Heart And Home

Tip No. 59: Plan Your Dream Kitchen

Today’s kitchens are the heart of entertaining and family life. Many house televisions and computers, in addition to numerous must-have cooking gadgets. Planning your own kitchen just the way you’d like it—pure heaven. Read on for tips to make your dream come true.

Steps

1. Read Tip No. 85: Plan a Remodel. All of the information there applies to designing and remodeling a kitchen as well as an entire home.
2. Visit kitchen showrooms, open houses and home design stores, and take photos of what you like. Flip through magazines, and watch remodeling and cooking shows on television. Create two lists: a functional wish list (appliances, cabinet arrangements, islands) and a list of style preferences (surfaces, colors, finishes).
3. Assess your storage needs. Count and measure pots and pans, plates and silverware, appliances, tools, linens, foods and ingredients, wines, special display items (vases, platters, artwork) and electronics (computers, televisions, radios). Use this information to determine how much cabinetry you need. Cabinets can tally up to half the cost of your new kitchen, depending on quality and material and whether they are stock units or custom-made.
4. Have all plumbing work done before the cabinets go in, when the walls are open.
5. Plan lighting and the placement of electrical outlets at this time, too. Three types of lighting are typically used in dream kitchens: ambient (for the room), task (for specific workstations, such as stoves or sinks), and spot (for display of food or decor). An electrician should also run television cable, telephone wire and computer network wire when the walls are open.
6. Choose surfaces carefully. Kitchens are hot, wet, messy places, so look for surfaces that balance cleanliness, durability and attractiveness. Ask about features of various surfaces—does will that gorgeous granite you covet, for example, become discolored under a hot pot?
7. Price out and prioritize all the elements of your dream kitchen, and reality-check this information against how much you’re willing to spend. A kitchen remodel should not cost more than fifteen percent of the total value of your house; if it

does, you’re over-improving. A new kitchen will return, at best, 80 percent of its

cost in increased home value.

1. Make some strategic cuts to your plan, with an eye toward staying in budget without sabotaging your overall goals. Sensible cuts include keeping your current appliances (upgrade them later) and choosing semi-custom cabinets rather than custom.
2. Factor in the cost of a professional design. A kitchen designer typically charges six percent of the finished cost of the project, but may also work by the hour (at a rate of $50 to $150 per hour).
3. Understand how space and proportion work in your kitchen. The classic kitchen work triangle—the total distance between sink, stove and refrigerator—should be 12 to 26 feet (3.7 to 7.9 m). Working aisles should be at least 42 inches (107 cm) for one cook, 48 inches (122 cm) for two. Base cabinets plus countertops should be 36 inches (91 cm) high, but can be 42 inches (107 cm) high if they incorporate a seating area with stools. The bottoms of wall- or ceiling-mounted cabinets should be at least 18 inches (46 cm) above countertops and higher over stoves. Check local building codes.

Tips

Don’t skimp when buying cabinets. Get plywood panels (not particleboard) and insist on dovetailed or doweled drawer boxes. The quality of semicustom cabinets can be remarkably good.

Multiple sinks are common in high-end kitchens because they can separate food preparation from cleanup.

Who Knew?

Remember, you need to eat while your kitchen remodel is under way. If you can remodel in the summer, you can barbecue outside and eat salads and other simple meals. You may still end up washing your dishes in the bathtub. Some kitchen contractors will create a temporary kitchen in a laundry room or garage.

Certified Kitchen Designers have at least seven years of experience and training, have completed 60 hours of specialized training, and have passed a kitchen designers’ exam.

Warning

Leave the electrical wiring to the pros.