You can look on Houzz. We went with Paul Bentham of Jennifer Gilmer kitchens. He's fantastic. We also met with a number of other people, but Paul stood out.

Look up kitchen designers who work in your area on Houzz. I highly recommend Jan Goldman of Kitchen Elements, she redesigned my kitchen, provided and organized the plumbers, electricians and general contractors and I have nothing but positive things to say about her. She also was willing to work within our budget.

I am an architect and I design tons of kitchens.
You can see my projects in Houzz or online.
www.ileanaschinder.com
Hope to hear from you soon,
ileana schinder

Where do you find a kitchen designer? We are in MoCo.

We had help from a design build firm since we were doing more than just the kitchen. They came up with ideas - we worked with them to fine tune what we liked, didn't like etc. Once we settled on a design we paid a % of the cost of the renovation to hire them. I'm not entirely sure if we hadn't gone with them what we would have had to pay but considering the time and people committed to our project - I'm assuming we would have had to pay for the designs regardless of if we hired them. During the the plan stage they had us look in their storeroom to determine types/styles we liked, didn't to further their design.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We completely changed the layout of our kitchen. ... Once we had a plan that we were happy with, we reached out to several contractors to price the work. This was the hardest part because it's just a rough estimate, it always costs more than you think and this is just for labor. Everything is piecemeal -- cabinets, labor, countertops, backsplash, flooring. Once you secure a good contractor, they can coordinate all of the moving parts for you. That's how we did it and it's working out well. You can probably also go to a full service design build who will design, coordinate all parts and then provide labor as well. I can't speak to the ease of that route because we didn't go in that direction.

How much does the design work typically cost?

Did anyone opt to buy most of the appliances and materials on their own? I'd still hire a contractor to source and oversee the work, but given that I am home most of the day, it seems like I could put in a bit of leg work to find deals on appliances, order myself to get rebates/discounts, and be at home to receive shipments of tile and flooring.

PP here. We originally worked with 2 kitchen designers and then uptimately picked the one we liked better once we got a little further along. One of them designed for nothing and I would meet her at her design place and make changes. Ultimately, if you want to move forward with her plans, it would have been $1000 and that would have been credited towards the cost of the cabinetry. The other one was $2000 to design and that was also credited towards cabinetry. We knew we were going with #2 so didn't mind paying the fee since it would get credited. We bought everything else ourselves -- appliances, countertop, fixtures, lighting, etc. If you are going with mid range appliances, you can shop around and look for deals. If you are going high end (Wolf, Sub Zero, Thermador, Viking), the prices are all the same everywhere but you can take advantage of certain promotions they might be offering (e.g., buy a fridge, range and oven and get dishwasher for free).

Does anyone have recommendations for the designer and/or contractor you used? We are in the exact same position as you OP and struggling with where to start!

The design is key. We spent a lot of time on ours with estimates/suggestions from multiple people. Ultimately, we picked the version closest to our idea and then improved on it. We have a great kitchen designer, who was considerate of our budget, understood our style, and had very practical suggestions.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We completely changed the layout of our kitchen. ... Once we had a plan that we were happy with, we reached out to several contractors to price the work. This was the hardest part because it's just a rough estimate, it always costs more than you think and this is just for labor. Everything is piecemeal -- cabinets, labor, countertops, backsplash, flooring. Once you secure a good contractor, they can coordinate all of the moving parts for you. That's how we did it and it's working out well. You can probably also go to a full service design build who will design, coordinate all parts and then provide labor as well. I can't speak to the ease of that route because we didn't go in that direction.

How much does the design work typically cost?

Did anyone opt to buy most of the appliances and materials on their own? I'd still hire a contractor to source and oversee the work, but given that I am home most of the day, it seems like I could put in a bit of leg work to find deals on appliances, order myself to get rebates/discounts, and be at home to receive shipments of tile and flooring.

Yeah, sure if you use a contractor or design build firm you can and likely will be responsible for finding your own appliances. My contractor preferred that I use ajmadison - which worked for me because I'd already found all my appliances were priced best there.

I would say design/build, or even just a good solo contractor with good design insight. I think they would provide the benefit of thinking about whether a wall should come down, whether you should expand a window, where you've got a pole you have to design around..... We're currently doing a full house remodel, including bumping out the kitchen -and we came up with our design/layout just between us and our contractor. He had really good ideas that he brought to the table. I assume a fancy design build group would have been more expensive?

I have had bad experiences with kitchen store design people. Their initial designs were like "did you even think about how this kitchen was going to be used"? It was like they just threw up a kitchen template - array of cabinets in L shape in one corner, wall of cabinets on other side, island in middle -- without thinking about flow, amount of space, etc. The initial drawings were so far from what was useful to us that we decided to just go another direction entirely.

All that said, once you get someone to help you think about overall layout, I suggest looking at the "31 kitchen design guidelines" - I think from the national kitchen and bath association? In any event, it is so incredibly helpful to go through all 31 guidelines to get thinking about how you will use your kitchen. You don't have to follow them to a tee, but they will help you spot major red flags or at least weigh pros and cons of certain layout issues. Like, maybe your kitchen is too big to stick firmly to the appliance triangle, but the guidelines will get you thinking about whether, if you fridge is all the way around an island from your sink, it is going to be a pain in the ass to walk from the sink to the fridge 20 times a day for a glass of water. When it comes down to it, even the best kitchen designer or contractor isn't going to spend the 3 extra hours it takes to really think through your kitchen design like this - so the ultimate design is going to fall on you.

Anonymous wrote:We completely changed the layout of our kitchen. ... Once we had a plan that we were happy with, we reached out to several contractors to price the work. This was the hardest part because it's just a rough estimate, it always costs more than you think and this is just for labor. Everything is piecemeal -- cabinets, labor, countertops, backsplash, flooring. Once you secure a good contractor, they can coordinate all of the moving parts for you. That's how we did it and it's working out well. You can probably also go to a full service design build who will design, coordinate all parts and then provide labor as well. I can't speak to the ease of that route because we didn't go in that direction.

How much does the design work typically cost?

Did anyone opt to buy most of the appliances and materials on their own? I'd still hire a contractor to source and oversee the work, but given that I am home most of the day, it seems like I could put in a bit of leg work to find deals on appliances, order myself to get rebates/discounts, and be at home to receive shipments of tile and flooring.

We completely changed the layout of our kitchen. Took out a wall between 2 rooms and moved everything around. We started by finding a good kitchen designer. They will come out and measure and put together plans for various proposed layouts. Most of them will not charge anything for the design unless you want to keep it and use it on your own without them. Some charge to design and then credit it towards your cabinet purchase. We spent a few weeks perfecting the design and putting everything where we wanted it. Once we had a plan that we were happy with, we reached out to several contractors to price the work. This was the hardest part because it's just a rough estimate, it always costs more than you think and this is just for labor. Everything is piecemeal -- cabinets, labor, countertops, backsplash, flooring. Once you secure a good contractor, they can coordinate all of the moving parts for you. That's how we did it and it's working out well. You can probably also go to a full service design build who will design, coordinate all parts and then provide labor as well. I can't speak to the ease of that route because we didn't go in that direction.

We definitely want to pick out selections before we sign a contract but I guess I don't completely know what selections we will need without a layout planned. We are looking at Houzz and will look more but it isn't enough because of the layout issues.

To start with I would look online - at places like Houzz to get a feel for what you like. When we started the kitchen renovation we did a far bit of leg work looking at materials, appliances, online etc before we meet with a design/build firm. Our reasoning was we wanted to know what the cost of doing the kitchen was and to firm up our personal style. We then met with a design/build firm to work on the actually layout. We meet them at our house to walk thru what we liked and didn't like about the current kitchen - we liked the triangle pattern between sink, fridge and stove, but didn't like the cabinets, flooring and countertops. Plus we wanted to add an island with a bar. Together we pieced together a design and selection of materials until we came up with the final product.

We would like to renovate our kitchen. One of the primary reasons is the layout but a preferred layout is not obvious. I'm not sure where to start. I think what we need first is to figure out a layout. Should we be contacting design build firms to see their suggestions? Or going to kitchen design stores? I am concerned that those places are focused on replacing cabinets etc but wouldn't be great at rethinking the layout which is the primary problem. Seems like way to small a job for an architect.