Kitchen Cabinets: Almost Ready.

I signed the original kitchen cabinetry contract with Noor back on June 6th. Since then there have been 2 other additional contracts including the living room cabinetry, bathroom cabinetry and medicine cabinets and today we signed another contract on getting the quartz counter top for the kitchen.

Jessica did the original design of the cabinets and layout, since then we have had many revisions. I suppose one of the major departures is the elimination of the wall in the entry hallway. Both for the reason of gaining storage space and a bit of a mod design element. (I did struggle a bit on that, but the eventual decision was to go with something "bold.") However, after rethinking about it, I'm not sure if I'm not having another one of my regretful moments... especially after I realize that the backsplash is much higher than how I envisioned it! There's also the error of not having the continuous plug mold underneath the cabinet. Apparently that was in the original design, but I didn't pick it up from the schematic diagram, so now I'm stuck with having the outlets on the backsplash. It would have been nicer and cleaner... Oh well, the cabinets are done, it's too late. I'm not so crazy as to redo that whole region.
Here are the two elevation diagrams:

Elevation 1: view from hallway, and into the hallway

Elevation 2: Garage facing and the island.

Another big departure from the original design is the material. Instead of going with matte white lacquer and a few wood panels, I'm going with mostly bamboo plywood with a natural finish. I went with this because I'm making custom cabinets, I feel that I would like some custom finish instead of a generic white lacquer where you can get from most suppliers. All the cabinets are made with Birch interior with Plyboo bamboo plywood exterior.

Back opening as in elevation 1. This is an example of the finish look of the wood.

The "counter" top of the opening. Backsplash will be placed in the unfinished wood area.

The third and possibly the riskiest departure is the sliding doors and a much bigger garage appliance, thus a roll up door is devised.

The garage appliance roll up door (partial) as in elevation 2 diagram.

The corner. The opening will be the garbage/recycle cans. The lost corner is use to hide the piping.

Detail of the garage door.

Last but definitely if not the most, then it's the next to most visibly different element: the color scheme. Aside from white and wood, I introduce orange into the cabinets. The back panel of the recessed bookcase is in orange and so are all the sliding doors. However, I did make a backup plan for the sliding doors (for insurance purpose), they are reversible and the flip side is white.

Dining room facing side of the island. See elevation 2.

The orange sliding door. Very mod indeed.

Here are a few more pictures showing some details of the workmanship:

A trench on the under side of the upper cabinets for LED lighting.

Showing the miter corner of the back panel facing hallway.

Edge details. Nice work.

Disregard of certain unforeseen regrets, the cabinets are very well made. The time it took to get the right finishing color also took months of trials and errors. I asked for the same color as the unfinished wood, and it's not as easy to obtain as I imagined. Instead of just applying a clear stain, which results in a much darker, more yellow tone color, this final color is achieved through a complicated bleaching process and then staining. Needless to say, the orange was even a bigger challenge. I hope after the eventual installation at my house with the right lighting, I will still like the color as much as I liked them in their little swatches.