Remodeling your kitchen can be a stressful endeavor. You’ve watched all the videos online, but want a realistic take on how long your remodel is going to take. When remodeling your kitchen yourself, you need to be objective about your timeline.
Break Down Your Project
The kitchen is the center of the home, and as such it is often impractical to remodel it all at once. Breaking up the work is often the way to go so you can still use the bulk of your kitchen while the work is in progress.
Step 1: Planning Your Kitchen Remodel
This can start months before you get any work done on your kitchen. A professional remodeler will save you a lot of time with their experience.
Planning your remodel will include designing your kitchen, budgeting, sourcing all the required materials equipment, and manpower, as well as planning the workflow.
Even the best laid plans can go awry. Kitchen remodels are notorious for taking longer than anticipated since they often require electrical and plumbing work. All factors need to be accounted for, and it’s not uncommon to encounter problems you didn’t know existed. You can’t plan for everything, that’s why it’s important to get professional help.
Step 2: Remodeling Your Kitchen
There are 2 general ways you can go about remodeling your kitchen. You can either go all-in and do everything at once, or tackle the project in phases.
For most people, the phasing strategy is more practical since parts of the kitchen will still need to be used – you may decommission the washing area to fit new sinks and taps, and can decide to either retile your backsplash at the same time or tackle that at a later stage.
If you want to do everything at once, you will have to make arrangements for cooking and cleanup while the remodel is in progress.
Demolition and Final Preparation
It’s time to pick up the tools! The first step in remodeling once everything is planned is to remove any old furnishings and equipment and doing any other work necessary for the installation.
Depending on how ambitious your remodel is, this can take a long time especially when redoing floors and removing or building walls. Installing new windows and doors can also form part of a kitchen remodel. Regardless, all the old stuff has to be removed to make space for the new.
This is where you will usually encounter some problems. For example, you might remove some cupboards and find or cause a water leak that will need to be fixed before you can proceed. Anything can happen, so be prepared for delays!
Installation
Finally, all the months of planning and preparing are coming together! The time can vary, again depending on the size of your project and external factors like problems encountered during preparation but if you have planned and prepared everything effectively, things should go smoothly.
At this stage, you will be fitting your new kitchen. Hopefully you thought about things like how much space will be needed while the work is carried out, and co-ordinated your calendar and any contractors to ensure you don’t have too many people trying to work over each other on the day.
Installations also have a tendency to deviate from the plan. You cannot always foresee problems that might arise during installation, but most commonly issues arise around sizing and positioning of water and electricity lines.
Anything Can Happen
You might start an installation, and have to abort it pending other work. The only defense you have against this kind of thing happening is careful planning, but you cannot plan for everything.
Even the weather can mess you around – paint and grouting take longer to dry in colder weather, just as an example. Kitchen remodels can be a mammoth test of even an experienced contractor’s patience – be realistic about your abilities and expectations.
Trying to save money by doing things yourself or using dubious remodelers who promise to do things cheaply can end up being more costly. Inexperience is often to blame for waylaid kitchen remodels.
Cleanup
The project isn’t over once all the new cupboards and countertops are fitted. You might be able to enjoy your new kitchen at this point, but you have to take care of any building rubble like old tiles and electrical wiring before you can say the remodel is over.
Plan ahead and decide what you will do with anything you remove from your kitchen. Old cabinets, plumbing, tiles and counters may still be reusable and can either be repurposed, sold or donated.
Using a professional building service will save you the trouble of figuring out what to do with all your old kitchen bits, but be sure to discuss cleanup with them. You don’t want to be that guy who has had building rubble in his yard for months due to poor planning.
If you are changing the layout of your kitchen, it might necessitate significant structural changes to your home and space becomes an issue, especially with cumbersome items like granite countertops.
Think of cleanup as taking place throughout the duration of your kitchen remodel. When removing things, it’s best to have a plan to store the or discard old or you may find yourself running out of space quickly. Compact homes and apartments may already have an issue with space, and like most problems, building rubble does not go away if you ignore it.
Conclusion
Understanding the timeline of your kitchen remodel is critical if you want things to go smoothly. Most people don’t realize that it can take months for a project to develop before anything is done. Then there is the cleanup which can be as much of a headache as the remodel itself. Hopefully, this guide has given you a bird’s eye view of sorts on the kitchen remodeling process and its timeline.