Kitchen Design, Part 2

Bob Smith: Hi1 I’m Bob Smith with Home Remodel Workshop. Now you’ve done the easy part of starting your kitchen remodeling project your major wishes. Now how do we take it from a wish list to a working design? Let’s get to work. Now, I’ve been a kitchen installer for nearly 15 years and one thing I can tell you after all that experience installing kitchens, installing kitchens and designing kitchens are two different things. At this point is strongly recommended that you need to consult a professional designer or architect to get you through the next space. Now there are expensive ways we’re going through this, it all depends on the scoop of your project. If your project involves tearing out walls, bearing work as far as you know supporting a second floor while you’re removing walls, I strongly advice that you go to a professional designer it may cause you up to a thousand dollar to get a working plan but it will be worth every time of it because of the mistakes that won’t be made. The second way to take care of this is let’s say you pretty much removing the existing cabinets the way they are, you’re maybe installing like I said in my first video and new dishwashers or something along those line or basically you’re working inside the space that’s already existing. In this case there is a much less expensive way of doing it. You can either contact one of the large builder or remodeler type companies in the areas such as Home Depot or Lowes they have a design department. This don’t comment any cost but they do come very inexpensively, I’ll take you through that process. The first place I went was to the Home Depot and I checked out some of there cabinets and what they offer and the expenses and stuffs and there is a wide range of expenses just like any other product do you going to buy but what I wanted to do is take my ideas and take them to a design and what I was told I needed to do was first look through this, this cost me nothing and it will see a guide to kitchen planning and it has all kind of interesting ideas and tells you all the pitfalls and basically you can sit down and lay out your entire kitchen if you would like and I wouldn’t bother doing that because the next stage is going to cost you a hundred bucks which is relatively cheap. I thought to get what they give you, now for the $100 they will give you a measure and a 3D design which basically that means they’re going to send a professional to your house or measure your area will make design recommendation on the spot right there with you and then don’t take those measurements back to the designer at Home Depot where you will make a plan to make a meeting and you’ll go in and meet with here and she will give you a 3D design which is basically a overall elevation or overall looking down floor plan and different elevation of all the different projects. Along with being here and checking with here about what the next step would be, she also give me books on all of the cabinets that they care the American Wood Mark the cabinetry, Thomasville and craft made obviously there is a hundred decisions that need to be made and you need to sit down and go through this books and find out you know what’s the more expensive brand, what’s more expensive styles and basically she said that the prices are base on door style, wood species and stains. Now even with the stains there is an upgrade and the event that you want to glaze or something that looks like a older type finish she suggest to consider an upgrade. All of which will be gone over after the guy measures your room and you go back for a sit down. A strongly advice that anyone is doing the decision making in this project be at you and your spouse or significant other I strongly advice that you both go to the meeting to sit down. It could take sometime to do but it’s well worth the effort instead of having the go through the whole thing towards three times until you get it away you want it. The second thing I did where is just got online and I checked out Lowes and they also offer a kitchen planner where I guest click in the word online again it won’t cost me anything. And pretty much has the same idea as what they had at Home Depot you know they’re going to tell you give you some advice and let you lay the whole kitchen out and even given this little punch out that you can stick on a chart and again I wouldn’t do that because very similar of the price they are also come out and the guy out to fill measure your job and go ahead and sit down and you will get a 3D design so for a 100 bucks you will basically get a working design and something they look at and get started with and start to make some decisions with so I strongly advice if your staying with a similar space what to you have in very little working around then I strongly advice to go with something along this lines. If this doesn’t becoming obvious already planning a kitchen is nothing but one decision after the other complicated by the next decision after that decision. At this point though is a major decision that has to be made, are you going to try to run and do this project to your self or you are going to hire a contractor to do it. Obviously Home Depot and Lowes both offer a contractors side on scene the people you don’t know and may not be the way you want to go or may, if I we’re going to hire one of there contractors I would definitely want some referrals and I want to know what project that they’ve done, I wanted to speak to the previous costumers and find out about there timeliness, there cleanliness and you know basically the quality of there projects. If you do to decide to do it yourself is a endeavor the you are taking on is going to take a lot of time and a lot of effort consider that your probably your schedule for how long is going to take for your kitchen to be done has probably just double. If there are parts of the project that you can do yourself and make sure you work it out with a contractor in advance that these are the part of the projects that you are going to do. And make sure that when your making up a schedule you allow yourself for extra time to do your part of the project and make sure that you do it in that timeframe because there are other sub contractors be an electricians or countertop measurement people that are all going to be counting on this project coming in on time. So this is a very important decision you have to make it this point but one it’s made will move on to the next project. The next thing that we are going to talk about is how to make a schedule for your kitchen project if your doing your project yourself and how to make a schedule for you kitchen projects starting from when you need to order or decide on your countertop material and how long this intake for a time to get a countertop after your kitchen cabinets are installed or how long a lead time does to take this appliances and there is a hundred different things that go in to making up a kitchen schedule a realistic kitchen schedule that will discuss those during our next days.