Giving yourself the green light to make your dream kitchen a reality is a beautifully liberating feeling - and an exciting time for any homeowner. That enthusiasm for your renovation continues over the design process, only to be stopped in its tracks by time and budget constraints as the going gets tough.
This is a situation we’re all too familiar with; homeowners commit to a timeline and a budget, and then get sidetracked and derailed by last-minute aesthetic changes or the odd construction hiccup that extends the duration of the project. Here’s the thing: it’s totally understandable, and expected.
Problems arise. Things happen. Minds change. That’s the beauty of designing your dream kitchen space - what you think you wanted earlier can change in a heartbeat - it’s how you’re able to manage these adaptations that ensure you’re able to get the job done without exhausting yourself or your resources.
Be Realistic
Time
The urge to jump in with both feet is hard to resist, but staying in line with a prescribed renovation schedule also means giving yourself the appropriate amount of time to find the right designers, contractors, tradespeople, etc - so you can manage these multiple moving parts with grace and ease. Patience, therefore, is a critical virtue of the remodeling process and needs to be respected.
Give yourself time to discover the styles and options you have for your space by discussing your ideas with our experienced kitchen design team. They can help make recommendations on layout, workflow, and how to organize a renovation with your initial vision in mind. This stage will set the tone for your whole remodel - without giving it the time to flesh itself out, you’ll be rushing out of the gate; a surefire way to develop problems down the road.
Second to patience, construction/renovation timelines will always change. It’s important to be realistic and prepare for hiccups (more on those later) by giving yourself a sustainable and appropriate stretch of time to get the job done right. Rushing through your dream kitchen remodel will ultimately mean cutting corners, eliminating the opportunity for inspiring adaptations, and creating tension with your team.
If you’ve been told the job is going to take 6 weeks, plan for 8. If it’s completed before then, you’ll keep it in the black and be in a much better headspace should your renovation take two extra weeks you weren’t planning for.
Budget
Being realistic about your budget involves two main principles of thought. First, setting a low budget is a double-edged sword. When you set a low budget to save money immediately, it sets you up for a stressful, and anxiety-ridden renovation project. Homeowners who strive to be as cautious with their spending as possible usually wind up contemplating two things that put pressure on their renovation:
- They aren’t truly building their dream kitchen, negating the whole process.
- They trip over the costs of their project and spend too much time trying to find frugal alternatives, sending the timeframe of the project into a tailspin.
Allowing yourself an appropriate budget, on the other hand, does two incredibly beneficial things for a kitchen remodel:
- It allows homeowners to actually build their dream space and ultimately enjoy the fruits of their labour when the dust settles.
- It allows homeowners to enjoy the process by spending what they’ve expected to pay all along; when you enjoy the process of renovating, it becomes a much more rewarding experience.
Cutting corners in the budget department could mean another renovation, or upgrades down the line - costing you the same, if not more money, than if you had dedicated the appropriate budget to the project in the first place.
Discuss budget concerns with your kitchen designer prior to hitting the gas on your renovation. We can help expose some hidden costs, make a side budget for unexpected hiccups, and ensure you’re dedicating a proper budget towards the most important aspects of the build, and not to the extra expenses that can quickly eat away at a well-planned budget.
Dial In Your Vision
Time
Renovating your kitchen is exciting. We totally understand. The eagerness you feel to jump in with both feet is a personality trait we love working with at KAD, but we’ve also learned that entering the water before you know how to swim isn’t the best way to enjoy your time at the beach - catch our drift?
Dialing in your vision before laying out a timeline for renovation completion can contribute to a long list of unintended complications that derail your schedule. Purchases may require custom fixtures and design work to have them fit the space properly, or the overarching scheme of the design may be throw off as ideas adapt during the remodel.
As a general rule, we suggest building a schedule according to your household’s lifestyle, availability, and preference before committing to anything. When you give yourself a timeframe to complete your renovation project, we can build a suitable process from which to work and eliminate foreseeable problems or roadblocks that could potentially derail your ideal schedule.
Budget
It’s so critically important to know exactly what you want when you’re in the middle of discussing renovation specifics with your kitchen designer, and your team of contractors and tradespeople. Should you have a lofty, vague depiction of what you want for your kitchen renovation, you’ll likely wind up receiving wildly different estimates in return, meaning your estimators really have no idea what you want - resulting in a confusing and complex slew of ideas to wade through.
To pull this off, you’ve got to get serious and do your research before making any calls. Getting specific with your budget, and clearly defining the style of kitchen you want — right down to the architectural changes, features, flooring, cabinetry, and appliances — is a great way to help plan your budget and put your team on a level playing field.
It’s misleading for homeowners to begin planning before they know what they want, so dialing in your vision and communicating the same goals to your entire team helps deliver the same expectations to everyone. This ensures a streamlined process, a faster schedule, and ideal results that use a concrete budget.
Try Not to Deviate From the Plan
Time
Straight up: making a schedule is meaningless if you throw it out the window on day one of your kitchen rebuild. We know you’re tired of your old kitchen and its many flaws. We know it’s tough to enjoy and use a space that doesn’t suit your lifestyle or your tastes as a homeowner. Once your plan gets underway and you begin to see things removed from your space, it’s easy to get carried away - but do your best to stick to your plan. Here’s why:
Constantly adding things to your to-do list adds innumerable steps and stages to your schedule, throwing your timeframe out of whack. The same goes for changing the specifics of what you’ve already agreed on and planned for. Changing your mind halfway through a build is devastating for a schedule and creates many setbacks that can include the morale of your whole team.
When you put a plan in motion, always stop to ask yourself if what you’ve designed and created is exactly what you want. This will help you to ignore the urge to deviate from your plan and will ensure your renovation is completed on time, just as you imagined it.
Budget
Deviating from your set plan also puts your renovation - and you - at the mercy of surcharges and added expenses courtesy of your contractors and tradespeople. Changing your mind midway through a build always comes with an added cost, simply because changing directions means adding time - and time costs money. Sticking to the original plan contributes to a flawless sentiment while the project is underway, and eliminates the possibility of discovering added surcharges and fees.
Making sure your kitchen remodel stays on time and budget is about more than opting for a rigid, expressionless schedule, and more about finding ways to jive and roll with the punches.
Things will come up, your plans may change without your blessing, and your renovation project may prove difficult to navigate emotionally - but the object of the game is to find ways like these to adapt and enjoy the process, regardless of the hurdles it may throw your way — the end results are always worth it!