The kitchen is the heart of the home, which means when you decide to remodel, you need to ensure you do it right – the first time. Unlike other rooms in your home that tend to be hidden away from guests or can easily be redesigned by shifting furniture or painting the walls, the kitchen is one of the rooms that almost everyone sees, and because it’s not modular, re-arranging your kitchen isn’t really an option. Not only that, but the kitchen is also the most expensive room in your home to remodel, which is yet another reason to make sure you get it right the first time. So why remodel your kitchen? Because if you do it right, a remodeled kitchen can not only look gorgeous, it can offer you a level of functionality that makes cooking at home a joy both for you and your entire family. Old kitchens tended to be the domain of the cook; new kitchens are the domain of the entire family. And if that isn’t enough of an incentive, a new kitchen is the single biggest way to increase the overall value of your home, which will make selling your home significantly easier down the road.
My home was built in the late ’60’s and the kitchen was updated in the late 90’s, a few years prior to when my family purchased it. There was nothing wrong with the kitchen, as it was functional and nice looking, but it just didn’t fit what I and my family envisioned. After updating numerous other rooms in the house to try to make our new house feel like our home, we were left unsatisfied as the kitchen was one the room we found ourselves in most often. After over a year of deliberation, we decided it was time to take on our kitchen remodel.
The process began by sitting down with my family and listing everything we wanted from our kitchen. Once we were in agreement, we set off on our search for brands and products that fit our wants and our budget – starting with cabinets. This was perhaps our biggest mistake initially, as a kitchen is composed of far more than just cabinets. When shopping for cabinets, we found several high-end custom cabinets that we loved and that fell within our total budget. But while they fell within our budget, they also took up all of our budget. And the real truth is that no matter how beautiful your cabinets are, if everything else doesn’t follow suit, it won’t matter who’s name is on your cabinets. So, before signing off on our high end cabinets, we looked at the other kitchen pieces and their cost including countertops, appliances, flooring, windows, lighting and hardware. Once we added it all up along with installation and construction costs, this left us with a far smaller budget for cabinets that originally anticipated.
In our new search for cabinets, we looked at numerous places, including local kitchen showrooms, big box stores and online suppliers. We then stumbled upon All Wood Cabinetry at Costco of all places. All Wood Cabinetry is a U.S. based semi-custom cabinet manufacturer that focuses on creating quality cabinets with a quick turn around time (they ship within 10 days of your order). All Wood cabinets are assembled in the U.S.A, they note a a plywood box construction with dovetail drawers, and your choice of either wood or MDF faces, depending on the style. In our case, what drew us to All Wood Cabinetry was their Nantucket Polar White Kitchen, which mimicked the look of some of the more expensive we had considered, but at a significantly lower cost. In total, our custom designed kitchen from All Wood Cabinetry came in at 1/3 of the price of the original cabinets we looked at, leaving a huge portion of our budget for all the design elements of the kitchen we wanted. Add in the fact the cabinets carry a limited lifetime warranty and are KCMA certified, and we felt that from a value standpoint, All Wood Cabinetry was the way to go.
After choosing to work with All Wood for our cabinets, we started the design process, which is a little intimidating considering everything’s handled over the phone and/or internet. But as I’d come to find out, I really loved the design process, especially compared to the local big box stores. The process starts by picking a cabinet style. As already noted, we began by choosing the Nantucket Polar White cabinets to help brighten our kitchen and give our kitchen a more clean, modern feel. The next step was working with All Wood Cabinetry to send our kitchen measurements along with inspiration photos to our personal All Wood designer, Jennifer. One phone call and one day later, and we had our first kitchen rendering. And looking back, it was amazing to see how close the first rendering is to our final design. Jennifer did an incredible job taking into account all the inspiration photos we sent her, creating a design that was exactly what we were looking for.
This may sound like an easy feat, but our list of wants was anything but small. Incorporating a 36″ farmhouse sink, numerous custom depth cabinets, island seating for three and counter to ceiling cabinets were some of the things we incorporated. We were anything but easy customers, yet Jennifer took all of our ideas and requests and turned them into a beautiful functionally designed kitchen.
From there, the tweaking process began, which was basically making minor adjustments to the kitchen. And this is what made the design process so great. Because everything’s handled via phone and email, you don’t have to jump into your car and head to the local kitchen showroom to make adjustments. You simply open your computer anytime you want, send your ideas, and you’re done. It just so happened that my husband was on assignment out of the country while we were doing the design, and even he was able to stay involved in the design process despite his hectic schedule. We sent changes to jennifer four or five times before arriving at our final design, each time with less than a day turn around. In total, our kitchen design took less than a week to complete, and we didn’t have to make a single trip anywhere to have it done. From a convenience standpoint, you simply can’t ask for more.
After the design was completed, Jennifer sent the final quote that included an itemized list of every cabinet, piece of hardware and trim that we would need for the kitchen. This was yet another benefit of working with All Wood, as we weren’t quoted a bulk price on the kitchen without knowing where our money was going. Instead, we knew the exact cost of every cabinet and every accessory, which we preferred. We paid for the order online, and in less than two weeks, our kitchen cabinets were on our doorstep. Arriving on four pallets, our All Wood cabinets arrived packaged very well and in perfect condition without any missing pieces. Jennifer had informed us to make sure to inspect all the cabinets so in the event there was a problem, they could have a replacement immediately shipped out. But after checking the cabinets for blemishes, scratches, etc., we were happy to report back to All Wood that we would need no substitutions and had no complaints.
And thus begins our kitchen cabinet installation. To be continued…
We’ll keep you up-to-date on our new kitchen installation, but in the meantime, you can see the cabinets we chose as well as All Wood Cabinetry’s full lineup of products at AllWoodFast.com.
