Kitchen in my ranch-style house was last updated about 20 years ago. Small photo album here.
The "bad" list includes: Wall-mounted oven/broiler needs replacing, vent hood (over stove top) needs replacing, wood floor is warped and filthy and needs replacing, shelves in several cabinets are warped, can't see/interact easily between kitchen and dining room, wallpaper is hideous, ceiling needs repainting, several of the cabinets are impractically deep, lighting is not ideal, cabinets are butt-ugly, laminate countertops and backsplashes are boring laminate.
The "good" list includes: Refrigerator is brand new, stove top is in excellent condition, dishwasher is in great condition and doesn't leak at all, cabinets are solid wood and sturdy and perfectly straight, general layout (the "kitchen triangle") is good, I'm not under any kind of time crunch to get this done in a short period of time.
While most of the issues are entirely aesthetic, the division between kitchen and dining room is something I want to address. This is what it looks like now. What I would like to do is take the rightmost four of the upper row of cabinets, and the lower cabinets to the right of the dishwasher, and move them to this wall. I'll need to hire someone to move the HVAC vent over a few feet; it's all perfectly accessible in my basement so it shouldn't cost much to do. With the space opened up between kitchen and dining room, I'll have the dishwasher moved to the right about 2-3 feet and an island installed over/around it, with hanging lights providing a nice accent.
One thing that concerns me is how to close the cut-out side of the cabinets. When I take down the upper cabinet and cut it down to size, the left side will be wide open. Ditto for the lower cabinet next to the dishwasher. I don't know if it's a simple matter of cutting a piece of wood to size and nailing/gluing it into place, or if additional support is needed — or if I should just hire a cabinet maker to do that part of the work.
That's pretty much the extent of the heavy work. Other things to be done:
- Remove all of the ivy wallpaper, repair walls, paint walls and ceiling.
- Update lighting.
- Remove all laminate countertops and backsplashes. Buy new stone countertops, install new tile backsplashes.
- Remove the wood floor, install new tile floor.
- Refinish all of the cabinets. I was looking at the Rustoleum "Transformations" product and it seems easy enough. I would need several kits and it would take me several weekends to do all of the cabinets, but I think if I take my time I can come out with something nicer than what I have now.
- Install new hardware and other details to the refinished cabinets.
- Install new wall-mounted oven/broiler and vent hood.
I'd like to start on this just after the holidays and have it done by spring; as I said, time isn't really an issue. By my very rough estimate I should be able to do all of this for under $4k, not including the cost of the new countertops. The alternative is to hire someone to do it which would undoubtedly be faster but also significantly more expensive. My neighbor, who is a landlord and owns several properties, thinks my $4k estimate is pretty accurate and would expect to spend about $25k to hire someone else to do it all.
Any thoughts, ideas, caveats, etc would be appreciated.
Submitted September 24, 2015 at 06:32PM by bubonis http://ift.tt/1Lzbxzm HomeImprovement
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