Please share ideas, anecdotes and advice about what works and what doesn’t. Trying to modernize a house we will sell in 5-7 years as we head toward retirement. I love to cook/bake, so a double oven it a must for me. Thanks in advance!
A great place for help is Garden Web’s “That Home Site”. It has a wealth of information in both the kitchen forum and the appliance forum. Here is a link to the kitchen forum. It is a great place to start.
Oh, what fun!! I’ve done two kitchens, and I’d love to do more.
Will you “only” be replacing everything, or will you be relocating things as well? If the layout works, I don’t advise any relocating – that’s what gets expensive. And – having just redone two bathrooms, that of course wound up costing more than necessary – my advice is to just go with what looks good, not with “the best.” Especially since you’re not planning to be there for the long-term.
Just my two cents : Make sure anything that is “built in” is of a standard size. If it breaks -you want to be able to replace it without having cabinet work done.
I really enjoy pull out shelves and lots of drawers.
Consider grouping areas together with storage and electical outlets. For example Coffee pot, mug and coffee storage and water and an outlet all within arms reach.
or baking things like a mixer or food processor in an area where you can store it conveniently, plug it in and have counter space to use it
At my old house I had instant hot water -and I really liked it. Used it for cleaning, tea, oatmeal -it was great.
The kitchen in the house I have now has beadboard cabinet doors. I hate them -dirt gets in all the groves and really shows.
You might want to have a chat with your local building department as part of the discernment process. I talked with ours today and was told that if we replace cabinets, counters, floors and appliances but do not move any electrical, plumbing or gas lines then I don’t need a permit. If I replace my gas range with the induction cooktop and separate electric wall ovens that I crave, then a permit will be required.
Anything that requires a permit here triggers an inspection for hard wired smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Hard wired CO detectors were not required here a decade ago, but when we did a bathroom remodel a few years back we had to install them all over the house. That was a blow to the budget.
I’d consider quartz or quartzite counters over granite for ease of maintenance and current popularity. Even if you prefer black or white, I’d go with stainless steel appliances for resale.
The GW Kitchen forum can dish out some tough criticism, but it can also be quite helpful. Good luck!
If you have soffits in the kitchen get rid of them during the remodel. I see too many remodels that leave the soffits in to save money. Sure it saves money, but the kitchen still looks dated.
The best thing we did was almost all of our lower cabinets are drawers. They are much better than cabinets with doors and slideout shelves. We have pullout cabinets for trash and recycling. If you do that, get ones where the cabinet face is mounted at the top of the pullout. Ours hook onto the bottom and I can tell that eventually they will begin to lean from all the pulling at the handle at the top.
Get full extension hardware for the drawers. I wish we had the soft close, builder talked me out of it.
Soffits aren’t in now and I don’t think they are coming back any time soon - either leave space up there or run the cabinets to the ceiling. I would not use lower cabinets with doors anywhere except under the sink. Just use drawers. I have a lot of open shelving in my kitchen and love it, but if you like it, do be aware it needs to be for things you use (and wash) regularly or for things you’ll never use, but are pretty. I agree with using standard sizes.
On the other hand, I’m not sure if stainless steel will still be in fashion 5 to 7 years from now so I’d get what you like. Ditto on the counters. Personally I love my counters - some are butcher block and some are soapstone. I really don’t care for quartzite - though I have a white quartz vanity top in my bathroom which I liked better than any of my other options. (The sink is a turquoise undermount.) I really dislike marble and don’t like granite much better. But I realize that’s a personal quirk, granite has been popular for those who can afford it the entire time I’ve been an architect. (Registered in 1991.)
Depending on what you do, you may want to work with an architect or certified kitchen designer. We are trained to ask questions and to think about how you use the space. The current thinking is to have work areas - clean up, cooking, prep and to worry less about the “work triangle”. That said there are some rules of thumb about how far a stove should be from the sink and stuff like that. I like having a second sink, but should have made it bigger.
And I cannot emphasize enough the first thing you should do is go and talk to the folks at your building department and find out what their requirements are. Every town is different.
We love having cabinets that go all the way to the ceiling–no wasted space! We also have lots of built in drawers, including two pull out drawers for our pots and pans under the cooktop. We also have baby other drawers.
I have six big drawers and love them but since kitchen is U shaped a lazy susan and a very deep cabinet at corners of U (range is inbetween.) We got rid of soffits and cabinets go all the way to the ceiling. I hate cabinets that don’t. It looks cheap to me.
My personal preference is a counter depth refrigerator - I hate when they stick out - but that’s probably just me.
Agree about not moving plumbing etc, that really adds to the cost bigly.
Good luck and have fun!
We have a U-shape and we moved the sink from the center of the peninsula to the corner and it gives us a nice, large work space which can be used as a bar or eating area with stools. I wish I had more drawers. We have a cabinet with dividers for things like cookie sheets and cutting boards. We changed our pantry (with a door and shelves) into a pantry cabinet which has pull-out shelves. Very worth the money.
We also have the full height cabinets, which are great for storing things we don’t use often. we moved plumbing slightly and it wasn’t that costly.
Since our kitchen is not huge, we were going to get a combined microwave/hood but we cook enough asian food that we decided to go with a hood with a high powered exhaust fan and put the microwave elsewhere. I did not get a counter-width fridge, but found a narrower depth fridge that doesn’t stick out too far.
Agree with kitchen designer. Can really help maximize use of the space.
We did our kitchen a little more than 3 years ago. We couldn’t remove the soffits, as they contained ductwork!
We used a kitchen design company, and I am really happy we did. I went to one & didn’t care for the sketches. I had wanted to do something that the first place incorporated into the sketches. The next place I went, the designer said absolutely no - it would not look good. She instead came up with a really great alternative. It was worth whatever extra it might have cost over DIY or us hiring the contractors. She helped with design, materials, backsplash, floor, etc. She got to know us well enough to present a couple great options in our price range for each thing. We were actually really picky about knobs/pulls, and she gave us tons of brochures so we could pick exactly what made us happy. She helped us figure out sizes for appliances (counter-depth fridge - which we would not have known we should do). We wanted a junk counter, and she helped us design it so we could hide our junk! She designed a roll-out pantry to replace the pantry we had. We had a rather tight area for the U, and she helped us figure out how to maximize cupboard space with what we had … and open up the area as much as possible. In short, she was awesome. She also hooked us up with a contractor to do all the work except the wood floor (my cousin did that, because that is his profession).
We didn’t move things radically (not much space for that!), but we did switch from electric to gas stove.
We got Cambria countertops, which I love.
Ditto for more lower drawers than cabinets. In my old house where I remodeled the kitchen, I had some deep drawers for storing pots and pans. I also had a spice drawer where the jars were nicely lined up on their sides that made it much easier to find what I needed.
Agreetings with @dragonmom that drawers that pull out on the lower cabinets are the best and I’d never do reach in lower cabinets in any of my future kitchens.
I’ve seen designs that hide the soffits inside the cabinets, the top part of the cabinet is unusable in the inside, but on the outside you have the beauty of the tall cabinets.
Faucets with one lever/stalk, much easier to use and clean.
Big center island-I love how people can work/socialize on all four sides at once.
Drawer microwave in the island at waist height.
Absolute must for me is a powerful vent that vents outside. We have an open floor plan and I hate cooking odors that linger.
I also love lower cabinets with drawers instead of doors. But I wouldn’t rule out lower cabinets with doors entirely. They store more. No wasted space. I have one lower cabinet with doors. All bulky items that I use only once a year get stored there. I also like the look of doors better than all drawers. In the end, I went with a mix of doors and drawers.
I have a set of drawers in a lower cabinet that is about 15" wide and each drawer is 5 inches deep. They are very convenient for storing small tools and gadgets. They remind me of the type of drawers some chem labs have. When I pull them open I can instantly find the item I am looking for.
If you do move a sink to a corner make sure that you locate the dishwasher far enough away that you can stand at the sink and load it. Ditto with any cabinets for trash. I don’t love lazy susan cabinets, but if you do get one, make sure it’s nice and solid. My old kitchen had a horrible wire one, and things were always falling off it and landing somewhere inaccessible.
My lazy Susan is solid wood. Really good use of space.
Seconding the vote for GardenWeb (now nested inside Houzz)- so many very helpful people there. From GardenWeb we discovered AJ Madison for appliances in our last move, and are using them again in this move. They have competitive prices, super customer service and you can’t beat their option warranty- 5 years, in home, full service- and if you don’t use the warranty in the 5 years you get 50% of the price back.
Depending on your layout, consider a pantry instead of some cabinet units. In our last house in place of 2 blocks of upper/lower cabinets we put a pantry with french doors. Save a lot of money, and ended up with more- and more useful- storage space. Then, for the next segment of the kitchen we did only lower cabinets, with windows instead of upper cabinets (which weren’t needed b/c all that stuff was in the pantry). That gave a long, open counter with lots of really useful food prep space, and it was really pleasant to work there. We are doing something similar in this new house.
Always loved gas, but couldn’t get it in our last house, and am now a convert to induction cooktops (now available in a range of options and price points).
I have never bought from AJ Madison, but I love to refer to their website for dimensions and variety of models.