Dec 212010
Planning or saving up for your kitchen renovation? Here’s a small passing-of-the-torch, all the various sites and pages I’ve referenced for this stage of our project. Useful info, not quite as juicy as Wikileaks – but we don’t like leaks around here. Bookmark the list & cast a smirk towards the future… bitchin’ kitchens for everybody!
Adding value to your kitchen
- Invest in Your Kitchen (My Home Ideas)
- Which Kitchen Cabinets Are Better for Resale? (HGTV.ca)
- Kitchen facelifts on a budget (The Telegraph)
Planning the renovation
- Kitchen Remodel Planning and Critical Path Really useful if you’re demolishing your whole kitchen & using contractors. Needs a little tweaking otherwise, but very helpful overview for a first-timer.
- Planning Your Kitchen (Rona PDF guide)
- Ikea kitchen planner Where I rant, at length, about this useless proprietary software that doesn’t work on Macs.
- Greener kitchen renovations (HGTV)
Stuff you might want to buy or build for your new kitchen
- The Mini Kitchen Desk
- Open shelves
- Bench seating and wine racks
- 25 DIY kitchen organizers (Martha Stewart)
Before and after kitchens
- A new kitchen for around $100
- Stained oak to white cabinets
- Before and After: A $500 Kitchen Makeover (Shelterpop)
- Kitchen transformation (Modern Jane)
- And one more before/after kitchen
- Ten of the best white kitchens
And now to acknowledge “you aren’t helping, get off the couch” glares from Paolo….
Hey, you want a s'more? Some more of what?10 Responses to “Kitchen renovation: resource & planning list”
Comments (10)
I’ve been meaning to tell you…. I grew up with EXACTLY that wallpaper in my mother’s kitchen (as well as the obligatory giant wooden knife and fork). Strangely enough, seeing it here doesn’t make me even the slightest bit nostalgic. : )
Haha! That’s really funny. Good to know not everything is Canada’s fault. Did you have the matching appliances as well? If the nostalgia ever kicks in, I’ll supply a sample for the record books.
I should upload a close-up for everyone’s enjoyment… the earthenware pot says ‘RICE’ in capitals. Of all the things to store in it? Rice, some oranges and a big wooden spoon. Mmm……
My folks built the house I grew up with their own hands. It took 3 years, starting in 1966 (I was 5). Talk about DIY! The appliances were of a similar vintage, but not quite the same. First they were this ugly sort of reddish-brown color that wasn’t hugely popular even back then. I suppose you’d call it rust. It wasn’t like Mom picked the color because she was wild about it or anything, but the local appliance store had a then-state-of-the-art refrigerator that had been special ordered, but then delivery was refused. Turns out someone had screwed up the order and the door opened the wrong way, so my folks got a tremendous deal on it, and ordered the rest of the appliances to match. We had a cooktop and double wall ovens rather than a stove. And half the cabinet and counter space that I consider sufficient today!!
Rust coloured… mm….. haven’t seen or heard of that before! You must possess some innate savvy with DIY to have grown up around a house build!
Thanks so much for the shoutout! My first time visiting your blog and I will be back.. I laughed out loud as read. You have a gift for writing and a lot of energy! Looking forward to following along:)
You’re welcome – and thank you ever so much as well. That’s really kind of you. Merry Christmas!
I was just showing my Big Guy your photos and when I got to the light fixture, he immediately spoke up. He asked me to remind you that not everyone is going to find it hideous, and there are bound to be places you can donate it to. In this area we have REstore, which is a part of Habitat for Humanity, and a more local operation called Community Forklift. In both cases, you donate used good condition (or sometimes not-so-good) fixtures which they then re-sell at a discount price to someone who might be able to re-use them in their property. I’d bet there is something similar in Vancouver. It’s the green thing to do, right? I know that if you lived near here you wouldn’t have to pay full price for tiles for your floors or backsplash.
Ahh – I hadn’t even thought of it & it hit the dumpster a week ago. Thanks to you both for the tip – it was evidently a reminder I needed. I might have had a hard time convincing Paolo – we’d definitely got to the “just get ‘er done” stage of manic go-go-go. Will remember this for next time!
Oh Lauren, I found these little gems today: http://www.rev-a-shelf.com/rev-pages/product-listing.aspx?CategoryFilterID=47&SubcategoryFilterID=56 –> Just the idea of some hideyholes for my embarassingly ratty sponges in the kitchen (and my pristine toothbrush in the bathroom) makes me want to my kitchen NOW.
Funny thing about the Ikea Kitchen planner? I begrudgingly booted up the old P4 desktop when the Mac-hate wouldn’t even let me load the thing properly in Parallels and to the safe, I measured the kitchen twice. With the first width measurement, 72.50 inches, the cabinets would not fit. I measured it again, and discovered, oh, its closer to 72.25 inches. I update that field, make my kitchen SMALLER, and the cabinets all FIT. WTH!!!??? I don’t trust this, or the $13,000 price tag it would cost before countertops and appliances, so I decided to do as you did and suck it up and paint them.
But with the promise of little plastic hidey-hole trays in all my useless drawer faces? I can’t wait!
Right now, I am having a meltdown about drawer and cabinet pulls. Brushed nickel, oil rubbed bronze, or black? Well the light fixtures are black, the hardware should be black. Knobs or trendy bar style pulls? The bars cost three times as much as the knobs and I would like to make a LITTLE profit on this property…. Round knobs or egg-shaped knobs? Egg-shaped knobs cost the same as bars, so you get just get the bars, right? And then hinges?! There are many styles! Should I wait until they’re painted to make this decision? But as I would be buying on eBay things I sourced out at Home Depot, I would have to wait a month handling my paint job with dirty hands… And paint? There are infinite shades of white and apparently they are not created equal. What to do? To much stress! I just had to make a trip to the beer and wine store to get a huge bottle of red to help me through this trying time!
Keep up the good work, and let me know when you have your open house — I’d like to see this beast in person once it’s appropriate for strangers from the internet to invade your beloved home.
~M
THANK YOU for that link. It won’t surprise you that our ratty lives include ratty sponges as well.
I can’t believe the price tag of an Ikea kitchen — I was too cheap to even buy a lousy drawer unit. Seriously ouch. Painting cabinets is the way to go, I can’t believe how well ours withstand daily bashing and “oops, shouldn’t have shoved that chair/pan/vacuum cleaner there”.
My vote would be for the least expensive cupboard-door-opening-device that still feels quality in your hand?? And I outsourced white-paint-colour-choosing to my mum … the answer came back: Minimalist White! (Be prepared for the paint dudes @ Home Depot to make fun of you for asking them to mix a different shade of white than “paint can white”. Apparently that’s weird).
1) Crack the wine!
2) Crank up the tunes!
3) Start painting!
4) Get bored of painting, make drunken & impulsive decision about all of the above
5) Sell apartment, retire to France
Any other problems I can solve???
(P.S. Open house postponed ’til 2012 – as long as strangers from the internet talk loudly in front of genuine buyers about what a catch this place would be).