Making do when your kitchen is inaccessible

When your kitchen looks like this:

Kitchen completely gutted

 

You make do as you can.

Eating in the office

Gotta have coffee

Kitchen Remodel – Contractor Allowances

One thing that I’ve learned from this kitchen experience is that the contractor price is not something absolute. I’m talking about the contractor allowance  When they write-up a contract and give you a total dollar amount that your kitchen will cost, they do a bit of estimating. That makes sense, because you don’t always know how much something is going to cost if you haven’t already priced it out. Now in some things they were spot on and the allowance covered the items I chose, like for the sink and toilet in the powder room.

The one area where things didn’t quite make as much sense was in the tile for the floor and back splash wall. They measured everything and added the appropriate square footage to the contract and then gave me a $5.00 allowance.

That’s well and good, but I found out that my taste outdistanced the cost. I ended up choosing a floor tile that was $5.99 a square foot and I really wanted the back splash wall tile that was $11.99 a square foot. But, I reined myself in and went for the wall tile that was $4.70 a square foot. I’m sure it will look wonderful, but that was an agonizing decision. So, you could say, I stuck pretty close to the cost they allowed me.

But, oh no, not so fast.

The allowance cost does not take into account that you also have to buy grout and sealer and they usually make you buy full boxes of tiles. So, even though I only have 286 square feet of floor, I had to buy 290 square feet of tile.

Well, actually, the allowance would take that into account if I’d known or thought to ask if that was for the actual tile or if it had to pay for anything else.

So, when looking at those contractor allowances, remember to think about or really ask about all the extra things that allowance has to cover.

New Kitchen Design – representation

These are the drawings for my kitchen design. Of course the disclaimer, they are only a representation. Thanks to Dave at Kitchen Express II.

The table that you see in some of the drawings is not part of the current design. And the half wall/shelf thing will be removed to open up the space even more. I removed those manually from the final aerial view.

Top 10 Reasons I’m Remodeling my Kitchen

I’m going to remodel my kitchen! There I said it and after writing a couple of big checks, I’m committed.  After thinking about it and talking about it and researching it for more than 5 years, this time it’s actually going to happen. It’s a confluence of many things that is prompting these actual plans. The top ten list:

10. I went to the Home Show and met some contractors I really like, who hooked me up with a designer I also like.

9. I may have saved enough money to afford it.

8. The laminate floor is peeling up at the seams.

7. The appliances are old, some of them likely originals from 1957.

6. The lights over the stove and sink shorted out.

5. The fan over the stove shorted out as well.

4. Sometimes the main kitchen light (flourescent) doesn’t turn on and it flickers when it does.

3. There’s no dishwasher.

2. My dog can open the refrigerator and cabinets.

1. I want to enjoy a comfortable, functional kitchen!

Extremely Dated Kitchen