10 Reasons to Design Your Own Kitchen Remodel
If you’ve lived in your house for a while, you may have started to think of ways to freshen it up. One easy way to do this is to design your own kitchen remodel. Doing this will allow you to have a lot of freedom with personalization because you know exactly what you want. Read on to see more reasons why you should plan to design your own kitchen remodel.
Aesthetics and Style
You may have bought your home ages ago or even inherited it, and it makes no sense to be stuck with outdated appliances and decorations. Just because you did not construct the house yourself does not mean you have to endure colors that look dull to you and less than ideal amenities. This is where a remodel comes in, and the space that can instantly improve your house is the kitchen.
Any remodeling project that you undertake should aim to improve both the function and aesthetics of the space in question. You could hire painters to change the color of your walls, or even just touch up and refresh the existing color.
A kitchen remodeling project does not have to cost an arm and a leg to yield good results. As long as you don’t try to cut costs so much that you end up with fittings and fixes that will require to be changed in a short while, you should be okay.
When you design your own kitchen remodel, you can save money. Some of the amount that would have gone towards paying a professional designer can be put into getting better quality finishes.
Modern and Energy-Efficient Technology
If your home was built a while back, there is a good chance that it is missing some modern comforts. While older technology will still work more or less okay, modern technology is more energy-efficient.
Things like heating and air conditioning have improved a lot in the past few years. When you design your own kitchen remodel, you can replace older fittings with more recent ones. The initial cost may seem high, but you stand to save a lot on energy over time. Newer appliances will also make things run more efficiently in your kitchen, and your whole family will enjoy the new convenient space.
Outdated Features
Older homes, as mentioned, are bound to have some outdated features that you could do away with when you design your own kitchen remodel.
A few outdated features that you could change up include:
- The flooring, which plays a major role in your kitchen. Linoleum and rolled vinyl were a big trend for flooring a while back, and there’s a chance that if your kitchen has one of those flooring, it needs repairs. You can install a new, modern floor instead of patching up the worn areas. Tile, wood, or even stone can give an instant facelift to your floor and give a durable boost to your kitchen.
- Upper cabinets and shelves were common in older kitchens. While they are great for storage, they may give the kitchen a crowded look. You can design your own kitchen remodel to include lower-level storage solutions to give an open, uncluttered look to your kitchen.
- Instead of sticking with tile and grout, modern kitchens make use of solid surfaces. These include granite, marble, resin, and more, which you can be sure will last a long time without fading or cracking.
For extensive improvements that may get technical or dangerous, you may seek the help of a kitchen remodeling company. If the remodel involves moving large and heavy furniture around, call a furniture moving company instead.
Meet Your Family’s Needs
When you design your own kitchen remodel, you can work to address your family’s specific needs. These may include adding seating areas to the kitchen which will help a lot when you have guests and want to cook while entertaining them. Your children may also want to do homework after taking a snack or have breakfast while you do the dishes or something similar. Since people often congregate in the kitchen a few times throughout the day, adding seating will make the space a bit more comfortable and functional.
Improve Functionality and Flow
Most dated kitchens were compartmentalized and featured walls and partitions separating them from the rest of the house. You could modernize yours by knocking down some walls, for instance that between the kitchen and dining areas, or even those adjacent to the living room.
As long as the walls do not have any structural value, you should be okay. Your kitchen will instantly become bigger and feel more airy. For this remodel, you should consult an engineer or architect who will help you know whether the walls in question are load-bearing or not.
A hardwood flooring contractor can also help you fix the floors after the walls have been brought down. Be sure to deal with the walls before working on the floor to avoid doing the floor twice.
Create a New Pathway to Your Backyard
If you entertain often, you may find yourself making more than a few trips between your kitchen and backyard. You can improve on these trips by adding a new pathway to your backyard when you design your own kitchen remodel.
Adding a fun walkway with concrete slabs or even natural stone is one thing you could consider. A glass door replacement will also come in handy because your family will benefit from having access and visibility to the backyard.
You could also light the path with string lights or any other creative light fixtures. The best part about this is that you can change them up in different seasons like Halloween and Christmas to match the theme of the moment.
Add Space
A kitchen remodel allows you to add space to the kitchen. Do this by either knocking down adjacent walls that are not load-bearing as mentioned earlier or by extending the kitchen into your backyard. While the latter may call for more manpower and technicalities like also extending the roofing, you can involve professionals at this point. Simply let them know exactly what you want, and they should be able to translate it in the remodel.
A more spacious kitchen will not only make entertaining guests a breeze, but it will also give your family room to do things together. These include food preparation and simply catching up after a long day at work or school. Chores are also a bit more bearable with some company sometimes, so it won’t be a hassle getting the children to do them.
Restore Damage
Your home may weather a few disasters over time, and it becomes necessary to fix the damage before it gets out of hand. Hurricanes, burst pipes, storm surges, overflowing rivers, and excessive rain can all cause damage to your home.
Water damage is the most common damage that most homeowners experience. When it happens, you can design your own kitchen remodel to repair the damage and upgrade your kitchen as well. Water damage restoration can lead to extensive work, so it would be great to call your local plumbing service alongside a kitchen remodeling company of your choice.
A few more ideas why doing a full remodel when your kitchen gets damaged include:
- Cost savings because rather than tear down and rebuild, you are repairing and upgrading in one go. Find a company that has the experience so that both function and appearance can be dealt with simultaneously. Make sure to have your design at hand to reduce the potential back and forth, as well as avoid getting talked into getting additions that you would not want when remodeling.
- Convenience. As mentioned before, since you will be fixing the kitchen and spending money on it, why not just perform a full remodel of the space at this time? This will save you time that would have been spent on the remodel, and you essentially hit two birds with one stone.
- Remove the risk of mold and mildew. A full remodel of the kitchen after extensive water damage will make sure there is no risk of mold and mildew building up in an area that seems unaffected on the surface. Floors, wallpaper, and even walls can all be affected, and removing them in a remodel makes sure there is no chance of further destruction happening. Damaging to both your home and health, mold, and mildew need to be dealt with before they become a big problem.
- A flooded kitchen leads to problems with the appliances alongside other things. When you remodel, you can change dated and damaged appliances so there is no risk of an electrical shock in the kitchen. The introduction of dampness will also create an environment for mold and pests, none of which are good for your home let alone the space in which you prepare food.
Damage to your home is never an easy thing to deal with, but if you have been considering a remodel, there is no better time than while repairing damages.
Eliminate Pest Issues
Pests love dark, damp areas as mentioned above, and they will thrive and multiply as long as they have a place to hide. Design your own kitchen remodel to make sure that any space where pests may hide since you got the home is refreshed.
It is important to make sure you have effectively dealt with pests to avoid sealing them up somewhere you won’t be able to remove them unless you destroy a job you had already done.
Some pests carry pathogens and spread diseases, while others negatively affect the structure of your home. Work with residential pest control to make sure that you are not setting yourself up for future pest issues.
Pest management will:
- Assess your area’s pest activity, helping you determine the necessary measures to take.
- Make sure you pretreat for certain pests and whenever possible, use steel or alternatives instead of wood which termites attack.
- Inspect all materials you intend to use before bringing them on-site, and again before using them.
- Set up designated garbage collection areas to minimize the possibility of pests hiding in waste material.
- Set up traps around the home’s perimeter to catch insects and rodents that wander close.
To avoid the future possibility of pest infestation, you can work with your contractor to make sure windows and doors are smug against their frames. Also, install screens on windows to keep out flying and crawling pests whenever you open them.
High Return On Investment
A kitchen remodel is bound to increase the value of your home. If you ever want to sell or rent the property out, potential customers will be attracted to modern amenities.
Small kitchen remodels have been shown to have a superb return on investment. If the remodel includes updating kitchen appliances for more energy-efficient ones, you will enjoy an even better return because of the savings you will make on energy.
The kitchen is one space that most people constructing new homes are willing to spend a lot of money on. It is also the space in which people in a majority of households will spend most of their time. Making it beautiful, comfortable, and modern will improve the value of your entire home.
If you want to design your own kitchen remodel, you need to know that research is key. Make sure you know everything there is to know about the improvements you want and the fittings you are aiming for. While it is not rocket science, you still need to take the time so that in the end you are sure that you got what you wanted, and all within a reasonable price range and time.