Here is my last big kitchen renovation tips/likes from a post from late last year. Not much has changed with my opinions so I am just reposting this. If I had to suggest one tip it would be to buy a toaster/smart oven and make sure your BBQ is in working order. We used our Cuisinart countertop oven non stop for the two months our kitchen was being remodeled.
Three other things we have in our current house we didn’t have before:
*an island w/electrical plugs, and storage doors for cookie sheets and metal pans.
*a pull out garbage bin in the island
*an appliance carousel in the cupboards
We remodeled the kitchen of our old house in 2019.
Here is my list:
Cabinet related
*Pull out drawers
*Pantry, if space, if not a lot of built ins (we have this in our current house)
*Cabinet carousel for small countertop appliances (another thing we have in our current kitchen that is great....these were super popular in the late 90s/early 2000s when my kitchen was last remodeled)
*Narrow tall cabinet for cookie sheets/cupcake pans
Hardware related
*substantial feeling pulls or knobs. I don’t care for
this cup style (and maybe the ones we had before were cheap as a few of them broke in our old house), but I know they are popular. Franklin Brass hardware from Amazon is great; we splurged on a bunch of $10-$15 each Emtek pulls in our old house because my designer recommended them (and I did love their uniqueness), but when I needed knobs to match and needed about 20 of them and didn’t want to pay $10 a piece for another 20 of them and I found some great knockoffs on Amazon (as recommended by posters here). Franklin Brass is not an Amazon exclusive brand as I have seen their stuff on Wayfair, and Houzz.
Countertops:
I love the marble like quartz counter tops vs. granite because they are light and bright and you can go with so many colors on the wall and the cabinets. We had Cambria’s Statuario Maximus and loved it. I have also seen some beautiful ones like this onethat have some blues and tiny hints of gold in them that would look amazing on large spaces.
Appliance related
*built in oven, we had a GE Cafe in our old house, and have a Kitchen Aid in the current house and we have been happy with both. I think I liked the controls on the GE a bit more, but the Kitchen Aid works just fine.
*a large range hood. After having
this one from Zephyr in our prior kitchen I don’t think that much else is adequate. We had a smaller Zephyr Breeze unit prior to this unit and it worked quite well for being a smaller unit as well, but it was not ducted and after having a ducted unit I would only do a ducted unit again. Zephyr makes a bunch of different sizes of high powered hoods and none of them are crazy expensive either. I like the under cabinet model vs. the chimney style because you get slightly more cabinet space above (we put our large 8 qt. stock pot, and oils that I continually reached up to grab while cooking).
Large refrigerator: we had a counter depth unit in our old house and it was fine because it was small space, but even in our larger kitchen now we have a non counter depth and the extra 2” it sticks out doesn’t bother me. We got more fridge for maybe 2/3rd of the price of a counter depth. We currently have
this Whirlpool (bought it about a month ago when the Kenmore Elite (that came with our house) compressor died) and it has been fine. TBH though it does look a little vanilla compared to the to the Kitchen Aid with the slightly nicer handles and it is caddy corner to the Kitchen Aid oven so it would be nice if they did match, but I wasn’t going to pay $400 more for essentially the same fridge with different handles). However if I was remodeling I would probably not balk at the price, but when funds have been budgeted elsewhere (bathroom remodel, and 2nd bathroom refresh) we needed to save some money on a replacement we weren’t really planning to make.
Gas cooktop. We currently have a Dacor 5 burner 36” cooktop and it works great. In our old house we had a 36” GE gas cooktop and it worked well and wasn’t fancy at all. The Dacor definitely heats up a little faster and has had a bit of learning curve vs. using a mid range GE cooktop. I wouldn’t go less than 5 burners. I am a sucker for the look of the Thermador star burners so if I were putting one in a new kitchen then I would definitely look at one.
Miele dishwasher. We bought the Futura Crystal model in September when we noticed the Whirlpool we had wasn’t washing dishes and was just not working the way it should’ve. The Miele has been life changing in regards to dishes. We have super hard water and with the added salt option and Jet Dry we have clean dishes. It is amazing. We can also fit a ton of dishes and pots and or pans in it. The Futura Crystal mode has been discontinued so we got it for $500 off regular price for buying a floor model. We have the older version of this model with the outside controls similar to this classic model, but it has all of these options on that are on the new model. We usually run the standard 2 hour wash. If you don’t need a water softener option then the model below this one (Classic Plus, I think might be a good option). I would also start looking for showrooms with floor models of the old model.
We had the older version of this Kitchen Aid dishwasher (without the 3rd rack and was ironically Wirecutter’s top dishwasher recommendation....had no clue when I bought the floor model for $500 in early 2019) in our old house and it was great and initially thought we would just buy the new model with the 3rd rack, but I thought the set up of the 3rd rack was awkward and I liked the set up on the Miele better, and for the same price I got a great proven dishwasher that should last 15-20 years.
Countertop level or higher built in microwave. We had a GE Profile at our old house and it was amazing. I miss it. Our current house had a built in unit at some point and it died and the owners put in a Magic Chef countertop unit in the space. When the countertop microwave dies we will buy another built in. They aren’t that expensive, maybe $350 and another $100 for the trim.
Sink/faucet:
Loved our Kohler single farm house sink. I would buy another. Ours was white cast iron.
Get a nice sturdy faucet. Ours was Moen and it was solid, but not overly expensive. We currently have a Glacier Bay (Home Depot house brand) and while it works just fine it isn’t super sturdy and it feels loose even though DH has tried to tighten it up.
What I would put in my dream kitchen that I haven’t listed above:
*Pot filler
*Dual built in microwave/oven unit like this GE Cafe one
or one similar from Kitchen Aid (my grandma has a Kitchen Aid that is awesome!)
*Scotsman Nugget Ice Maker
*wine fridge
What I wouldn’t do again:
I would not buy an LG fridge or a Kenmore Elite fridge that is a rebadged LG. LG compressors are known to fail, and there are legal settlements that LG has to cover the repair of you have one of those models, but it is a pain to figure out which models are affected. The compressor quit on the fridge that came with the house out of the blue on an estimated 5-7 year old fridge. I called LG who wouldn’t even address the issue and said it was Kenmore’s service issue and when I called Kenmore I got nowhere on the non human serviced call center (pushing 0 got me nowhere) and the only option was to schedule a service call on a previously purchased service contract. This left me with a very bad opinion of LG appliances in general.
I don’t know if I would buy a GE French door fridge again either. I thought I absolutely raved about ours, and it worked great for about 9 months before the bottom freezer started to ice over and cause water to leak out the bottom freezer. This is a known issue with GE fridges as well. Thankfully it was $100 or so fix to have the repair clear the water line, but it was pain because it happened right before we moved.
If you know a good contractor and or of a good cabinet/kitchen remodeling store I would consider using the cabinet store for kitchen design. I had no idea that they offered this service so we hired the same interior designer (that we used for our bathroom) to plan out our kitchen and then it turned out the cabinet store our contractor recommended had the same design services, carried flooring and tile options, and pulls and knobs. We would’ve saved the design fee had we known this. Plus the interior designer’s measurements for the cabinets were slightly off and some of our cabinets had to be redesigned at the last minute. We opted to go this route for our bathroom remodel and refresh. I found the company we are using in one of those contractor mailers you get in the mail. So far so good, and the company employs their own designers as well.
What I would do again:
Buy floor models. Except for the gas cooktop and the microwave at our old place the rest of the kitchen appliances were floor models. I saved a bunch of money by doing this.
Use wood like tile. We have used Arizona Tile for two
remodels and will be using for our current bathroom projects. It looks like hardwood, but is so easy to clean.
I would consider hiring a color consultant to pick paint colors. We did this at our old house and it was so helpful. We have done it for our bathroom projects as well. So far I am happy with the service we chose this time and we have to go get samples of the paints she recommended.
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