vmole has a list of random thoughts on kitchen remodeling:

1. Make a table to build your cabinets on — even just a piece of plywood over a couple of sawhorses is better than bending over and working on the ground. Put one of your many large scraps of cardboard over the top to protect it. Tape or glue the cardboard down, so it doesn’t slide off. Or worse, slid only halfway off, so that when you set the cabinet pieces down on it, they fall on the ground. Or your toes.

2. At a certain time of the day (or after a certain number of hours of work), you and your partner will start to get grumpy at each other. STOP WORKING NOW. Tomorrow, stop working 30 minutes before “that certain time”. Go have a glass of wine and heat up the ramen noodles in the electric kettle.

3. It is almost impossible to remove a hinge without damaging the cabinet. Double check that the cabinet is right side up and that you really want to hang a door on that side before inserting the hinge.

4. Unless you are super-builder, you are not going to get it all done by your original schedule. Accept this, and don’t let the fact that you did not get all 27 cabinets built and installed today get you down. Build off days into your schedule.

5. Someone previously mentioned the benefits of letting your layout simmer for while. I can tell you that we played with possible layouts for over a year, and it was only in the last month that we had a “Eureka!” moment and it all came together.

6. No matter how agonizing the whole process is, when you’re done (or possible, a month after you’re done, and you’ve caught up on your sleep), it will all be worth it.

Join the discussion in the IKEA Kitchen Planning forum

Tags: IKEA Kitchens, kitchen remodeling, Lessons Learned, vmole

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 6th, 2008 at 12:36 PM by Tigratrus and is filed under IKEA Kitchens, Lessons Learned, Tips and Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.