Kitchen Remodeling- A divorce might be cheaper?

Check Craigslist. I got several things off of there.... sinks, stove, hood, lights, faucet, dishwasher, fridge...  wow just about everything now that I think about it. 
I got a great deal on a viking stove, for example, because I had to take it apart and clean it up pretty good. 

I like having a basic stove with no $500 control panel that will go bad   

Black Friday is coming up so start thinking about what you want and what a good deal would be.  Best Buy has appliances and often has sales.  As does Home Depot and Lowe's. 
 

and don't forget those big online stores that ship free and have great deals:

aj madison, goedekers to name a few. 
 

the fridge we initially got used lasted 5 years but was always a bit rough.  I finally bit the bullet and bought a new one from goedekers and am happy.  Shipping took a bit longer than it should have but it was free shipping and no sales tax.  The tax thing might be different now though. 

our microwave drawer (we love ours...  but there was no way in the world I was gonna spend full price on one) came from Sears' outlet center as a display item for 75% off   

I was not going to pay $300 for each end panel of the cabinets (4 needed) so I got some rough fence planks, stained them and put them on the ends.  If your style is more fancy than industrial, you could get some nice wood and make the pieces.  
 

also, consider running any wires for ceiling speakers or Wi-Fi or outdoor lights/cameras/receptacles. The walls will be open so adding stuff outside is easy now  

I put our cabinets pretty high above our cabinets so we would have plenty of room to use a blender underneath and take the lid off and on. Some cabinets are so low you can't fit them under   
 

get a quiet (read: expensive) garbage disposal   Ours is so quiet it was on and I didn't even realize it    
 

overall, It's not gonna be cheap but buy once cry once. 
 

this is what a lot of Craigslist finds looks like:

but if you go that route, focus on the most expensive items.  It takes as much time and effort to find, arrange, and go get the  vent  that saved you $700 as it does to get the sink that saved you $60. 
 

jfryjfry (Forum Supporter) said:

That tabletop is delicious. Did you do it?

My kitchen flooded in April. Extremely familiar with remodels.

Shop around on countertops. There's a giant price difference between one and the other. We ended up going granite, but it was still 2400. 

Ikea cabinets aren't cheap, and if you're wanting something that isn't modern ikea isn't the answer. I went with ready to assemble cabinets. HD was going to be 18k, ikea was 7k, I spent 4700. 

Backslash sucks, but makes a huge difference. I didn't want to do it, but I didn't want to pay someone 1000 just for labor, so I did it myself. It's miserable, but it's not hard. 

Our microwave was 20$ on Craigslist. It doesn't look like a new Samsung, but it's stainless and matches. Used appliances are cheap. 

In the planning stages or redoing our kitchen. Lots of countertop to replace, lots of sticker shock. We did the appliances first since ours were in pretty bad shape. We did a lot of shopping around, and found that the big box stores seem to steeply discount appliances at random intervals. Shopped for the double oven first, and had our eye on a couple different models. Just missed a killer deal on one, only to find that the other one went on a killer deal soon after. Both over $1000 off their normal prices. Bought the second one, but watched the prices after. Sure enough, they seemed to have $1000 dips now and again, then go back up to full price. Weird, but can’t complain about the price. Love, love, love the double oven. Replaced a single/micro combo, and the old oven was tiny inside. New ovens are about twice the size, and there are two.. We got one with all the bells and whistles that I didn’t think we needed, but it was the cheapest one, so bonus. What is the point of WiFi on an over!?! Turns out to be a great feature. I often pick up a take n bake pizza, set the oven on my phone at the store, and it’s ready to pop in when I get home. Went with a large induction cooktop. Same deal, watched the prices for a couple months and waited for one of the ones I liked to go on sale. Bought it for less than 1/2 the normal price, saved more than enough for the new induction cookware. It has been amazing to cook with, and simple to keep clean (no heat at the cooktop, so spills don’t burn.) Dishwashers didn’t seem to fluctuate nearly as much, maybe $100-$200 on sale. 

I will also echo the Ikea cabinets, they are solid and the hardware is nice, and the suspension rail system is worth the price of admission by itself. You just measure up the wall the specified distance, make a mark then laser level it around the room, and hang the 1lb suspension rail nice and level instead of having to hold up a heavy ass cabinet while you screw it in. Not all of their fronts are modernist atrocities either, they have a few designs that would look perfect in a home with Craftsman or Shaker style trim.

I bought quartz counters through Ikea also, but realized late in the process that I could have shopped around at any Caesarstone dealer and potentially gotten a better price on the exact same material.

I also noticed that the big box stores seem to run the appliance sale deals every couple weeks, not just on holidays anymore. I would see the Home Depot "special buy" pricing pretty often when I was looking. I ended up buying from a local place for a price basically in between the normal price and the special buy price because the installation, delivery, and misc install parts prices worked out better.

Annoyingly for me, because I wanted white mid range appliances; it seems like stainless is actually cheapest these days because it's most likely to be stocked in store. 

Keith Tanner said:

jfryjfry (Forum Supporter) said:

That tabletop is delicious. Did you do it?

I did not but I hired one of my best friends to do it.    He had always loved wood working so he started taking classes at the local community college while still doing campus ministry and after a few years ended up starting a new career in the cabinet world.  
 

it's walnut and has held up pretty well to 3 little kids. 

I was talking with my neighbor about his kitchen remodel, most of which he did himself. 

He was pretty surprised about how easy the cabinet install went. Mostly because you provide the measurements of the walls and stuff to the cabinet place and they sell you a cabinet kit that will match that space. It's not rocket science. 

That being said, recreating a new kitchen design is a different story. Some houses were just not designed with the kitchen being as central to our daily lives as they are today, or, they just weren't designed around the idea that a kitchen might add or detract as much as 10% of the total value of the house. 

I've strugglign with my kitchen redesign quite a bit. I just can't figure out how to get the kitchen I want in the space I'm provided. 

pheller, even if you're not going to use IKEA cabinets it's worth using their design tool. It's a great way to try different layouts. You can screw around with tools like SketchUp but you have to create everything from scratch. The IKEA tool has all the normal cabinet sizes and appliances and different doors etc already built in for you. I've used it for two kitchens and a bathroom. 

https://kitchenplanner.ikea.com/us/UI/Pages/VPUI.htm