From: brooksp@hpcc01.corp.hp.com (Peter Brooks)
Newsgroups: misc.consumers.house
Subject: Re: Kitchen Remodeling: Need Advice getting started
Date: 14 Apr 92 17:13:42 GMT
Organization: the HP Corporate notes server

I did a partial kitchen remodel and helped extensively on a complete
(that one literally moved the kitchen; fun!) redo.  The precautions
you take need to be calibrated to several things, but mostly to
three-four factors:
  1) Your (honest) assesment of your own skills.
  2) Your budget.
  3) How much time you are willing to have it take.
  4) What your tolerance is for chaos and mess.
I was willing to tackle many things, had little money, but high tolerance
for long times and mess (I'm single).  My cohort on his project had much
the same situation.  I'm much less well versed in low tolerance and/or
high budget situations, so your milage may vary.

I got lucky, in that I was able to keep most of my cabinets.  As a
result, I seldom lost the use of my sink and cooktop, though my oven
was MIA for a year.  I learned how to survive quite well with a microwave.
When the sink was down, I went the Mcdonald's route, but this was only
for a few days.  The hard part was when the cooktop had to go down,
but I was able to do fairly well for the few weeks that took.  Got
*really* good with a uwave that time.  :-)

My friend's redo took a long time.  I believe his kitchen was out of action
for over a year.  He had a second bathroom that was slated for demolition
at a later stage.  He jury rigged the old kitchen sink/countertop and
installed it in the bathtub.  This required he be very careful as to what
he dumped in the sink, but it worked out fine for keeping dishes clean.
As far as cooking, mostly he used an electric hot plate and a BBQ.  He
had this thing about preparing a week's worth of burgers at a time and
keeping them in the freezer.  He also had a covered patio, so he could
BBQ year round.

Both of us used subcontractors to some extent.  We did our own sheetrocking,
and I did my own taping.  Frankly, it looked like hell.  If I did it
over, I'd contract out the taping.  (I did this for the rest of the
house, in fact).  I didn't want to lay the linoleum, though I did install
the underlayment.  I arranged this with my sub when he gave me the quote.
I had him tell me what he wanted for material and what nailing schedule.
Worked fine and the lino installation was a piece of cake.

I built one cabinet to match the others, which I had refinished.  Also did
new doors on several of the old ones.  could have contracted this out,
but I knew I could do the job and had the tools.  My friend had the skill,
but not the time.  He spent the money to get cabinets, then installed
them himself (with me as helper).  Reasonably easy.  About the only nasty
part of his kitchen was installing his dishwasher.  For some reason, the
couplings all leaked.  In my kitchen, I had an icemaker fitting let go
(I had overtightened the brass fitting, and it cracked.)  This dumped
5 gallons of water over the subfloor; mercifully I was able to clean and
dry things out.  Glad I hadn't done that particular screwup 6 months
later when I had the underlayment down.

Because of my schedule, I had my kitchen partially down for two years.
If I had concentrated on doing the kitchen, I could have done the same
job in about 3 months.  If I had farmed out the taping, could have
taken out a week of pain, too.  Not sure what my friend's job would
have taken, but his project was quite elaborate.

Hmm, one of my longer postings.  Hope there's some value in this
rambling.

Pete Brooks