Jump Start Your Spring Updates.
Spring always seems to bring dreams of sprucing things up, perhaps because you’ve spent the winter indoors, staring at all the things in your home that could use some updating. If you find yourself with lots of ideas for changes you’d like to make in your home, then you’ll be glad to hear that May is National Home Improvement Month. We’re celebrating by offering some tips and advice to help you get started on your next remodeling project!
Where should you start?
Careful planning of your home improvement projects will enable you to update your home, increase the value of your investment and customize your living space—all for a lot less than the cost of a new home. So take a look at those to-do lists, Pinterest boards, and Houzz Idea Books you have and make some decisions. What room needs help the most? What project would make the biggest difference in how well your home works for your family? What would make you the happiest to check off your list?
Since the room that is most often remodeled is the kitchen, we have some tips on planning the best possible kitchen for you and your family. So let’s get started!
4 Steps to a Better Kitchen Remodel
1. Define how your new kitchen will be used and who will use it. With this list you are helping map out how the kitchen must function:
• What do you typically use your kitchen for? (Only cooking, cooking and eating, or cooking, homework and as “command central”?)
• How many people live in the house (now and during the life of the kitchen)?
• What are the ages of the people who will be using the kitchen? (Children, teens, adults, seniors, anyone with mobility or range of motion issues?)
• How many people use the kitchen at the same time and are they all cooking or doing different things?
• What types of cooking do you do? (Mostly family meals? Cooking for parties? Lots of baking? Preparing gourmet meals?)
• How much refrigerator and freezer space do you need?
• How big and what type of range top/stove and oven (or ovens) do you want?
• Do you need more than one sink? Or a pot-filler faucet at the stove?
• How much counter space do you need and what type of counter top is best?
• How much and what type of storage?
• Will you do much entertaining that will require food preparation or staging in the kitchen? If so what is your typical size event? (4 people? 20 people?)
2. Determine what you can afford or what you want to spend. Will you need to get financing, such as a home improvement loan?
3. List your priorities for the project. What are the most important things you want and must include? What are things that would be really nice to have? What are the things you like but could live without if you had to?
4. Consult a professional. With the first 3 things done you are now well prepared to sit down with us for the design process. We’ve designed lots of kitchens and can recommend not only the latest style trends, but also the most efficient layout, best new appliances, appropriate counter surfaces and flooring, plus help you get the storage space you crave.
Perhaps nowhere else in your home does remodeling result in as much payback and long-term satisfaction as in your kitchen. And even though kitchens are arguably the most complex room in your home to update, because of your planning, the results can be more beautiful, more successful and more “uniquely you” than you had hoped.
