We did our kitchen about ten years ago and it turned out great. There are only two things we would have done differently.
The big key to our success was planning, LOTS of planning. We spent a LOT of time thinking about how we should arrange things, listing our likes and dislikes about the old kitchen (which was built in the early 60s), what worked and didn’t work. I read lots of article about kitchen design. We measured all of the things we wanted to store in the cabinets and worked up design variations to accommodate them. We did the demo ourselves and then laid out the new design in blue tape on the floor. We sweated every detail like how much clearance did we want for esthetics between the range hood and the adjacent cabinets, how much space between the window molding on the window over the sink and the adjoining cabinets, precise location of ceiling can and pendant lights, how to use the space over the fridge, etc. I mocked up some of the cabinets in corrugated cardboard to give us a good physical feel for things. We specified EVERY dimension on our drawings. We did hire a kitchen designer to help us sweat some of the details at the end and make the fabrication drawings.
Think ahead about the design as you get older. Also think about things that you might want to splurge on which you can do in the design phase. We put in a heated floor in the kitchen and dining area. It is sure nice to have on cold winter mornings. We turn it off around April and back on around October. It runs a couple hours in the morning and a few hours in the evening. There’s nothing like it!
Bottom line...think ahead not just today, but some years down the road. Sweat the details. Then sweat them again. You cannot spend enough time on broad design, detailed design, and thinking about the details over and over. Take your time in this phase. Be sure to hire good craftsmen and check references.
Take care of things that will be hard to fix later on. We cut an access hold in our subfloor for the plumber and electrician. We changed out the 50 year old iron drain pipes that ran under the kitchen with ABS to make sure we wouldn’t have to deal with leaks in the future.
What were the few things we would have done differently?
1. The cookbook and microwave cabinet to the left of the range was about one inch too shallow. The microwave fit fine, but the bigger cookbooks wouldn’t fit because I forgot to account for the loss of depth caused by the mounting rail in the back of the cabinet! Check the depth of EVERYTHING you will store in a cabinet.
2. The faucet is about an inch too close to the backsplash. The faucet handle pushes back for hot water and pulls forward for cold water, left and right for on/off. There is clearance between the backsplash and faucet handle when I’ve got hot water turned on, but not enough for my hand. I should have made that cabinet an inch deeper.
3. I gave the appliance specs to the designer and builder. The GE Profile refrigerator spec had the appliance height on it and we built the enclosing cabinet to that spec. When we took delivery of the refrigerator, it was a half-inch taller!! The spec sheet that came with the fridge showed the correct height, but that sheet differed from the spec sheet the store gave us even though they both had the exact same model number and date!! I have never seen that before. If you are doing built-in appliances, be sure to measure the actual physical appliance and do NOT go by the spec sheet!
4. The electrician installed one single-gang box a couple degrees out of plumb. I saw the problem when he roughed it in and I thought he would correct his mistake. He never did fix it and I didn’t remind him. I should have nagged and nagged him on it. To this day, that outlet cover plate is slightly askew. Nobody sees it but me, but my eye goes right to it.
During construction, check EVERYTHING EVERY DAY and tell the builders about mistakes. It’s easy to fix things before the sheetrock and tile go on. I’ve still got one cabinet edge in the dishwasher recess where the cabinet maker didn’t install a small cherry panel (you have to look at the floor to see it). It still bugs me he never installed that.
Your eye will always go to your own mistakes!
I have a kitchen but don’t pay any attention to it as long as the microwave works