When my wife and I bought this new house in Las Vegas, we knew we were going to rehab it. My wife put a lot of thought into the design.
We never did a lot of thinking about this stuff until after we rebuilt our Geneva house.
We built a house in Geneva, IL back in 1993. In 2001, we went on vacation and had a water leak that destroyed a lot of the house. We were able to do a big redo on the kitchen and that was my first experience with higher-end appliances. We put a nice Dacor oven in it. Here is what that kitchen looked like after we redid it. It looks the same as when we redid it, the person we sold the home to put that rack over the island. Not my style but their check cleared.
By the way, your style might change over time. I was initially a very traditional person in my “style”.
Clothing-wise, I still am. I have had the same shoes for years and years and dressed basically the same way. Preppy I guess people call it but understated and not over the top. In our homes, we were traditional but now like the clean lines of modernists combined with a touch of warmth to make it human.
When I rehabbed my cooperative apartment in Chicago, I had a high-end kitchen installed. It had a Vent a Hood, a Dacor oven, a Viking wine cooler, a nice Dacor convection microwave, and a Miele dishwasher. I wanted to shoehorn two dishwashers into it but the exterior walls didn’t work. Vent a Hood makes the best range hoods and I have tried to put them in every home I have ever lived in. We like to cook a lot at home and entertain, so putting in a kitchen like that works for us. We also put stainless steel countertops in. I dig those a lot!
When we rehabbed a very small apartment in Chicago, I found an old 30” Dacor range on Craiglist. It needed a little bit of work but it was great. We also put in a nice Miele dishwasher in that one. But, it didn’t dry very well because of all the damn EPA restrictions. Because of space, we put in one of those french door refrigerators. Here is that kitchen. The cabinets are IKEA.
IKEA gets a bad rap. However, their interior hardware is really good and some of their storage ideas are fantastic. They work well if you have standard measurements. For a custom kitchen, they can be challenging. They are a pain to put together until you get a system going. We put a stainless top on the island, and quartz on the counters. We never liked the quartz. When we bought the pied-a-Terre place, it had a range hood. We bought that wine chiller from Abt out of their warehouse.
We did kitchens at the two cabins we rehabbed up north in Minnesota. Those are different sorts of projects. They have different demands based on their use, and where they are located. Here they are. The cabinets in both are IKEA. It was our first experience with induction cooktops. One of them is a two-burner. The larger kitchen has a five-burner we found in the back room at Abt! I found the oven in the top photo on Craiglist. It’s an Italian one. All stainless steel. Alps Inox.
We pulled the propane oven out of this one that my grandma made so many great meals on and put a convection microwave in. Again, got it out of the backroom at Abt in Morton Grove, IL! Yes, the drawer below it is fixed now and we have toe kicks installed. We picked up the maple butcher block countertop at Floor and Decor.
Interestingly, my grandfather built the cabinets in this kitchen prior to us redoing it. We ripped them out and saved as much as we could. We repurposed them in a shed.
They are hung upside down. My grandmother was barely five feet so he built the cabinets for her!
That brings me to Las Vegas. We put a lot of thought into the kitchen based on the experiences we had. We also looked at what was out there appliance-wise. There has been a lot of innovation since we did our first kitchen back in 1993.
We tore down a lot of walls and reconfigured the kitchen. Here is what it looked like before. Pretty high-end place back in 2003! My kitchen in my cooperative was done the same year. My friend who used to trade, Kandi (Her badge was KV), wanted before and after shots. Here are some before.
This time, we decided to switch from Dacor to Wolf when it came to cooking. We had read that Dacor hasn’t been as reliable. Some of our friends had Wolf and raved about it. We were going to stick with SubZero refrigeration. We switched from Miele to Bosch on our dishwasher because our last experience with Miele was subpar.
Once that was decided, we had to decide what to get.
One thing I have done over the past several years is sous vide. It really takes making meat to the next level. I have one here at home and at my cabin. When I went to the appliance store, I saw a “convection steam oven”. After doing some research, I decided we needed to find a way to integrate a steam oven into the new kitchen.
I had seen steam ovens in the past. But, they seemed primitive compared to this one. In years past, no one could articulate what one was good for. Primarily it seemed just steaming vegetables and cooking fish. The ovens have improved and come a long way. You can get some high-end ranges with both convection and steam. But, I have read that they are unreliable.
We settled on a Wolf induction range, Wolf convection steam oven, and Wolf convection microwave. Once we put the Primo grill outside we ought to be able to handle any crowd.
We wanted to do IKEA cabinets to keep the cost of the rehab down but lead times and stock were very uncertain. when I did our second cabin rehab, we had to pull stock from six different Midwestern stores. That wasn’t going to happen this time. Some of our runs were also not standard length, so we couldn’t do it. We incorporated some IKEA ideas into it like the double drawers they have. We did a lot of roll-outs inside cabinets because we had them in other kitchens going back to Geneva.
We decided to put in a white kitchen. Those go in and out of style, but they never really go totally out of style. These cabinets were built in Minnesota. When we went through new developments and saw those homes, the cabinets all came from China. In addition, the back of our home faces north. That makes white the right choice to brighten it up. There is radiant heat under the floor which has been wonderful.
Our new kitchen isn’t quite finished. We ordered all the stuff from SubZero/Wolf in February of 2021. We still don’t have our freezer. But, we have everything else. My wife was not a fan of two dishwashers but I was. We put them in and now she really appreciates them. She was uncertain about the steam oven and frankly, so was I. But, it’s a game-changer.
I highly recommend getting a steam oven if you are going to redo or build a new kitchen.
If you were in a smaller space, you could get by with a convection steam oven and a convection microwave along with a cooktop. Totally skip the range. Yes, the steam oven is not cheap. When you are in this high-end appliance category, nothing is and prices are going higher. Stainless steel prices are going to go through the roof. You can save yourself $10k or more by skipping the range. When you think about ranges and their use, for most people they really only get a huge workout a few times a year. You can plan around all that if you have the two other ovens.
I dislike eating frozen fish. Never tastes right or quite like fresh fish. It’s kept me from eating fish. However, with the steam oven, it is cooked perfectly every time. Even sockeye salmon tasted okay. I don’t like sockeye, since it has no fat! Better for my diet to add in some fish!
I roasted a chicken in the steam oven the other day and it was perfect. The chicken was finished in slightly less time than a regular convection oven or a convection microwave. I made shrimp in it, and they were excellent. Cooked perfectly.
You can sous vide in a steam oven. I have done that with broccoli, but nothing else yet. They say you can make incredible bread in it, but I have not done that either. It seems to be an amazingly versatile appliance. With two people, I can cook in it every night and leave my range out of the equation.
The downside to the steam oven is that it’s not a breeze to figure out. Lots of pushing buttons. There is a learning curve. The folks at Wolf ought to meet with the folks at UICO to figure out better engineering and touchscreens.
I have become a huge fan of the steam oven and so has my wife. Here is the kitchen today. Not quite done but getting there. Still missing quite a bit of the finishing touches, but it works. We didn’t do panels on the front of the dishwashers and are regretting it somewhat. That’s a Vent a Hood insert. We found a local stainless company that built the hood for us.
The steam oven is the bottom one. Waiting on the freezer. It was supposed to be here in March, but not until May now. They will both get the same panels the cabinets have.
We opened up the house by tearing a wall down, taking the appliance wall and moving it backward about five feet, and putting new doors in the back. There is a view of the Strip from everywhere now. The backyard should be done by the end of March.
For what it is worth, we are seeing housing turn over in Las Vegas and then a dumpster shows up. Lots of rehabs going on. I am wondering if it will start to slow down given what is going on in the world.
If you do decide to do a rehab, expect supply lines to be long and prices high. Spend an inordinate amount of time on your architectural drawings.
To give you some instances about getting stuff and how crazy it is, here are some examples. We ordered two pendants for the island in November. They might get here in April. Ordered cabinets in May that were supposed to be here in September and got here in late November. Furniture takes months. It’s crazy. I think we will be mostly done by October.
Making some cassoulet this weekend.
That is a very impressive body of kitchen rehab work. You stand alone in the firmament. Great advice.
Pre-built cabinets are the way to go and you can use a simple filler piece or custom unit to make it all work. Costco has 3 different lines that are all good.
All the pre-built cabinet shops will make you a layout drawing that respects the "triangle."
One thing I have noticed is you can't have a big enough refrigerator and that pantries are the big luxury.
There is also something to be said for butler's pantries.
Bravo and well played.
You need your own HGTV show.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
So Wolf offer classes for the steam oven at the local distributor or online I am in Denver & the Roth has a demo showroom plus if you do it person you get a free meal