Some of you may have thought about remodeling your home. I thought it might be fun to show you what remodeling is like today. You have several wild cards that you wouldn’t have had before.
You have heard about supply and demand, and it is alive and well when you are remodeling. Both contractors and materials are hard to find, and you have long wait periods to get your job done because of it. I have been remodeling this house since mid-December 2021 which is more than six months ago.
The other thing that people may not realize is the mess you live through during the remodel. For example, I just changed the granite in the kitchen to Mystic White quartz. My next step is to paint the cabinets. It’s a whole lot less expensive to paint than change out your cabinets!
When you remodel your kitchen, the biggest decision is whether to save the cabinets or tear them out and get new cabinets. Definitely price it both ways. I think you’ll find it is a lot more expensive to start from scratch.
The kitchen was one of the last rooms we remodeled. We had already spent a lot of money, so I took a hard look at painting the cabinets. I knew I wanted to change the countertops, but if I could paint the cabinets rather than replace them, I could save a lot of money. I finally decided to paint them. The cabinets that were there are wood. They have been used a bit but seemed to be built well.
So here’s what I have to do at this stage to get ready. The picture on top and side is the way they looked before we started. In the bottom left picture we had installed the new countertops and backsplash.
I decided to paint them white on the top (Sherwin Williams Extra White) and gray on the bottom (Sherwin Williams Steely Gray). That seems to be what is in vogue today – who knows what tomorrow will bring.
You can see I had painted the cabinets in the living room those colors and since the rooms are both visible, I think it looks best that way.
However, to get ready for all this to start, I had to unload the cabinet drawers and some of the cabinets themselves. So where to put all this stuff? For me, it’s the dining room table. You can see what a mess this is.
We needed to move the kitchen table into the living room, so we have room to cordon off the kitchen and its eating area to spray paint. I went with a hybrid paint, although I think he used Emerald on the bottom. Supposedly, hybrid doesn’t smell as bad, and you can stay in the house. We found it to be very livable while we were there.
Finally we finished with the kitchen cabinets, and I'm very happy with them. It would have cost at least $60K for a kitchen remodel with new cabinets. They were good cabinets to start with - just had the used look on the wood finish and I wasn't happy about their accessibility. I added pullout shelves and drawer dividers which I’ll tell you about. The usability has turned around completely.
I'm not sure exactly what it cost to paint the cabinets because the bid included the painting of the cabinets in two bathrooms, but I think it was about $5K.
I also am happy with the coordinated look between the living room and kitchen since it is an open concept.
I did not replace the dishwasher or the refrigerator because they are working fine.
I had to buy a new stove. I wasn't planning on it, but the oven totally went out. I didn't some research and found one I liked. Best Buy matched the Costco price, and it was delivered and installed fast. Great service!
The new range is a GE Profile and has an air fryer/convection oven built in which I think will be fun to use. It also uses a steam-clean process. And it's controlled by Wi-Fi on my phone. I haven't tried any of it out yet, but it sounds interesting! It was about $3K.
I have to add in the pull-out shelves, the drawer dividers, the quartz countertops, and the new faucet, but it was a whole lot less expensive to do it this way!
