Remodeling

Some Before and After Photos Of Remodel

I wanted to post a few more pictures because I kind of jumped ahead and skipped over some pictures I wanted to post earlier.
Tip: Use Wax Paper to move heavy cabinetry or other objects over wood or laminate floors to prevent scratching of floors.

Diapers work well too :).

In this before picture look at the top [...]

I wanted to post a few more pictures because I kind of jumped ahead and skipped over some pictures I wanted to post earlier.

Tip: Use Wax Paper to move heavy cabinetry or other objects over wood or laminate floors to prevent scratching of floors.

Diapers work well too :).

In this before picture look at the top of the cabinets. We decided in the remodel get rid of that gap where we always filled with “kitchy” stuff. We didn’t want to do that anymore because we would just fill the space with whatever we could find and never liked it nor had attachment to. Every company we worked with whether it was Omega Cabinetry, Thomasville Cabinetry, or IKEA they all had a solution. IKEA is not custom cabinetry, but they do have 39″ wall cabinets and they were a perfect solution. We also gained a little bit of room if you measure countertop to bottom of cabinet with the new setup.

As I already posted that we scraped the popcorn off the ceiling and made it smooth. The reason for this was because we were moving the cabinets to the ceiling and the eye would be drawn upwards. Another reason would be the trim above the new cabinets would show alot of gaps or light holes because of the uneven surface. The third reason is that it just looks better and if you’re spending the money, spend a little bit more to get all the details covered. Its just a detail, but its a big one.

The new cabinets probably have 3″ from the ceiling as opposed to about 14″ with the old cabinets. The ceiling is almost never level, so this where the trim comes into play. Some people don’t even do the upper trim. We just felt it was another detail worth doing. The piece costs around $20 bucks.

This is our installer Marius putting in the uppers.

Here your eye is drawn to the ceiling. Can’t have the popcorn there.

Cabinets flat packed.

The whole kitchen pushed over into the other room.

Some before and afters of the wall knockdown:

After knockout.

The new pantry is split between the two tall cabinets that surround the refrigerator. I’ve already mentioned a few times, the paint is 0 VOC paint from Freshaire. You can get it at Home Depot. No smell at all.

IKEA Cabinets Installed Sort Of

We went with IKEA Adel Medium Brown cabinets with the new thinner handle Lansa handles. IKEA just changed over to the thinner model during our order.
We opted for delivery service so we didn’t break our backs. Plus with C pregnant, it was going to be my back that was breaking. Let the pros handle it [...]

We went with IKEA Adel Medium Brown cabinets with the new thinner handle Lansa handles. IKEA just changed over to the thinner model during our order.

We opted for delivery service so we didn’t break our backs. Plus with C pregnant, it was going to be my back that was breaking. Let the pros handle it for a little more than a hundred bucks. The total weight came out to around 1700 pounds. Yeh no thanks.

We had alot more boxes than this.

Uppers with microwave.

The rest of the uppers and lowers are in.

Looking out to the living room.

We originally had a SBD30 (sink cabinet 30″ for the non-ikeans), but the measurements were off. We went back to the store and got a BD36. Not a sink base cabinet, but a lower 36″ cabinet. We wanted a full door look without the false fronts sink cabinets come with. Nothing is installed yet here. We are doing a door/drawer pullout on the left door, and a hinged door on the right.

Where the old pantry was, we put in a higher bar than our countertop height. We used 39″ wall cabinets on the floor. To break up the space and give dynamic levels. Then we stepped up that bar about 8 inches and put short top around. You’ll see in the final pics.

Added 8 outlets to the “bar” area. Good for charging cell phones, a phone, and if we feel like putting a small appliance there we can.

So we’re going for the built in fridge look on the fridge side, but when the cabinets were ganged, they were installed too low. Actually I didn’t account for the door hinges on the refrigerator when I measured. I would later have to take out these big cabinets and raise the support rail myself. The 36×24 over the fridge was a PITA to deal with.

In this picture you can see the box frame position is lower than the fridge door hinges. So imagine if the doors were put on, they would not be able to open and close. The solution is to raise the support rail where the two tall 88″ cabinets on either side of the refrigerator hook onto as well as the cavernous 36×24 cabinet. Then place 1″ mdf squares under the Capita legs of the 88″ tall cabinets. This will give enough clearance to have smooth door operation.

Now done the right way.

Cabinet Demolition and Painted Wall

After researching kitchen installers, we chose to work with a man/woman team who had previous experience installing Ikea kitchens. If you need good Ikea kitchen cabinet installers at a good price in the South Florida Area, contact us and we’ll hook you up with them.
Our cabinets arrived a day later than expected so on the [...]

After researching kitchen installers, we chose to work with a man/woman team who had previous experience installing Ikea kitchens. If you need good Ikea kitchen cabinet installers at a good price in the South Florida Area, contact us and we’ll hook you up with them.

Our cabinets arrived a day later than expected so on the first day our installers were only able to demo the kitchen. They had originally planned to demo, paint over the newly smooth-finished ceilings and start putting together the cabinetry. After the demo was complete, we painted the cutout wall with Freshaire Natural Wilderness, which looks like a khaki gray color. This is a 0 VOC paint. No obnoxious smell and not harmful to breath in either.

Here are some pics of the cabinet demolition:

Popcorn Ceiling Removal and Drywall Demo

Here are a few pictures after the popcorn ceiling has been removed. Popcorn removal was definitely something that was on the fringe of our budget, but once we did it we knew we made the right choice.
We interviewed with 4 different companies that specialize in popcorn removal and we found Renew Ceilings on Angies List [...]

Here are a few pictures after the popcorn ceiling has been removed. Popcorn removal was definitely something that was on the fringe of our budget, but once we did it we knew we made the right choice.

We interviewed with 4 different companies that specialize in popcorn removal and we found Renew Ceilings on Angies List for the South Florida area. They rated high and were extremely good at what they did. We hired Renew Ceilings to do our drywall cutout of our pantry as well as the popcorn scrape. They brought in a crew of at least 7-8 people and got it all done - the whole job inside one day. Everyone we talked to said it would take a few days and some said we can’t stay in the house overnight. These guys are professionals and they left the place clean. It would have been a tremendous undertaking for almost anyone else we interviewed to get the job done in the same amount of time.

C’s parent’s just used this company the week before we did to scrape their ceilings and C’s mom told us that the primer was the reason she had a headache for 3 days. Well we’re eco friendly. So I haul butt down to Home Depot and pick up 4 jugs/gallons of this Freshaire Drywall primer. This paint and primer is sold only at Home Depot and has no VOC’s which means no headaches.

It costs a little more, but the amount is negligible when weighing in the discomfort and potential health issues from exposure to VOC’s from traditional primers and paints.

Ok so I was trapped upstairs during the process, but I took a shot through the plastic. They plastic up the area that is being scraped - walls, floors, you name it. In this case it was the area of the kitchen, living room, dining room, laundry room, and downstairs bathroom. We couldn’t only scrape the kitchen because now with the wall knockdown it transitions into the other two rooms. The whole enchilada would need to be scraped.

This picture shows the wall not fully taken down yet, just the hole cutout. The electrical had to be rerouted here and the doorbell was moved. Its that black thing in the foreground near the ceiling.

Here is why you want to remove the air vents before popcorn scraping. Actually the company we hired should have taken these down. It was two screws…

Closeup of popcorn scrape, primed, but not painted yet:

Here are some shots after they cleaned up the popcorn from all over the place and the drywall was well, drying.

New Appliances Installed

Happy Earth Day! The Earth Friendly and energy efficient appliances were installed about a month and a half ago and replaced older less efficient appliances. The dishwasher has a very high efficiency rating.

Happy Earth Day! The Earth Friendly and energy efficient appliances were installed about a month and a half ago and replaced older less efficient appliances. The dishwasher has a very high efficiency rating.

Remodeling Our Kitchen

Some of you know we are remodeling our kitchen.
What we’ve done and how we made some of our decisions.

New stainless steel appliances.

Sears is running a deal till early March that gives a 20% discount if you buy 3 appliances. Done.
We already have the Kenmore Elite french door/bottom refridgerator with water/ice on the door. Its really [...]

Some of you know we are remodeling our kitchen.

What we’ve done and how we made some of our decisions.

1. New stainless steel appliances.
   • Sears is running a deal till early March that gives a 20% discount if you buy 3 appliances. Done.
   • We already have the Kenmore Elite french door/bottom refridgerator with water/ice on the door. Its really a rebranded LG I think.
   • The three appliances we bought were the Kenmore Elite Dishwasher (Elite UltraWash HE 1315), rated high by Consumer Reports, Kenmore Elite Microwave 8083, again rated high by CR, and Kenmore Elite Oven #46713, unrated by CR.
2. Scraping the popcorn ceilings
   • Popcorn removal is kind of expensive and I looked into doing myself because its not that difficult to scrape off, but its an extremely messy job.
   • There are two options with popcorn removal. The first option which is the most common and least expensive is knockdown. Basically its a sprayed clay or mud that has a stucco like look to it, but flat. The second option which is a flat scrape is the most expensive and most time consuming option. To flat scrape its around double-triple the price and it requires about 3-4x the amount of time and you can’t live in the house when its being done (or so we’re told).
   • We found a company who brought in a crew and did flat scrape within 1 day. In and out. Great service and highly recommend them for popcorn ceiling removal in South Florida area.
3. Kitchen Cabinets
   • We’ve looked at 5 different Kitchen remodeling stores to compare prices. Home Depot Expo, Home Depot, a very reputable local Kitchen & Bath co., a wholesaler for Omega Cabinetry, and IKEA.
   • Home Depot EXPO - Retail prices, comfort of someone doing everything for you. Good for the person who wants NO HANDS on the job. Also good for higher end appliances, fixtures, and finishes. Again its retail prices and you pay for the comfort of someone taking care of it all for you. No ability to find best prices. At EXPO you get an account manager that manages all the sub contractors, but they come from different places and they never know what each sub contractor is doing so it can cause frustration for the homeowner when there is a communication breakdown. You can also opt to act as the General contractor and sub out the different parts, but you are still paying a middle man here.
     Final opinion: Considerable savings by going elsewhere, but would require considerable work/research/time on our parts.
   • Home Depot - Retail prices, semi-comfort of someone doing most of the job for you. Good for the person that doesn’t want much Hands on the job. Limited ability to find best prices. At Home Depot you also get an account manager that sort of manages some sub contractors. If you choose to do just the cabinets, then its up to you to get sub-contractors for everything else. You are still paying a middle man here. One bad item for people who choose to do the whole remodel through HD is that they sub out to all different companies anyways based on availability and then those subs tend to not have good communication with the homeowner and between each other. These are some of the reasons why there are a lot of complaints about HD for kitchen remodels. If we went with HD we were only going to order the cabinets from them.
     Final opinion: Cost was semi reasonable, but for a little bit more money, we could opt for the best cabinets on the market. So for around one thousand dollars more we could get Omega cabinets vs Thomasville cabinets. Omega is rated the best from Consumer Reports while Thomasville is second best.
   • Local reputable Kitchen co. - Very expensive - retail prices. Best option for the person that wants nothing to do with the remodeling job. You have one main contractor and he handles all the work. They used Omega cabinets. Very high end kitchen remodel place. This reputable local kitchen co. was even more expensive and charged a huge premium for using Omega cabinetry. There is a large mark up on these cabinets and they are rated as the best.
   • IKEA offers a high end look for an extremely discounted price. We have never been to an IKEA and had limited experience with IKEA products. Although we always loved their catalogs. However, that price comes with the hassle of assembly, cheaper quality construction, no customization in terms of special sizes, and limited styles.
4. In the end it came down to two things. Style and cost with cost weighing heavily. We loved the looks of IKEA Adel Medium Brown cabinets as well as the Nexus Black Brown cabinets. However, the closer we inspected the Nexus Black Brown style the more we were worried about chips on the cabinets. See Nexus BB is a veneered MDF, while Adel MB is of slightly better quality with solid doors. With two kids running around we didn’t want to worry about easy chips happening in the kitchen, which is what our old cabinets were. The other thing was cost. With IKEA cabinets being about 1/4th the cost of Omega Cabinetry it became a no brainer, not to mention we loved the style of the Adel Medium Brown. We were buying alot of other things, so the savings in the cabinets afforded us to do more around the house, like buy a new couch, new tv’s, a new wall divider, scrape the ceilings, other new furniture.

More to come later until then, here is a video of our old kitchen:

Recycled Glass Countertops

Have you seen the look of recycled glass product countertops?
I really love the look of these and considered it for our kitchen remodel, but we ended up with granite. However, we WILL be using recycled glass countertops in our downstairs bathroom remodel.
Here are a couple of manufacturers that I like and am considering myself.
Icestone - [...]

Have you seen the look of recycled glass product countertops?

I really love the look of these and considered it for our kitchen remodel, but we ended up with granite. However, we WILL be using recycled glass countertops in our downstairs bathroom remodel.

Here are a couple of manufacturers that I like and am considering myself.

Icestone - Recycled glass and concrete mixtures. One sample I like:

Vetrazzo - A little more wild in looks due to a higher ratio of glass in the countertop than others. I like Hollywood Sage and Glacier Blue.

Eco-Terr - Uses recycled materials from different sources such as recycled granite, recycled glass, and more.

Enviroglasproducts -  Enviroglasproducts has recycled glass tiles and slabs, but get this, their new product Enviromode is made with recycled porcelain from toilets, bathtubs, and sinks! Pretty cool to put those materials back into a bathroom.

Kitchen Remodel Steps

I know we’ve been talking about this for a while, but we are finally really knee-deep into the process of remodeling our kitchen.  I’ll post about each step individually in more detail, but for now, I wanted to post a list of all the steps we’ve been taking and still need to complete in order [...]

I know we’ve been talking about this for a while, but we are finally really knee-deep into the process of remodeling our kitchen.  I’ll post about each step individually in more detail, but for now, I wanted to post a list of all the steps we’ve been taking and still need to complete in order to finish this entire project! It definitely takes a lot of time and energy, but I know it will be worth it.

1. First of all, we had to come up with a kitchen design.

2. Pick out kitchen cabinets. The hardware can essentially come later, but needs to be done at some point too.

3. Buy new appliances. This needs to be done in order to measure correctly for the cabinetry.

4. Find contractor(s). J and I are working as the general contractors, but we needed to find people to do the actual work. I wrote about this step here.

5. We figured since we would be replacing our cabinets with taller ones that go up to the ceiling, we needed to scrape the popcorn off the ceilings and of course repaint.

6. Pick out granite for the counter tops.

7. Pick out tile back splash.

8. Choose new sink and faucet. We are going to keep our current garbage disposal and let it run it’s course.
9. Decide on whether or not we are getting new lighting fixtures and get an electrician for some other minor electrical changes.

10.  Speak with phone company to see about adding a new phone jack. We changed things when doing the design and need to make sure that what we planned will actually work.
11.  Empty all of the current kitchen cabinets to get ready for demolition. What a job!!!

12. DEMOLITION

13. Install the new cabinets, reconnect all of the appliances, sink and counter top installation.

14. Putting it all back together……..

Stay tuned for photos and updates.

Questions To Ask Contractor And His References

 We are currently in the market for a contractor to install our new kitchen cabinets. We have looked up different contractors on Angie’s List and Craigslist. I prefer Angie’s List since it is legitimate. People need to pay for their listings. They are based on a rating system and are reviewed by customers. Anyone can [...]

 We are currently in the market for a contractor to install our new kitchen cabinets. We have looked up different contractors on Angie’s List and Craigslist. I prefer Angie’s List since it is legitimate. People need to pay for their listings. They are based on a rating system and are reviewed by customers. Anyone can place an ad on Craigslist and it’s up to you to make sure they are legit.  We are speaking with people from both lists and getting estimates. One major thing I intent on doing is asking for and speaking to references.  I’ve come up with a list of questions to ask the contractors and their references.

To ask contractor:

Does your company carry workers compensation and liability insurance?

Are you licensed and registered with the state?

Do you give written warranties?

How long have you been in business?

To which professional associations do you belong?

To ask references:

Were you able to communicate well with the contractor?

Were you happy with the job?

Did the crew show up on time? Were they pleasant?

Was the project completed on schedule?

Were there unexpected expenses?

Would you use the contractor again and refer them to others?

Did workers clean up after finishing the job?

———-

I know many people suggest asking to see a finished project that the contractor has done, but I’m not sure how I feel about going to someone’s house and seeing their kitchen? I suppose it is the only real way to get a feel for the quality of work, since quality is relative and you really do need to see for yourself to decide if it is up to par.

What do you think? Would you mind having strangers come to your house to check out the work that a contractor did? Can you think of any questions I’m missing?