Oops, I meant $238 million.
He also just bought a place in London for $120 million and in Chicago for $59 million. So maybe he’s in the market for something on the west coast!
Billionaires, amirite?
NRE, me thinks the HOA fees on that NYC condo broke his budget… 
I suppose the real cost of that house is only $100 million because, evidently, it includes a vintage car collection in the garage and a helicopter:)
A few years ago, I painted my lower kitchen cabinets. I am finally getting around to painting the upper ones. I plan to remove the vent-a-hood when I paint and replace it with a microwave. I am pretty sure the hood is hardwired and a microwave will require a plug. Is this something I could do myself (I have hung light fixtures, replaced plugs and switches, etc) or would it require an electrician? I’m assuming, if the wires are long enough, I could move them up into the cabinet above and put in a box. Of course, I would youtube it first. lol Anybody ever done this?
We’ve done it with a micro/hood conversion and then with 2 wall ovens (had to install an outlet where the old oven was hardwired). There is usually enough wire to do the box/outlet thing you mentioned to be up to code. Just make sure the hood is on a separate circuit so the new micro will be, too. I’m sure this is a universal code requirement. In our very first home, when we replaced the hood with a micro/hood, we discovered that the old hood was on the same circuit as some wall outlets. Not OK! We ended up adding a circuit and running a new, dedicate microwave/hood line from the panel. Good luck!
Hmmm. I’m pretty sure the hood is not on a separate circuit. It will be a few weeks before I’m at the point of removing the old hood and I will see what’s back there. Since I work full time, I’m a weekend warrior with my DIY stuff and hate to take off work to be home for electricians and such. Thanks for your advice, @BunsenBurner .
I think it’s allowed to wire the hood into the lighting circuit, as long as the current draw is low enough. Otherwise it’s supposed to be on it’s own circuit.
Microwaves require a 20 amp dedicated circuit, which means using 12/2 wire, that stuff is a pain to work with.
The other issue is spacing, in my cape house at some point the original owners replaced a thin hood with a microwave/fan combo, but didn’t change the cabinet. The original hood’s bottom was flush with the bottom of the upper cabinets, but the new one hung down a solid 4" below the upper cabinets, so there was only about 12" above the stove top to the fan. And it stuck out from the upper cabinets as well, so it made using the stove a real PITA. It had all the hallmarks of a bad DIY project. It probably wasn’t wired right either.
It’s official - we are redoing our kitchen. I signed a contract and paid my deposit last night. Now is the hard part- decisions on every little thing. Right now I have to decide between two kitchen cabinet makers and they both don’t have great reviews although after looking at appliances I know the bad reviews always outweigh the good ones. My neighbor used this contractor so I am going over there today or tomorrow to check out her cabinets.
Other decisions:
- Do I want an appliance garage to hide the microwave. I would love one of the vote cabinets that have the pocket sliding type doors so it looks like the rest of the cabinets but these companies are not custom and don’t make them.
- Should we do a chimney style hood vent or an under the cabinet type? Contractor said our wall is too high for a chimney type (said it should to be more than 10 feet and ours is about 10.5) but I know I have seen people put extensions on there. Not sure if we even want that so it is not a huge deal.
- Do I want glass cabinets anywhere?
- The bar area - we decided to keep it as a bar but I am not sure how I want to design it.
I am not good at making quick decisions so this whole process will be hard!
Congrats @momtogkc!
I struggled with some of the same decisions. Our cabinets didn’t have the best reviews either but make sure you are looking at the right product line. We went with semi-custom but the company also has a line of stock cabinets and it turns out most of the crummy reviews were about that line (not the same materials, construction, or even manufacturing site).
We opted to put the microwave in the island. We were able to just have a shelf built to the right specs so it looks nearly built in but at a fraction of the cost. (I was loath to spend the money for a real built in microwave since we don’t use it very much. I also like that since it’s on the work side of the island, you can’t see it very well so it feels hidden.
The distance between your hood and stove top is the critical component. You should be able to buy an extension for the chimney style hood if that’s your preference. (We have high ceilings in our kitchen as well and our kitchen designer had no issue with a chimney style). One thing to consider though is where/how it will be vented. Our home is a brick and stucco exterior so it was easier and more cost efficient to drill through the stucco than the brick so our hood exhaust makes a 90 degree turn. We have that hidden by cabinets. I’m not sure how that would have worked if we had gone with a chimney hood.
We put glass cabinets in our bar area (still part of the kitchen). They are the same style cabinets but with glass fronts and shelves, and we changed up the hardware a bit (it coordinates but they’re latches instead of knobs). We have all our decorative glassware in there and it dresses up the room some. That said, if I needed those cabinets for storage, I would have done frosted glass that you couldn’t see through (I did that in my last house).
I spent a lot of time looking at photos on Houzz. It became evident quickly that I was saving similar styles. That helped me feel more secure in my selections.
Good luck!
There are metal work companies that make custom lengths chimney covers for ductwork. The chimney you see is just a metal shell. The actual ductwork is inside and is quite ugly.
Congrats, @momtogkc! Hopefully your project is on time and under budget! 
Are you going to have a cabinet-depth fridge? If so, pay close attention to the specs when you do your cabinet layout. We pulled the cabinets along the fridge wall around 2" out from the wall so that only the doors stuck out, because the “cabinet depth” fridge we got required 26" in order for none of the side of the fridge to show.
We used a builtin microwave/convection oven, there was no need or desire to hide it.
No glass cabinets for us, I do not want the pressure of keeping the insides of my cabinets immaculately clean and arranged.
I like the look of the chimney hood, and we set the upper cabinets back about three inches from the sides of the hood to open up the space a little more and not have cabinets so close to the cooktop.
Yes a million times to @notrichenoug’s suggestion about the fridge. We did deep depth pantry cabinets around the fridge and it still didn’t work out perfectly (despite the kitchen designer having all our dimensions and specs).
We inherited a giant side by side Subzero with House2. The fridge is almost 20 years old. When it dies, I will cash out a CD to replace it with a like one. Love the look of seamlessly built in.
I prefer to get a full size fridge and find a way to recess it, or put it somewhere where the extra depth is not an issue. Make sure that you can open the door fully if it’s in a corner. I think glass cabinets are okay if you have some things that you use rarely and will look nice, but I just have open shelves. Which means when I pull down the cute tea pot, I usually have to clean the grease off of it. Chimney style vs cabinet style is really a matter of taste. However generally the shorter the vent the better it should work. I use my microwave multiple times per day so I would hate to have it behind a cabinet door. I built a custom set of shelves around the refrigerator and the microwave is on one of the shelves. I’m very happy with the arrangement, but I don’t mind my kitchen looking like it’s used. I have a lot of utensils out in jars as well.
No big remodeling or home improvements here but I do need to replace a light fixture at the bottom of my driveway. During our recent rain storms we lost a large tree limb that took out one of our lights. Luckily it didn’t take out the adjacent gate keypaid. This is down at the street at the bottom of our long driveway outside a wooden gate. The light is on top of a wood post. We have one on each side of the driveway. The one that didn’t get smashed to a pancake is hidden within the bushes but we will replace both so they look alike. The original lights match our house and were custom made by a local metal smith. My H doesn’t want to spend the money to have replacements made plus the guy is 6-8 weeks out as he has to make them.
Any suggestions for where to find lights online? Looking for something black or wrought iron.
@mom60 - We actually had really good luck ordering lighting fixtures on Amazon! Just read through the reviews.
There is a web store called Lumens. They have a giant selection of light fixtures. I personally did not have much luck with them (never returned my emails regarding a light fixture I wanted), but some CCers say they liked Lumens. We ended up buying the same fixtures off Amazon (refurbished, but looks new!).
Quoizel has a lot of nice stuff. Here’s their post lights: https://www.quoizel.com/exterior/post-lighting?limit=all
This is what we used: https://www.quoizel.com/exterior/post-lighting/trumbull-outdoor-lantern-tml9008k
https://www.lumens.com/sagamore-post-light-by-troy-lighting-uu466094.html#cgid=40&sz=24&start=24&tileIndex=2
This is the shape I’m looking for. Our existing lights are more early California ranch style with some scroll work but this shape is close enough. Your rather spend under $200 a lamp. My H wants somewhere that is easy returns.
For the kitchen remodel the endless decisions were a bit overwhelming. So good luck! We went with the micro/convection oven on top with the oven below. Our designer recommended some glass cabinets, but we knew we were not the “glass cabinet” type. One of favorite thing that we added is the pullout cabinet for spices/oils, etc… Our designer recommended a specific sales woman at a specific appliance place who was excellent explaining to us why we would want certain things or not.