Planning for a kitchen remodel is an exciting and potentially stressful time. No matter the size of your kitchen, no matter how big or small the renovation scale is, it’s important to prepare yourself for your remodel. By knowing what to prepare for before your remodel begins, the process becomes easier on you and our team and ensures you have a positive experience.

Kitchen remodel considerations and decisions

1. Decide if you are going to stay in your home during your kitchen remodel. A home that is being remodeled is many things. It is dusty, it is loud, and it is an inconvenience. You may want to consider staying with a friend or family member if you are going to have a major home renovation. If you are going to stay in your house during your renovation, it will be important to decide which rooms will be yours to inhabit during the remodel.
2. Plan for where everything in your kitchen will go. You likely won’t need all the items from your cabinets and storage areas, so it’s a great time to go through them and decide what you want to keep and what you no longer need. Items that you keep can be placed in boxes and stored in a different room while the renovation takes place. This also allows you to donate any items you no longer need or have duplicates of.
3. Decide where you will prepare and eat food during your kitchen remodel. Without a kitchen you will need to decide where you will prepare your food. Do you have a basement, wet bar, or laundry room for meal preparation? Wherever you plan to prepare your meals, you will need to set up a small temporary kitchen. Some helpful tips from past homeowners:
   a. Move your old refrigerator or a small mini fridge to a convenient space close to a water source.
   b. Add a table with a microwave and place a trash can below the table.
   c. Keep a stash of non-perishable snacks such as soups, condiments, and cereal.
   d. Stock up on microwaveable frozen dinners or better yet make your own.
   e. Keep essential items handy such as paper towels, garbage bags, dishcloths, dishwasher soap, paper cups and napkins, paper plates, and utensils.
   f. Coffee Pot: Don’t forget your coffee pods (or filters with coffee grounds), coffee mugs, sugar, cream, etc.
   g. Electric Oven: Don’t forget your oven mitts.
   h. Electric Skillet: Don’t forget your spatula, cooking spoons, tongs, cooking spray, etc.
   i. Crock-Pot: Don’t forget your spatula and cooking spoons.
   j. BBQ: Don’t forget your cookie sheet, grilling utensils, and basting tools.
4. Prepare adjacent rooms for the kitchen remodel. Prevent disaster and heartbreak by removing items from your walls. During your kitchen remodel, there will be tools used which will cause vibrations to the walls. In addition, there will be quite a bit of foot traffic in hallways from the installers, inspectors, and project managers. For this reason, it is important to remove anything attached to the walls in the remodeled rooms as well as in adjacent rooms (including shelves and pictures). Additionally, remove any floor mats to avoid any tripping hazards.
5. Remodeling is incredibly dusty. To avoid getting dust on upholstery and on knick-knacks you should box up what you can, making sure to apply labels to your boxes. Anything that you cannot box up, cover with thin plastic wrap. If you do not want to invest in plastic wrap many times homeowners will simply drape old sheets over their furniture as protection. Clean up will prove to be much easier if you protect the surfaces in this manner.
6. Have a plan for your children and animals. Treat your kitchen remodel as a worksite. Kids and animals are curious by nature, but they will need to be restricted from the construction zone for their own safety, especially while work is going on. If you have a young child who naps during the day, remember that construction will continue during nap time. Pets frighten easily due to loud noises, and you may consider finding care for them outside of the home during your kitchen remodel.
7. Prepare to be inconvenienced. Managing your expectations will alleviate the burden of a kitchen remodel on your household. Your kitchen remodel will be loud. Your home will be dusty. You will not always have plumbing or electricity. Your privacy will be interrupted. Keep your routine and timetable flexible if possible, to allow for any unexpected delays. It is okay to feel stress during your kitchen remodel. Keep a positive attitude, trust your contractor, and understand the remodel process is temporary. Construction is not fun, but once it is all over, you will have a beautiful new kitchen.
8. Remember the big picture. Some days, the stress and dust of a kitchen remodel might get to you. All this hard work begins to seem useless if you must wait for weeks to enjoy it… don’t let the process get you down. All good things take time, and that’s exactly the case for a kitchen remodel! At the end of the project, you will be in love with your new kitchen, and you won’t even remember the time you had to make an entire family dinner with the help of a microwave.

Preparing your kitchen to get remodeled should not be too daunting of a task. If you take a few days to prepare your space, you will find the organization will help you get through the remodel easier. In the grand scheme, this is but a short period of inconvenience amid years of kitchen bliss. Using the tips above should help alleviate some of the stress of preparing and living through your kitchen remodel.