DIY - Kitchen Remodeling Part III - Completion

The construction has finally comes to an end. Besides a few minor hiccups here and there and the whole four weeks without a kitchen, we finally got ourselves a brand new kitchen. We put in a lot of effort in skim coating and applying texture on the walls and ceiling and as a result, it does pay off. The quality comes very close to a professional work. A new trim and silt around the windows make them stand out and more prominent instead of being blend in like before. The design of the glass tile back splash in combined with a wall mounted glass/stainless steel vent hood turns out to be quite nice for the setting. We got many compliments from friends on this combination. The LED lights give the kitchen some dimming illumination at night – be warned though, some people may say it’s a bit cold looking due to the bluish color tone from the LEDs, for me, it’s just a clean and modern look.


All new stainless steel appliances we picked compliment one another and blend together perfectly. The dual drawer dish washer from Fisher & Paykel is a plus: we have a small family and most of the time we only have enough dishes and utensils to load up one drawer, so this is a perfect match for us. The four-door LG counter depth refrigerator recessed nicely with adjacent cabinets and appliances. This refrigerator is smaller than a typical French door refrigerator (20.5 cf vs 24.7 cf); however, it’s quite roomy for the size of our family (or perhaps we don’t eat that much, except me). The Bosch glass cooktop got us by surprise: it’s not easy to keep it clean as we thought; there were some stubborn stains that take a lot of baking soda (yes, we try to stay green and toxic-free) and elbow grease to remove. The Bosch convex oven and microwave are conveniently occupying the area next to the refrigerator and so far have served us very well.

Tying all of these appliance pieces together is the cabinetry and the granite counter top. The blank granite counter top comes from 2 large slabs cut to size, and we asked the fabricator to connect them at the sink so there’s no long seam near the corners as typically seen in many kitchen displays. The cabinets are from KraftMaid, which has built-in drawer soft closers as their standard option. I found that KraftMaid and many other cabinetry manufacturers are using Blum Blumotion soft closers for their cabinets, thus I ordered these soft closers from an online store and install on all cabinet doors. These closers keep the doors and drawers from being slammed in which besides making a loud noise, will damage the hinge and door in a long run… a must have if you have young kids in the house. One thing worth to mention is that the Blum Blumotion soft closers for cabinet doors are selling for three to five bucks a piece, while at the store they will charge sixty dollars for the exact same closers installed. Same cut-throat deal with the glass inset cabinet doors: they want an additional four hundred dollars per each door with glass; we end up ordered three doors without panels and got the decorative glasses of your choice from a local glass store for 1/5 of the price.



One last thing I want to mention, if I haven’t mentioned it before, is that we did all of this by ourselves (with exception of the granite top). We probably have saved a few hundreds or perhaps a few thousands by doing it ourselves, but that’s not the point. The main point here is the pride of being able to put things together while keeping up the high workmanship and paying attention to details. This project also made me become more flexible to changes as there are many small changes throughout the project. Finally, this project is just to proven that we do have a true spirit of an DIY Novice.

Now, we just have to think about our next project: fire place mantle, hallway bathroom remodeling, skylights, front yard landscaping, concrete walkway, paver driveway… Uhmm, maybe next year.