Beach to Bay Custom Builders Corp.: Sometimes new is better....

Over the past few weeks, I have been in the process of renovating my kitchen. My house is a 1959 relic, and everything about the house is archaic and original. The bathrooms have the cotton candy 4” x 4” pink tiles and pink bathtub, the floors are made of poured terrazzo, there is an indoor/outdoor Florida room with jalousie windows, and the house just has the overall feel of an Old Florida home. Since I officially became the homeowner, I have done some minor cosmetic work, but just haven’t had the opportunity to really customize any one facet of the house. My first chance to make a drastic change to the house came a few weeks ago. At one of my projects, we were gutting the original kitchen, and doing a complete kitchen overhaul. The existing cabinets at the house though were high-end KraftMaid cabinets that are just not in vogue with the latest trends, yet still are very nicely crafted hickory wood / plywood cabinets. The homeowners were contemplating just getting rid of the cabinets, but my dad asked if they would be willing to allow me to be the beneficiary of the cabinets, and they obliged. My dad and I took measurements of my existing kitchen, and drew up a master plan and layout for the “new” cabinets. We had our restaurant napkin plan, and were ready to begin the next step.

So began the long and winding journey of removing the cabinets from their original locale, and relocating them to my house. This task sounded like a piece of cake, but until we began to physically dismantle the cabinets and remove the screws, we quickly learned that we were in for a difficult assignment. We managed to get all of the cabinets down without too much trouble, and then the next leg of the journey began – loading them in the Uhaul and transporting them to my residence. Thankfully, one of my good friends, Joe, offered up his services in helping with the move, and we managed to get everything over to my house without having too many issues.

After having removed the existing cabinets in my kitchen, my dad and I began to install the new cabinets, and to our great surprise, the layout was coming together flawlessly. One by one we placed the cabinets in their ultimate locations, and before we knew it, the job was done (in actuality the job dragged on way longer than either of us had hoped for it to).

After all of the cabinets were installed, I had the granite company template all of the countertops, and within 6 days they had the granite tops installed. I chose a 3CM Nettuno Bordeaux slab, which was 130” x 79” - just large enough so that all of the tops were able to be cut out of one large slab. After the tops were in, the next step was to pick out a backsplash that would complement the granite, terrazzo floors, and hickory cabinets well. I decided to check out Lowes, to see if they might had any nice tile. I happened to find a green 3” x 6” glass subway tile, the manufacturer is Shoreline. I also picked out a glass border tile to add a little bit of a modern feel to the backsplash.

Once the tops were done, the backsplash installed, I took a trip to Brandsmart in order to pick out the appliances. I was able to find reasonably priced General Electric appliances for the slide-in range, over-the-range microwave, and 18” dishwasher. With a hop and a skip, the kitchen was completed, and below are the pictures of the final product. I was very pleased with how everything turned out, and was grateful to have the chance to re-use the cabinets and give them a new home!