Our 5-Point Kitchen Renovation Start-Up Plan

The kitchen is the hub of the home, the main artery through which most daily activities flow. We’ve all experienced a kitchen that’s too small, poorly laid-out, or closed off from the rest of the home. It can add a chaotic element to our lives that most of us would prefer to do without.

Kitchen renovations in Calgary are one of the most common projects we’re asked about, and you can probably imagine why. However, due to the important role that the kitchen plays at home, many families’ kitchen renovation plans can become frozen in their tracks when the impact is considered. How will your family eat and prepare food when the kitchen is turned into a construction site for a period? Does it really cost as much (or as little) as the internet would have us believe?

Overwhelm will be in play at some point through any kitchen renovation project. However, with the 5-point plan I’ve laid out below, it’s my hope that I can shine a light on some of the more confusing elements of the process, and in turn, set your kitchen renovation up for success. Let’s get started.

1. Understand your budget

Obvious right? You need to know what you can reasonably spend before taking the plunge. While you’ll need to interview a group of qualified kitchen renovation contractors to get a true sense of the likely expense, establishing your cost-comfort zone prior to your interviews is important too.

Another, maybe more powerful question to ask yourself early in the process comes from construction industry author/educator Shawn Van Dyke. That is: “At what price will your lifestyle be affected?”

The number at which your family’s lifestyle begins to be negatively affected is the number that you AND your chosen kitchen renovation contractor need to plan to be under, no matter what. Which leads me to my next point about budget…

2. Communicate your budget

I know this seems counterintuitive, but please be open and honest about your budget expectations with the group of contractors you interview. The budgetary cat-and-mouse game that goes on far too often between client and prospective contractor is detrimental to the process.

The more willing homeowners are to be forthcoming about their budget expectations, the quicker they can get answers about whether their budget is realistic or not. From the contractor’s perspective, with an actual budget expectation to work with, pricing can be tailored around a target. Areas where concessions or modifications to the plan are required can be identified much earlier in the process. This allows us to get to reality, and into your dream kitchen renovation that much quicker.

Now, I completely understand a homeowner’s inclination to keep their budget cards close to the vest. Unfortunately, the reputable contractors in this industry fight an uphill battle everyday when it comes to trust. As with most things, a few shady operators have cast a cloud of apprehension over the whole industry. Luckily, savvy homeowners can protect themselves from the fly-by-night crowd by selecting only qualified, reputable contractors to interview. I’ve written a separate piece on how to identify these types of quality renovation contractors, which you can view here.

Related: Take a deeper dive on your Calgary Kitchen Renovation with Channel Custom Builders

3. Understand the impact on your life at home

Prior to conducting your contractor interviews, spend some time considering the probable (and inevitable) impacts on your life at home throughout the kitchen renovation process. Here are a few things for you to consider:

Timeline

Sight unseen, at Channel we usually project that the average full-gut kitchen renovation in Calgary will take 12-16 weeks. Now, every project is unique so that can certainly vary from project to project. It is, however, a good jumping-off point for the homeowner. Try to visualize what it will be like having a construction site inside your home for that period. If you’re getting a bit anxious about it, you’re not alone. Even the smoothest projects can be uncomfortable at times for the homeowner. Having said that, being prepared for reality from the start makes sailing the sometimes-choppy renovation waters that much easier.

Disruption & workers on site

The obvious challenge with this type of work is that the contractor is trying to run a job-site and the homeowners are trying to lead peaceful domestic lives in the exact same place. This can be a recipe for discomfort. Knowing what to expect on a day-to-day basis can help to alleviate some of the tension.

On our job-sites, the expectation is that workers can/will be present between 8am and 5pm Monday-Friday. With a project as disruptive as a kitchen renovation, it’s imperative that your contractor have a carefully planned and expertly executed construction schedule. Kitchen renovations can be challenging work, but thinking about your schedule like a weather report (in that minor changes should be expected here and there) will help you ride the waves with confidence. The best kitchen renovation contractors provide their clients with regular site reports. This way you’re informed on the status of your project often, and you can sleep easy knowing everything is under control.

Construction sites are messy. There’s no way around it. Kitchen renovations can be especially challenging due to their natural location at the centre of the home. High-quality kitchen renovation contractors make dust and debris mitigation a priority. Through the use of polyethylene zip-walls, heavy-duty floor coverings, and daily site clean-up, the inherent dust & debris associated with renovating can be contained solely to the renovation area and life can continue in a (mostly) normal way throughout the rest of the home.

Move out vs. Temporary Kitchen

From time to time on a project such as a kitchen renovation, the homeowners will decide that the activity and the disruption I’ve outlined above warrants finding separate living arrangements for the duration of the project. This may be through a short-term rental or staying with family. While this type of arrangement certainly makes the project process easier on the homeowner and the contractor, it’s not always an option for everyone. When the decision is made to stay in the home through the renovation, your contractor will help you to set-up a temporary kitchen elsewhere in the home (or garage) using your existing appliances. This way meals can still be cooked and families can still maintain some level of “normal” throughout the process.

4. Clarify your goals

Unless money is no object, it’s a good possibility that some concessions will need to be made somewhere through the planning process. To reconcile your plans for your dream kitchen with your available budget, while still getting everything you need out of your kitchen renovation, a couple of simple exercises can make the process easier and more clear.

Needs/Wants/Dreams

With our clients we use a simple exercise called Needs/Wants/Dreams. Essentially you have each of these three categories, and the job for the homeowner is to sort the various elements of your ideal kitchen renovation into one of these three categories. For example, if you or your partner love to cook, but are constantly hindered by old/clunky appliances and lack of counterspace, having high-quality appliances installed and reconfiguring to allow for extensive counterspace would fit into the “Need” category. “Wants” are nice-to-have’s but maybe not as critical as a “Need”. “Dreams” are reach-for-the-stars-type fixtures, finishings or design details that you’d love to have, but maybe don’t expect to fit beneath your budget. Put them in anyways. You never know.

Armed with your honest budget expectations and your Needs/Wants/Dreams list, your kitchen renovation contractor can get to work. Having this information in hand, your contractor can now craft a kitchen design that accounts for as many of your Needs/Wants/Dreams as possible, while still hitting your target budget goal. This type of design vs. budget engineering is essential to achieving every homeowner’s biggest goal: The kitchen renovation of their dreams, on-time and on-budget.

Look & Feel

This part will be fun. How do you want your kitchen renovation to look and feel? This is where you get to spend time online looking at plenty of beautiful kitchens and gathering design inspiration for your own renovation. We recommend our clients use Houzz, an online home design platform. The photo stream feature on Houzz allows homeowners to browse a seemingly endless amount of gorgeous home photos. Use the filters to home in on your exact design preferences. Save you favourite photos to your Ideabook. Make notes on these saved photos of which design features you love. Share your Ideabook with your chosen Contractor through the Houzz platform. Now not only does your contractor have a wish list and budget expectation to work with when engineering your renovation plan, but also a whole host of wonderful design ideas to incorporate into your project. You can see why we love Houzz so much and we imagine you will too. Just don’t be surprised if you lose your whole night down the photo stream rabbit-hole!

5. Choose your ideal contractor

Now that you are armed with a solid start-up plan and realistic expectations for your kitchen renovation, the next step is to select a group of qualified kitchen renovation contractors to interview. While this may seem as simple as firing up the Google search and choosing the top hits, we need to be a bit more careful than that. Without knowing what to look for, the interview process can become a huge chore. Worst of all, we could end up selecting the wrong Contractor for the job. I’ve written a companion piece here, focused solely on selecting which Contractors to interview for your renovation project. With all the tools you need now at your disposal, you’re ready to get started down the path to your dream kitchen renovation. Happy renovating!