I put one of those in my last 3 residences including my current one. They’re totally awesome. During one move I rented a very nice house for a few months that didn’t have one. It was amazing how much I missed that thing.
I now also have an undersink water chiller so my extra tap puts out almost boiling water and almost frozen drinking water. Filtered of course. Had to pull in extra electricity under there, but worth it.
Definitely a luxury item, but it’s a lot of luxury for fairly moderate prices. If you’re a tea drinker it’s double good.
It is worth it, driving the 100 miles to Ikea. Here is my last Ikea kitchen.This reno cost a total of $7500 including all appliances, and all drawer bases. There is no way I could have done that without the Ikea cabinets. My current kitchen is bigger, with a 10’ island and a professional gas range, and it has cost about $10K (I got the range used, or it would have been $8K by itself). I don’t have pictures yet because the backsplash and trim still need to be done.
Ikea uses Blum hardware, which is what the high end cab companies use. They really are very, very good. I’m a total kitchen snob, and I love them.
BTW, that gardenweb website I just linked to is SUPER helpful if you’re doing a remodel. Those people know their shit. You should post your plan there before you make any major decisions.
Another vote for strip LED lighting for under cabinets.
You can have your contractor set up a switched outlet in the basement below the kitchen and then run low-voltage wires to convenient places under the cabinets.
Then you buy a kit from a place like the one linked above, put the transformers in the basement, and install the strip lighting an inch or so from the leading edge of the cabinets. Get the strips that have highest LED density (e.g. several LEDs per inch instead of just one or two) and choose a warm color temperature like 2700K or 3000K. If you like stark bright white, go for the 5000K ones, but that’s not for me.
I rarely use the overhead lights in my kitchen, preferring the soft glow of the under-cabinet LED strip lighting.
I think the “get a loan” idea is your best option, do the job right. Your plans are to resell in 5 years so you’ll get all the money back plus whatever the appreciation of the home.
Quality cabinets sell homes, spend the money.
A building permit may not be required, but it’s still a good idea. Not only keeps everyone a bit more honester but you’ll be able to clearly document the improvements to any future buyer
I only learned two things. Huge pot drawers are far more useful than cupboards and should be your default, being able to keep all the small electrical things in one giant drawer where they can be pulled out and just dropped back in is a boon. If you stand in the kitchen you should be able to picture them in operation.
The other tip came from the tiler. We were tossing up between good tiles and very expensive handmade Italian tiles. He pointed out that we weren’t tiling a stadium it was just a kitchen splashback and would only need a few square meters of tile. He reckoned that things like tiles, architraves, cornices and doors and door furniture are the first places you should spend money rather than the first places to be cheap with. It held us in good stead doing renovations. Often adding a few hundred dollars to the outlay for theses secondary items makes a huge difference to the result and only represents a small % increase for the whole job.
As a professional I have to urge caution about the DIY end of things. I see fire code violations in DIY kitchens all the time, and sometimes the reason I am there is to deal with the aftermath of a fire. Some very simple rules: no combustibles within an 18" arc of the range top, and no combustibles less than 30" above range top. That means for the love of god and common bloody sense do not put the fridge directly beside range. It will not only look stupid and impractical, the fridge panel will catch fire. Keep wall cabinets a healthy height above the base cabinets. Typical practice is 22", this gives room for countertop and valence, and your 18" clearance.
Ikea cabinets are OK, but they do have drawbacks. They have decent Blum hardware, the boxes are pretty good quality, but the backs are 1/8" material and have a poor fastening arrangement. The back panels tend to detach after install and it is very hard to fix. Finish options are somewhat limited, with very thin and short cover panels, limited choice of valence and crown, and a pretty crappy toekick/ leg system. If installing Ikea cabinets I skip the shitty plastic legs and build a level plywood plinth for the cabinets to sit on. This gives a good backing for the toekick and makes leveling and alignment a breeze The 5 piece wood doors are on the poor end of the quality scale, but if you are going for a modern look they have some nice single panel doors. The big advantage of Ikea is it is all in stock; once you have your layout done there is no multi week wait, just pick up the package and start assembling.
Get some 11 x 17 graph paper, make some paper cutouts of appliances, sink, cabinets and play with your layout. This will allow to really easily experiment with a top down view of your kitchen and how you can arrange it. Yes, plumbing can be expensive to move but often it isn’t that big a deal, so if putting your sink and dishwasher in a different place makes the rest of the layout better you really should explore that option.
And please be sure you know what you are doing before you start taking out walls.
Oh I just wanted to add that there are other stock cabinet solutions than Ikea. There are various major cabinet outfits that ship all over North America (Kitchen Craft is an example that is similar quality to Ikea). You can go to a local dealer that will sit you down with a designer and 2020 and give you a professional layout with all the drawings. They do the take off, order the cabinet package and deliver it if you like. The boxes come pre-assembled, so it is a bit simpler than Ikea. Some options are much better quality than you will find at Ikea. These come with drawings but not instructions so you have to know how to install a kitchen, or hire an installer.
just a word about sinks and drawers.
Drawers–forget about cabinets with doors! Below waist height, drawers are the way to go–MUCH more convenient to use for pots and pans. No stooping down and ducking your head into a dark cabinet to find that large frying pan which is under a stack of pots. It’s much, much easier to slide the drawer out, so you see entire contents.
Sinks from Ikea— Not good.
Ikea may make some decent stuff, but you don’t need to be an expert to see that their sinks and couintertops are a bad design. All their sinks are raised up above the level of the countertop, with a lip and a little ridge between the sink and the countertop. This makes it impossible to wipe clean. Normally, you clean by swiping crumbs and liquid spills along the countertop and right down into the sink. With Ikea, you can’t do that–you can only push the liquid to the raised ridge , where it remains in a puddle. And the crumbs get caught on (or under) the metal lip , and don’t slide into the sink.
I did a relatively large kitchen about 8 years ago for 18K. That included cabinets and appliances. The key is being realistic. A mid-grade set of cabinets out of a box can still look good and be as functional as high end cabinets that most try to sell you. But don’t go so low as contractor grade. Plywood is perfectly fine. Particle board is not.
Also, I can’t emphasize more–drawers, drawers, drawers. We have standard cabinets on top for dishes and cereal and the like, but below counter level, its almost all drawers (corners are carousel corners that spin) for pots, pans, tupperware, bowls, spices, etc. I never have to get on my hands and knees digging into the back of a cabinet trying to find a lid for something.
I did my kitchen myself around 12 years ago and regret only one thing: that I did not pay a little extra and get a sink that mounts from underneath the counter top (as opposed to one that has a lip and is installed from above).
I dunno, maybe this has become standard at this point, but I kick myself every time I wish I could just wipe crumbs and whatnot into the sink.
mmm
From my extensive experience of doing this once about 12 years ago… These are the things we think went the best.
Flooring… We went with hardwoods. People thought we were crazy, but they still look great today. Do the entire floor no matter what material you use before installing any cabinets etc. This way if you change your mind you have a floor you can use without making it look like patchwork.
We wanted a separate cook top and dual ovens. Our contractor talked us into making one of the ovens a convection microwave. It can be used as a microwave, a small convection oven, or a combo of the two. We are really glad we took this route rather than having another full size oven. If I just need a couple of baked potatoes I can have them ready in under 15 minutes that are crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. The only drawback is that if you use it as a convection oven it has to cool down before you put something that could melt in it and use it as a microwave. This has only been an issue a couple of times.
The other will only work depending on your floor plan. Cabinet depth fridges are more expensive than standard ones, but we wanted that look. Our contractor kicked out the back about a foot into the garage so we could fit a standard sized one in the space. We have more room in the fridge, a little less room for junk in the garage, and it looks like it custom fits with the cabinets.
We went with a cheaper counter top figuring that we can easily upgrade this in the future. It has been about 12 years and we have never even thought about it. It still looks good, works well, and unless you really examine it you wouldn’t ever know the difference (but my budget sure did).
About the only thing we don’t like are the two lazy Susans in the corner cabinets. It doesn’t take long for things to start falling off in the back spaces. We have one for spices and the other is where we have Tupperware type of things. I’m frequently digging around in places I can’t see to find a spice or a lid that I need.
I have an under-mount SS kitchen sink the previous owner installed. He was a corner-cutter through and through. And used only Florida’s finest :mad: craftsmen when he didn’t DIY it. :smack:
The sink is a bit oversized for the cabinet. So there wasn’t room to install the proper retention clips to the bottom of the granite countertop. So he just siliconed the sink to the bottom of the granite. Which sink is slowly peeling off the bottom of the granite; I now have a gap around about 1/4 of the perimeter where if water gets that high (or splashes that way) it flows out of the sink, under the countertop and into the cabinet below. And among the many things that won’t stick to silicone caulk is … more silicone caulk. Nothing sticks well to that crap.
Repairing this kludge will involve removing the granite countertop, grinding a fresh underside in that area to remove the caulk residue, and installing the proper retention clips. Or replacing it with a different slightly smaller sink then replacing the countertop with a new one with a smaller opening cut in it.
Did I mention the countertop is 18 feet long? And matches another one that’s 10 feet long? Both with matching 12" backsplash. Can you say stupid-expensive mess for want of 1/2" of clearance around a damn sink?
I would be real happy had this guy installed an overmount stainless sink. They’re unstylish, but the lip is real low & crumbs still sweep in just fine. And they won’t fall out the bottom.
I’m very happy with my undermount sink, specifically because it means I can do this.
Two other things to think about on sinks:
How many compartments? I went with one really big sink. It’s big enough to fit my largest pot, or my largest cutting board. Makes it easy to clean up after anything. I know other people prefer two compartments - for instance, some people like to pile up dishes in one, but still have a clear area to rinse things off…
Sinks can be categorized in two groups - those with corners, and those with somewhat rounded edges. The ones with true corners - zero radius sinks - can be hard to clean, because you can’t get in the corner properly. I personally avoided that, and am happy.
Remodel for you on the time and budget scale that make sense to you, not thinking primarily of eventual resale. The one caveat is that if your tastes are far from mainstream for the local area, e.g. Avante Garde architecture in rural Oklahoma, better to tone it down a bit.
The best way to recover dollars from a rehab is to do the house-flipper trick: Put in the cheapest, shiniest, most in-style thing you can just before putting the house on the market. You may not get all or even most of your money back out, but what you will get is a sale, not a sits-forlornly-on-market, and much sooner than you otherwise would. At least in most areas in most eras.
Huh, this may be one of those “Europe vs America” things. It would never have occurred to me to shove things into the sink: liquid gets dried, solids get collected at the edge and tossed into the garbage (those garbage disposal units still freak me out, never seen one in Europe).
I redid my kitchen last year. New countertops (Corian), new appliances (stove, over the range micro, dishwasher, fridge), new cabinets. I had a local kitchen design place do the cabinets and countertops. Appliances came from Home Depot. The biggest lesson I learned is hurry up and wait. It takes forever. Cabinets have to ordered and manufactured, installers scheduled, etc. Then there was living for 2 weeks with no sink because the countertop is custom fit. I learned to wash dishes in the powder room. The sink (also Corian) is molded into the countertop.
I would never have a Lowe’s Home Depot, etc. do my cabinets. They are no less expensive, and of course they do it as fast as possible.
I to pull out shelves for certain cabinets, where I keep my pots and pans. I put drawers where there used to be skinny cabinets which were a waste of space. Hinged swing out cabinet in the corner. No walls were moved or demolition done. I used the existing space as is. I went from a double sink to a single sink which gave me more counterspace.
Spent around $15K which is on the low side because my kitchen isn’t that big. Worth every penny.
I never do anything with the intention of increasing resale value, or thinking “would a buyer like this?” If they don’t like it, they can change it.
The last two houses I’ve lived in…one a rental, the other a purchase…came with expensive designer painted cupboards. I loved both kitchens but the painted finishes did not stand up to the wear and tear of someone who actually uses their kitchen; I swear, the previous owner could not possibly have used the kitchen considering how quickly it went from pristine to chipped and worn on the edges after I moved in! Consider how well your chosen finish will stand up, particularly around the sink where water is splashing around.
If you have the budget for it, hiding dishwashers and refrigerators behind cupboard doors gives a nice uncluttered finish, especially in an open plan layout.
The countertop in my last house was corian (I’m not a fan of marble and granite) which seemed OK to me.
Keep in mind what someone up thread said about fire hazard. The gas inspector this year said my upper cupboards on either side of the stove were too low, too close to the burners.
A lot of kitchens have the sink in front of a window but I always thought I spend more time preparing food than washing dishes, so I had the sink put in the corner and had a good stretch of counter space in front of the window so I could look out while chopping.
