Kitchen nightmare

[minkydog]

We are in sticker shock. We just got back from seeing a kitchen designer and we're looking at about $25,000 for new cabinets, lighting, and counters. There is no way we can afford that. Our house took a big hit when the economy tanked and it's only worth about $124,000 now. We plan to sell the house within 2-3 years, maybe sooner. I know that fixiing up our 1970s kitchen would help it sell, but I can't see spending 20% of what the house is worth. Not when we also need to re-do the bathrooms and put flooring in the basement. I don't know what we're going to do. I'm just sick.

Well, of course I know what we're going to do. We're not going to get the kitchen I wanted. We're going to paint the cabinets, replace the fluorescent lighting with an equally ugly fluorescent light, and put in new laminate counters. It won't be anybody's dream kitchen, but it will be okay for a nice starter home, which is what this house is. We will be able to sell it to some nice young immigrant family and they willl love the finished basement and the huge fenced in backyard. They will not care that they don't have fancy corian countertops or nice cabinets. They will just be glad they have a nice place in an area with good schools. But i have to admit, i'm disappointed.

 

[Wish I lived in Fl]

We are in the same boat. Kitchen needs updating but DS needs to go to college and we need to seriously save for retirement.

 

[TheIncredibles!]

Before you pull the plug, I would take a visit to Lowes or Home Depot and have them design a kitchen and give you a quote.

Some of the cabinets there are crap but some are downright beautiful.

When we redid our kitchen in our last house there was a $10,000 difference between the lowest quote from the specialty design store and Home Depot.

 

[dis-happy]

Did you try Ikea?

Other than that, NOTHING wrong with painting the cabinets and keeping the layout that you have. Maybe you can upgrade the countertops---look for a bargain/sale/closeout on some granite and see if it's do-able.

 

[amyren]

I can relate, I wanted to redo our kitchen but ended up going with "plan B" to save money.
My advice, go for a few inexpensive updates. Of course you can paint the cabinets, but changing the hardware and adding molding can also help dramatically.
In our first house we replaced the laminate counters with granite tiles. Way less than granite slabs and they looked really good!
Just a few ideas. Good luck!

 

[minkydog]

We are in the same boat. Kitchen needs updating but DS needs to go to college and we need to seriously save for retirement.

Yeah, we're in the same place. DD17 goes to college in august and while we know we can't pay much of her college bill, I know there will be some expenses we will have to incur. Plus, I'm coming up on retirement age. DH is retired on disability, so our main income is SSDI--read: just short of the poor-house.

Before you pull the plug, I would take a visit to Lowes or Home Depot and have them design a kitchen and give you a quote.

Some of the cabinets there are crap but some are downright beautiful.

When we redid our kitchen in our last house there was a $10,000 difference between the lowest quote from the specialty design store and Home Depot.

This was a Home Depot quote. I'm going to check out Lowe's this week and see if they can do any better. And we have friends who do renovations, so we'll let them have at it too.

I can relate, I wanted to redo our kitchen but ended up going with "plan B" to save money.
My advice, go for a few inexpensive updates. Of course you can paint the cabinets, but changing the hardware and adding molding can also help dramatically.
In our first house we replaced the laminate counters with granite tiles. Way less than granite slabs and they looked really good!
Just a few ideas. Good luck!

Hadn' t thought of granite tiles. That would actually look very good with my current layout. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[rie'smom]

Before you pull the plug, I would take a visit to Lowes or Home Depot and have them design a kitchen and give you a quote.

Some of the cabinets there are crap but some are downright beautiful.

When we redid our kitchen in our last house there was a $10,000 difference between the lowest quote from the specialty design store and Home Depot.

My husband was a cabinet maker and he said that some of the cabinets at Home Depot/ lowes are very well made- Kraft maid and another brand especially. You can get those for MUCH better prices than custom cabinets. A few years ago and in another house, it was a case of "the shoemaker's kids have no shoes", I bought some of the Kraftmaid cabinets for my bathroom and they're gorgeous.

I can relate, I wanted to redo our kitchen but ended up going with "plan B" to save money.
My advice, go for a few inexpensive updates. Of course you can paint the cabinets, but changing the hardware and adding molding can also help dramatically.
In our first house we replaced the laminate counters with granite tiles. Way less than granite slabs and they looked really good!
Just a few ideas. Good luck!

In the same house in my post above, we did the tiles in our kitchen and it looked great!

 

[Planogirl]

We need to redo ours but luckily we have good cabinets. We need appliances and countertops and a new light fixture. The appliances will kill us which is why we may go for black instead of stainless steel.

 

[rcraw45425]

We need to redo ours but luckily we have good cabinets. We need appliances and countertops and a new light fixture. The appliances will kill us which is why we may go for black instead of stainless steel.

I have a stainless Kitchen Aid Architect stove with black appliances. It looks fine. My cabinets are cream, compactor, dishwasher and fridge are black. What ties it together is the black glass top on the stove (total electric, can't have a gas stove). Concider all your choices, in my case the silver would look odd against the cream.

 

[kirstenb1]

OP in your situation, I'd go with the new laminate counters that look like granite. Also, consider getting rid of fluorescent lighting altogether. When we built our home 13 yrs ago, the builder threw in one of those large fluorescent lights in the kitchen. They drive me crazy, so I had him tear it out, and just did recessed lights (very cheap). I bet you could find a nice fixture for under $200 easy.

 

[minkydog]

We need to redo ours but luckily we have good cabinets. We need appliances and countertops and a new light fixture. The appliances will kill us which is why we may go for black instead of stainless steel.

thankfully, we don't need appliances other than an over-the-stove microwave, which we can easily get at our local sears outlet store. My other appliances are less than 5 years old, the stove is only about 3 weeks old. I went with all white appliances, rather than stainless. I think they will be adequate.

 

[Nette]

We just redid my dad's kitchen for under 6k... It's not a huge kitchen, but we got new counters (LivingStone solid surface) new cabinets and new lights. Yep, IKEA. That said, I like the 1970s (custom) cabinets at my house, and would only refinish them rather than replace. I think there is nothing wrong with painting your cabinets and replacing the counters.

I also got microwave vent hood, gas range/oven and dishwasher in a stainless "look" for under $900. If you look, you can find really great deals.

 

[handinpocket]

We used Lowe's and Home Depot and did our Kitchen for a fraction of that cost. We had new cabinets, new countertops, sinks, appliances and TILED floor for under 8 grand. You really need to shop around.

 

[minkydog]

We just redid my dad's kitchen for under 6k... It's not a huge kitchen, but we got new counters (LivingStone solid surface) new cabinets and new lights. Yep, IKEA. That said, I like the 1970s (custom) cabinets at my house, and would only refinish them rather than replace. I think there is nothing wrong with painting your cabinets and replacing the counters.

I also got microwave vent hood, gas range/oven and dishwasher in a stainless "look" for under $900. If you look, you can find really great deals.

Yeah, I think a trip to IKEA is in order. I don't like IKEA stuff, but it's cheap and it will look decent.

We used Lowe's and Home Depot and did our Kitchen for a fraction of that cost. We had new cabinets, new countertops, sinks, appliances and TILED floor for under 8 grand. You really need to shop around.

We were going to put in a bank of cabinets at the end of our galley kitchen with a desk top for paying bills and stuff. I guess that will go. I could pay around $6-9000, but no way can we afford 5 figures.

 

[Pigeon]

Some of the granite look laminates are pretty nice. I've also seen some kitches with granite tile that are nice. I'd definitely shop around. We did ours a couple years ago. I was going to go with laminate counters, but we found someplace that was having a special on Corian that actually ended up being $100 cheaper than the nicer laminate, and had an integral sink, so it saved us that cost. It wasn't every single color of Corian, but it was about 30 choices, which was 25 more than I needed.

We wanted good quality, solid wood cabinets, with no fancy glazes. The custom kitchen place was the same price as Lowes. You can get cheaper cabinets at Loews, but the higher quality ones were not cheaper.

Spend some time at gardenweb.com. There are people with great ideas on how to do reasonably priced kitchens. Of course, there are also plenty of $80,000+ kitchens, but those are entertaining, too.

 

[BellePrincessBelle]

Before you pull the plug, I would take a visit to Lowes or Home Depot and have them design a kitchen and give you a quote.

Some of the cabinets there are crap but some are downright beautiful.

When we redid our kitchen in our last house there was a $10,000 difference between the lowest quote from the specialty design store and Home Depot.

What he/she said. A kitchen can be redone top to bottom for around 10k if you shop with good quality cabinets.

 

[tvguy]

We are in sticker shock. We just got back from seeing a kitchen designer and we're looking at about $25,000 for new cabinets, lighting, and counters. There is no way we can afford that.

My wife and I have been shocked that most kitchen redos that our coworkers have had done have cost $50,000 to $80,000, so $25,000 seems like a bargain. My wife would love to redo our kitchen, but no way with 2 kids in college.

 

[handinpocket]

My wife and I have been shocked that most kitchen redos that our coworkers have had done have cost $50,000 to $80,000, so $25,000 seems like a bargain. My wife would love to redo our kitchen, but no way with 2 kids in college.

I see you are in California. That would make ANY and EVERYTHING more expensive. Minky is in GA. She should be able to get a top notch kitchen for 10 grand tops.

 

[Pigeon]

I see you are in California. That would make ANY and EVERYTHING more expensive. Minky is in GA. She should be able to get a top notch kitchen for 10 grand tops.

While CA might be somewhat more expensive, I seriously doubt you're going to get a "top notch" kitchen anywhere for $10K. You can do a decent remodel if you don't have many cabinets, and are pretty budget minded for that amount.

 

[Planogirl]

I have a stainless Kitchen Aid Architect stove with black appliances. It looks fine. My cabinets are cream, compactor, dishwasher and fridge are black. What ties it together is the black glass top on the stove (total electric, can't have a gas stove). Concider all your choices, in my case the silver would look odd against the cream.

We have wood cabinets in that lighter warm brown color. I think that both black and stainless go well with these.

The idea of a stainless stove with black is interesting. We also have a (broken) built-in microwave above the stove and I guess that should be stainless too....

I like IKEA countertops. I checked them out recently and they have some nice granite choices.