May 28, 2006
Probably Best to Avoid Moving Any Walls…
While I feel pretty good about most of the renovation plans I’ve put together so far, I’m struggling with a few issues. Namely:
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Kitchen Cabinets: The cabinet framing, shelves and doors are all in decent condition, but I’d like to update the look of the wood and brighten the otherwise dark kitchen area by painting them white. My dilemma here is that I’m not sure if I want to sand and paint the existing doors or just get new doors custom made. Sanding and painting would probably be very labor intensive and take a lot of time, but it’s a fairly straightforward process and would cost very little. New doors could be comparatively expensive and challenging to mount in the existing frames, but it would give me the chance to change the style of the cabinets and probably wouldn’t take as much time to complete.
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Kitchen/Living Room Floor Plan: There’s a nice opportunity to create an open floor plan by opening up the walls that divide the kitchen from the living room and the dining room (Wall A and Wall B on this rough floor plan), but I’m not sure if it’s worth the expense and the
hassle on this project. It seems like a waste to have a formal dining room in such a small house and I think it would really brighten the whole first floor to open up the kitchen, but I know that costs can escalate quickly when you start changing structural items. I doubt there will be room in the budget or the schedule for this in the end, but it’s worth considering. -
Bedrooms: One of the three bedrooms in the house is quite small (9’ x 9’) and is probably better suited as a den, but I’m wondering if the house would sell faster if I combined two bedrooms to create a master suite with a walk-in closet. The master bedroom would still be lacking its own private bathroom and I definitely don’t want to deal with that level of renovation, so it’s probably better to leave the bedrooms as they are.
Update: See a more detailed version of the open kitchen question on apartment therapy with lots of great comments from AT’s stellar editor and thoughtful readers.