luxury kitchen styles
If you’re lucky, you may have $20,000 to remodel the kitchen or, like most of us, need to get that home equity loan for kitchen and bathroom upgrades. What if you had a budget of $100,000? If you could take a look at the kitchens of new loft condos breaking ground on Park Avenue in New York City, or in San Francisco’s Marina District overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, what would you find?
Yes, you’ll probably still find tile on the floor (like the masses), but it’s most likely porcelain and not ceramic. You and I can load our van with tiles from Home Depot at $3 per square foot, but even mass-market stores like Lowes and Color Tile have tiles that cost upwards of $20 per square foot in their showroom, so how can you Imagine, there are many varieties of tile at over $50 per square foot to please hedge fund managers. (Other floors you might find in these chic settings: cork, marble, travertine tile, and seamless hardwood.)
Under the tiles you can find an electric heating system because nobody wants to get out of bed at 2 am to buy cookies and milk and have cold feet. The power line that snakes under each tile will perpetually remove the cold.
Looking at the countertop, you can bet you’ll find granite 80% of the time, but for completely custom jobs with unlimited budgets, you’ll find plenty of custom concrete. And yes, Wall Street moguls can find granite as exotic and expensive as you want to pay for it. (Five thousand dollars for a countertop would put many of these people to shame.) Adding an inch or two to the thickness of the granite and sourcing the granite from some of the most remote countries in the world should add $10,000 to the cost, enough not to be embarrassing at Christmas parties.
The stove would be a stainless steel 17,000 BTU, six burner with double ovens below, costing $10,000 to $15,000. Of course, there would be a wall-mounted chimney hood for ventilation, above the cooktop with six speed settings, dual halogen lights, and a 650 CFM rating. You might see the food cooking, you just won’t be able to smell the food cooking!
The refrigerator will probably be a Sub Zero built into the kitchen cabinets, because Maytag or Amana just won’t cut it. This $10,000 beauty will be able to hold enough food to feed a small Icelandic town.
The kitchen cabinets would still be wood, like we have in most homes, but the wood would be imported and exotic. Solid under counter and glass door above, so fine dishes and sushi sets can be seen without opening the door. The “hardware” i.e. cabinet and drawer handles would cost upwards of $10 each or it just wouldn’t make a fancy kitchen. In reality, this “hardware” is getting more and more expensive for the rest of us, as it’s almost impossible to replace your hardware today for less than $4 a handle. Hopefully we can live with what came standard.
In the kitchen island you would have another sink and perhaps another countertop. Above the island you would have recessed lights and a grabber. The dishwasher would be a 3-rack stainless steel because common people have two racks. The improved insulation would make this thing quieter than a whirring little fan, not the beast that splashes water in our kitchen, forcing us to turn up the volume on our TVs. Of course, in this dishwasher, there is no need to pre-wash!
Average price for all of this installed, around $90,000, however if you have to ask you can’t afford it.
