Are you getting ready for a kitchen remodel? The prospect of remodeling your kitchen to make it more functional, beautiful, and modern is no doubt exciting. It will not only allow you to enjoy the upgrades while you’re living in your home, but it should deliver a major return on investment when you decide to sell. However, before you can start enjoying the end product you must first go through the process of kitchen renovation, which includes the mess and hassles associated with demolition, building, and having a contractor and crew in your home for weeks or even months. Plus, you’ll be living without a kitchen during that time, which means eating out or making other accommodations. In short, you’re going to have to prepare yourself, your family, and your home for the gutting that’s about to occur. So here are just a few tips to ensure that the process is streamlined and relatively free of disaster.

Tips to consider before you start your renovation

Image via: ACS Paradise Concrete Design Studio

Kitchen remodeling tips – clear away the clutter

The first step is to clean out the kitchen space, and that means clearing out absolutely everything that you might want to keep or that you don’t want to pay the demo crew to haul away for you. You can start by eating or tossing everything in the fridge since non-perishables obviously won’t keep. Then you can box up unopened pantry items to keep or donate to your local Food Bank. After that it’s just a matter of packing and storing dishware, utensils, cooking implements, linens, and small appliances. Don’t forget your fridge bins (like the egg, ice, or soda receptacles) or any items that are stored in the under-stove drawer (like your broiler pan) if you plan to replace large appliances.

Kitchen organization – decide what you are keeping.

In addition to all of the items you can easily remove from your kitchen, you may want to salvage products like door and drawer hardware, cabinetry, lighting and plumbing fixtures, the sink, tile, and so on. In some cases you might want to reuse these items or save them for a project elsewhere in your home (like a granny flat). Or you may be keen to sell or recycle them instead of breaking them up and sending them to the landfill. Either way you need to remove them beforehand or give your contractor a list of items to be salvaged prior to the demo phase.

Kitchen renovation – measure with preciseness.

All of your estimates for replacement products will be based on your measurements, so it’s important to make sure they are precise. Otherwise you could end up with cabinets that don’t fit your space or you might run out of tile before the job is complete. Any errors of this sort could end up being both costly and time-consuming.

Make your kitchen remodel an enjoyable experience.

Set your kitchen remodeling budget and your schedule.

There are two areas where you need to be very clear with your contractor or interior designer, and these are the budget and the timeline. That said, your contractor will likely beg a little wiggle room on both, and this is common. However, you should put it all in writing in your contract, complete with milestone payments and repercussions for failure to live up to the terms of the contract (barring any changes you might make along the way).

Prepare your kitchen renovation space.

When the power tools roar to life, your kitchen won’t be the only area of the home beset by dust and debris. By sealing off the workspace appropriately you can at least reduce the blast radius, so to speak. Whether you’re shelling out the dough for custom designs like those offered by David Hecht kitchens or your entire setup is coming courtesy of the modular magicians at IKEA, you don’t want the impact of renovations to affect your entire home. So ask your contractor to hang some heavy-duty neoprene and require the crew to wear cloth booties over their shoes when walking through other parts of the home.
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