Make my kitchen great again!

[laurazone5]

Poor little thing.
I need it to function, first and foremost.
It needs updated, terribly.


From the entry to the LR to the garage door, 10'6"
The doors hide the furnace, water heater, water softener(closest to LR) and the washer and dryer (close to back door)
I do not like the doors, at all. Super ugly. LOL

From the WINDOW to the doors, 15'9"
From the cabinet to the doors, 13'4"

From the cabinets to the fridge is 6'1"


The inside of the cabinets are gross. Cheap chipping paint, and they are DEEP.....not functionable.
The corner (which should have a lazy susan cab) is wasted empty space.
The upper corner cabinet is shaped in a triangle, and does not function.
I do not like the bump out above the cabinets; again, wasted space.

I don't know where to start. I have never updated / remodeled a kitchen!!

[Melissa]

New cupboards are going to be very expensive. You could paint the old ones. For depth issues you can buy slides that will pull the shelves out. Overall it is a nice space.

The best thing to do is look at lots of kitchen pictures and get some ideas about what you like then use those ideas to implement what you can. It all depends on how much money to you want to spend.

[Maura]

I like the doors. I don't like the cabinets.

Do you really hate the kitchen, or do you really hate clutter? That shelving unit set where the refrigerator used to be will always make the kitchen look cluttered. Do you hate the kitchen, or do you hate living with your next door neighbors?

Can you afford to redo the kitchen? In a previous post you stated that you needed to get out of debt. It is a useable kitchen and I don't think it would turn away most people looking to buy the house.

If you sell the house it is unlikely that you will get your money out of a kitchen redo. For now, I would repaint the cabinets in a cheery color (my monitor may not be showing the true color) and remove the shelves to a garage or pole shed, along with the bucket and water bottles. In the living room corner, place a basket for all that junk on the floor. Put For Sale sign up. Put a For Sale sign up even though you don't think the house is "ready". At this point in the year housing sales slow down, so don't wait.

[solargeek]

laurazone5 , Are you doing this for yourself or for getting it ready to move based on the neighbor issues?

If for you, take your pictures and measurements into any Home Depot, sit with their designer and tell them your budget. They will help you for free.

When we built, I not only lost a foot of length but also about $5,000 from the budget (the kitchen is a large part of our home so some of that budget included the peninsula/snack bar). That meant no island, and no lights or special stuff on the cabinets. They honored my budget, told me how to get a deal on counters, when the sales were running and delivered everything (delivery was only $49 for an entire kitchen, and cabinets for 3 bathrooms and the laundry room).  

We ordered very inexpensive cabinetry and I bought the "pulls" there also. Because we were building and definitely spending over $1500, we qualified for special large quantity discounts for ALL of our house items. It was called the Pro-Desk discount and it has another name now. 

Anyhow we used the large quantity discounts on top of Black Friday discounts to order all house appliances, all the bath and kitchen cabinetry, all the counters for the baths and kitchen, and 2500 sq ft of tile for the floors. And all lighting and the bulbs! Also all the ceiling wood (we used cheap pine 'car siding' on the slanted portion of the great room ceiling to make the house look prettier).

All in all, in 2012 we paid Home Depot 10% of what it cost to build the house and according to our builder and our own research, saved ourselves over 30% of standard pricing most get stuck with when they build a house. I know for a fact on the lighting alone, (lots of can lights, sconces, and the hangy-downy types (but not chandeliers?) we saved 45% over what we had paid at a lighting store sale for the same lights for our old log home in 2003. So even though prices had gone up for 9 years, still it was 45% less just on the lighting. 

Good luck 

[solargeek]

BTW your kitchen may be bigger than ours. I just "measured" (counted the 18" tiles each way) and I think we are 16' x 10'.

[laurazone5]

I hate the kitchen.

The shelf to the left of the stove has all of my pots and pans, baking dishes, etc. The bucket is the dog food!
When I am cooking, they are easy to access....cabinets are deep, and bending over / getting on the floor to get pots and pans is not enjoyable.
My stand mixer and coffee pot are the only 2 things on the counter (some fruit and veggies on a plate also)
It is organized chaos.....lol
But I was hoping for ideas on how to make it function w/o the chaos!!

I could sell this house tomorrow for 40k more than I paid for it......that's a fact.
But I have no where else to go, so at my age and in my profession this would not be a smart move.

I was hoping someone one had an eye for ideas on how to make it function.

[Maura]

DH put a pot hanger for me next to the stove. You could do that in the same space as the shelves. Add a small cabinet that is at stove height under the pots. The cabinet could have drawers instead of shelves, if that is more suited to you.

The cupboard above my refrigerator pulls out like a drawer, with open sides so that I can reach what is up there. This might work for you.

If you want to spend more money than a pot rack and small cabinet, you can have a cabinet maker make a unit for next to the stove that has pull outs and a washable surface on the stove side.

I did not go to a store to get my kitchen cabinets. I had a local cabinetmaker do the job. The cost was the same as if I had bought good quality cabinets at a store, but they are much nicer and exactly what I wanted.

[laurazone5]

We have a Re Store (Habitat for Humanity resale store) in a very affluent community that has amazing items, dirt cheap. Pennies on the dollar.
That's the route I will go because it will be affordable AND the money they receive goes back into building Habitat homes. Win Win.

I am definitely looking at 'drawers' in the deep lower cabinets. That makes sense to me?

[Use Less]

You could take those louvered doors off and let the works be visible. If you don't mind the loss of space, you could build a wall or a wall of shelves far enough out that you can easily access the various works and the washer & dryer. Could you take away the wall where the fridge is now, opening into what looks like a family room that isn't all that wide?

I am reading this with interest, btw, since I am due for a kitchen redo. The current cupboards were installed in 1979. They aren't that nasty, but the inner parts and side panels aren't as good as the doors My room is roughly 12' x 16', which sounds big, but there are 3 doors, none of which lend can reasonably be closed or moved. I don't want to pay to reroute the gas or the water. Dad built an island for a dishwasher, but it is awkwardly close to sink and stove.

I don't have a bump-out: the ceilings in here are 10' high. That also means if I store things on top of mine, it takes a ladder to get at them (and I'm 5'7"), and they collect dust and grease big-time. So, yours is wasted space, but not another cleaning job.

[Maura]

I guess you could go visit the Re-store and see what they have. Know your measurements. Something may jump out at you and demand to be freed from the store.