Tag: interior design

Kitchen Renovation: Cost Breakdown

One of my favorite things that home bloggers do is to share their cost breakdowns. For the uninitiated, renovations can be incredibly daunting and overwhelming. HGTV shows are not necessarily helpful since they toss around very large, round numbers… granularity provides the additional context for those considering their own renovations.

I find the transparency really encouraging since it allows the reader to draw their own conclusions about if a certain material or design choice is “worth it.” Let me be clear, please keep your negative opinions to yourself on this one. Feel free to judge, but this money is water under the bridge so any negative opinions are for you to think about and not send to me. Thank you, haha.

Cost Transparency

Cabinets: After shopping around to 4 or 5 places with my self-designed layout in hand, I chose Cabinets To Go because their prices were low, they were running a special, and the customer service was attentive and listened well to my wishes and concerns. $5000 for cabinets + $2142 for cabinet install.

Countertops: Wow, it was hard to find a countertop company that would special order the specific Formica I had picked out. Which was a shocker, since the design I wanted was front and center in Formica’s 2020 lookbook. Countertops 4 Less in El Cajon came out to measure, ordered the right material for me, and installed quickly. There was a problem with the first round of countertops being damaged so this was our first delay. $1650 including install.

Lighting: Doug let me have free reign with the design, but his request was to have can lights added in the ceiling and under-cabinet lighting. $2500 for materials and labor. The additional cost on top of lighting was very extensive drywall work which added another $1500.

Paint: Ceiling paint, drywall primer, and 2 gallons of wall paint came to around $250. We painted everything ourselves.

Flooring: I hadn’t originally budgeted for flooring, planning on pushing it to 2021, but after demo it became obvious that we would have to put in new floors right away. I chose a luxury vinyl plank that will hold up for a long time. We installed it ourselves and learned a lot in the process. $470, DIY installed.

Sink & Plumbing: The new, deep sink and cool faucet are one of my favorite things in the kitchen. For labor, I think I got somewhat taken for a ride by the plumbers who annoyingly insisted upon replacing my angle stops (the shut offs under the kitchen sink). I think what was there was fine, but at that point in the reno I was too tired to get a second opinion. $2300 for new sink, new angle stops, new garbage disposal, and labor.

Tile: This was my big splurge to elevate the kitchen’s look. Loving the look of handmade tiles from Zia and Fireclay, I chose something with a similar essence that was much more budget friendly from Bedrosians. Tile was our second major delay, being backordered a little bit (for the square tiles) and several weeks for the border pencil tile. $450 DIY installed.

Appliances: We saved a lot of money by reusing our stove and dishwasher, which were already white and looked great with our new white cabinets. I did select a counter-depth refrigerator to streamline the room and make the floor plan work. It was such a nice upgrade. $1284.

Budget Reflection

I think there are two things that blew the budget. The first was the under-cabinet lighting. The end result turned out fantastic, but to make it happen there was much more labor. The electrician essentially rewired the whole kitchen, which is a huge invisible value add. To add the under-cabinet lights and the cans the scope was much bigger than expected and we had to hire out extensive drywall patching.

The secondary labor cost was the plumbers. They came in at triple what I expected.As I mentioned above, they insisted on replacing my angle stops and they also wouldn’t reuse my garbage disposal (which was only a few years old and in fine working order). After 6 weeks with no kitchen sink I didn’t have a lot of fight left in me to get multiple quotes; I know with more effort I could have saved money in this spot.

Conclusion

All in all, taking a kitchen from 1969 original to 2020 brand new came in at approximately $17,500. This was around $5000 over my ever-shifting budget which in all is not bad for a top-to-bottom kitchen renovation. Almost all remodels come in above budget when the scope grows and splurges arise.

I had the home appraised for a refinance a couple of months after the kitchen was completed and the appraiser was very impressed and the new kitchen improved the value of the home more than $20,000. Not bad for spending $17,500 (plus 3-4 months and some blood sweat and tears). In conclusion, I think it turned out amazing and it was totally worth the whole ordeal!

What kind of Realtor doesn’t add in her own self-promotion at the end? If you are tired of your kitchen, I am available for a conversation to talk through the costs and benefits of a remodel based on my experiences and professional network. For a total change of scenery, I’d love to offer my sellers’ and buyers’ services. I work in San Diego county and southern Riverside County and I also have a deep referral network across the USA. Leave a comment here or contact me through my real estate website: SDHomeDreams.com.

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Kitchen Remodel: Completion! (w/ Photos!)

Hard to believe I was starting to put together my kitchen mood board about a year ago, and now here we are. I am not much like the DIY bloggers that I still follow closely… documentation is not the name of my game. Work has been extremely busy, which is awesome especially since the money for the kitchen reno had to come from somewhere.

Wait, how about a couple of before photos??

Vintage Dining Room Art
The Empty Kitchen

Last time, I wrote about my renovation priorities, and now on the other side of the process, I am pleased to say that I upheld most of them. Honestly I think that writing them down helped me prioritize them, even thought I did not refer back to them during the whole renovation, having thought it through at the beginning helped me align my vision and follow it.

When we began the product sourcing journey, I met with a woman at the Home Depot Design Center who wouldn’t even design with me when I told her my projected budget. She all but laughed me out of the building. While yes, I did spend more than my initial projection, I still came in under what she said the bare minimum kitchen renovation would cost, and I won’t forget the way she wrote me off. More on costs next week, though!

As for materials, most of the items I chose were on the moodboard in one form or another, however bringing home samples and laying them around the kitchen for weeks at a time really helped me hone in what I wanted. The major pivot was that the first moodboard looks a little more deep and earthy, but upon reflection, the dining room window doesn’t provide that much light to the kitchen half of the room. In particular, the green/blue tile from the first mood board were much darker in person than they were online. So, I chose a lighter pallet. As a result, the kitchen turned out brighter and fresher:

Cabinets: I decided to go with shiny white slab cabinets despite some feedback I got on facebook about the potential for scratches. The finish is excellent after 6 months; we shall see how it holds up to renters (spoiler alert, the condo is now rented).

Countertops: Honestly I have never been entranced by stone countertops, having grown up with ceramic tile in my parents’ house and some type of laminate in every rental I’ve ever had. This was an easy way to cut costs and get something that looks great and needs very little care. There is very convincing formica out there these days.

Glam it Up: The tile and the cabinet pulls were my glam moments. I picked a really pretty tile from Bedrosians made in Spain. The black grout was a style gamble that turned out really well, in my personal opinion. The gold cabinet pulls from CB2 are like jewelry on top of the whole look. I ended up not using the little black pulls from the moodboard but I think those would have also been a really cute option.

Reveal Time!

Sources: Cabinets to Go, Formica, CB2 (similar), LG, Kraus, Nucore LVP, Bedrosians

I have a budget breakdown ready to go next week so please come back to check that out! I am not promising a full-fledged return to blogging the way I used to during the blog heyday of 10 years ago, but this has been really fun to write and I’ve had a few questions from friends about the renovation so I hope this was likewise enjoyable for you to read.

Leave your questions and below and I will be happy to answer them!

Wallpapered!

As I may have mentioned in my last post, my bedroom has never really quite come into its own, design-wise, even as the other areas in the house have begun to seem more or less “finished.” This is a common issue with bedrooms, because these rooms are private and do not need to be decorated to entertain the general public. Funny how things work out; I had planned a bedroom overhaul for 2020 before COVID hit, but once the stay-home order came out, it became clear there would never be a better time to show my home some TLC.

Check out my wallpaper journey – and check the bottom for a 25% off coupon code!

For a refresher on how the room started, and a piece-by-piece breakdown of the mood board, check out my last post.

How-to

This was my first time tackling wallpaper… ever. I’m happy to report that the process proved to be much easier than I expected! The kit I ordered from Photowall included everything I needed except for a bucket and paint roller, which I already had on hand.

In addition to reading all the Photowall instructions, I watched a number of youtube videos before beginning, and I found this one by Spencer Colgan to be the most helpful; it’s where I got the idea for the paint roller. In fact, his youtube channel has tons of tutorials on hanging all different kinds of wallpaper. Another resource I drew on was Young House Love. In their post, they hang peel-and-stick wallpaper, but many of the principles are the same.

Considering the resources I listed in the paragraph above, I feel like diving into a detailed how-to on this blog would not be the best use of my time or yours. Check Spencer’s video and the Young House Love post referenced, they have explained everything very clearly. I will share some of the things I learned, however, because when you watch a video made by an expert it seems foolproof, but there was a bit of a learning curve.

Had the room cleared and the plastic laid down… ready to start!

Learn from my mistakes:

Here are a few things that I had to adapt to along the way.

First, use more glue than you think. The wallpaper glue is pretty thin and runny; we ended up rolling the wall with glue and brushing it onto the back of the wallpaper (especially the edges) to make sure we got enough.

Second, measure both the right and left corner, floor-to-ceiling. We began on the left corner of the wall, following the instructions. However, by the time we reached halfway across the room, we noticed that the ceiling had actually been slanting up the whole time and we were on track to have over an inch of wall with no paper – obviously we wanted the pattern to match up! Luckily, I had chosen a fairly forgiving pattern and the window in the center of the room made it easy to do a subtle “reset.” The slightly mismatched pattern is obscured by the bed. I should have begun the paper with a little extra overflow on top… there was plenty of extra at the bottom.

Third, don’t be afraid to squeeze glue out of the seams to get a good seal – you may have noticed on the youtube video Spencer had a wet towel on his shoulder. THIS IS KEY! Have your wet towel handy especially if you hate having sticky hands like me… because this is a pretty messy process.

Progress

At the end of the day, it was thrilling to see the dramatic change. Many people say that painting a room a light color will make the room seem bigger, but what I found is that the exciting wallpaper actually makes the feature wall seem larger.

Active time with the wallpaper only took about 3 hours to do this feature wall. Clearing out the room and putting it back together took longer! If you want more step-by-step progress footage, check my Instagram highlight which has stills and video from the weekend I tackled this project.

The Finished Wall!

wallpaper / rug (similar) / bed / bedside tables (similar)
lamps (similar) / sheets / quilt (similar)

Voila! I’m very happy with the result. It reminds me of a hotel – which is pretty much the ultimate goal for me since I love staying in boutique hotels.

You’ll notice a few changes in the before/after, but aside from the wallpaper, everything you see here was already owned. I love swapping things from room to room for a free mix-up. You might see I traded out the rug. The black and white geometric rug from the mood board did look good with the wallpaper, but this gray geometric rug was a Black Friday purchase that I never really felt went with the living room. Swapping the rugs brought perfect harmony to both rooms. The final touch this room needs is a solar shade for the window- as you can see above, this room gets a lot of light first thing in the morning. I haven’t hung any art up on the paper yet because I think the wall is art now.

Now that I know how easy the paper is to put up, I’m brainstorming other areas in my home where it can be used. I would love to know if you would ever tackle wallpaper in your home. What color or design would you pick? A large-scale mural on a feature wall like me? Or a repeating pattern, perhaps doing the whole room for a more traditional approach? Photowall has thousands of options, including the option to upload your own photo, so head over there to find inspiration.

I’m so excited to let you know that Photowall has extended a coupon to all myfriendstaci.com readers, offering 25% off through September 25, 2020. Enter myfriendstaci25 at checkout!

I love to hear from you. Please add your thoughts or questions in the comments!

I was not paid to write the post but I was gifted product from Photowall to bring my vision to life.