Episode 1575
How to design a kitchen before you start that remodel
We are now getting into that time where people start thinking about that fall remodel and in make cases if you are not started on the kitchen remodel right now...you might not have it done for Thanksgiving. Here are my tips and tricks for a kitchen remodel if you are going to be doing it yourself or hiring an amazing contractor. Thanks for listening to Around the house if you want to hear more please subscribe so you get notified of the latest episode as it posts at https://around-the-house-with-e.captivate.fm/listen
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Mentioned in this episode:
Baldwin Hardware
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Transcript
[00:00:30] Eric Goranson: Because 20 years ago, many contractors had lines of credit with lumber yards and other places like that, paid by the cabinets, and by the time they got invoiced, they were getting installed and they were fine. That is very rare now where many contractors were having to ride at $20,000 check for cabinetry first.
[:[00:01:14] Eric Goranson: Thanks for joining us today. Well, I wanted to talk, since we're coming into, uh, late summer as August is, we are starting to get into the time when people start thinking about designing that kitchen. So they have it ready for Thanksgiving and the holidays, and right now it's almost too late to get that done in time.
[:[00:02:09] Eric Goranson: So here is where I start. I can wanna come up with a 30,000 foot plan of what the project is and define that before you go talk to a designer, before you go talk to the contractor. Before you even plan to do this as a D I Y, spend the time and say, okay, I wanna do a white painted kitchen, or I wanna do a black walnut kitchen, or I wanna do a cherry kitchen, or whatever you want.
[:[00:03:11] Eric Goranson: And here's the thing, when I'm hiring a designer or training a designer, and I've done this for 29 years, so I, I've done this, I've managed screws. All of this, I've trained designers from never designing into heading off to college to get their degree, and I've turned into be great designers. Here's the thing, it takes a kitchen designer about two years to really get decent at what they're doing, and that's working 40 hours a week and not making mistakes and really getting things dialed in.
[:[00:04:16] Eric Goranson: Our worst case scenario, you're gonna order stuff that doesn't fit and that can cost you tens of thousands of dollars. So we're gonna talk about that here today about what some of these best practices are. And so let's back up at your 30,000 foot level of this kitchen project. If you go, Hey, I'm gonna open up this wall, or I'm gonna go over and do this, or I'm gonna do that, this is kind of where you need to stop and you needed to have a solid conversation.
[:[00:05:09] Eric Goranson: But that is the only group out there that is teaching residential kitchen design to that level. The A S I D is great for commercial projects, in my opinion. They do not train people to be residential kitchen designers. They don't it, they don't get into that technicality. And uh, it is one of those things that if you are looking for that qualified designer, Now there are great designers out there that are not certified, but the ones that are certified, you know, you have someone with a test proven skillset to tackle your project.
[:[00:06:12] Eric Goranson: If you're gonna hire a contractor to do it, if you bring in three different contractors with three of their own designers and you have nothing to measure off of, you are wasting your time. Now. If you wanna interview kitchen designers and see who can come up with the best plan, that's great. Usually if you call in three contractors that have designers they work with, you're gonna have apples, oranges, and bananas.
[:[00:07:06] Eric Goranson: I got these dollar Home Depot ones. And that's where you wanna make sure that you've got that plan done. And if you're moving walls, I wanna make sure that you've got a, a contractor and or structural engineer involved in doing that. So if you know it's a wall and you're gonna remove it, A quick conversation of, Hey, is this gonna be a $200,000 remodel that I only have a hundred thousand dollars for?
[:[00:08:05] Eric Goranson: Not gonna work. And in our next, next segment here, I want to talk more about this because it's not just replacing cabinets and putting 'em back in. It's not just doing a, a fluff and buff like that. There are a lot of things that have changed when you do this right. It's something we've talked about in the past, but it's something I wanna make sure we understand, is that if you're designing a 19, taking a 1970s kitchen that hasn't been remodeled, you're gonna probably have 3, 4, 5 new electrical circuits that gotta go in there because each appliance needs to be on its own circuit.
[:[00:09:09] Eric Goranson: This is where you gotta be really tight to navigate this. Now, if you're gonna be doing this as a D I Y project, great. You might save as much as 50% doing it all yourself, but I'm still gonna say if you have a lot of electrical and plumbing work, unless you're really good at it. It might be better to have the plumber do it once, do it right, and it's quick and easy way of having a professional.
[:[00:09:57] Eric Goranson: What's up? This is Stick and Satchel [00:10:00] from Steel Panther and you are listening to Around The House with Eric G. Yeah, we love Eric G and you should too.
[:[00:10:52] Eric Goranson: And so first I wanna talk about materials out there that go into these projects so you can fully understand what's happening [00:11:00] and so you can make informed choices on them. Now one of the biggest pieces in this whole thing are cabinetry. Where's the cabinets coming from? And I tell you what, I've got, uh, a friend of a friend who I'm gonna help navigate through this process of really trying to decide how to fix this battery remodel that he paid a contractor do, and got absolutely taken advantage of this guy spent.
[:[00:12:01] Eric Goranson: Fully custom shop where they are designed build and they build their own cabinets. Maybe I've also seen like that house that I was talking about earlier where the contractor thought he'd make his own cabinets for the first time and it looked like a four year old's erector set, gone sideways, and it just horribly wrong.
[:[00:12:55] Eric Goranson: Or what cabinetry you are going to put in, if you're gonna be doing this as a D I Y project. [00:13:00] Now, there's lots of different levels of cabinetry out there. If you wanna talk about the low end, kind of the entry level, that is going to be the import cabinetry places, which now the prices have gone up due to the tariffs, which is quite fair in my mind.
[:[00:13:46] Eric Goranson: Craft MAs though, American Wood marks, um, the Schuler, all of these different companies out there that make cabinets that you see in the home centers that are national [00:14:00] brands, brands out there now, that is what I call kind of the entry to entry, middle of the line. So the highest end cabinets in there is kind of what the mid grade is.
[:[00:14:41] Eric Goranson: Now let me talk about the numbers here and then we'll get into the kind of the higher end stuff as well. When it comes to cabinets, let's say you're looking at a a $7,000 cabinet package at a Kia, it might cost you 10 or 12 at the home centers. [00:15:00] You get up into the upper end stuff that could be 14 or 16, and now when you move up into.
[:[00:15:36] Eric Goranson: Now you're into that solid mid. To mid upper range where they can make things, things for you and come up with it for you. And then you get into the higher end stuff, which is your specialty retailer. And you'll see these in major market cities. Um, there's a few in Portland, but really Seattle, San Francisco, LA [00:16:00] to get into these places.
[:[00:16:36] Eric Goranson: That's kind of the flavor of the cabinets out there. But the prob, what makes these things different is one finish. So if you look at what's done in a Kia, you know the, the wood panels aren't all the way wood. Many times there's wood around the edge of the cabinet box, but in the middle it could be cardboard.
[:[00:17:32] Eric Goranson: Or some of the UV cured waterborne finishes that are nice. So that's kind of where you start to get into the good finishes, where you get into the higher end stuff. Maybe you have a, a, a gloss door that is lacquered that has now got 22 coats of hand rub lacquer, or hand stained or specialty woods. And so this is kind of what you need to really pay attention to when a contractor or a designer is talking about the [00:18:00] cabinet lines.
[:[00:18:29] Eric Goranson: It's sitting there and that's where you gotta be careful. Don't be dismayed by the word custom. Custom just means they're making it for you.
[:[00:19:31] Eric Goranson: So that's gonna save you a ton of money and have healthier trees and bushes. And who doesn't want that? Root quencher.com. We've been talking about kitchen remodeling today and uh, we talked about design a little bit earlier, but. We'll talk about that in more detail in the next segment of some of my design tricks.
[:[00:20:15] Eric Goranson: I want you to not grab the other 10% that are out there doing low quality work and are maybe new, trying to get better or don't care about the job that they're working on. So the first thing it starts with is when you're talking to them is to get a very detailed estimate. Now, here in the Portland area where I live, I've worked a lot with, uh, R E F Construction over the years.
[:[00:21:03] Eric Goranson: He'd have the flooring, he'd have the faucet, the sink, the garbage disposal, the electrical work, the plumbing work, the lighting, even what the costs or anticipated costs of the handles or knobs that would go on the cabinets. All of that was spelled out in the estimate long form. So this estimate in a kit model can be anywhere from three to six pages really quickly.
[:[00:21:53] Eric Goranson: And here's where that makes a difference. You can spend, if you've been eyeballing this $25 or [00:22:00] $30 a handle knob, that's gonna be the jewelry on your cabinetry and they priced out something that was literally $2 a piece and you didn't catch it, well, it was in the estimate. Everything in that over that is an overage.
[:[00:22:36] Eric Goranson: I wanna see it laid out. I wanna see the brand, I wanna see the budget. I want see what the framing costs are. I want to see every little piece of that job spelled out so you know what those costs are. And then some of the other things that I see that are sideways, that go sideways is making sure that.
[:[00:23:13] Eric Goranson: So it was a little bit ago maybe contractor went in, gave a complete budget on the whole project. Design was done, ready to sign the contract, went down to go get a building permit and make sure there were no issues as a major remodeling company that is well known in my area, did the remodel on it, but the contractor failed to get the final inspection on that project, so it was never signed off at the end, and nobody ever got ahold of them to have it signed off.
[:[00:24:12] Eric Goranson: This Now, kits remodel had doubled in price and was over $200,000 because they had to go through and remodel work. That was beautifully done, but no one had signed it off and building codes had changed and they would not grandfather it in because it had never been signed off on. So these are things that I wanna make sure that you follow up, that when this project is done that those have been signed off on, and then you're good to go.
[:[00:25:06] Eric Goranson: You wanna make sure you get those permits pulled so you're covered. Another trick that I see that becomes problematic is not having a payment schedule written into the contract. How much goes down? And here's where this issue comes in, and a lot of times it's that original, you know, putting the order in for cabinetry.
[:[00:25:53] Eric Goranson: That is very rare now where many contractors for having to write a $20,000 check for cabinetry first. [00:26:00] So this is where you want to make sure that you've got things really dialed in because two things can happen. One, you wanna find out if they're prepaying for this cabinetry, and if they're dealing with a local cabinet shop.
[:[00:26:37] Eric Goranson: So it doesn't mean that it couldn't happen to you. And this is the education part of this. If you write a check to a, b, C construction that I'm making the name up on, so sorry, a, B, C construction, if that's your name. And they go over and put on their line of credit the cabinetry order, [00:27:00] and they pocket that money, spend it on the last project they're trying to get finished up 'cause they misquoted it.
[:[00:27:40] Eric Goranson: So you wanna stop another company from not getting paid on your project. Now if you can pay the cabinet shop directly, that can be okay. The only thing that can be bad with that is that when you buy those things to the contractor, in many states that [00:28:00] warranty is covered for replacing it. So if you go buy a faucet and give it to the plumber, for instance, the plumber might not warranty coming back and having to fix it.
[:[00:28:49] Eric Goranson: Alright,
[:[00:29:23] Eric Goranson: And now we're gonna talk a little bit about design as well, and what's hot and what's not, and something to really consider whether you're on a budget. Or not, and these are all quality things you should pay, be paying attention to. One more thing that I want to see when you're doing your research on the contractors, and I say this all the time, but it's an important one.
[:[00:30:10] Eric Goranson: That, uh, the chance of you getting ripped off even under that big famous name could be, uh, could be dangerous. And you could have some very unqualified people going out to your job site. And so these are things to be very careful with, as well as some of the home centers here too. Some of the home centers, if you buy it through the home center and have their.
[:[00:30:54] Eric Goranson: So be very careful on who's doing the work for you. Many times there are [00:31:00] plenty of contractors that are working for the home centers that are brand new and less experienced because they need to have that home center, bring 'em the leads, and uh, that can be problematic for your project as well. So, another thing to be careful with, but design-wise, and I wanted to talk about this because this is a common mistake that people made.
[:[00:31:53] Eric Goranson: The correct ventilation. We have microwaves that aren't on a cart in the [00:32:00] kitchen, so there's a lot of different things, including what we store in that kitchen. I mean, back in the eighties you went into the JC Pennies or Sears or a couple other specialty retailers to buy your kitchen goods, but there wasn't a ton of stuff on there.
[:[00:32:46] Eric Goranson: So drawers which are much more expensive than doors and adjustable shelves are very important. It's much more efficient and it works out better. The style of cabinetry. In the [00:33:00] United States, we have what we call an American face frame construction, where we have kind of a one by two that goes around the box that is much less efficient than a traditional European or frameless cabinet where there is no face frame around the front.
[:[00:33:41] Eric Goranson: So these are things that are really hot and will continue to be hot because you can get more in there. Another trick to look for in the design process is open up the drawer of the kitchen cabinets that you're looking at and see how much space is behind them. [00:34:00] Some cabinet companies put in shorter drawer boxes to save a little bit of money, and that can leave three or four inches of space behind that drawer box.
[:[00:34:32] Eric Goranson: And now some of the other mistakes that I see happening come around with refrigerators, for instance, in the design. French door, upper French door refrigerator with the pullout freezer below is one of the biggest problems in the world of design. These things cause more headaches, especially if it's up against an a wall.
[:[00:35:27] Eric Goranson: Then you need 6, 7, 8 inches of space. And if you have an end wall or a, a, um, double oven or a microwave or something that's flush with it there or another pantry, you need to make sure that you have the proper space for that. French door refrigerators, although they are nice, can be problematic on the design as well as corner cabinets with appliances up against them.
[:[00:36:38] Eric Goranson: Ends up being much harder to work with and sometimes you don't have access because of appliances in the area. So sometimes in tight kitchens, not using the corner is going to be your safer alternative. So that's another key one. And another big mistake that people make is ventilation. You need to have a properly sized hood [00:37:00] that ventilates completely to the outside in no circumstance.
[:[00:37:35] Eric Goranson: If you've got a 36 inch cooktop, maybe a 42 inch hood that is over 400 C F m, that can really move that air, that is a good choice. And remember, if you're doing a decorative wood hood, that wood hood has to be probably at least six inches wider than the cooktop or oven down below it because you can't have any wood [00:38:00] hanging over that cooktop.
[:[00:38:27] Eric Goranson: That's why they do those wood liners. So if you ever have a fire, you have a chance of stopping it. Before it takes over your house, man, we could do hours of this. Topic because I tell you what, kitchen remodeling is such a big thing. We'll tackle it again in a few months. Coming up in another episode.
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