<p>It’s not a question of smaller furniture. The kitchen is 11’x 12’, which makes it very inefficient especially with doors in the corners of three walls. Our basement stair makes 2 turns, if I move the last turn so that it’s a straight run into the dining room I can use the very awkward closet in the dining room combined with the pantry as part of my kitchen. It makes it a lot easier to have a longer cabinet run or an island. If I want more counter space in my kitchen I have limited options. There’s lots of ways to solve my issues, part of the reason I haven’t gotten around to it! I also just rearrange what’s in the drawers to see if I could coax ourselves out of always wanting to use the same piece of counter. Interestingly that experiment does seem to be working.</p>
<p>Reviving this thread because now we’re really starting to roll.</p>
<p>We knew when we bought the house that we’d need to renovate three bathrooms and the kitchen. We just discovered a slow leak under the master bathroom shower, so that project has moved to the front of the line. </p>
<p>We worked yesterday to develop a bathroom layout with a wonderful designer at Home Depot. I told her we wanted to go with modestly priced cabinets, since we’re doing three baths and a kitchen, and she recommended HD’s “American Woodmark” cabinetry. </p>
<p>I’ve checked their reviews online and they are very interesting: Some people absolutely slam the company, HD, and the cabinets, while some people absolutely gush about them. I’m beginning to think that the gushers are phoney reviews, because I can’t fathom how there could be such diametrically opposite perspectives.</p>
<p>Just one site with their reviews: <a href=“http://www.kitchencabinetsreviews.com/reviews/42-kitchen-cabinets/74-american-woodmark.html[/url]”>http://www.kitchencabinetsreviews.com/reviews/42-kitchen-cabinets/74-american-woodmark.html</a></p>
<p>What do the slammers dislike? If its the quality of the cabinet than I would be concerned. But remember they are probably modestly priced for a reason and will NOT be like custom made! In a bathroom, the reviews I would be most concerned about would be things affected by water…warping, delamination if a veneer, or water spotting.</p>
<p>In some cases it’s the quality of the cabinets. In other cases, it’s the HD installer – which we are not going to use. For example: “Just received our new American Woodmark cabinets…spent over $10,000 for cabinets for a very small kitchen…the quality of the cabinets is horrible…very cheaply made…cabinets not glued together, door finishes are poor. For the price that we paid, I would have expected more. Very disappointed in American Woodmark…would not recommend them to anyone!”</p>
<p>And others like that.</p>
<p>Scaring me. I should stay away??</p>
<p>Thumper: I always thought “custom made” simply meant that you could order the precise sizes that you wanted for each cabinet. IMHO, there seem to be sufficient “stock” sizes made that one can generally get cabinets to fit without going custom. Are you suggesting that custom is better quality?</p>
<p>It’s possible that the quality varies quite a bit from batch to batch, and they may even have multiple manufacturers.</p>
<p>Home Depot in general has pretty low-end stuff. If you are looking to save money I would investigate the numerous RTA (Ready To Assemble) cabinet manufacturers out there, and have your contractor assemble them for you.</p>
<p>I have used RTA cabinets numerous times in my rentals and they have held up pretty well. I only get cabinets with plywood boxes though - no MDF or particle board.</p>
<p>I’ve gotten them from Grossman’s Bargain Outlet and [RTA</a> Kitchen Cabinets, RTA Cabinets, Ready to Assemble Cabinets & Bathroom Vanities | RTACabinetStore.com](<a href=“http://www.rtacabinetstore.com%5DRTA”>http://www.rtacabinetstore.com) . A friend of mine won the Ugly Kitchen contest from the RTA Cabinet Store, it looked realy great. The price is really good too. I sound like an ad. :)</p>
<p>Custom made means they are made for your space…not a stock cabinet. Sometimes custom made means they are actually built by a cabinet maker for YOUR house! We know someone in that business…builds custom cabinets for famous people in the Litchfield hills and they are very pricey. And YES…the ones made by the cabinet maker are better quality. They are built like fine furniture.</p>
<p>Are there other options for you to consider? We had a friend who did a kitchen and didn’t like the Home Depot choices at all…so went to Lowes.</p>
<p>I have absolutely no problem with other choices at HD. They have KraftMaid, for example, Thomason and Martha Stewart.</p>
<p>VH…then maybe get pricing for another cabinet type at HD that gets better reviews.</p>
<p>Going on a realty scouting trip in Brooklyn mid-December to see if my dream of a 3-unit brownstone can be had. One unit for us, another for S and DIL, the 3rd for another tenant.</p>
<p>Some of these buildings would require renovations, some not. Prices differ dramatically, as you can imagine, depending on which stage of reno the building is currently.</p>
<p>I read this thread just to scare myself up and think verrrrry seriously. Good luck to all of you who go to sleep with visions of blueprints and plaster dust dancing in your heads!</p>
<p>p3t, that sounds like a lot of fun!! You’re a stronger person than I, that’s for sure. The threads about tenants have scared me away from being a landlord forever.</p>
<p>DH and I want to install a portable gas-run generator for the house, for the next time a ginormous hurricane hits and leaves us without power for a week. Our house is 2,400 square feet. How big a generator (in terms of wattage) do we need?</p>
<p>You really can’t base it on square footage. I think you need to figure out what you want to be able to power up simultaneously and go from there.</p>
<p>Things like air conditioning, clothes dryers, and electric stoves and ovens use a lot of power. If you need all those at once, you will need a big generator. If you are willing to do without any of those, you can get by with a lot smaller generator.</p>
<p>DH has found a couple of good websites that detail how much wattage certain appliances need. So we’re going to add up what we would want to power during a blackout and take it from there. Thanks.</p>
<p>VH…Oldfort started a thread about this topic. Most (including my husband) agreed that an 8000 watt standby generator would suffice. You won’t be able to do your laundry while you run the dishwasher and bake a cake…but that’s not really what you are looking for. That you are on town water means you don’t have to power a well pump…which is a huge power sucker.</p>
<p>P.S. we have a 3500 watt generator for our house. It will power our well pump, heat, fridge and a few outlets and lights…which is really all we need. It is not a stand by…which is what I wanted! But then…I got to pick out the dishwasher!</p>
<p>Thumper, you’ll use the DW every day – the generator, not so much. You won.</p>
<p>Here’s another one for you…</p>
<p>Apparently the idiots that lived here last, who toiled away on all the kitchen and bath updates to sell the house, didn’t bother to seal any of the granite counter tops-- which we’ve just discovered the hard way. Can I fix this? Will these stains eventually disappear? Do I have to wait for them to disappear to seal it? Can I seal it or do I need someone to do it? </p>
<p>I am so upset. 
I swear to god, these people did DIY for every project in the house and effed all of them up-- including causing a gas leak in the garage from the fireplace they installed that our inspector missed, which BLOWS MY MIND because there’s a closet in the garage where the gas line is and if you open the door you could pass out from the smell of the gas. I swear if they touched the electric or plumbing I am very seriously afraid for this house. And we haven’t even started painting yet because there are so many places where paint is lifting and peeling and bubbling up and I don’t know how to fix it. I already know we have to replace molding and re-drywall in some places to repair things that they did. This house looked so beautiful but the craftsmanship is complete crap.</p>
<p>Emaheevul07–did you use an actual inspector or just someone to do an appraisal? If you used an actual inspector, their E and O insurance should be covering things like your gas leak. With lifting and bubbling paint you have water intrusion from somewhere–roof, brick siding??? I would get someone out there that knows what they are doing to look over the place again—with a fine tooth comb!!! If they find things missed on the original inspection that should have been caught, you need to go after the inspector. Now, if it was just an appraisal for the bank, that is not the same thing.</p>
<p>The person that we used was an inspector, not an appraiser. I know inspectors come in a wide range of quality and qualification, we used who the realtor recommended because he was a good friend and we didn’t know anybody else to recommend… in hindsight I don’t think he was very good. We may have to get in touch with him, I don’t know. The bubbling in the sun room could be condensation from outside if it’s water that causes that, because it’s all around the window. In the rest of the house it’s in completely random and weird places, like where I expect a drywall seam is coming up because they also did the drywall themselves. I think they painted over a lot of major flaws in their drywall. But I don’t even half know what I am talking about, so god knows. My dad is coming over today to fix some of the major issues, but I am afraid for what is there but hasn’t been found yet… they even installed all the outlets in the addition upside down. What if they built the addition!?</p>
<p>One thing that is disturbing is that it has become clear that the ugly textured ceiling was done to try and disguise a VERY ugly water damage repair, so we are having the whole ceiling up there inspected and serviced by a professional and having the roof rechecked. Our inspector said our roof looked like it was in great shape and quite new, but I don’t know if I trust him anymore. It could be that the source of the leak was fixed properly and they just repaired the drywall in an idiotic way, but I don’t want to take that chance.</p>
<p>Ema…what was the stain? If water, just let it dry out . If oil (like from a pizza box) …we were told NOT to put that on our granite counters, and ours ARE sealed.</p>