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.

DIY - Kitchen Remodeling Part I - Planning

It's been a while until I have some spare time to blog about our recently completed kitchen remodeling project.

We planned to wait until next year when our toddler daughter is old enough so that we can replace the kitchen cabinet without having to put back the child proof latches on our cabinet doors and drawers.  However, there was an after Christmas sale on appliances that we could not past, and one thing after another, by January we had already shopped for all appliances for the kitchen. The next logical step was to select a good set of cabinets and counter top and pick a date to start the demolition.
We came to Lowes, Home Depot, and other smaller local cabinetry shops trying to get some ideas on what's out there and what is our style. We didn't want to go with modern or European style because then we have to change out the furniture in our dinning room and great room to match the design... and besides, it's a little "cold". We thought of traditional American style, but the idea didn't last for more than 5 minutes. After a few weeks looking, we settled for French's cottage style as this would match our taste and tends to have an everlasting look. This style also has a little more details to look at, while not being too busy and bulky.

With a style selected, we started our shop list again. Surprisingly we could not find any smaller local cabinetry shops that do painted wood. After further research, we found that painted wood would require a multiple paint and cure processes to provide an enamel finish look while ensuring no cracks along the joints. When it comes to this complicate process, larger cabinetry companies seemed to be a better choice. We finally settled for KraftMaid from Lowes. This is only a mid range cabinet amongst all higher end cabinet manufacturers. While Lowes and Home Depot both have a similar promotion, the display at the local Lowes was newer, thus had gave us more ideas of what the finish product will be like, thus we went with Lowes.
It took us a couple more weeks to finalize the design. One weird thing about Lowes and any other Kraftsmaid authorized retailers including Home Depot is that they don't give out an itemized price list until the design is final and we have paid for the whole thing. Perhaps they want to avoid shop bid? Anyway, at the end we decided to go with Montclair Maple Full Face in Canvas color with Cocoa glaze.

Choosing the counter top typically wasn't easy as there are many good materials and colors to consider. However, in our case, we can only pick a something heavy in dark color to go with the cabinets and our grayish granite tile floor. We can either go with Absolute Black, but finally decided on Galaxy Black granite slab which has some sparkles that would eventually go with our back slash.
Now we just had to wait for the cabinets to arrive and call the warehouse to deliver the appliances.

To see a the construction, please continue to Part II - Construction

Here's a sneak peak at the construction...