Anyone can do a normal color session Part 3: Assembling the kitchen
The most difficult topic was probably the kitchen, because American kitchens are a bit old-fashioned in our eyes. We also don’t like the country house style, which is characterized by lots of framing, earth tones, scroll handles, etc. So modern house looking for modern kitchen, preferably high-gloss, but not white, because we already had a white kitchen in Germany. Even though the kitchen will be installed last, we felt early on that we should take care of it.
We couldn’t even begin to find what we were looking for at our builder’s source, which only had American-style kitchens. It wasn’t a problem for him, we should look around for alternatives. We did most of this online and also at a local kitchen supplier. We discovered that high-gloss fronts are very expensive and would probably exceed our builder’s budget.
When we told him about our fruitless search, he recommended that we go to the DIY store . Buying a kitchen at a DIY store wasn’t really an option for us. But we took a look at the kitchens at Lowes and Home Depot – can’t hurt – and found what we were looking for. We opted for a two-tone kitchen. We chose white shaker fronts for the wall cabinets and blue high-gloss fronts for the kitchen island to go with the bluish quartz worktop – rattling hot!
Perplexity when putting together a kitchen
One Saturday, we put together our kitchen with a friendly and very knowledgeable, sprightly lady who was well over 70 years old. The result was a price that we thought was quite expensive, but after all, American kitchens are made entirely of wood and are very solidly built. We proudly presented the quote to our builder, who literally threw up his hands and said that the budget had been exceeded by about twice the amount. Of course, you can always pay the difference as an upgrade, but who wants to do that?
Once again, we looked for blue high-gloss fronts on the Internet and locally. They were available, but the price – if you could get one at all – always brought us back down to earth. Incidentally, this research gave us the feeling for the first time that none of the local suppliers in this area needed to make money. Getting offers after visits was mostly a non-starter.
At some point, we were so annoyed that we opted for a white American-style version from our builder partner. After all, we don’t have to pay anything extra and the kitchen is made entirely of wood. The quartz top we chose would give the furniture a modern touch. We were happy, but things turned out very differently much later.