Doing a kitchen renovation is probably one of the biggest upgrades you’ll ever do for your home. The kitchen is used more than any other room in the house so you better make sure if you’re going to spend the money you do it right. Don’t make the common mistakes others have made and lived to regret.
Here are 5 things you need to know before you endeavor down the path of remodeling your kitchen:
- Don’t be cheap: You’ll end up regretting being cheap. You could spend more to get better quality cabinets but instead you get the cheaper ones and less than 3 years later they’re full of chips. Labour is expensive, upgrading materials are not. So spend extra on quality, it’s always worth it in the long run.
- Get an accurate estimate: A lot of contractors use “allowance pricing” which means you don’t really know what your final price will be until you make your selections. So if your budget is $35k and your estimate is $35k but it’s based on allowance pricing then you will end up way over budget. To avoid this, your contractor should use software like CostCertified.com that allows you to make your selections in real-time within the quote while see the price change.
- Love your design but make it practical: There are so many stories of people who build their “dream” kitchen and focused on the look and feel of it only later to realize the kitchen isn’t very practical. And there’s nothing worse than an impractical kitchen. Sure, make sure it looks awesome but make sure you have enough storage and room to do what you need when you’re cooking.
- Get a good project manager: Are you hiring a company or the contractor actually doing the work? It really doesn’t matter as long as you know who’s managing the project. The project manager is very important since they will be scheduling everything and make sure your project runs smoothly.
- Don’t let the designer influence you too much: Designers are paid to help you make decisions. But, sometimes they can really persuade you to do something that you really don’t want or like. Be strong and know what you want. It’s your kitchen and you’ll have to live with it not your designer.
- Choose colors that stay in style: Are you going to sell your home one day? Most likely you will so make sure the colors you choose will still be in style 5 years or 10 years later. That means you should pick “neutral colors”.
- Go bigger if you can: Know down that wall that’s closing in your kitchen… yes, it is worth it to open it up! An open kitchen with lots of room is never something you’ll regret. A closed kitchen that doesn’t have as much room will be something that you’ll end up regretting.
If you do it right you’ll probably never regret renovating your kitchen. It’s a central place of the home and usually when you have guests over everyone tends to congregate in or near the kitchen. Take the time to do it right. Make it a masterpiece, be proud of it and don’t let others influence what you really want. A well-thought out kitchen can end up being one of the best upgrades you’ll ever do for your home.
