Kitchen Renovation for Buy & Hold

[Andrew Casal]

Hello all!

Looking for some tips/suggestions on some kitchen renovations that I will be doing in the near future on my buy & hold property. The cabinets are 15+ years old and are just a mess. Was thinking of getting the pre-made and installing those as I believe that would be cheaper and more straight-forward than putting in custom on a B/C neighborhood. Also thinking of upgrading countertops to granite for durability.

Looking for design/build suggestions. Should I go with white cabinets or the "wood look". Also would granite make sense for durability purposes. I don't mind spending a little more for durability sake.

Appreciate any feedback in advance.

[Jill F.]

Hi Andrew, I've planned and designed 26 kitchen renovations in the last two years. What matters most is that ALL your choices (countertops, cabinets, backsplash, and flooring) work together. You can choose all beautiful materials but if they don't hang it won't look great. If your floor space is small, 42" is a minimum for space between cabinets and really 48-60 is better. For apartments, we buy the birch face furniture board stock cabinets from home depot and we finish them with the rustoleum cabinet transformations. In our lowest end apartments we've bought used cabinets and they still finished out nicely so long as they are all either face frame or frameless (they don't even have to be exactly alike). We use Daich spread stone for counters. I **love** that epoxy paint kit. Its plain with subtle granite chips for sparkles and it lets the backsplash shine (you have to be super plain on a backsplash if you use granite-- the granite will be the star) and the Daich is really easy to repair down the road if anything happens to it. You can use it over existing countertops if you aren't re-laying out the kitchen. In the dark kitchen below, all we did was refinish the existing cabinets & countertops & hardware and add a backsplash and new appliances. The white kitchen was a complete redo the before is the last pic (we did take out about 18" of wall) My husband custom built the counters with particle board. We usually spend about 5-7k in materials including new appliances and do all our own work. The lighting and flooring is not included in that number. We spend 500-600 in lighting for each apartment and that covers all new lighting for the unit. I usually stay under $2/foot for flooring materials and we do our own work. (Don't forget that you need plinths for spacing if you have cabinets meet at the corners so that all your drawers open and your refrigerator can't be right next to the wall to get full door swing; we also use stock ikea cubbies and ikea 15" shallow depth base cabinets when we don't have room for full 25" countertops).

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