I think I have more questions about your kitchen than the Knipex Diagonals. First of all, who has a kitchen that friggin' clean (not a dirty plate, wrapper, or even a crumb to be found, anywhere)?... looks like something out of the Property Brothers episode, and maybe even nicer. Why were you messing with a custom island? Seems like a tremendous amount of work, especially since it has a built in sink and heavy granite top, and I'm not sure for what gain (just wondering). That single piece granite slab must weigh a ton, so how did you handle that in order to cut the island height? The ceiling is interesting as well - did you do that, yourself? Finally, that refrigerator you have is quite a piece... looks like a $10K German Liebherr. You should start a thread on just your damn kitchen. Very impressive...
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LOL, it's only that clean because my wife snapped the photo about 30 seconds after we finished it up, before we cooked our first meal in it.
We actually tore out most of the existing island, which was a dual-height design that really boxed in the kitchen. Granite was dark, dated, and cracked- the wife really wanted it counter height so.... I removed the existing granite countertops, cut down the plumbing wall, relocated the plugs and switches, removed the alder face frames , completely dismantled the frame and panels (that's where pulling hundreds of brads came into play) , cut everything down and reassembled it, added the columns, corbels and a new plywood sub-top. Interesting fact was the island (and the entire house) is all steel frame construction. The new counters are quartzite -a natural stone that look like marble but is harder than granite. To install it we also had to remove the bottom row of backsplash tiles on the rest of the kitchen to remove the existing countertops. (HF 1.5 ton aluminum floor jack and a 31" long 4x4 made quick work of popping those up) My wife did all the staining and finishing- she's much better at it than I am. No seams in the granite anywhere- single slab for the island, second slab went into the back counters. It
was heavy- I helped the installers roll the island slab over and into place.
Appliances were already in place when we bought the house- GE Monogram.
This is a big custom house that had been seriously neglected- deferred maintenance, pet damage, etc-and needed a bunch of work. (LX Cam saw it the day after we bought it, before we started the remodeling )
The place was built with incredible attention to design details- all travertine floors, custom multi-level coffered ceilings, stone columns, massive wood beams, etc throughout. The kitchen remodel needed to complement the rest of the custom features. We had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy the place at a huge discount in May , have taken care of the maintenance issues, done some minor remodeling, and just moved in a couple of weeks ago.
