Reply to Purchasing a home, how to approach renovation?

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[quote=Anonymous]I'm 18:12.  I felt the same as you: with a major renovation, I wanted to get it done before I moved in.  I didn't want to live with the mess or be unable to cook for 3 months.  I don't regret it at all and would do the same again.

Talk to your contractor and see who he/she has on staff for help planning the kitchen.  I used both a general contractor and a designer (hired on an hourly basis).  I also talked to designers at Lowe's and Home Depot* -- I got bids on kitchens from both those companies as well.  So I ended up with 4 different plans for my kitchen design, which let me see which things were the same on each and which were different.  I then picked my favorite aspects, running the final version by the designer.

I do think talking to a kitchen specialist is worth it, and the contractor you pick may have one who works with the company.  It can be tricky to have an outside designer/architect and a contractor -- a friend of mine did this, and the two sort of fought with each other.  It's not impossible to use two separate people, though.  I did and it was fine.

Kitchen design is a huge process.  It was fun, and I loved the end result, but it was also stressful.  Tons of small decisions from picking a faucet to the size of the refrigerator.  I read a bunch of books from the library and browsed at my local bookstore.  Those helped.

* After this process, I wouldn't buy cabinets from Lowe's or Home Depot.  You can get the same or better quality at better prices elsewhere.  I assumed the big box stores would be the cheap option, but this was definitely not true.[/quote]

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