Full article with thanks to: thespruce.com/steps-to-a-kitchen-remodel-1822229
Few home remodeling projects come with more benefits—and more headaches—than a major kitchen remodeling job. If you hire a general contractor to manage a major job that expands the kitchen footprint, costs can easily go into the six-figure range. If you have the courage to tackle the work yourself, the job may take many months to complete, and you may need to live without a kitchen for a good portion of that time.
But a gleaming new kitchen will make your home more livable, and it will increase the equity value of your real estate like few other remodeling projects can do. A great new kitchen will be the focus of family life and can be the center of social gatherings. A fully remodeled kitchen is most certainly a project worth the time, money, and effort, and you can avoid being overwhelmed if you fully understand the steps that go into the process before you begin.
Tip
If possible, decide at the beginning of your project if you plan to work with a general contractor or designer (or both). These professionals can help you get better rates on materials and other purchases throughout the remodelling process, and when they are looped in at the beginning, they can help you decide which ideas are doable and which are outside the realm of possibility.
Assess Needs and Wishes
A great many kitchen remodelling projects end up disappointing a homeowner—or shocking them with the cost—simply because they did not spend the necessary time to determine what they wanted and what they could afford.
Needs vs. Desires in a Kitchen Remodel
Start by asking yourself what persistent problems you experience with your current kitchen. Is it a matter of too little space to cook effectively? Too little space to store food and dishware? Do you lack dining areas? Are the appliances ineffective or too old? Or does the kitchen just make you wince because it is so dated and so ugly?
Establish a prioritised list of things you would like in your new kitchen, ranked according to their importance. It’s helpful to distinguish between those elements you absolutely need and those you simply want.
Remodel Reality Check
Early on in your planning, confront the two-part reality of a kitchen remodeling project: the logistics of the work itself, and the expense involved.
If the work will be done by subcontractors managed by a general contractor, you will have strangers tracking through your house and making noise and mess for a matter of weeks or perhaps even a couple of months. If you plan to do the work yourself, the downtime for the kitchen will likely be much longer—and do you really have the time and DIY skills necessary to accomplish this?
Kitchen Remodel Resale Value
Consider the financial payback on a new kitchen. If you are planning to remain in your house for many years, a dream kitchen might be worth the high cost since it will serve as a functional and attractive family space for decades. But if you are an empty nester who plans to downsize to a smaller home in the next five years, perhaps a surface-level kitchen renovation is really the more practical option.
A kitchen is a highly personal space, and your idea of a dream kitchen may not be anything like the next owner’s idea. Kitchen remodels often return a good portion of their cost in improved home equity—but not all of it.
Prepare for Compromise
Right from the beginning of the planning stage, establish a mindset that is willing to look for ways to cut costs on your kitchen remodeling project.
By far, the easiest and most expensive way to remodel a kitchen is to off-load most of the planning, design, and management of workers to a general contractor. But the contractor comes at a significant cost, and you can save a lot of money if you are willing to serve as your own contractor and hire and supervise individual subcontractors to do the hands-on work. Your cost savings will be greatly amplified if there are some of the tasks you are willing and able to tackle yourself.
Be ready to compromise on the materials in your new kitchen. It is easy to get dreamy-eyed about custom cabinets and marble floor tiles, but you will find that there are stock cabinets with hardwood veneer and mass-produced porcelain floor tiles that will also look great. Is that restaurant-grade gas range really necessary or will a good quality consumer range do the job?
If you’re truly creative, you might even think about using reclaimed cabinets and other materials to create a vintage kitchen look that is both unique and inexpensive.
Kitchen Design and Planning
With a realistic idea of what you need in a new kitchen and a mindset of determined flexibility, you can start to brainstorm and begin to hone a concrete, workable plan for your new kitchen.
Basic Kitchen Plans
While you have a wide range of possibilities, utilise one of the five classic kitchen design plans. For ease of movement, all plans represent some form of that classic workflow model, the kitchen triangle.
- One-Wall Design
- Corridor Design
- L-Shape Design
- Double-L Design
- U-Shape Design
In all likelihood, one of these classic kitchen design plans will be the logical choice for your new kitchen. From there, you can look at a number of resources to help develop actual plan drawings and blueprints for your kitchen:
- Kitchen design software: Inexpensive or free online kitchen design software helps you with the difficult task of space-planning.
- Physical design packages: These kits have cardboard punch-outs representing cabinets and appliances. Placing punch-outs on a kitchen grid helps you realistically view your available space.
- Kitchen designers: Kitchen designers staffed at home improvement companies or at kitchen design stores typically design your kitchen free of charge. However, they will steer you to their own vendors and to their own work crews. Independent designers will have the most freedom and may give you the best product because they have fewer restrictions. However, they will charge you for their services, either by the hour or as a percentage of the project cost.
- General contractors: The same GCs who manage kitchen remodelling projects may be able to assist you in the early stages of planning the kitchen, although their design assistance will not get detailed until you hire them. But most GCs who are bidding on a job will offer suggestions and possibly even plan sketches as part of their proposals. Just talking to contractors can help you clarify your own plans.
Hire a Contractor or DIY
Whether you do have created your kitchen plan yourself or worked with a design professional, once you have settled on a kitchen layout and developed drawings, it is time to make the all-important decision on who you will hire to turn those ideas into reality. There are three options:
- Hire a GC (general contractor). These are generally builder/construction firms that specialise in managing major projects from start to finish. They can range from small companies with two or three people, to a large firm with dozens of employees. In large firms, the commission charged by the GC ranges from 15 to 25 percent of the total job cost. Smaller GCs are often owner/operator business in which the owner may perform a good deal of the work himself, possibly one or two staff carpenters, then subcontract out specialised work, such as wiring, plumbing, and tile installation. This can help with cost efficiency, as most GCs have a pool of sub-contractors they work with often, so they may be able to negotiate a better rate. An owner/operator contractor with a good track record is an excellent choice for a kitchen remodelling project since their overhead costs are usually much lower than larger firms. These smaller contractors usually do not charge a commission, since their costs are figured into the overall job estimates.
- Do it yourself. At the other end of the scale is doing all the hands-on work yourself. This is a practical alternative if you are a very experienced DIYer, fully knowledgeable in all the skills required, and if you have plenty of spare time to do the work. But this is not an option for the faint-of-heart, because kitchen remodelling is a big project. It is not uncommon for a DIYer tackling a major kitchen remodel to find themselves a full year into a project with the end still months away. A good DIYer, though, can cut the project costs in half by doing all the work.
- Hire your own subcontractors. A compromise strategy is to serve as your GC—finding, hiring, and supervising the individual subcontractors (carpenters, plumbers, electricians, flooring pros, etc.) yourself. This can save you quite a bit of money over a GC-managed project, but it requires a good deal of effort to manage the workflow and supervise the various subcontractors. One advantage of this approach, though, is that you can choose to tackle some aspects of the job yourself to save money. for example, you can choose to do the demolition yourself, then hire carpenters to do the framing, wiring, and plumbing, then do the flooring and cabinet installations yourself.
Building Permits
At the point where you’re ready to hire a general contractor or begin the work yourself, it’s time to apply for permits. Permits must be obtained from different agencies. Your city or county may administer the electrical, plumbing, and building permits. Your water company may also need to permit any work relating to water supply and drainage. If a general contractor is handling the renovation, he will obtain all the necessary permits. If you are doing it yourself, start by calling your local city or county permitting agency.
Prepare Your Home
Make contingency plans for meals during the time your kitchen is out of operation. With some kitchen remodels, your plumbing and appliances may be operational for some portions of the project. More often, though, your stove, sink, and other appliances will be disconnected and absent for at least a short time, or maybe even many weeks, as your kitchen is being remodeled.
Make arrangements for living without your kitchen for however many weeks it will be out of commission. You may be able to get by if you move a few appliances into another room and set up an informal kitchen for the duration. A recreation room or home bar with a sink can serve as a cooking and dining space for this time. If you cook up a number of meals in advance and store them in a freezer, you’ll need nothing more than a microwave oven to reheat them for meals.
This might be a time when you eat more meals at restaurants, or a time when you find yourself joining sympathetic friends and relatives for meals at their homes—invitations are likely if you offer to cook for them.
Kitchen Demolition
With all the preparation out of the way, the first real step is a noisy and messy one—and one that can be fun, as well.
Whether it’s done by you or the general contractor’s crew, removing the old appliances and tearing out the old materials is the first step on the road to the new kitchen. This can be hard physical work, but it is not particularly complicated unless the demolition involves removing load-bearing walls.
This may be a part of the project you choose to do yourself. If so, remember to wear safety gear and take precautions if there is any chance that lead-based paint or asbestos is present. These materials require special handling. And if you are doing the demolition yourself, you’ll need to arrange for a roll-off dumpster or other means of hauling away the debris and any discarded appliances.
Kitchen Structural Build-Out
With demolition complete, a typical kitchen remodel begins in earnest with the contractor’s carpentry crew performing whatever framing work is necessary for the project. Depending on your new kitchen’s configuration, this may involve some very major construction tasks. Are you adding or replacing windows? Or removing windows to increase cabinet space? Taking down walls to open up the kitchen to the rest of the house? Even minor kitchen remodeling projects may need joists strengthened to support heavier appliances or built-ins such as a kitchen island.
Framing work is something many experienced DIYers can do themselves, working according to the building plans that were developed during the planning stages.
Plumbing, Wiring, and HVAC Rough-In
After the framing work, the next step is for new or rerouted plumbing pipes, wiring, and HVAC duct work to be run. This process is known as the mechanical rough-in phase, and it is normally done by licensed plumbers, electricians, and HVAC pros hired either by the general contractor or by a homeowner serving that role.
If you’re doing the work yourself and learning as you go, this will be slow-going. Plumbing and wiring are not trades you learn overnight, and kitchens usually require a lot of new plumbing and wiring. The current code wiring requirements for kitchens may mean that several entirely new circuits need to be installed. The complexity of the work and the inherent hazards if wiring and plumbing aren’t done correctly means that all but the most skilled DIYers will want to subcontract this work out to pros, who can do the work with remarkable swiftness.
Plumbing Rough-In
Unless the kitchen project involves merely replacing a sink, dishwasher, and refrigerator in the same locations, normally there will be some rerouting of water supply and drain lines to new locations. Even if the fixtures are remaining in the same place, this is a good time to update any old plumbing pipes—galvanised steel pipes can be replaced with PEX, for example. The plumbing changes may be quite complex, such as if you are moving a sink to a center kitchen island.
When the plumbing rough-in is completed, it will receive the first of two inspections mandated by permit requirements. The inspector will review the installation while the wall surfaces are still removed to make sure it has been done according to code. If you have done this work yourself, it is your responsibility to arrange for the inspection.
Wiring Rough-In
As complex as the plumbing may be, the electrical service upgrades for a large kitchen remodel may be even more sweeping. Modern kitchens have very heavy electrical loads and the code may require as many as seven circuits or more. To effectively power a large modern kitchen, your home should have at least 200-amp service. This means that many kitchen remodeling projects require that an electrician update the entire electrical service to the house.
As the electrician runs the new circuits to the kitchen, he will likely abandon any existing circuit wiring in the kitchen in favor of running new wiring for all the kitchen circuits. sHere, too, the wiring rough-in installation will need to be reviewed and passed by the inspector before the project can move to the next phase.
HVAC Rough-In
While not always necessary, any new HVAC ductwork required by the project is done at the same time that wiring and plumbing work is being completed. Installing sheet metal ductwork is usually done by an HVAC contractor who understands the physics of airflow and can position the new vent registers and cold air return registers in the most effective locations.
Finish Walls and Ceilings
With the next step, the kitchen will begin the transition from a battle-zone into something that looks like a kitchen.
Once the plumbing, wiring, and HVAC rough-ins have been completed and passed by the inspector, the walls and ceilings can be closed up. Exterior walls will be insulated with fiberglass batt to provide a buffer between the kitchen and inclement weather. With the wall cavities accessible, this is a good time to install high-quality insulation.
Next, drywall is hung and the seams are taped and finished. Walls and ceilings are now primed and painted. If ceilings are being textured, the texture is now applied.
Insulating, installing drywall, and priming and finishing walls and ceilings are all tasks that homeowners can do themselves to save money. Be aware, though, that pros can do this work very quickly and are relatively inexpensive.
And there’s much, much more!
Full article with thanks to: thespruce.com/steps-to-a-kitchen-remodel-1822229
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