Kitchen Remodel/Schedule

In this chapter, I would like to unmethodically itemize some thoughts about the schedule of a kitchen remodel.

Getting in touch with a contractor
We didn't only have a kitchen to be remodeled, but the entire house. Still, not even this put us on top of the priority list of the general contractor whom we trusted with our construction. They started half a year later than they originally promised they would do, and the work took also considerably longer than they had scheduled initially. The kitchen alone was populated with craftspeople for more than three months, despite the fact that we changed our original plans at some point and decided to do both the cabinet installation and floor tiling ourselves.

One of the lessons that we learned from this experience was that you cannot get in touch with your contractor too early, and that oral pledges may show a great deal of goodwill, but can never replace a proper schedule that comes in writing and with all legal trimmings.

The topic of contracts for a remodel as such, I cannot discuss in this book. Only so much: the more thoroughly you educate yourself about it before signing, the better. If you won't, it can get extremely stressful, nasty and expensive for an owner. In particular figure out if the estimate of cost that your contractor gives you with the contract is legally binding for them, and educate yourself about the significance of the term "contingencies". Request a detailed account from your contractor of how they will handle unforeseen rises in costs…


 * because the materials became more expensive; some possible reasons:
 * the store prices went up
 * they miscalculated the amounts that were needed
 * because the work became more expensive; some possible reasons:
 * the salaries went up (unfortunately, this seems to be the most unlikely reason)
 * they underestimated the amount of work needed
 * their itemization of works was incomplete
 * their craftspeople made mistakes that needed to be fixed; in the worst case the whole work may need to be redone from zero; some possible reasons for such mistakes are lack of carefulness, lack of craftsmanship, and poor communication between contractor and the craftspeople
 * the contractor suggest a measure that later turns out to be infeasible, so that a (more expensive) plan B must kick in.

In our house renovation, except for salary rising, every single one of these events applied eventually, and I strongly believe our case was only average. They bid low, possibly fully knowing that the pricing is unrealistic. If we would do such a remodel again, we would probably spend the money to have a lawyer check the contract through before we commit to it.

Another nuisance that we experienced a lot was the reluctance of our project managers to take notes. Since they generally didn't, we had to explain things over and over. That your project manager takes notes, all the time, is something that you can expect. It is probably an indicator for a high level of organization, and something you may look out for when selecting your contractor.

Ordering appliances
The obvious advantage of ordering appliances early is that you thereby secure them; postponing can lead to unhappy surprises, especially if your whole kitchen layout is based on the dimensions of an appliance that later turns out not to be available anymore. Another advantage is that if may be helpful for your contractor to know certain technical specifications.

A disadvantage is that the product warranty may expire before you even get a chance to put the appliance in operation.

Ordering cabinets
If you purchase your cabinets from Ikea and this is your first Ikea kitchen, it is probably highly advisable to request the assistance of one of their kitchen designers. Since we were nowhere near an Ikea store, we had an online conference with ours. Doing this in person would probably have facilitated an overall better and more redundant communication, but the outcome was still good for us.

The goal of such a kitchen planning session is the compilation of a "shopping" list. Based on this list, there can actual orders being made, either in a store or with a specialized kitchen representative that you can call. Our communication with those telephone representatives went better than we expected, they were easy to reach, friendly, patient, and helpful.

The one thing that did not work was speedy delivery. We had our kitchen planning session early March and put our first order in at the end of the same month. Subsequently, we put in no less than eight more orders, because there were always items on our shopping list that still were not available yet. The last items were being ordered and delivered mid-October. A reason that contributed to that problem were obviously supply chain issues caused by the Covid pandemic, but as you can tell from a look at the web site, these issues still may persist. One downside of sequential ordering – beside the anxiety if your kitchen will ever be completely delivered – is that you pay for delivery not just once but multiple times.

We saved a considerable amount of money by joining Ikea's "Family" program and applying for their credit card, which supplied us with oodles of 15-Dollar coupons. Due to our choked ordering history, we had plenty of opportunity to spend those.

Another advantage of purchasing our kitchen from Ikea was, beside the 25-year warranty for cabinets and 5-year warranty for appliances, that we could return items which we didn't use. They take unpacked items back for 90 days, and packed ones for a year; we didn't even have difficulties to return some very last items after 14 or 15 months.

Entire room flooring vs partial flooring
While some construction companies prefer to install the flooring (tile, vinyl, hardwood, etc.) before the cabinets, others advice to install the cabinets first and the flooring later. I would like to give you some pros and cons: