My New Blog: TF Workshop

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Thanksgiving Treat: Skiing!

We are lucky enough to live 90 minutes from a year-round ski slope in Oregon, so my son and I took an early day off and went up for the morning. The snow field shown on the right side of picture sits at and elevation of 8500 feet.


What does this have to do with remodeling? Nothing at all - sometimes I need to take a break and have fun. This helps me remember all the good things I have, and how lucky I am to to have my family, my job, my friends, my faith...

I hope all of you out there have a great Thanksgiving, and get the chance to enjoy and appreciate all you have.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Coffee Center

We have gone a little over a year without any additional projects in the kitchen. After staying in a vacation home that had a high-end built-in coffee maker, we decided to add one more.

We really liked the Miele coffee & espressp maker, but at $2400 or more, it's pretty much a budget-buster...


After doing some searching online, the cheapest built-in unit we could find was $1800. Free-standing units with the same features run $700 to $1500, so we decided to go with that option, hoping to spend less than $1000. My DW doesn't want it to sit on the kitchen counter, so we will build an in-wall coffee center. This will hold the machine, canisters for beans and cups, and it will pull out for easy access.

The only place available in the kitchen is on the wall outside the pantry as shown below. It can sit between the pantry door and the fridge, and push back into the pantry shelves.


Here is the concept picture...


I will need to move the display shelf up 4 to 6 inches and frame out a box. At present, I think the cabinet will be 18" high, sitting 36" off the ground. This will take up about one and a half of the pantry shelves on that wall, which really isn't that much.


I hope to build and install this over the Christmas to New Years holiday. If any of you readers have had a good or bad experience with automatic coffee & espresso makers, I would appreciate you leaving a comment. I am currently considering one made by Bosch...