More on Custom Kitchen Design

There are many different elements that make up a kitchen. From countertops to cabinets to flooring to storage, there is much planning that needs to occur before any custom design New York is drafted for a customer. Among the biggest deciding factors with this is budget and price. If your budget is infinite, the possibilities are infinite. If your budget is restricted, there are still ways to customize your kitchen without breaking the bank.

Any custom design will accentuate your kitchen countertops. A kitchen countertop Brooklyn can be one of the most important elements in any custom design. The material you choose should depend on your budget. However, if you want the look of stone but can't afford it, there are ways around it such as using granite tile vs. a large granite slab. There are expensive materials and cheaper materials, but all can be utilized in your design based on your budget. Once again, as a custom design, you need to find the material that is customized to your function.

Another important part of custom design New York is your lighting. Kitchen lighting will accentuate all of your kitchen elements but it also serves a great function. In your custom design, you need to discuss with your remodeler the uses for your kitchen. If it is a relaxing area, you need dimmer availability. If it is more of a food prep area, you need bright lights on the most used areas. As a custom part to your kitchen, your lighting scheme should fit your use.

When planning your custom kitchen, get design ideas and keep your eyes open as to what other people are doing and have done. Also, get your budget together before you meet with a remodeler. As discussed throughout this article, there is an amazing amount choice which will be narrowed down based on what your overall project budget is. Remember, this is your custom kitchen so spend enough money where you will be happy with the materials used, the appliances, and design elements, and the overall result.

A Truly Custom Designed Kitchen

Custom kitchen design New York is not a task for the inexperienced or for the faint of heart. It requires expertise in all disciplines of design and kitchen construction as well as knowledge of function to create the perfect environment that will be both useful and aesthetically pleasing. Designing the perfect custom kitchen is a challenging task. Your kitchen must look great and fit your style. It must also be able to accommodate cooking, dining, and be a comfortable place for gatherings of friends and family.

If you are not experienced, this can be a daunting task. A skilled contractor will speak with you and absorb what you want out of your kitchen then design and implement the perfect kitchen Brooklyn that will not only accent your style but will be the perfect functional workroom. Any kitchen renovation project starts with a design. As stated before, this design should not only be aesthetically pleasing but should be designed to reduce un-necessary movements in your kitchen by making the most used elements of your kitchen in convenient places. A skilled remodeler is able to develop a great kitchen idea as a happy medium between form and function. They will begin with function and include the best materials to meet that function without compromising style. Custom kitchen design New York can be summed up with two words - function and design.

If you are looking at articles about custom kitchen design, you are most likely ready to begin the journey of remodeling your kitchen. The first step to any new remodel is a fact finding mission. This is a journey into design to see what others have done and what you like and dislike about other designs and designers. Your custom kitchen is wholly your own kitchen and should be designed for you, and in a sense, by you. You will tell your remodeler what you want to do in your kitchen and how you want it to look. Many times, ideas can be found in magazines and through internet searches. Look at designs, go to book stores, pick up magazines, look at your friend's kitchens, and see what style you want. When you do make an appointment with your remodeling contractor, you will be much happier with their custom design if you bring what you want to the table and actual pictures of it for the contractor to mimic.

Trendy Kitchens to Think About

If you are lucky, you may have $20,000 for a kitchen remodel New York or like most of us, need to take out that home equity loan for kitchen and bath upgrades. What if you had a $100,000 budget? If you could take a peek into the kitchens of the new loft condos begin built on Park Avenue in New York City, or in the Marina District of San Francisco with views overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, what would you find?

Yes, you would probably still find tile on the floor (like the masses) but it would most likely be porcelain and not ceramic. You and I can load our station wagon up with tiles from Home Depot at $3 per square foot, but even stores for the masses like Lowes and Color Tile have tile that run over $20 per square foot in their showroom so as you can imagine there are many varieties of tile at over $50 per square foot to please the hedge fund managers. (Other floors you may find in these posh settings: cork, marble, travertine tile and seamless hardwood.)

Under the tile you may find an electric heating system because no one wants to creep down out of bed at 2 a.m. for cookies and milk, and have their feet get cold. The electric line snaking under each tile will perpetually remove the chill.

Looking at the countertop new york you can bet you will find granite 80% of the time, but for completely custom jobs with unlimited budgets you will find a lot of custom concrete. And yes, the Wall Street tycoons can find granite about as exotic and expensive as you could want to pay for it. (Five thousand dollars for a countertop would embarrass many of these people.) Adding an inch or two to the thickness of the granite and sourcing the granite from some of the most remote countries on earth should add $10,000 to the cost, just enough to not be embarrassed at holiday parties.

The range would be a 17,000 BTU stainless steel, six burner with dual ovens below, costing $10,000 to $15,000. Of course, there would be a wall mounted chimney hood for venting, above the cook top with six speed settings, dual halogen lights, and rated at 650 CFM. You could see the food cooking, you just won't be able to smell the food cooking!

The refrigerator will probably be a Sub Zero built right into the kitchen cabinets, because Maytag or Amana just won't do. This $10,000 beauty will be able to hold enough food to feed a small Icelandic village.

The kitchen cabinets Brooklyn would still be wood, like we have in most houses, but the wood would be imported and exotic. Solid under the countertop and glass door above, so the fine dishes and the sushi sets can be seen without opening the door. The "hardware," meaning the handles on the cabinets and drawers, would be more than $10 each or it just would not be a posh kitchen. Actually, this "hardware" is getting more and more expensive for the rest of us too, as it's almost impossible to replace your hardware today for under $4 per handle. Let's hope we can live with what came stock.

Refinish Your Kitchen

If your cabinet frames and your cabinet doors and drawer fronts are in good structural condition and you want to remodel your kitchen New York without spending too much money, you can add a dimension of beauty to your kitchen by refinishing your kitchen cabinets. Replacing cabinets are a very costly part of any remodeling project but sometimes that same look can be achieved through refinishing. If you are unclear on the remodeling terms being used here, refinishing is not the same as refacing. Refacing a kitchen cabinet means replacing all of the doors, drawers, molding, and spacers with new ones whereas refinishing means sanding down your cabinets, stripping the finish, and reapplying a new veneer or finish. Refinishing versus refacing Brooklyn will generally save the homeowner $5000 (or more) depending on type of fronts are placed, condition of the cabinets, etc.

When you hire a refinishing contractor, you are hiring a contractor to strip the finish from your existing kitchen cabinets and cabinet frames and re-apply a new veneer and new finish. This new finish will either act to restore the cabinets to their original beauty or restyle the cabinets to match any new design scheme the contractor has designed for your kitchen. Once your cabinets are stripped, they basically become a blank slate for your contractor to work with.

Refinishing a cabinet New York means following a series of steps and procedures. When you hire a contractor to do work on your cabinets, they will typically first present you with a sample of whatever finish you choose. This can be done two ways. First, the contractor can bring you a sample of stained or treated wood that will look similar to yours. Second, the contractor can actually remove a cabinet or a drawer, take it back to the workshop, work on it, and present it to you as a finished product. This aspect of the project is done initially to get your approval on the color, stain or finish. Any changes that need to be made are typically done in this phase.

After the refinishing contractor has your approval, they will schedule a date to begin work. This is important because it gives you time to prep your kitchen. Because the refinishing process involves your cabinet frames as well as the fronts and drawers, you will need to clean everything from inside of your cabinets and from your countertops. The sanding and refinishing process generates an abundance of dust so make sure when your refinishers begin, they tarp up the kitchen area well so the dust and debris doesn't permeate throughout your home.

A Kitchen Makeover

Brooklyn Kitchen Makeovers; they seem to be the popular trend in today's society. Television is full of series whose premise is based on dramatically changing the look of a person, a room or an entire home. Some of these shows revolve around major changes, while others involve simple cosmetic changes. There is no room in the house that people want to make over as much as the kitchen. The kitchen makeover or kitchen remodeling is the dream of any forward thinking homeowner. While the kitchen is the costliest room to makeover, it also is the room that adds the most resale value to the house.

Many of the top people in the kitchen makeover new york feel the kitchen is the pulse of any home. A kitchen makeover not only gives the home a whole new boost and a whole new center of focus, it also allows the homeowner to put their own stamp on the home. Keeping practicality in mind, the homeowner can design the kitchen to reflect who they are. The kitchen makeover is the homeowner's signature that the house is now their home. There are so many advantages to remodeling a kitchen, and there are just as many questions that arise when the homeowner decides to tackle such a project.

The first step in your kitchen makeover New York journey is to determine a budget. The budget will allow to see, just what you can (and cannot) afford to implement in building your kitchen. Yet determining your budget is just the first step of your journey. In addition the homeowner must prioritize the importance of each aspect of the project. Should the money be spent on appliances or cabinets? Should the importance be placed on countertops of kitchen flooring? These are questions that one must ponder before actually proceeding with the project.

After you have determined your budget and your priorities, you need to decide how you would like to lay out your kitchen. In a simple makeover, perhaps some or every item is replaced, but the general layout or design of the room will remain the same. In more complex kitchen makeovers, the design of the kitchen can change dramatically. Often times on projects such as these, outside professionals are needed. It may be in the form of a kitchen designer or an architect. These may be costly options, however, it is difficult to tackle a project without the expertise that these individuals bring to the table.

There are so many options on each and every aspect of kitchen remodeling that the most important thing that one must do is to shop around. From online options to discount stores, to designer shops, the options and pricing can range from affordable to outrageous. Shopping around not only helps maximize your budget, it also is a great starting point for other ideas. The more one sees the more that they learn and nothing is better for a kitchen makeover than an educated homeowner.

Granite Countertops

You hear about people spending $3,000 to $5,000 on a granite countertop and that sounds expensive, but the cost of granite compared to other "substitutes" for the kitchen counter is actually very reasonably priced, especially compared to concrete. Looking at the entire process of what it takes to get granite (from Brazil in this case) to your home, granite suddenly seems cheap. In South American, Argentina is also a large exporter of granite and granite is imported from countries all over the world including India, Italy, South Africa, and even Zimbabwe. What does it take to get the granite from the ground to your kitchen or bar?

Brazil is a large importer of granite countertops New York into the U.S. Where once dynamite blasting was used to get to the granite, today expanding powder and water is used to separate large slabs of rock without all the "collateral" damage blasting used to cause. At the quarry site, 30 ton blocks are prepared for transport to the fabricator where they are sliced to a thickness of 3/4 inch to 1.5 inches using some of the world's biggest wet saws.

After the slices are cut, the stone need to be polished on site into what resembles the smooth look of granite we all can recognize. "Finished" slabs are trucked to a sea port, and then shipped to a U.S port. Most kitchens will require two slabs, so slabs from the same stone are kept together whenever possible for the closest match. Nature was not thinking of how this stone would look in your kitchen so variations in the slab, and from slab to slab are very common.

At this point, the slabs still have rough edges and "edge styles" picked out by the purchaser are often put on locally, along with the computerized cutting for the exact measurements over the cabinets or island.

Some granite countertops new york needs to be sealed as the finishing touch. As a basic rule, some of the lighter styles of granite need to be sealed while many of the darker granites do not need to be sealed. All granite is very durable, and resists etching and scratching compared to almost all other kitchen countertop materials. (Most granite can withstand heat up to 1200 degrees F.) Most people confuse etching with physical scratches and this is not the case. Etch marks can come from acids (lemons) and even cleaning products, leaving dull spots or rings.