Where to start?

14 years ago

This forum has been such a huge help on many of the smaller projects we've tackled since purchasing our 1973 two story house just under a year ago. No we are ready to tackle some larger projects and I am hoping you experts can provide me with some direction. I truly appreciate any help/direction you can provide!

Background info:

Kitchen

Currently: semi-updated kitchen (probably late 1990s/early 2000s). The previous owner put in new cabinets (not my style of finish, but decent cabinets overall), awful laminate countertops that have scratched and show dust like nobody's business.

What we'd like to do: 1) The range is a slide in Jenn-Aire in the island and we would like to remove it and put in a nicer range and hood on an interior wall.

2) Replace the laminate countertop island with butcher block and granite on the surrounding counter surfaces.

3) Paint the cabinets a gray color

Rest of the house

What we'd like to do:

1) Replace all stained wood trim with white trim

2) Have hardwood floors (the entire house is hardwood, no carpet) refinished a darker/warmer cooler. They are currently a yellow/orange stained oak and the entire house looks yellow at this point.

3) Install carpet in the living room as we want one room with carpet in it.

Where do we begin? We plan on having the floors done by a professional as well as the countertop installation. We would like to change out the stove, etc. by ourselves and will most likely have our painter paint the kitchen cabinets as he can do it much quicker than we can.

In a perfect world I'd prefer to do the floors first, but I realize that all of the kitchen work will wreck havoc on refinished floors. The other issue is we will need to do these jobs in two waves for budget purposes. The kitchen will be one job and the floors another.

Are we out of our minds trying to coordinate this on our own? Do we need a professional to take over? Can someone please help me get a grasp on how to best approach this? I appreciate your help! Thank you in advance!

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Comments (3)

chibimimi
14 years ago
About the range: Do you have a cabinet the right size in the spot that can switch places with the range? If not, you'll have to do a lot of reconfiguring, and it may not even be possible. Do you have sufficient electrical/gas where you want to put the range, plus venting for the hood? What will it do to the "work triangle"? This might be more than a DIYer can do him/herself.
weedyacres
14 years ago
Since your budget necessitates your doing kitchen in one batch and floors/trim in another, I'd do the kitchen stuff first. Not so much because of the havoc that painting cabinets will wreak, but because your footprint might be a little different, and it'd be a bummer if you refinished your floors and then ended up with a small patch of old floor that hadn't been refinished.

I don't think this is so complicated you need a GC, though. It sounds like your sequence would be something like:
1. Figure out the cabinet replacement plan
2. Remove countertops
3. Change cabinets as needed
4. Install new range and hood
5. Paint cabinets
6. Install new countertops

Then phase 2:
1. Remove baseboards
2. Refinish floors
3. Install carpet
4. Install new baseboards
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katiemcc
Original Author
14 years ago
Thank you both for your responses! I can't tell you how helpful it is to have a starting point. The kitchen it is. Thankfully based on the cabinets we have (newer wood face, engineered sides, etc.) we are able to remove two inner cabinets (they are one chunk so to speak), replace that with a 30" or 36" range and then purchase a spice pullout cabinet or baking sheet cabinet to fill in the extra space left from removing the two cabinets. We have an existing via our family room fireplace which is connected to the kitchen that we can pull under the crawl space (when I say we- I mean a trained professional!) I'm feeling more and more confident that with proper planning and lots of professional help we can pull this off without a GC.

Thank you for taking the time to respond- I'm sure I'll be back with many more questions as we plan and proceed.