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It’s all worth it when it’s over, but when it comes to majors, it’s not an easy road to get from the miserable before to the glorious after kitchen renovation. (Honestly, any space or proportion renovation will do.)
was refurbished bundle There have been many kitchens in my career, but none quite like the Victorian house my best friend and I bought to repair and sell. The whole house was lean reno, The kitchen just got more dramaticI had to go down to the foundation, so when I entered through the back door, I was balancing on a joist on top of the dirt for a while.look at some weird pictures here.
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And this complete discard means an opportunity to have a clean slate and in fact this actually makes a lot of things easier — well, no workaround needed everything. But it also leaves room for a lot of things to go sideways…and they went sideways.
Sometimes you have to learn the hard way, but we certainly had a part to play. Here are a few things I wish I knew that could have made this experience an adventure instead of a misfortune.
we went with a beautiful person, Large tile In the kitchen, think about how you want to set it up (angle it, start with a slanted wall with a window). And it was great! again? It was set on top of a ton of ‘self-levellers’ which is absolutely essential for tiles this big. Here’s why. Larger tiles are less tolerant of floor irregularities. By the time the installer poured in a ton of self-levelers, we were taking up vertical space under already installed cabinets and creeping up in height. Do you know when we discovered this? When the plumber arrived to install the dishwasher. The dishwasher suddenly became “too high” to slide under the countertop due to the height of the tile floor underneath it.
Demolishing the entire room is not an option at this time. I called my local electronics store to tell them the problem and wished they had something like a dishwasher that was shorter than normal.I felt like I was in danger of being avoided serious They had the answer when they told me that other people were having similar issues. It was a universally designed dishwasher intended for use in kitchens accessible to people with disabilities. This dishwasher is adjustable and can be raised or lowered. Presto! It was perfect.
Treat the exposed bricks first.
Finding the original bricks is like the pot of gold in the renovation world, and we were so excited to see the brick chimney hidden behind the crumbling plaster.from demo day, we knew it would be a great feature. It was in pretty rough shape, but it was a little hard to tell how bad it was in the mess and rubble of the construction site. Still, we had a mason expert (I thought) deal with it, and by the time the kitchen was almost finished, we knew they had done a terrible job. So I had to start over again. Ha.
This mason did a great job with the chimney, but didn’t hide the new cabinets, countertops, or appliances while he worked. In fact, he was running the range hood while he was grinding the mortar. You can imagine what that caused. From the tile grout to the cabinets, literally every inch of the kitchen was covered in fine red dust, completely clogging the inside of the range hood. I don’t even know how long it took to clean up the mess.
Sure, he should have done a better job of protecting the new kitchen, but had he done it at the beginning of the project, the mess wouldn’t have been an issue.
Don’t take any job for granted.
It’s nice to think that experts will do professional work, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you can never assume people do things right. That means you have to watch like a falcon. We had a project manager who gave me almost all the oversight (more on that another day), but I couldn’t be on site all the time.
So when the kitchen ceiling came in and was painted, I was so excited to see that fresh white ceiling and didn’t even think about what was supposed to be on it until the day I installed the range hood. We installed an island hood in the ceiling above the stove and I was there to make sure it was installed correctly. So I could see the face of the installer when I noticed that the mounting posts were missing from the ceiling. Yes, I couldn’t attach the hood because I only had drywall. That beautiful new ceiling? I had to tear it open and start over to set the range support. It takes time, money, and, as usual, more confusion.
These are just a few of the things I wish I had been more aware of when I started this massive kitchen reno.
What’s your biggest kitchen remodel regret? Comment below what you’ve learned the hard way.
