What I Wish I Knew Before My Kitchen Remodel

Are you thinking about tackling a kitchen remodel? In most homes, the kitchen is the heart, the center of it all, the hub of the activity, and the common gathering space. You may be considering a kitchen remodel because your kitchen has outlived its usefulness. Maybe it doesn't fit your family's lifestyle. Or maybe it's just not your style. You may have been thinking about tackling a kitchen remodel for years, or maybe you just bought the house and you want to make the space your own. Remodeling a kitchen can be a massive undertaking and a major inconvenience but the benefits of living through a kitchen remodel will often outweigh any objections you might have. We just completed our kitchen remodel and we had a few hiccups along the way, from firing our contractor to extending the remodel from weeks to months, here are some things I wish I knew before my kitchen remodel.

We bought a custom home in 2010, but it wasn't our custom home and I never really liked the kitchen space. Many of the items in the kitchen were high-end, but they weren't selections I would have made. With three young kids, we lived in the space for a decade before we really started to get serious about pulling the trigger on a kitchen remodel. We spend a lot of time in our kitchen. We rarely eat out and make most of our meals at home, so having a fully-functioning space that was perfectly curated for our family, was important to us. 

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I can't tell you how many times I got this question. I felt like I constantly had to justify every reason for our kitchen remodel because while our kitchen wasn't my style, there were plenty of people who would have been very happy to have had the space that I was wanting to gut. I'm also a very big advocate of using what you have, and what we had was perfectly good. What it boiled down to was, could I be happier for longer if we updated the space the answer was yes. And in today's real estate market, sometimes staying put in your current home is a better option than buying something different and updated.

We were able to resell our cabinets and granite on Facebook Marketplace. This actually made me feel much better about the demo process because I knew the materials would be having a second life in a new home and not just be destroyed. We also skillfully avoided dump fees for some pretty large and heavy materials and made a few bucks in the process. 

If you'd like to read more about how I sold our cabinets and granite, check out this post on my blog.

If your kitchen cabinets and other building materials still have life left in them, but you don't want to try to resell them, you can donate them to organizations like Habitat Restore or to a local furniture bank. Many will demo and haul them for you. Just give them a call to start the process.

Small updates can make a big impact, and instead of completely gutting your kitchen, you can make improvements that will increase the functionality and aesthetics of the home. Updating can also be a more economical option and changes, like updating your kitchen faucets or painting your cabinets, or changing your lighting, can make a huge difference. Consider the projects you want to tackle and your budget and make the decision if you want to try to update the space or gut it and start from scratch.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm a big fan of using what you have. We spent months trying to decide if we should paint the cabinets and looked into other options like replacing cabinet doors and adding cabinet boxes, and in the end, we decided it would give us an updated look but it would only put a band-aid on the progress and end result that we wanted.

If you asked me a year ago if you should hire a designer, my answer would have been no. Hear me out. I have a decent idea of what I like and what I don't like when it comes to design and style. But having your pulse on your design style is just one aspect of a remodel. 

We also knew that tackling a kitchen remodel was not going to be cheap. Adding in a designer's fee was an extra expense so I dragged my feet on it. We had several ("free") kitchen designers from the cabinet company draw up plans, but to be honest, nothing excited us.  A good designer will work with you to really draw out the best of your personal style in a way that will get you excited about the project. 

After several kitchen cabinet designers drew up plans that we just felt meh about, we decided to consult an interior designer and I'm so glad that we did!

I think what I learned in the process is that an interior designer is a whole lot more than someone who was there to help me pick out a paint color. A good interior designer will offer design consultations, space planning, purchasing, and project management. After sitting down at our design consultation, we were blown away by the out-of-the-box design concepts she was able to give us. What had previously taken months, in our experience, using kitchen cabinet designers, was done in one meeting. We had a design we were excited about! 

Not only that, but once we started making selections from cabinet color to countertops, faucets, and lighting, she was there to help us narrow down the options and keep us on track with our selections. It's easy to get quickly overwhelmed with decisions and with her expertise, we were able to select our favorites quickly without overthinking it. And when we did overthink it, and I started to second guess a decision, she'd quickly help offer her expertise. I'm probably not going to remodel a kitchen more than once or twice in my lifetime, but a good designer will have countless experiences she can draw from that will benefit you through the process.

Decision fatigue is a real thing, and when you are in the process of a remodel, you'll have to make a lot of decisions. Some of the decisions are fun, but then there are some decisions that you just plain won't care about. Maybe it's me, but I have not thought once about where to place a light switch or how many inches above the countertop to hang a pendant. It's never crossed my mind to even think about how many inches away I should place my Delta air switch for my disposal from my kitchen sink handle. Should you center the pot filler or not? These are real-life scenarios I texted my designer about when I had people working in my home asking me how they should do things.

For us, hiring an interior designer was one of the best things that we did. I would never tackle a large home project again without one.

We hired a contractor instead of trying to do things ourselves because our kitchen remodel project wasn't a DIY project we wanted to tackle. I consulted multiple contractors, called references, looked at pictures from past projects, and verified their current licenses. We communicated with the contractor we selected for months before our project actually got off the ground and we felt comfortable hiring him for the job. I did all the due diligence the experts will advise you to do and yet we still found ourselves in a situation where our contractor over-promised and under-delivered.

There were several red flags that didn't present themselves until the project was underway. And the reality is, you don't start a project anticipating that you'll have to fire anyone, let alone the person you have hired to be in your home. 

Trust is a precious commodity and when it's lost, it's hard to get back. When you take on a home remodeling project, you have to fully trust the individual you've hired to be at the forefront of your project. Through a series of bad choices on our contractor's part, we lost trust that he could complete the job to our standards. 

While you should expect that not everything will go according to plan during a home remodel when issues arise, you should allow your contractor the opportunity to fix mistakes and come up with solutions. When you are making concessions for shoddy, unsafe, and haphazard work that was clearly outlined as something your contractor should have been competent to complete, then it's time to reevaluate the working relationship. 

An open-concept home has been popular for decades. The openness of the space and the flow from one room to the next allow the space to be maximized. When you tackle a remodel in an open-concept home though, it's really easy to get started and then have a trickle-down of projects that you want to see completed and the budget for the project just keeps going up and up!

For us, the kitchen remodel was just part of our complete project. We replaced the flooring and painted the whole house and updated a half bathroom on the main level. It's sometimes easier to break your remodel down into phases so that you don't have to tackle everything at once, but you will need to budget for some things as you update, like the paint or flooring, because it's hard to find a place to start and stop in an open-concept home.

Want to read more? Here are 8 tips to tackle a home remodel.

Since our half bath was on the main floor, we decided to tackle that during our kitchen remodel. We were able to take on the project on a budget and did the bulk of the DIY projects in that space. The bathroom vanity was the same color as the cabinets we removed in the kitchen. I updated it with some paint so that it wouldn't clash with the new flooring. We had a remnant leftover from our kitchen countertops and during installation, we were able to change the sink and install a new countertop in the bathroom quickly updating the space.

Changing out the faucet to the Delta Faucet Matte Black Ashlyn made a huge difference in updating the sink. Delta Faucet also has bathroom accessories that complement like towel rings and tissue holders. Finally, updating the lighting with an inexpensive fixture and adding a bold wallpaper made the bathroom feel completely different. 

If you are taking on a primary bathroom remodel, check out this post.

Here are even more ways you can refresh your space with Delta Faucet's reno pros!

Our remodel project has been complete for a few months now and we are so happy with how everything has turned out. We have a space that's perfect for our family and we can continue making memories for many years to come!