Let’s be honest, kitchen remodeling is the 2nd most stressful thing that you’ll probably go through in your life. 1st will always be proposing to your wife, or buying your first house. Or maybe even having your first child (that did scare the heck out of me to be honest).
For some people it is public speaking, or one of the things I mentioned above. Most people though, will agree that buying a house is the most stressful thing they’ll ever go through in their life. And understandably so.
You want to make sure that you are buying a good house because you’re going to be living in that place for years or even decades to come.
Same thing with kitchen remodeling – you want to make sure that you are making the right changes, and for the right reasons. You don’t want to just change something because it looks good and then end up with something really inconvenient.
You know you will be spending a lot of time in there, and you’ll probably never remodel again, unless you happen to be lucky enough to live past 100 years.
Most people only remodel their kitchens/houses once in their lifetime according to this survey. And that’s more than enough.
And so in this article, I wanted to go over 5 rules that you can follow to avoid having to go through a lot of stress when remodeling your kitchen.
Rule #1: Hire a Designer Right Away!
I cannot stress this enough. Most homeowners like the idea of designing their own kitchen, and rightfully so. It is their house and they’d like to do what they want to do with it. But the problem is, a kitchen designer has a LOT more experience than them.
I mean, the designer’s job literally IS to make sure that you get the best, most practical kitchen for your particular use case. And if someone has YEARS of experience doing this thing over and over, you would think that they would know more about designing a great kitchen. And they do.
The problem is, most homeowners call us mid job once they have decided on what materials they are going to buy, cabinets, appliances, etc. Not only that, most people give us a call when they find themselves stuck in a serious situation.
The problem is, by the time they call us, they have already lost thousands of dollars in materials and labor. And when we come in, they will have to spend even more money to fix the mistakes and redo the mistakes that were made.
And if they had spend just a couple hundred dollars more in the beginning and called us and hired a designer right out the gate, they wouldn’t have to go through that stressful situation.
That’s why we recommend that you get a kitchen designer from the kitchen remodeling company that you’re going to be working with.
It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you get a good designer from the start so they can help you plan things out the proper way so you avoid making any huge mistakes.
Rule #2: Your Plan Won’t Work Out
I know I just said that you should hire a designer to avoid making a lot of mistakes, and rule #2 seems contradictory to that. But you should expect this to happen.
Even if you plan things out perfectly, you will run into problems. That’s just how the world works. Either the materials won’t come on the date they were supposed to. Or maybe you won’t get the same appliances that you planned out to buy in the beginning.
Maybe that particular model of fridge is not out of stock and it will take that store a couple of weeks to restock.
There’s no point getting stressed out about those things because there’s nothing you could do about it. Neither could us. Those things are out of our control.
That is the reason why whenever we take on a new project, we make sure that the client and we are on the same page. We tell them straight up that things won’t go according to how we plan. And that’s okay.
That doesn’t mean that we won’t deliver them on the design that we promise them. By things not going according to plan, we just mean that it’s possible that things might get delayed.
That’s all. Or maybe we’ll face issues with the electricals or the plumbing, who knows.
Once we do come across an issue like that, we’ll deal with it. But there’s no reason why we should be stressed out about it.
Rule #3: Save More Time With Your Designer When Shopping For Materials
This is a big one.
When you hire a designer, they’ll usually bring samples of materials that they recommend you use. This saves a whole lot of time on your end because now you won’t have to call up the supplier and ask for a sample. And you don’t even know how long it will take the supplier to deliver that sample to you.
Or maybe you’ll have to drive up to get it. Either way, you’ll be spending your own time to get it done.
With a designer, you don’t even have to leave your house. They’ll bring it to you and demonstrate within your kitchen area so you can imagine how it will look like.
And even better is the part about where our designer can take you to a design center where they’ll have access to more materials that will help you imagine your kitchen and see what will work best for you.
This design center is usually located near our own showroom, and in some cities our showrooms and design centers are combined. So you can get both things done on one visit.
Conclusion
These tips are aimed at people who want to have the kitchen renovating process be as seamless as possible. Because in our experience, most people do go through a lot of stress in having to decide the perfect countertop or that island placement. And they don’t really have to do that.
They can let our designer help them with that and they can just say yes or no to whether the designs we recommend will work for them or not.
Then it will be our job to understand your needs better and come up with a better design and see if that will work for you.
But if you are someone who likes to get their hands dirty and want to be more involved in the project, then feel free to do more.
But we do stick my our recommendation to hire the designer because they will literally help you save hundreds, if not, thousands of dollars over the course of this project. And you won’t even notice it because you won’t be making those huge mistakes had you not hired a designer.
