5 "must-have" kitchen/bath organization items

Serenity now! Even if you didn't grow up watching Seinfeld (like I did) I think you can appreciate my cry for help. The apartment walls are closing in on me!!

First, I would like to make the disclaimer: the size of the apartment is fine, it's two bedroom, one bath with a big enough room for our king size bed, no complaints there. It doesn't bother me that our roommate is an 8 foot long window. Even the one bathroom is something we can live with (we have found that making your trips to the bathroom sound really pretentious, i.e. "Forward all my calls to my office, I'm going to be awhile" or "I'll be in the library if anyone needs me," helps make you feel less dumb about the fact that your significant other knows entirely to much about your personal hygiene habits. Mystery and intrigue my butt, two working people who share almost the same sets of hours and spend a large portion of their free time together have to joke in order to survive one bathroom).

Back to business ... What bothers me about this apartment is the total lack of storage and workability. Everyone always talks about Small Space, Big Style. Well I'd like to make this post about Small Space, Big Function.

So I started doing research about the types of organization equipment that is out there for kitchens and bathrooms (my two biggest problem areas) and found some really cool options. The more I kept typing ideas into google to see what existed the more I kept getting linked back to the same store. It appears that this post will showcase all Rockler products.

Maybe you can use some of these in your life, if you do (or already are) I'd love to hear about how they work. While my dream would be to put all these into our home in the end it will come down to budget so it would be great to have feedback on what is and isn't worth it.

The Double Waste Containers: Tucking away your trash can is clutch. Ours currently hangs on the edge of the drawer (on one of those hooks that fits over the edge, classy, I know). I like the idea of this one because it has space for two, which you could use for recycling. At $92.99 that is way worth it. Or if you're family is really into recycling you can get the Tri-cycler but it's a bit pricier at $305.99. I'm not sure if that pans out as well with all the other recycling options out there.

The Filler Pull-Out Pantry: I'm a huge fan of a nice pull out pantry. Mostly because I think not every kitchen has the floor space to devote to a true pantry. These take advantage of the decorative fillers that you see in a lot of the high-end cabinets these days. At $276.99 that seems reasonable but I can't quite figure out how the darn things actually work so I'm not exactly sure. Rockler also has other options for pantry-pull out which we may end up going with, I just think there filler pull outs are pretty cool.

This EZ Slide N Store "Stuff" Manager: This one makes sense, however, I'm going to take it one step further. In the bathroom I'm going to wire behind my vanity, so that when I pull out the "stuff" manager the hair dryer is already plugged in. Or a tray with my hot-rollers on it, already plugged in, I just have to turn them on. The less times you have to touch things the better.

This Filler Pull-Out has this cool insert you can use to put your keys and such. They have a message board option or you can just use the hooks ... it's really just like a stainless steel peg board.

This Heavy Duty Mixer Lift is awesome. I would use it not just for my mixer but also for my blender, my toaster, shoot, why not my coffee maker? I hate having things on the counter so this is ideal. At $99.99 it's a bit of a splurge but maybe well worth it. I wonder if I would have to learn to bake (correctly) for Mr. Nick to buy it for me? 

To basement or not to basement?

As relatively new transplants to the Pacific Northwest (we've been here since 2005) we've always been a little confused as to why so few houses have basements out here. Nick grew up in Ohio and I spent a lot of time on the East Coast where it seemed like everyone had a basement to hang out in. Until recently, no one could provide an explanation as to why basements are so few and far between but we think we've finally figured it out!

In colder climates the frost line is lower (your foundation sits on a footing, but because the ground swells when it freezes, the footing has to go below the frost line) which means the structure for a basement is accidentally made. It would be silly to not take advantage of that space. However, in the Pacific Northwest the frost line is about 3 feet, not quite enough for a basement :)

We have decided that even though it's out of the ordinary we're going to do a full basement (terraced with partial walk-out). Since we're building the home on a budget we can basically build the first floor (a 3,300 square foot rambler with 3 bedrooms), get our certificate of occupancy, and then finish the basement as our family grows.

We got the estimate from one builder (who has tried to talk us out of the basement because of the cost) and the additional cost is about $54,000. This includes the extra cost of the foundation, the framing (which I thought, oh, why don't you just wait on that too but then I was reminded that you have to have something to set the house above on), the framing labor and the basement floor (a 4" concrete slab). At first thought that seems like a lot, but, when you consider that we'll be gaining at least 2,500 more square feet, that's only about $21.60 a square foot! Now that doesn't include all the finishing but for the basic shell of a basement we'll take it.

Photo Credit: I took this photo outside of the Catedral de Leon in Nicaragua. It is a statue of Maximo Jerez, a 19th century military leader.

Kitchen Cabinet Comparison

I met with the Kitchen Cabinet people at Lowes last night to "finalize" the majority of our kitchen in order to make sure that the estimate I created online was actually correct.

First things first though, this is the inspiration photo, you can see it in it's full glory here: We'll change some of the things (i.e. one of the women in my office suggested that small children and glass cabinets on the bottom don't mix well...I agree with that as we plan on turning that into an eat-up bar.)

The man I worked with (Mike for anyone who is in the Olympia area), was really great. We don't have our final plans yet (as they are undergoing some modifications) so all I had was the printout from the internet...instead of just telling me that I didn't have the right information he worked to create a blueprint from scratch. I appreciate when people don't just say no because they don't want to go the extra step.

So, I learned some really good things about kitchen cabinets yesterday the most important being that of the brands that Lowes sells Kraftmaid is the third most expensive. The least expensive (which I am quickly learning is the non-offensize way to say cheap) is Shenandoah. I was okay with this as I really liked their crown molding options but, they don't offer the Silhouette Glass Pattern which is a necessity in my book. (As a side note: Shenandoah doesn't outsource any of their labor which is how they are able to keep their costs down, or at least this is what Mike told me).

The second least expensive, the one I am going with, is Diamond Reflections Cabinety. There were a couple options that I liked about Diamond, even over Kraftmaid. First, they offer my Silhouette Glass Pattern. As an added bonus though, they have really broken the code on cabinet organization. Third, they are extremely durable...he demonstrated for me how kids can hang on open drawers...something I never did as a child but I am told children do quite frequently.

All that being said, phew! It was a 3.5 hour process to design the cabinets (silly me, I thought it would only take about 30 minutes). I'm sure it will take even longer when we go to officially order asthis is just the estimation phase but it's nice to have the groundwork layed.

Grand total for our "estimate" kitchen was $19,053. I asked how much Kraftmaid would have been, just as a point of reference and he said he guessed about $22,000 and Shenandoah about $17,000...