The First Step for Your Kitchen Renovation

Budget is a very critical consideration.

As I mentioned, anything is possible but you must be honest with yourself about how much you want to spend.

The before and after photos at the start of this blog shows that some walls were removed during the renovation of this kitchen.  It could have been redesigned without any structural work, or with just removing one wall but with two walls removed, the whole feel to the back area of the town house changed.  It moved in to this decade of open plan living and was no longer shut away in a claustrophobic hole.  It did, however, come at a cost but to the owners it was well worth it.

So, once you work out what you REALLY want to spend, you can explore the possibilities:

1.  Do you want to keep it in the same location or move it to another area of your home?  Architecture and interior design has changed a lot over the years and now the kitchen is the heart of the home, not tucked away in the back corner where meals mysteriously emerged from.  Sometimes  it is worth moving its location or knocking down walls.  Sometimes your existing kitchen works perfectly and it just needs updating – it is definitely not worth reinventing the wheel for the sake of ‘doing something different’.

2.  Major building work or just a small tweak to the layout?  Maybe you can just enlarge an opening instead of removing a whole wall.  This will save money and actually can also improve on the design sometimes!

3.  What finishes do you want?  The textures and colours that you choose won’t effect the price but the style and finish of the doors will, so will your bench top selection.  (More to come on that later!)

4.  Appliances?  This is often the catalyst for a new kitchen but do you need all new appliances or can you keep some of your existing ones?  Having said that, I think it is rarely a good idea to keep your existing sink and tap unless you’ve just moved into a place with a brand new kitchen and they have never been used.

5.  Please don’t forget to include the trades!  So many of my clients have worked out their budget but not factored in the cost of tradesmen.  This is very frustrating for everyone! You (arrg! you have to spend more money….), the designer (having to break the bad news to you and to try and work around a revised estimate) and of course the tradies (who really do want to get paid)!  If you have good tradesmen, they are worth their weight in gold so we won’t hold their costs against them – just make a note to BE one next time around!  This can easily add on $4,000 by the time you strip out the existing kitchen and put it all back together again.

6.  Be realistic and honest with yourself.  There used to be a formula that allocated a certain percentage of the value of your property to the renovation of your kitchen.  That has gone out of the window along with the affordability of housing in Australia’s capital cities!  If the new kitchen is for your home, is of average size and is not an investment property nor something you are doing cheaply to resell (think twice about that scenario…), look at spending the equivalent to the cost of a  half-decent car.  If you have a reluctant partner, that tit-bit could be useful amo’!

While this is a lot to think about, keep persevering!  I will help you work through and resolve all of these issues.  This is really worth it and you won’t regret it if you are informed, prepared and realistic.