Kitchen Remodeling For You… or Future Buyers
November 12, 2015
Filed under Blog
With the holidays upon us, everybody is spending a lot of time in the kitchen. This is a great time to notice problems and annoyances instead of continuing to ignore them. As you put your kitchen space to work this Thanksgiving and Christmas, keep a list of things you’d like to change as you plan your next remodel.
The first important question to ask about a kitchen remodel is: Who is it for? If you plan to stay in your current home for many years to come, the remodel needs to be for you and how you use the space.The most important thing is how easy the kitchen is to use and maintain. If you’re small-statured, is the microwave over the stove too hard to reach? Are the built-in cabinets and shelves too high, or too small? Is your kitchen accessible and safe if someone in your family has become disabled? Do you have tile counters with grout that’s impossible to keep clean, or cracked tiles? Do the appliances all work properly and are they easy to keep clean?
It’s easy to look past problems when you’ve lived with them for many years. They become, literally, “part of the furniture” that you’ve learned to work around. But you shouldn’t have to keep doing that. If the remodel is for you, make a wish list of everything you would change if you could. Ignore fashion trends and do what makes you happy — it’s your kitchen!
However, if the remodel is in anticipation of selling your house in the near future, trends do matter. You’ll need to fix obvious problems, but you’ll also need to make the kitchen area gracious and pleasing. Kitchen remodels are the best return on your investment when selling your home (interestingly, expensive showcase bathrooms are the worst).
It’s tough to know what a future buyer will want, so playing it safe with neutral colors and clean lines is a good bet. Shaker-style cabinets are still popular, because they fit in with vintage-look or modern styles equally well, depending on the hardware used with them. Open floor plans with a countertop gathering place are popular with couples who like to invite friends over for wine and cooking parties. Clean white and cozy tan are popular and safe color choices. Try visiting a home supply or cabinet store for the latest ideas.If your kitchen is so old that it’s circled back around to being fashionably retro, you may want to repair and revamp instead of remodeling. “Mid-century” is a hot trend right now, so if you’ve got an authentic 1950s kitchen, you could be sitting on a vintage goldmine… after some restoration work to bring it back up to its original atomic-age glory.
Some of this you can do yourself, but major work needs to be done by a professional. Unless you’ve done a lot of restoration work yourself in the past, it’s easy to get in over your head, and you could end up spending a lot of extra money to get mistakes fixed, especially if you run into unexpected problems.
The Fix-It Professionals are here to help you see your kitchen in a new light! We can work with you to figure out what needs to be changed, and help you plan your next steps. By hiring us on retainer, you can take your time and make small changes as you think of them, because sometimes new ideas pop up during a revamp. Just give us a call.
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