What do you think of this?

[Lisa0825]

I have so many things I want to improve about my house, but will only have about $10K left after getting central air/heat, and rewiring. One of my big issues is the idiotic floorplan of the kitchen/dining/utility areas. Basically, I have a tiny peninsula kitchen, with the clothes washer and water heater at the closed end of the peninsula. Then, you have to walk down the kitchen with a load of wet clothes, go diagonally across the dining room, and open the utility room door to put the clothes in the dryer. The dining area is not wide enough to adequately fit a standard sized dining table, and have room for chairs on each side, so it is pushed to the wall on one side. The utility room has enough space to fit the washer if I remove the shelves in there. The bathroom is directly next to the utility room, and a seldom-used coat closet is on the other side.

Now, instead of spending my money having rather basic things done to the entire kitchen, dining, and bathrooms, I am thinking about this... what if I get a contractor to do the really major stuff, like moving walls so I can fit the water heater and washer into the utility room, using the coat closet so that the size of the bathroom doesn't have to shrink, and opening up the peninsula kitchen to the dining area... but leave it at that so I can try to do as much of the rest myself as I can, or at least "pay as I go" with things like cabinets, tile, appliances, etc?

[Warpy]

1. Pick out the appliances you want, and have the "hole" sized to

fit them if they're bigger than what you've got. As for the peninsula, if it's between the kitchen and the inadequate dining room, consider either pushing the table up against it or mounting a table onto it and doing some bench seating around it. You'd be surprised how many chummy people you can cram around a table that way. The other thing would be to lose the peninsula completely to open up the space. If you can afford the loss of the cabinet space, that would make the whole area look really huge and "airy." That way you could do the banquette thing at the walls and chairs on the other sides of the table, a trendy look these days.

As for the laundry situation, consider stackable appliances. You can get away with a much smaller footprint if you do that, and a lot of the newer ones, including the economical front loaders, will stack. That way, you can cram the water heater and washer/dryer into the same space that would be taken up with the conventional, side by side arrangement of the washer and dryer and have room for shelves to keep the soaps on.

The best places to save money when you're do it yourselfing are flooring and countertops, which are the bigger moneymakers when it comes to remodels. You can do a wonderful granite tile countertop at a fraction of the cost (and weight!) of solid stone, and it generally looks as good or even better. You do have to rent a stone cutter to cut the tile to size, though. It's generally not that expensive.

Consider refacing the cabinets you have now, putting new doors and hardware onto them instead of springing for entirely new cabinets. You can save a major bundle that way and you won't have your kitchen torn up and contractors clomping through for months, either.

Kicking the washer out of the kitchen will free up storage space and possibly compensate for the loss of the peninsula. I've found aquatic landmasses to be horribly inappropriate to small kitchens, dunno how you feel about it. It sounds like you do need to open up that space, though.

Good luck, and give us pics when you're done.

[Lisa0825]

2. Thanks for the input!

I definitely want to knock out the peninsula. I figure the space from moving the water heater and washer will give me some space for storage. Also, there are no cabinets on the wall across from the bar (where the stove is). I bet having cabinets (and a hood) on that side would work too. I really don't know about refacing them though. They are very old and ugly. I'll post a pic, from after I scrubbed 30 year old, discolored varnish off of them. Still ugly, but better than they were!LOL



I had thought about stackable w&d, but I have full sized ones already, and so do most people I know, so I figured it would be best for resale to have a laundry room that could accomodate a full-sized set. What do you think?

As for flooing, my best friend did ceramic tile in her entry way, and it turned out very nice, so she said she'd help me with that. I want to do that in the bathroom and kitchen.

[politicat]

3. Everyone I know who has bought a W/D in the past 4 years has bought

a front loader, and all of those stack - the dryer goes on top. When you've got the choice of one that can do a family of 4's laundry in 6 loads or 12 loads, for less than half of the water and higher energy efficiency, it just makes more sense to buy the front loaders (especially since they're about the same price.)

The little stackable top loading washer dryers are not worth the money.

I think the trend is going to continue, until eventually either top loaders go away entirely, or are replaced by the combo units I'm just starting to see - it's a dryer and a washer in one.

So I think you'll be okay having only a vertical space for washers and dryers.

[Warpy]

4. They're only slightly newer than my 1952 cabinets

so I can relate. Yes, you can reface them, but you might have your choices somewhat restricted by the fact that they're "custom," i.e. weirdly sized. What you do is stain the frames to match the new doors, cover that worn, tired finish they've got now. New hardware alone will brighten those old cabinets up, especially if you pay close attention to things like making sure those doors meet up in the middle.

Mine were always meant to be painted, and I counted nine layers of paint when I stripped a set to find out if the wood underneath was any good (it wasn't, it was terrible and patched with joint compound). I ended up painting them white and spraypainting the hardware (which is exactly the same as yours) a hunter green. It looks pretty spiffy.

Ceramic tile in the kitchen has the advantage of being nearly indestructible. The disadvantages are that it's a hard surface and can be fatiguing to stand and walk on and that anything breakable that gets dropped on it will.

I mentioned the front loading w/d sets specifically because they're full size and stackable, something that doesn't happen with top loading machines for obvious reasons.

[NMDemDist2]

5. i'd take a look at how much wiring and plumbing are on the walls

you want to knock out. it there is no plumbing, i'd start knocking down the walls myself (carefully) and see what's what.

doing sheetrock is pretty easy and you can always hire out the "finish" work on the walls (that's what the contractors do often, the sheetrock crew is different than the "mud" crew)

maybe just start by removing the top half of the wall from the kitchen into the dining room and see how is goes. If it's something you can manage fairly easy, knocking out the wall into the closet should be easy too.

maybe you can just move where the door goes into the utility room instead of changing it around too much. the biggest issue sounds like moving plumbing and you can get that roughed in by a pro and do the finish stuff yourself.

it there is wiring in the walls, just be careful as you take the wall out and you can deal with the wiring once it's exposed by just putting it into the ceiling if needed or grounding it out

here's some info to start http://www.hometips.com/articles/openingwall.html

[wildeyed]

6. Sounds like a plan.

Try to have a complete plan drawn before you start taking out walls to be certain that everything you want fits and can be done for a reasonable amount of money and/or labor.

I have renovated 1 1/2 houses and here is my advice. Don't underestimate how much time and money the projects will actually take. I usually guesstimate about 50% of the actual time it takes me to do something before I start. After I am into it, it is too late to turn back. Second, don't underestimate how much you will hate living in a torn up, dirty house while the endless renovations are in progress. My last house was a total disaster when we moved in. It had been a group rental for 10 years before we moved in and had 5 inches of water and plus debris like broken TV's, old boxes, etc. in the basement. Once we got it cleaned up, it was beautiful, but we were not happy campers there for several years.

On the plus side, it really jump started our equity. The house was worth so much more when we sold it than when we purchased that we were able to buy a much nicer house than we could have afforded on our regular salaries. Course the new house is a semi-fixer too, so we are back at it with the paint swatches and sanders. I did pay someone to landscape this time. After nearly killing myself doing the small city lot on the old property, I decided that the new spacious lot needed professional attention.