Money was a tad tight, but design expectations high when we traded our family home for a snappy town house tailored for a pair of happy boomers.

Almost eight years later, the perfectionist (that's me) is perfectly happy with the splurge and save choices when designing our kitchen. If money hadn't been an issue I could have easily gone wild with glass front cabinets and full helpings of granite or polished concrete.

Sit down with husband, Dave Brown, and he remembers we didn't get a kitchen when we bought a bungalow town house across from the Kanata Lakes Golf Course.

The basic white cabinets and laminate countertops Monarch was offering were a problem, especially since I removed 90 per cent of the walls in the place and the kitchen was wide open to the living and dining room.

The kitchen had to be special, with a warm furniture feel. It also had to be functional and work efficiently when family landed for Sunday night dinner.

This is when Kevin Rosien and Deslaurier Custom Cabinets stepped up to the Brady-Brown's budget challenge.

I talked, Kevin Rosien listened, and together we came up with a kitchen light years beyond basic white, but short of maxing out the credit line.

Now imagine Dave Brown exhaling with relief.

"If money is not object then you go with all granite," says Rosien, who estimates only 10 per cent of the 150 kitchens he designs a year are 100 per cent granite. "Most people are counting their pennies,

meaning there are compromises." The overwhelming majority are a mixture of textures in the kitchen, says Rosien.

Like us.

We opted for upgraded cabinetry and then saved on black iron pulls.

We splurged on a raised breakfast bar in black granite and saved on laminate countertops with rich caramel and black colouring and a maple bull-nose detail wrapping around the edge of the laminate.

Granite can range from $100 to $120 a square foot, while laminate is $20 a square foot, and adding the maple bull-nose pushes the cost up to $35 a foot. "That is substantially less than all granite," says Rosien, who says the different textures and colours all combine for a warm look.

There are many who are caught in a budget crunch when they buy, he says, so initially they go with laminate countertops, waiting a few years for their bank accounts to bulk up, and then add granite.

"We have designed all our cabinets so they can handle granite," says this affable designer.

During the design process, I splurged, added a thick slab of maple butcher block, positioning it under the kitchen window. It's easy to keep clean, all you do is scrub it down and then rub in vegetable oil for a warm glow. It cost $200.

It is wonderfully convenient because there is lots of chopping space, an extra helping of texture and colour and I don't have to worry about pulling a cutting board down from a top shelf.

Black appliances add another furniture touch and Kevin Rosien had the bright idea to put affordable black tiles on the diagonal to form a backsplash. The tiles are easy to wipe down and they tie neatly into the black and tan colour scheme, a colour scheme repeated by Rocky, our favourite doggie scavenger, whose favourite

part of the house is lying under a chair at the breakfast bar. You just never know when someone is going to drop a bit of meat.

One of the final details was to nix the standard fluorescent lighting, avoid the pricey potlights and instead opt for ceiling fixtures in brushed silver. I used the fixtures, found at Home Depot, throughout the main level for continuity. I splurged $400 on a pair of suspended lights for the breakfast bar, but I love them.

Eight years later, I would have made a few different splurges, including a longer granite breakfast bar, with shelving for cookbooks or a bottle of wine. I would also have lowered the ceiling in the kitchen, but these are tweaks for the next house.

Did I just hear husband groan? Just foolin' honey. Honest.

Reach Sheila Brady at sbrady@ottawacitizen.com