We recently completed this amazing kitchenCRATE Custom for Lori and her family. Lori was kind enough to sit down with kitchen & bath CRATE founder Scott Monday and discuss her experience. Hear what Lori had to say about her newly-renovated kitchen in Brentwood, CA! She discusses her experience with the CRATE process and working with the kitchen & bath CRATE team.
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Hey there, Scott Monday with Kitchen and Bath Crate, and today we have a treat for you because I am with Lori here in Brentwood, and Lori, you let us remodel this kitchen of yours within the last few months, and today, are you willing just to tell me a little bit about your experience?
Absolutely, all right, so it’s great we’re excited to do that to share this with you. Lori, let’s kind of step back to before you even encountered Kitchen Redesign. What made you want to do a remodel of any type with anyone? What started that process for you?
Well, the kitchen functionality was not so great. When they built these homes, they didn’t put in nice big islands of any sort, and everything was real cramped in here, so it was really hard for both my husband and I to get in here and work together. I kind of felt always trapped when I was over by the stove. We had the refrigerator on this side, and so we lived here for a long time and just kind of looked and felt it. I think that’s the best thing to do is don’t move into a house and then change it right away. Live with it, feel it, get to know your space, get to know what you like, what you don’t like.
Absolutely. So, the layout sounded like a real key element. Talk a little bit about the finishes like in terms of your old countertops, your old cabinets, where were those kind of falling short of what you wanted?
Orange cabinets really fell short. We had the old oak, you know that every house has here, and storage was huge, and I needed, you know, I like to entertain. Dinners are usually all over the place, and we just had nowhere in here, no countertops or anything to put food on. So that was a big deal.
All right, well, very good. So obviously, you had a need, right? You had a layout issue.
The finishes weren’t exactly what you wanted. How did you discover Kitchen and Bath Crate? What was that like?
I do a lot of Instagram, and I’ve been doing interior design studies for a long time. I actually was able to help a lot of people do their kitchens. I’ve done a flip before of my own house and went through a whole house build. And so, I kind of like doing those things, but on Instagram, I kept seeing you guys pop up. Oh, weird. I wonder how that happened. Well, I think I don’t know. It’s magic. It’s the magic of the interweb, you know? I guess we were following a lot of the same people in a lot of design. We’ve used Bedrosians in the past for our flooring. And so, I think there was a connection there, and I just kept seeing you guys and following what you were doing. And a lot of it fell in line with what I liked, what I was seeing.
Looked fantastic.
There you go. So you called.
I remember talking with you because I screened the majority of the leads that come through. I remember our initial conversation, which was, gosh, maybe close to a half a year ago, probably January or February, yeah, eight, nine months ago. So we had that first phone consultation. And I didn’t scare you away, apparently because right then, we came out, and Jeffrey did an in-home consultation with you.
Oh, Jeffrey. Jeffrey is probably the biggest reason why. I have to give him that because he just felt like a son to us. He felt honest, and he was open, and he was friendly. And everything about him just fit, you know? It didn’t feel funny at all. He told us yes to what we could do, and he told us no to what wouldn’t work for our budget. You know, I mean, and that’s important. I wanted this wall taken out, and he was like, no, you don’t.
And that’s you bring up a great point because sometimes our job is obviously to provide customers with exactly what they want, but it’s also our job to provide the information for customers to make decisions along the way and maybe sometimes counsel slightly against certain things. That’s kind of why you hire us, just being yes men and women, right?
That’s absolutely true.
Yeah. So talk a little bit about the sales process with Kitchen and Bath Crate. You know, obviously, Jeffrey comes out; he meets with you for your in-home consultation. And so, as you went through that process and kind of saw the numbers and things like that, honestly, what was your reaction to that process?
To back up just a hair on that, I did actually get several quotes.
Yeah, you know, there was a local vendor here who there was nothing wrong with anything that they had given us.
Um, she did not come out with a full quote. So, I was a little concerned about that, and I kind of thought that that would go off the rails real quick because the, you know, picking out the fixtures and everything, I just felt like that was going to get real expensive. Another company would not even give us a quote to include all of our appliances.
Everything that was quoted with them didn’t include that. So, I thought, okay, I gave him my budget, but now it’s going to cost me at least $30,000 more, $20,000 more for high-end appliances or whatever. So, when Jeffrey came, he was pretty honest about, okay, what do you want? Here’s what we think we can do within your budget, and this will encompass everything. That was pretty much what I needed to hear.
So, we worked from that, and he would say, okay, Lori, you’re looking for this sink, this is what entails this is what extra it will be or this, how much credit you’ll get. And we worked it out, and we stayed really close to budget throughout the whole process, even upgrading to, right, which we’re going to talk about in a minute because this countertop is spectacular. There’s no other word for it.
So, you go through the process with Jeffrey; you have the in-home consultation and the proposal, and you then decide to move forward with our team, right?
We did. So tell me a little bit about the design phase. Actually designing the cabinets and choosing the materials, was that exciting for you or is it nerve-wracking?
Oh no, not nerve-wracking at all. I enjoyed it. I love that kind of—I kind of thrive on that. I love creating. So, yeah, the cabinet guys and your interior designer, Lindsay came out with Jeffrey, and we went through probably three hours or four hours here in the kitchen, you know, just talking through everything. And what did I want? What did I, you know, I would ask them, what can I get here? Will this fit if I’m ever in a wheelchair? Those kind of things were important, you know? I’m getting up there in age, and it’s not something that’s unrealistic for me. You know, I also, you know, didn’t want anything that was going to be outdated in a year, yeah.
And I could tell by that when I walked in and saw this and saw the pictures, the finishes you chose, very classic look, stuff that’s going to age really well. And you bring up an interesting point about designing around the future, and that’s a big thing in kitchens and bathrooms because we don’t want to create a design and a layout that, you know, 20 years down the road just not going to work for us to age in the home or things like that. And so, it’s important to build these projects for 30, 40 years, not for 10 years, right?
That’s really important. So, the design phase for you was a real cool process and not nerve-wracking for some of our customers, a little nerve-wracking because they feel like they’re deciding. I’m going to be looking at this surface for the next 30 years, right? Some big decisions, but it’s just really depending on the personality, absolutely.
So, we did, we had a little excitement after your design meeting before we started construction when this whole little pandemic thing came into play. Pandemic project. Yeah, it put us on hold for a period of time, and I remember getting a couple of emails from you along the way, saying, you know, help. Are we ready to go? We’re ready to go. And so, we were finally able to start. So, talk to me a little bit. Let’s go to day one. Talk to me a little bit about day one of construction. They’re so exciting.
So, they brought the crate, put that in our driveway. That was kind of cool to go through that process with them. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know what was in the crate, like the clowns were going to pop out or something like that. I don’t know. You never know what’s in the crate.
Right, and he was your sales guy, yes.
That’s true, yeah. We had everything out of this kitchen. They had everything out of this kitchen literally that day. It was all demoed. I was like, wow, that was fast. And clean. They actually, they came in here, they hung plastic everywhere. They did all of the whole requirements, masks and everything that we all were required to do. We kind of had to stay our distance. We had doors closed and just made it very safe for everyone. They were so good, and they were so thorough when they came in and did it. It was just a great process. I was amazed that by the end of day one, we didn’t have a kitchen. We also didn’t have restaurants to go to. So, that was kind of challenging. A few extra challenges, and we have a big barbecue out in the backyard, and we made do.
Yeah, excellent. Now you mentioned one of our team members, and we’re blessed to have so many of them that are great, but one specifically you mentioned that was here from the beginning to the end, and sort of, you said, oh my gosh, he became like family. He was family. I asked my husband. He’s, I’m going to cheer up again.
I missed him. That last day was very hard for me because I just felt like we were losing friends that had been here with us and kind of carried us through this pandemic, right. It was very hard to say, you know, to say goodbye. I didn’t know what to do. I was like, no, don’t leave us. He was a great guy. He really, he carried us through this whole thing. But every single one of the trades that came in here, Scott, I will tell you, everyone was proud of their work and asked me along the way, what do you like? What do you see that you want me to change? Is there anything different that, you know, that I should do? And I’m telling you, I’ve never experienced that before in going through several renovations and projects. I just had never seen anyone kind of really care about what they were doing. And they would tell us, like, your texture guy, Terry, Terry, and Trevor, yeah. You know this, and you can’t tell where this guy textured. You just, you wouldn’t be able to see it. So everybody came through, and the painters, that, you know, I just can’t say enough about the team. They were all on time, and that’s not easy from Modesto to here, right? A little bit of a drive, a little traffic here and there. Yeah, um, so everybody showed up on time, and everybody was polite, and I knew from the day before who was going to be here, and you know, no glitches because you had a process, you have it down, you don’t change that because it works. It really does work.
Awesome. Well, great to hear. So let’s talk a little bit about as we sit here right now in this beautiful space, what are some of your favorite things about the way it turned out? I mean, I have mine just having been here for a short period of time, but talk to me from the big stuff to kind of some of the details. Just in no particular order, what are some of your favorite features?
Definitely, the island is a favorite. I love this because we didn’t have an island before, and we were going to go with just the standard quartz originally, not a standard quartz. We were actually upgraded to a beautiful quartz, and when we went for that selection process, they didn’t have a quartz there for me to look at with the new 2020 quartz models that they had come out with. But we saw this quartzite, and I knew I had wanted it before and never thought that this would fit in our budget, and Jeffrey made that happen. He worked with the guys at Bedrosians, and so this is one of my favorite. We put it on the fireplace as well. My other favorite is the beverage bar that we’ve put in. Now, what was there before? Nothing. Nothing, okay. That now has this really cool countertop, lower and upper in this, talk to me about this color, this blue that’s on the island and the beverage area. The blue. I didn’t want all white because I didn’t think. I think I knew it would be stark and cold, and Lindsay, she actually was the one that suggested blue uppers, and I was like, oh, I don’t know about that. I didn’t know walking in the house and seeing those blue uppers was going to be kind of shocking. And it’s beautiful. It absolutely is gorgeous. So, I love the new cabinet over there. I like the fact that we’ve given me a lot more space around my stove now by moving the refrigerator. And so that was important because I wouldn’t have got that extra space without moving the refrigerator over here, which required new cabinets, and that’s okay. I love the new cabinets.
And you bring up a great point because that change in layout, the change in how the kitchen is oriented obviously leads to new cabinets, and in some kitchens that has to happen like in yours, and others were able to work with the existing layout. But the reason that you approach a company like ours is so we can help navigate those details with the customer to see if it’s going to make sense to move walls around or make the space fit the way you want it, right?
Absolutely, right, you have to have it right. It doesn’t have to be a big kitchen.
So we kind of went through that process and got through. You kind of said the fact that we had this unique quartzite top on the island and on the beverage area as well. You didn’t think that you were going to get this in your budget, and the project was put on hold for a couple of months due to the pandemic and all of the other factors. It wasn’t like we were here every day moving through that process. And so, there were some discussions, like, well, maybe we’re not going to be able to do this. How was it for you to hear from us when we said, you know what, it’s on hold, but you have this 2020 quartz, and we can do this beautiful quartzite in its place, and it will be, you know, no extra charge.
I was shocked. I was. It was like, okay, I thought it was going to be a cheap quartz, and I thought, well, maybe they don’t have good quality quartz, so this will work for us. But I kind of decided I liked the quartz better, but I didn’t think I could get it, you know. Yeah. So, I was really happy when they came in, and we saw this in the warehouse. I was excited to have this.
And it’s beautiful, and the whole kitchen is great. I mean, you have, like, the waterfall at the end, all of the appliances you mentioned. So, you’ve got a beautiful kitchen, and what’s fun for me in these conversations, Lori, is, as I mentioned to you earlier, I get the opportunity to meet the customer in the beginning, and they have their vision and their ideas of what they want, and then I leave, and I don’t come back until the end. And we do the reveal, which is really one of my favorite parts. And so it’s interesting to be able to sit here in a kitchen with you and kind of hear your vision of what you were hoping for and then to walk in and see the same thing that I knew that I wanted, that I hoped for, and the way it all came together, it’s got to be pretty exciting for you.
It is. I want to do it over and over again. And that’s the part that my husband has to hear now, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We got this done.
So yeah, you can see from the images, we’re going to have them up on the screen. So, you can see what this kitchen looked like, and I think we have a couple before pictures here.
Yeah, I’m just amazed. It’s just a great place, and I just wanted to say thank you. I wanted to just kind of take a minute to talk with you and hear how the process went for you and share that with everybody that we’ve got out there. And thank you. Thank you so much, Lori. It’s been great.
Thank you. It’s been great. I’m happy to be here, and I just thank everybody from your team. We really love our kitchen.
Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much. And until next time, we will see you soon.
