Kitchen cabinets and remodeling materials
If you’re a Davie homeowner considering a kitchen remodel, chances are you’ve been drooling over beautiful cabinetry at the local cabinet center. The color, finish, style, and materials of kitchen cabinets are important when remodeling, but there’s much more to think about before you place an order. Here are some things to consider before ordering cabinets for your remodel.
Plan Around Daily Kitchen Use
Take a look at the cabinets you have right now. Where’s the stuff that needs to come out repeatedly? Where do you reach around other things to get to certain items? How hard is it to get into awkward spaces? How crowded is the kitchen? Are there places that could be improved by rearranging things? Are there dead spaces where things can’t be stored? Take photos of problem areas to bring to a practitioner.
The goal of the kitchen should be a place where cooking, dining, and entertaining can be done efficiently and pleasantly. It’s important to spend some time thinking about the details of what happens in the kitchen and how it’s laid out.
Verify Dimensions Before Ordering
It may be fun to pick colors and styles at the showroom, but that’s the easiest part. Cabinets need to be ordered to fit a particular space. Walls, windows, outlets, plumbing, ceiling heights, appliance sizes, there’s a lot of variables to consider. The tricky part of ordering is knowing exactly how to work with them.
- What will the finished floor be? Will it interfere with base cabinets?
- Will the kitchen get new appliances? How big are they?
- Will they need ventilation and what kind? How high does a hood have to be over cooking areas?
- Will the kitchen have an island? Will it include seating? Will it block a walkway?
- How much room will the dishwasher have to open?
- Can people get by while someone’s getting drinks from the fridge? Etc., etc., etc.
The last thing anyone wants to find out after spending thousands of dollars on cabinets is they don’t fit, don’t function well, or block traffic. Practitioners know how tight of a squeeze is acceptable. As a rule of thumb, kitchens should have a minimum of 36 inches of open walkways, preferably more. Busy kitchens with multiple cooks may require 42 inches of clearance. Practitioners can suggest ways to test these dimensions, maybe even taping off cabinets on the floor and swinging open fridge doors to make sure everyone can get to the freezer.
Match Cabinet Construction to Real Conditions
There are a variety of materials and ways of building cabinets, each of which affects price. Cabinets come stock-sized out of a box, semi-custom with modular options and room for some adjustments, and fully custom, built to specific measurements and requirements. The right option depends on the kitchen’s particular challenges, limitations, and opportunities. For homeowners looking for a cabinet maker near Flamingo Gardens, the practical considerations start there. A few examples of when it makes sense to order custom include:
- Kitchens with awkward layouts that don’t follow common patterns
- Unusual dimensions that can’t be fixed by tweaking semi-custom options
- Non-standard heights
- Awkward walls that don’t play well with stock-sized boxes
- Soffits
- Oddly-sized dead spaces, especially in corners
- Special features such as appliance centers, full-height storage, deep cookware drawers, pullout pantries, etc.
- Specialized storage and organization
Look Beyond the Cabinet Doors
Once the kitchen’s been remodeled and the honeymoon’s over, day-to-day kitchen life is going to be lived inside those cabinets. Things like hinges, glides, soft-close features, drawer boxes, and other unseen factors affect ease of use and should be considered.
The kitchen gets used a lot and South Florida weather can be rough on cabinets. Humidity can cause finishes, edges, and other parts of the construction to fail prematurely. Investing in cabinets that are well-made and use quality materials will help them last. It’s important to ask questions about edge banding, box construction, finishes, and anything else that might get hammered by weather and daily use.
It’s also worthwhile to think about what happens to old cabinets. Can any of them be reused? Will they fit into a garage, basement, or other area for storage? How much of a hassle will it be to haul away? Some old cabinets can be reused (I bookmarked unep.org/resources/report/building-materials-and-climate-constructing-new-future for this), especially if they’re built to accommodate unusual spaces that don’t fit stock sizes. Old cabinets that have been in contact with water, have delaminated edges, are difficult to open, or were built to unusual sizes are best donated to the dumpster.
Start the Remodel With Specific Information
Kitchen remodels are exciting and stressful. Practitioners can help Davie homeowners figure out the right mix of style and function, staying within budget, and making the most of the remodel. Practitioners can be engaged before ordering to make sure there’s a well-thought-out plan for the remodel.
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Bringing photos, measurements, and detailed appliance specs to the consultation will help practitioners come prepared.
