. Should you get deep scratches or gouges, the damaged area can be removed and a new piece installed. If the new patch is made from the cut-out for your sink (the fabricator will give it to you), the repair will be invisible. Otherwise, the new piece will be from a different die lot, and the repair may show.

As a practical matter, it is difficult for the average homeowner to sand out scratches so that they don’t show, because most people lack the right sanding techniques and experience. Rather than trying to get out every scratch, you’re better off accepting the scratches as part of the patina, observed countertop fabricator John Murray of Washington, D.C. And Hueston has found that the solid surfacing materials will also stain if heavy staining agents such as mustard or strawberries are left to dry.

As with the other countertop materials, you should go to the fabricator who makes the countertops to see a large piece before making your final selection, and bring your cabinet and flooring samples along.

The price for solid-surfacing materials ranges from about $75 to $150 per linear foot of counter, installed.

plastic laminate

If the lower-priced granites, marble, or solid surfacing materials still exceed your budget, Formica, Nevamar, Pionite, and Wilsonart, the major manufacturers of plastic laminates, offer a very wide variety of colors, patterns, and finishes. Some, such as Pionite’s polished Olive Organix, look like polished granite. When an Olive Organix countertop is edged with wood, “no one can tell,” said one high-end builder in Florida who uses it when clients get in a budget crunch.

No plastic laminate is scratch-proof, but some—including Wilsonart’s Premium-90, Formica’s Sparkle, Pionite’s Crystal, and Nevamar’s Crystal—have subtly textured surfaces that are more scratch-resistant than a standard laminate matte finish. These are well suited for kitchen use, but they can also stain if you don’t clean up food spills promptly.

appliances

If you haven’t bought any of these in the last ten years, you’re in for a very pleasant surprise. Appliances today are easier to use, easier to clean, more energy efficient, quieter, and, to top it off, they look better.

electric ranges

The electric range has undergone the greatest transformation. You can still buy a range with electric coils, but now you also have the option of a glass-top one with radiant elements below the surface. Most glass-tops have at least one variable burner: Depending on how you turn the dial, a burner can accommodate a small pot or a large one (this is particularly advantageous if your spouse is forever putting small pots on the closest, large burner). Some models also have a “bridge burner”: a small burner wedged between two regular-sized ones, handy if you want to steam fish in an oblong pot. With the low-heat simmer feature for melting butter or making slow-cooking puddings or sauces, you can kiss that pain-in-the-neck double boiler good-bye forever.

When you turn off the glass-top, all models have a “hot surface warning light” that remains on until the surface cools. Another important plus with the glass-tops is cleaning them—you just wipe off the surface with a sponge or dishrag. If food cooks on, you remove it with a special cleaner.

Some of the coil ranges heat up faster than the glass-tops, but this type does not have a simmer feature or variable burner sizes. The coil-tops are not as easy to clean as the glass-tops, but modifications have made them easier to clean than the old ones. Instead of having to clean spillovers by removing the coil and drip pan and then reaching in and feeling your way around with a sponge, you lift up the stove top and support it with rods (just like lifting the hood of your car) while you clean underneath. More expensive coil ranges have porcelain drip bowls that are easier to clean—you can use a scouring pad without damaging the surface. They look better longer, so you won’t eventually be wrapping aluminum foil around them every week. Even better, one manufacturer makes a solid drip bowl without a hole at the bottom, so the spills are contained. As you compare different coil-top ranges, note the number of coils per burner. The lower-priced ones have fewer coils for each burner and they won’t heat up or cook as fast.

The thermostats in electric ovens are now much more accurate, so you’ll have to recalibrate your cooking times. The old ovens were “fast” or “slow” because the thermostats often varied by as much as 25 degrees.

Besides more accuracy in temperature, the major change in ovens is the convection option. A fan distributes heat equally around the food, allowing you to cook more things at once, to cook them more evenly, and to cook them a little faster. If you like to bake up a storm, you can cook several pies and cakes at a time. As yet, there’s no industry standard for what constitutes a convection oven. Some manufacturers provide only the fan but others have a third, concealed element that helps maintain a consistent temperature.

If you are working with a custom builder, you will be picking out the appliances yourself, and you can specify exactly what you want. If you are working with a production builder, the kitchen appliances will already be specified. If you stay with the same manufacturer that the builder is already using, but want to upgrade it, the builder should be able to get it from his distributor and credit you for the unit he would have ordinarily installed. For example, if the standard dishwasher is a GE Potscrubber (about $250), but you want a GE Profile to get the better cleaning features (about $400 to $500), he should charge you only the $150 to $250 difference. If you want to upgrade the builder’s standard refrigerator, which is likely to be a top-freezer model, to a side-by-side type, make sure that it will fit, as the side-by-sides tend to be wider.

Cited and actual oven capacity in new ranges can differ because the broiler element in some models can hang down. This could affect your ability to cook a twenty-pound turkey at Thanksgiving, so before you buy the stove, check carefully to see if your big bird will fit.

gas ranges

Gas cooktops have also changed, but not as radically as the electric ones. Almost all of them now have sealed burners that make clean-up easier because there’s no space for spills to seep below. You can adjust the cooking temperature with more precision on a gas burner than on an electric range, so many chefs prefer them. On the higher-priced gas cooktops, you can adjust the cooking temperature with even more precision, because the dials rotate 180 degrees instead of only 90.

The burners on a gas stove are all the same size, but they can vary in the amount of heat or BTUs that each one puts out. A lower-priced gas range may have burners with a maximum BTU output of only 9,600; the food won’t cook as fast, and stir-frying and sautéeing will take longer. Higher-priced ranges will have at least one burner that goes as high as 12,000 BTUs, and some professional ranges have burners that will go to 15,000 BTUs; but many of these do not have sealed burners or the self-cleaning ovens that are now common on residential ranges.

If you’re a chef who wants gas burners and an electric oven, dual ranges are available, but they are expensive. A residential dual range is about three times the price of a residential range that is either all-gas or all-electric. A commercial-grade dual range is about five times as much.

dishwashers

In the past, most dishwashers functioned as “final rinse and dry machines,” because you had to make sure all the food particles were removed before loading the dishes. Low-end dishwashers still have a limited cleaning ability, but at the mid-price level and up, dishwashers remove food, wash, rinse, and dry. The machines have an internal heater that gets the water hotter (it boosts the temperature to 135 degrees Fahrenheit; to prevent scalding, your hot-water heater should be set at 120 degrees) and a hard-food disposer. With this combination, you can take the dishes straight from the table and load them.

The mechanisms of these better-cleaning dishwashers include filters that catch food particles. American machines dissolve the food particles during the cleaning, but with European models, you must manually clean out the filter. If you scrape off the biggest food particles before loading the dishes, you need to clean the filter about once a month. By scraping off the biggest food particles before loading, you will also use less water and energy to clean the dishes (this is also true with American dishwashers). To conserve water even further, some machines have a soil sensor that detects how dirty the dishes are and adjusts the timer and amount of water accordingly.

Another difference between low- and mid-priced dishwashers is the quality of the racks. The ones in low-priced machines are clad with vinyl, a soft material that can chip or tear, causing the metal underneath to rust and break off. More expensive machines have racks made of nylon, a more durable material that is unlikely to break or tear.

Another plus with the mid-priced machines is that they have more insulation, so the machine is quieter while in operation.

refrigerators

The most significant changes to refrigerators are not ones that you will notice. They’re quieter and better insulated, and changes to the motor and compressor have greatly increased their energy efficiency. As of July 2001, as per federal mandate, they will be 30 percent more energy efficient than they were the year before, and 50 percent more efficient than they were in 1991. New refrigerators are also more environmentally friendly. The old chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants (CFCs) that were shown to be harmful to the ozone layer have not been installed in refrigerators since 1993. The hydrochlorofluorocarbon refrigerants (HCFCs) used today are a significant improvement. The hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) that will be phased in by the end of 2003 are even more environmentally benign.

The changes to refrigerators that you may notice are their larger size and increased storage capacity, better lit interiors, and in many models the shelves pull out so you can find the food more easily. One manufacturer even has a crank so you can raise or lower a shelf without having to remove everything first. Nearly all models now have glass shelves, but make sure that the ones on the refrigerator that you purchase are sealed at the edges. Otherwise you can have a small gap at the edge and spills will drip through.

energy star appliances

Another point to consider when choosing appliances is their energy efficiency. The Energy Star Program, jointly sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, rates both dishwashers and refrigerators. A refrigerator with the Energy Star sticker exceeds the federal standards for energy efficiency in refrigerators by at least 20 percent; a dishwasher with the sticker exceeds the federal standard by at least 13 percent.

Every major appliance manufacturer has a website listing all the appliances that they sell and “suggested retail prices.” However, the appliance business is very competitive, sales are frequent, and most dealers will match the price of a competitor.

The cabinets-countertop-flooring combination that you pick will make your kitchen uniquely your own. The opportunity to put a personal stamp on things, however, can be daunting. Are there any secrets to insuring a good result? You can get exactly what is in the builder’s furnished model, but so will half the other buyers. Or you can trust your instincts. Or take some expert advice. Two award-winning interior designers, Lita Dirks of Englewood, Colorado, and Susan Gulick of Herndon, Virginia, offer these tips:

♦ choosing colors: start with the cabinets. With white, both designers would pick contrasting colors for the rest of the kitchen. The actual materials will depend on your budget. If it is generous, try combining white cabinets, black-speckled Corian counters, and a mediumtone hardwood floor with a white and random black tile backsplash. If your budget is more limited, a similar effect can be achieved with white cabinets, black-speckled plastic-laminate counters, and a sheet-vinyl flooring with a warm faux-tile pattern. The tile backsplashes can add color and texture; they’re also practical. Though rarely standard, many production builders offer them as an upgrade.

♦ wood cabinets: You can have a light or dark wood that can be further refined with a stain. Most stains retain the look of natural wood. The ones that don’t—for example, bluish “indigo” or greenish “cypress”—will soon look dated. If resale is an important issue for you, go with a perennial favorite species and stain such as mid-toned red oak. Many people want wood cabinets and a hardwood floor to match, but both designers caution that this can be overwhelming. Moreover, with oak, it’s very hard to get a match between the cabinets and the floor that looks right because there is so much natural variation in the grain and color. If you just have to have that seamless wood look, maple cabinets and flooring are a better bet because maple has less grain and it’s easier to match. If your heart says it has to be an all-oak kitchen, stain the cabinets and floor different colors so that each enhances the other. For example, use a mid-tone oak that is slightly reddish for the cabinets, and then go darker on the floor. That way you will get enough differentiation that it won’t look like a mistake.

♦ countertop color: As with the white cabinets, the color of the countertops and flooring should contrast with the wood cabinets. If you pick a darker wood, go with a lighter counter and floor, or vice versa. If you get a darker-colored plastic-laminate counter, get one with speckles to hide fingerprints and scratches.

♦ countertop texture: When choosing countertop material, try to select something that will add another texture. With tile floors, get plastic laminate—generally a production builder’s standard countertop finish—or Corian. With wood floors, do the reverse and get tile counters. With a sheet-vinyl floor, any type of counter finish will add variety.

♦ cabinet color: A darker color will make the space feel smaller—a dark cabinet and a dark floor can make it positively claustrophobic. Conversely, a light cabinet and a light floor will make the kitchen feel larger.

♦ floor color: If you really love dark wood and hanker for blue floor tiles, this can work if the kitchen has a large window or two that floods the room with natural light, and you can add extra lights to brighten up the kitchen at night. Even with this, though, the space will still feel smaller than it will with the lighter cabinets and flooring.

♦ an all-white kitchen: White will make the space feel bigger, but you can easily end up with a sterile laboratory look. If you really want white, soften it by including almond or bisque, a near almond color currently favored by appliance manufacturers. For example, mix white cabinets and appliances with almond or bisque counters, and a ceramic tile checkerboard pattern with alternating white and almond squares for the floor.

♦ inexpensive color: To add a dash of color on a low budget, get a different color for an island counter—for example, the same color as some of your furnishings or one that is found within the design of the vinyl floor. Since the counter area of the island is small, you can afford to change it more often than you would an entire kitchen. An even simpler way to add color to a kitchen is replacing the cabinet knobs. Most standard knobs are white or brass, but home-center stores offer them in many bright colors.

♦ color cohesion: If you’re using sheet vinyl for the floor, take advantage of the color highlights in the material to unify the kitchen. For example, you can tie white cabinets and black counters together with a white vinyl that has a black diamond pattern, a classic look that never gets old. A vinyl pattern with the same color base as the carpet will make for a smooth transition from the carpeted area to the kitchen.