Remodel Your Kitchen (and Keep It Under $25,000)

by Gwen Holladay

Table of Contents Introduction v Chapter 1: Supplies You’ll Need 1 Chapter 2: What Do You Have to Work With? 5 Chapter 3: Draw the Room 9 Chapter 4: Get Estimates and Revise Your Plan 13 Index 17

Introduction This book is for homeowners who want or need to remodel their kitchens but can’t spend $50-

100,000 to do it.

Let’s face it—those of us who don’t live in

California, Florida, or the expensive parts of the northeast may not have the appreciation in our home values to justify an expensive kitchen

remodel. What many of us do

have are beautiful older homes which

could use some work on the

kitchens (bathrooms, too, but that’s a different book).

Realtors say the kitchen should represent about 10% of the value of your home, which gives you a guideline as to what you should limit your spending to. But that doesn’t help you find the money to do the work. We’ll talk about financing later.

What I’d like to do in this book is help you figure

out the best way to remodel your kitchen cost- effectively—the challenge is to keep it under $25,000.

There are two things you will need to do to make

this happen:

Plan and organize carefully. You will have to

think hard about what you really need and want & what you can live without.

Be the general contractor for the job. You

can save more money if you, your family, & maybe some good friends do some of the work, but you at least need to be your own

contractor.

Chapter 1 – Supplies You’ll Need

There are a few supplies you’ll need to plan and design your kitchen remodel.

A good tape measure

with inch markings. It should have a locking mechanism

(in case you need to measure and no one is around to help) and a belt clip (you’ll be

carrying your tape measure around all through this project).

Graph paper. No, you don’t need to do any

advanced math, but you will need to draw your kitchen to scale. Remember, the more you can do yourself, the more money you’ll

save. Eventually someone else may do a more professional drawing, but you should do the

first one.

A ruler, pencils, and an eraser. These don’t need to

be professional grade, but they do need to be good working tools.

A place to work. A drawing board is great,

but a desk or even your kitchen table will work.

Magazines and catalogs. You’ve probably

already been looking at these (a few, anyway), which is great, because that’s how you’ll get

some of your ideas. If you’ve been in

your house for a while, you probably have some ideas of

your own, too.

Chapter 2 – What Do You Have to Work With?

This next step may be brutal, but now you need to assess the kitchen you have—what exactly do you

have to work with? If you’ve been in your house for any length of time, you’ve probably already done

this. You may even have a good idea what you need or want to do.

Stand in the kitchen and really look at the appliances, cabinets, countertops, floors, and fixtures like the sink and the faucet. What things

really must be replaced, either because they don’t work or are worn out beyond their useful lives?

What things are fine because they still work, because you've already replaced them, or because you actually like something the previous owner did?

I assume since you’ve gotten this far that some paint or new window treatments aren’t going to cut

it. Those are the kinds of things you may have already done. You need some kind of major

overhaul. Here are some things to keep in mind when you’re doing a major remodel but need to keep the cost down:

Keep the layout of the kitchen the same.

Leave appliances where they are.

Reuse as much as possible.

Figure out what you must replace, keeping in mind that some things go together. For example, if you replace the cabinets you usually have to replace the

countertops as well, especially if you change the cabinet layout at all.

This is the "after" shot of the kitchen on the first page of this chapter. The home owners kept the basic layout the same but added an island for

extra work space.

This stage of planning is where you might make some tradeoffs to save money. For example, appliances that still work can be kept until you

have funds to replace them. In the kitchen pictured, the home owners may well have kept the

dishwasher, for example. Flooring is a whole separate part of the room which can be replaced as part of the big project or later if you need to save

money. (In fact, it should be the last thing you do, anyway. If you replace the floor before you do projects like replacing cabinets, you risk damaging

your new floor.)

If you are replacing cabinets, here is your chance to rearrange the kitchen to

improve traffic and work flows or

―zone‖ your kitchen.

The flow of traffic through your kitchen is something you need to plan carefully. The kitchen is the most-lived-in room in many homes: family

members come and go many times every day, dropping stuff off and picking it up, checking the family calendar, and visiting with each other and

friends. But it's also a work area for the family members who prepare food, cook, eat, and clean

up, so you need to plan the layout of the kitchen carefully.

Unfortunately, builders seem to give little or no thought to how rooms are actually used, plus in

many cases our lifestyles have changed since the house was built. For example, our house has phone jacks in almost all the rooms, including the master

bathroom and the back porch. Obviously, our need for phone jacks has changed. What we need

now is a place to charge all our electronics.

The best way to plan traffic flow is to think

hard about how your family uses the kitchen and how you'd like to use it. Think about setting up areas for specific

activities such as storage, food prep, cleanup, and maybe even that area everyone needs but builders

don’t know about—the area where everyone drops their stuff when they come in.

As a final consideration, you probably have some things you want to replace but don’t have to right

now. Keep those things in mind—if you have any money left in your budget, one or two of those items

could be splurge items.

Chapter 3 – Draw the Room

Now you need to draw the layout of the kitchen to scale. Drawing to scale means keeping the ratios of

everything in the room the same. For example, if your scale is 1'=1", then if your refrigerator is 36" wide, it should be 3" (3'=3") wide on your drawing.

First you’ll need to measure the kitchen and everything in it carefully and record those

measurements in inches. Use a metal tape measure; the kind that locks can be helpful for this

step. If you have someone to help you measure, it goes much faster.

Now go ahead and draw all the permanent parts of the room, including walls, doors, and windows, in ink on graph paper. If you think you might change

something, don’t draw it in ink. For example, if you might tear out an existing wall, draw it in pencil.

Then you can experiment with your drawing by leaving the wall out and putting it back in to see what works best.

Here are diagrams of some symbols you might use.

You don't have to—your drawing may be for your use only—but if you'll be showing it to others (and you probably will), it works better if you use

common drawing symbols.

Here is a sample layout showing not only the

kitchen itself but also the rooms around it. This helps you get a sense of where the room is in the house and what is around it. You may even want to

make some notes about where the sun comes in or what different windows and doors open to.

Chapter 4 – Get Estimates and Revise Your Plan

This is one of the hardest things to do, but it is the

part where you can really save some money. Lining up suppliers and contractors is a big part of what

you'd pay a contractor to do. Get estimates for everything you plan to do:

A. Electrical: A time-tested way to find an

electrician or other home-improvement

professional is to ask people in your area if they know of a good one, get at least two or

three quotes, and choose the one in the middle (unless you have a specific reason not to. For example, you might feel someone is

not reliable or honest when you meet him or her in person.). Electrical work is labor-intensive, making this probably one of the

more expensive parts of your project, but updated lighting will add so much to your

kitchen.

B. Plumbing: Follow the same process for

plumbing, and know that this work is also very expensive. This is one of the best

reasons for keeping your kitchen layout the same if at all possible.

C. Cabinets: You have several options when it comes to cabinets. You can:

Live with what you have.

Clean and refinish the cabinets you have.

If you decide to have this done, use the same process as you would to find an

electrician or plumber.

Buy off-the-shelf cabinets from a retailer;

and either have them installed or do it yourself.

Buy semi-custom cabinets from a retailer.

This has the added benefit that a

salesperson will come to your house, measure the room, and draw it, which will either prove you got your drawing right or

correct it.

Have custom cabinets made. This will

probably put you out of the $25,000 range when you add in countertops, but if it's important to you go ahead and get a

quote.

D. Countertops: Here E. Appliances F. Flooring

G. Other surfaces – walls, windows

Revise your plan if necessary.

Index