Minor Kitchen Renovations – What to do before you paint
Are you interested doing a minor kitchen renovation to refresh your kitchen cabinet and layout, without having to commit to a full renovation? Prior to painting your kitchen cabinets is a great time to make minor edits or changes in a kitchen’s construction. By working with a skilled carpenter or cabinet maker you can make changes that after painting will appear as thought they’ve always been there.
Here are some examples of things you can do to update and modernize your kitchen prior to painting your cabinets.
Add-ons
There are times when a client’s kitchen layout does not utilize its space effectively, or it lacks in storage area. Accordingly, this is a prime opportunity to make small additions that add significant storage area, utility, ease of use or counter space.
Adding a single stack of drawer boxes to extend a counter line, or building a cabinet box on top of a counter surface to add storage space. Many of our clients also request to have the space in between the top of their cabinets and the ceiling filled in with an MDF panel or crown moulding. An extra row of cabinets that go to the ceiling are also an option. There are a variety of options to clients who have open space around their cabinetry and a desire to utilize more of it.
New doors and drawers can often be matched to the existing so that, after painting, it all looks like it was built at the same time.
A skilled contractor can use MDF or a matching wood to build virtually any style of cabinetry, drawers, storage box, wine rack or shelving unit, and sprayed lacquer effectively blends it all together.
Deletions
On other occasions, we have clients that want to get rid of certain aspects of their cabinetry or kitchen layout. Deletions are much easier to do, require less construction work and, depending on the difficulty of the request, can be accomplished by the sprayed lacquer team themselves.
Things like filling holes so that a different sized cabinet pull can be installed. Removing wine racks and replacing it with shelving, or changing boxes from solid door to glass door. Minor requests like these for aspects of cabinetry that easily go out of style are not hard to accomplish.
Having a raised eating bar removed to allow for a larger counter is a popular choice.
Sometimes a simple swap of the glass in a door can change the look of a kitchen quite dramatically.
Kitchen Renovation – Minor Modifications
There are some aspects of kitchen cabinetry that may eventually go out of style, or see little use by the client. Microwave shelves that are small can be modified to fit a larger appliance, changed into a normal door front cabinet or removed all together.
Wine racks that wear down or see little use from a client can be taken out and replaced with shelves, glass doors or left as an open space. We have a client that requested their uneven upper cabinetry boxes be extended to the ceiling, and replaced with bigger doors.
We’ve had clients completely redesign the island portion of the kitchen. Replacing a curvy small island with a larger rectangular shape does wonders to up date kitchen cabinets. Some modifications are certainly easier than others, but the possibilities are virtually endless.
If you have a dated or oddly designed kitchen that needs an edit to better maximize effective space, you may not need the budget for a full renovation. Consider smaller edits to the design and layout that once painted will give your kitchen a new and updated look.