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Brett Winter Lemon
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A vertical glass tile backsplash is inset with decorative tiles Kate Steinbacher bought in Peru in this remodeled kitchen done by Denny Carr of Kitchen Solutions and Billy Webb of Dandy Handymen.
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Brett Winter Lemon
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The Bertazzoni range is from Larry & Alley Furn. & Appl., Martinsville.
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Brett Winter Lemon
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Bench Mark Builders created a new kitchen/dining area for the Sellaris.
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Brett Winter Lemon
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The cabinets were custom built by Montgomery Cabinetry in Wirtz; kitchen lighting came from Williams Lighting Galleries, Roanoke.
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Brett Winter Lemon
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Old laminate flooring was removed to reveal heart pine floors, which have been carried out throughout the area.
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Brett Winter Lemon
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The Steinbachers were so taken with the rainforest brown marble slab that serves as the coffee bar on their prep island that they wanted it as a centerpiece of the new kitchen. Stone Dynamics Inc. of Martinsville fabricated the support system. The flooring is hand-scraped hickory.
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Brett Winter Lemon
Remodeling 3
A vertical glass tile backsplash is inset with decorative tiles Kate Steinbacher bought in Peru in this remodeled kitchen done by Denny Carr of Kitchen Solutions and Billy Webb of Dandy Handymen.
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Brett Winter Lemon
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Kate Steinbacher’s Peruvian tiles add a random design element to the backsplash.
Consider Every Step Before You Remodel. Area experts talk about the steps and the realities of fixing up your home.
Thinking about floors:
“When homeowners come in my shop to look at flooring, I ask if they are redoing the floors to sell the property, or for them,” says Bob Evans, an owner of Classic Floors of Virginia.
If the customer wants to prepare the house for sale, Evans advises them to talk with a real estate agent for tips. What will get your money back might be just a fresh coat of paint on the walls and refinished floors, getting rid of carpeting.
“If you replace carpeting, you are doing it for yourself, not a prospective buyer,” he says.
If the owners are remodeling to make the house more pleasing or liveable, Evans tells them to choose what will make them happy and do it the way they want it. If you heat tile floors, you might not get your money back, But you will appreciate it every morning.
“The biggest thing is how do you want the space to look and feel when you’re done.”
Evans also cautions you to educate yourself about flooring, where choices have proliferated tremendously. Once his business only sold two-and-quarter inch oak hardwood. “Today, we have flooring from all over the world.”
Lighting Makes a Difference
“Make sure when you’re remodeling that the result makes the new area better than what you have, even if you are downsizing,” suggests Robin Maxey, marketing manager for Williams Lighting Galleries in Roanoke and Daleville.
Also, try to think about lighting early in the plans. All too often, customers began their search for lighting at the end of a remodeling, which means they may not have planned for what they want and also may not have put aside enough money for that part of the project.
Decisions in lighting are especially important because you need to decide where to put task lighting, where lighting should be used to set a mood – in other words what lighting is needed for each area.
Keep this in mind about lighting:
• Dimmers make it possible for lighting to be changed to suit the use of the room and also allow for more efficient use of electricity.
• Spend for the best lighting in high traffic areas; laundry room lighting can be a different quality.
• Lighting also can be done in phases as long as the later phases are planned for during the current phase. For example, if you want lights at the top of your cabinets (uplights) to highlight a ceiling, but cannot afford them right now, at least plan for them in the electrical changes.
• If you plan to hang a light in a high ceiling, put in a light lift so you lower the chandelier down for cleaning. Otherwise, you will need a very tall ladder or have to hire someone to do the maintenance.
• Calculating your lighting: Designer Diane Poff of Roanoke offers these formulas for deciding on lighting for rooms other than baths or kitchens. To get the total wattage for ambient lighting, for example, use length of room times width of room times 1.62. If the room is 18 x 12, this comes out to about 350 watts of lamps or recessed lighting, not ceiling lights.
• Where you need overhead lights, add length plus width to determine the fixture size. Example: 15 + 20 equals 25 inches, which is how wide the fixture should be.
Consider How Rooms Will Be Used
Today’s homeowners not only multitask at work, they want to design areas of their homes for multiple activities. For example, a laundry room might also be a crafts room, says Blair Graninger, key business manager for Reico in Roanoke.
“First, you have to decide if the changes are to be a facelift or a start-over. If it is a facelift, there are some easy things you can do such as update the hardware on your cabinets, or paint the cabinets or just have them professionally cleaned. You also can change your countertops.”
Be careful, however, that decisions made for a facelift do not create problems. For example, if your kitchen cabinets are old, they might not support a granite top. Or, adding flooring might affect the spacing for your appliances.
Think, too, about small touches that can help a great deal, such as the addition of storage for wet shoes and heavy coats in an entryway. Or adding compact storage in a small bathroom through the use of hanging baskets, or even putting in spice drawers that can hold beauty and cleansing products on a bathroom wall.
Rethinking Trends
Anyone planning a kitchen remodel should probably start by thinking about appliances, says Greg Perdue of Perdue Cabinets, a Roanoke company started by his grandfather.
“For a while, everyone was getting bigger refrigerators; now smaller is popular,” he says. “Pick your appliances first so that you can measure and incorporate them into the design.”
“There is no ‘best kitchen’ for everybody; how do you cook?”
For example, if you have a lot of cookbooks, do you want to incorporate display space for them into your kitchen?
Deciding on the right storage is so important and can be tedious, Perdue points out. If you want a ceiling pot holder, you need to know the height of your ceiling, the reaching height of the person using the rack, the height of the pot rack and the length of your longest pots and pans.
The pot rack hung over an island for display in his showroom is empty of pots because he noticed he was looking through pots while talking with visitors.
Scouting Out a Vendor
Denny Carr of Denny Carr Cabinet Solutions has sold kitchens since the 1960s. In his projects, he uses a variety of subcontractors. He offers this advice on choosing someone to help you with a remodeling project.
Get references; go look at some of their work.
Do not be too concerned about issues on past jobs, but look at how the company responded to the issues. Check the company out through the Better Business Bureau. You want to know that the person that designed the project and sold you the project is going to be there when the project starts and finishes.
Find out about any subcontractors that will be used. How long has the installer worked with or for the company? It is common for showrooms to use subcontractors. It is the nature of the business and these people like their independence. But, you need to know if the sub moves around from showroom to showroom.
Ask for a Construction Timeline
Choose a product that makes sense for the price of the home. Stay away from trends.
Carr echoes the caveat of not putting expensive countertops on old cabinets. “Know that the investment you make is one that you do not want to redo in five years. If you think you will be able to reuse those expensive tops in five years and put new cabinets under them, it isn’t going to happen.”
The Long Road to... Wonderful
So you think you want to remodel your kitchen? Well, have a stiff drink – at least a latte – and think some more.
While the results can be wonderful, as I learned in the past few months, getting there is a long, long road paved with questions about things you have to decide.
I planned to redo my kitchen for years. Whenever I saw a design or a product I liked in a magazine, I tore it out for my files. Looking at these suggestions helped me form some ideas about what I wanted in my new kitchen. What I could have, though, was equally dependent on the limitations of my space, the gutted old kitchen, and how much I could spend.
It turned out I knew more about what I didn’t want than what I wanted, with a couple of exceptions:
• I wanted a pantry.
• I did not want traditional shelves.
• I did not want a microwave over the stove.
• That was an OK starting point, the kitchen designer said.
But, the questions kept coming. Once the cabinet design was chosen, the designer wanted to know “what hardware do you want?” One night, I spent hours online looking at cabinet door knobs – one website had 1,500-plus examples. I did find the perfect one though and that purchase from a North Carolina company was one of the many pleasant experiences I had.
Deciding on appliances was comparable to viewing more than 1,000 knobs because appliances have changed so much since I bought mine. I also had to give up the idea of sticking with a coil electric stove (which I have used for years) because the choices of those are plain awful. Frankly, many appliances I viewed were not as well made as the ones I owned, but were evidence of our movement toward being a throwaway society.
After many hours reading Consumer Reports, viewing online forums, asking friends what they owned and deciphering how to apply for the energy efficiency rebates, I made what I consider good choices for a stove, a refrigerator and a dishwasher. They came from three separate manufacturers.
The floor tile was fairly easy because I look at tile all the time and would tile every floor in my house if I won the lottery. The countertop was a nightmare of trying to decide “to granite or not.” I didn’t, but I did learn that no matter what product you choose for your counter, there are pros and cons to it, and anyone remodeling should consider them carefully.
Final touches such as backsplash and lighting have proved to be just as frustrating to choose as everything else, but they have been opportunities for creativity.
The real test of the remodeling project has come with putting everything back in the kitchen. Even though I discarded a good one-third of what I had in my previous kitchen, I still have too much stuff. Perhaps the best advice that came from the experts interviewed on this topic was Diane Poff’s warning to “declutter” before planning.
I certainly do not need the rusted fondue forks I so lovingly stored during the project. I already gave away the fondue pot.