Since I rarely wash dishes by hand that wouldn’t be important to me at all, but to each their own.
Different strokes for different folks! I would hate to stare at a wall. I hate when people walk behind my back (I must have been a cat in my previous life), so no stoves or sinks facing walls for me, and my sink and stove should be directly across each other, so that almost certainly places one of them into an island 
I have two good sized sinks in my kitchen. One is in the traditional kitchen sink spot under a window that looks out into the yard. When we picked out a sink for the island the plans called for a bar sink which I felt was useless. I went with a large single bowl stainless. That sink in the island is oriented looking outward and one has a bit of an ocean view from that sink. My H only uses that island sink. The other sink rarely gets used. In our original house on this lot the kitchen, dining, living room was all one room with a floating island in the center. It was the only spot really for the sink. We had an ocean view from the sink and I guess we got used to looking out into the room and into the distance from our kitchen sink.
I hate eating at the island. My H doesn’t get it. I for some quirky reason don’t like bar stools or counter height stools.
We are over the hump and have a week or so of ‘finishing touches’. Kitchen is all done and we just need to install refrigerator, trash compactor and dishwasher, plus the kitchen sink plumbing. But I won’t let them install kitchen plumbing yet to try to keep everyone from using the new kitchen sink for cleaning paint brushes, etc.
Here’s a slightly funny story about working with elderly clients. We were going to use the left over marble to install a new countertop in the laundry area. First, the owners insisted on keeping the old cast iron deep laundry sink which is stained and scratched. OK, that’s fine. BUT… the dang thing has a thick lip of cast iron and strange ‘spokes’ going down that were thick metal. The only way to mount it is under the countertop. This required over 3 hours of carpentry work to grind off the spokes sticking down, route out the plywood and custom set it down into the plywood. It was a crazy expensive effort to ‘save a sink’.
Then the countertop guys come and after careful measurements we do not have enough left over countertop material to do the laundry room sink. Short 2 inches of material. Dang!! So, I told the guys to bring whatever they had leftover in their yard in quartz material. They show up with two choices. If I was doing this myself, choice made out in driveway, get it done. But No… I have to call the owners and try to describe the two choices… one is the quartz marble design and the other is the quartz kind of speckled white design.
Finally, they are not understanding the description over the phone so I tell him to go to his computer and I am going to send 2 links of pictures of the quartz material and he is supposed to look at them and call back with a decision. 20 minutes go by, 30 minutes go by. Finally the wife calls me from her cell phone. He cannot get his computer to work and somehow his phone is broken all of a sudden. He cannot look at anything. So, long discussion and he makes a choice. By now it is too late to start cutting this material, so they take measurements and have to go back to their shop.
I’ve loaded photos of our progress
Here is what we have left to do:
Install window trim on interior for all the retrofit windows. When you install retrofit windows, they are inserted inside the original aluminum frames in the stucco. This leaves about a 1" gap around the inside of the window that needs to be trimmed out to cover the gap. Usually window installers will put those ugly vinyl white strips over the gap. I cannot stand those, so we will do a lot of work to trim out the gaps with nice trim that is all caulked and painted in.
Install door trim around big sliding door and french doors
Install all interior doors with new hinges and lever style door handles
Install refrigerator, dishwasher, microwave, kitchen plumbing, trash compactor
Fix the dang down draft vent. We meticulously measured this based on the specifications/installation diagram that the owner gave me from the appliance store. This involves cutting a big hole in the stucco exterior wall to vent outside. Of course!!! this vent hole now does not match anywhere close to where the cooktop vent mechanism is installed. We are 4" too low. Have to cut a new hole through back wall after all the cabinets and drywall are finished and patch up the stucco outside. We don’t have any of the exterior paint to try to paint up the exterior. Going to spend my life trying to take an old piece of stucco around and try to get it matched perfectly. It will never be matched perfectly because the exterior paint is faded from years of sun and weather.
Install baseboard
Install 3 remaining windows that are In Stock and can be purchased off the shelf at the store
Finish installing new outlets/switches/plates (about 75% done)
Install grab bars in bathrooms
Install new registers for all the heating/cooling vents
And, of course, the owner found a broken sprinkler valve and wants us to fix it!!
CLEAN UP AND CLEAR OUT!! The hardest part of all tasks
Kitchen Complete
Kitchen is finally complete and I stayed late last night to get it all cleaned up to take photos for the owners. They asked me to take some nice photos, so I needed to clean it up for them. Of course, we are short one stupid double outlet plate installed in the back splash. And, we are waiting for the granite guys to come back with an extra piece of the marble to install a nice marble window sill under the window.
Photos loaded
I did not select the appliances, especially the trash compactor. The compactor sticks out not matching the other appliances.
For some reason this kitchen, and the marble, is much prettier in real life. I am in love with the marble and the color tones in the marble. It doesn’t photograph well. Good thing it’s not a flip where photos really matter to get it sold!!
And, we are moving as quickly as we can with the inevitable 2 steps forward and 1 step back. Here is what we have left to do now
Finish trim around large sliding door (it’s complicated)
Caulk and paint in the baseboards
Install heat registers
Install laundry sink countertop and windowsill marble ledge in kitchen
Grab Bars in bathrooms
Large trim around exterior windows (installed yesterday)
One light in bathroom
We made our first stab at clearing out the garage yesterday. One load of stuff back to my garage
Looks great CB. Cabinets don’t look as dark in the newest pictures. Love the counter tops. Maybe when owners see how beautiful new looks they will decide to do the bathrooms in the near future.
Oh wow! CB, you are awesome.
Funny about photos. Our “new” house photographs really well. Especially the wood floor, which is junky whitewashed oak. 
The most amazing part of this project is that we will be done in 6 weeks (not counting a couple of days we are going to work on some exterior stuff). We started on Tuesday August 29 and they will be ready to move in on Monday!!! That is their most critical issue because they are paying $100/day to stay in a downtown condo and they are paying $750/month for 3 pods in storage. But they only paid for one month of the downtown condo.
Just to make things a little less stressful for them, I recommended that they stay in the condo a couple more days into next week because they just don’t quite realize that their bed is packed way in the back of one of those rooms and it is going to be chaos for a couple of days trying to get everything out of those bedrooms and set up so they at least have a bed to sleep on and a couple of chairs or couches to sit on, let alone an organized kitchen to cook and eat.
I don’t even see a trash compactor.
With composting and recycling, it’s hard for me to imagine why one would want one, actually. Maybe in an apartment?
We don’t even have a garbage disposal! But if the folks are used to it… more power to them.
I’m wondering the same thing.
Since we recycle, we rarely generate more than one bag of garbage a week. If it was compacted we might go multiple weeks before taking the trash out. How do you keep that from stinking or attracting bugs?
How much does a full bag of compacted trash weigh, anyway? Can’t be light… I would think that would be an issue for elderly people.
In my area, one can sign up for a different level of garbage pickup service - the price goes down significantly with the size of the garbage can. Maybe they prefer a mini-can!?
They are not saving anything in their trash pickup costs.
It was one of those things that ‘we have one now, I need to use one’. I could not talk them out of it. Compactors are not standard kitchen around here and I agree that it makes the trash bag much heavier. I cannot stand them because I’ve never seen one in a house, after several years, that didn’t look beat up and gross. Too many nooks and crannies and handles and buttons to keep clean.
Unfortunately my brain always goes to ‘will this be desireable to sell the house in the future’? I don’t think buyers want an old trash compactor. A trash compactor is only 15" wide and this is going to cause a problem in the future if someone needs to take out the trash compactor and install a pull out trash cabinet or something.
I’ve never had a garbage disposal either. Been composting for decades. And they aren’t, or at least weren’t, recommended for septic systems. Our town has municipal curbside recycling and garbage pickup, so it is very easy. A few years ago they decided to require purchase of town trashbags, as a way to help fund it. (Recycling is free, as are the bins.) The town has sold compost bins inexpensively for at least 20 years. We probably put out a trashbag every 2 or 3 weeks.
Every house I’ve ever been in with a trash compactor (installed in the 80’s when they were popular) stopped working years ago. No new homes or remodeled kitchen have them now.
I like having a garbage disposal because I’m too lazy to compost. I’ve got a two bin pull out in my island and use one for my recyclables.
Here in my neck of the woods, folks with a garbage disposal have to have their septic “surveyed” for the county once a year. If you don’t have one, the inspection is needed only once every three years. Huge savings. Plus, you end up paying for pumping that cellulose residue out of the septic tank… it so much cheaper not to have one when you are on a septic. We moved to a sewer area, but I still ripped both garbage disposals out of the kitchen. Really - there is no need for them.
Back to Grandma’s house.
My ILs had a trash compactor in their 80s-built condo. They would not recycle and we ended up ordering bags online for them. One of the first things my H did when he redid the place to sell was rip it out and replace it with a wine fridge.
I’ve never really understood under-counter microwaves.
The kitchen does look nice, though. It’s hard to work with people set in their ways and you seem to have overcome most of the issues to get a lovely result.
I’m 5’2" so I never understood over the stove microwaves. Hot liquids over my head? No thank you.