How to Survive your Kitchen Remodel

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Selecting materials and planning your layout is definitely the calm before the storm. Once demo day hits, remodeling can feel stressful, loud and hectic. Change is really hard (especially when we take away the main part of your home!), however the key to a successful remodel is to keep your eye on the prize.

Here are a few tips that can help take the stress away from the remodeling phase.

1) Give yourself enough time to prepare the kitchen.

  • Don’t wait to empty out your cabinets the night before a big remodel. You’ll stress yourself out before we even start! We highly recommend you start emptying out cabinetry one week before the start date. This will give you plenty of time to purge what you don’t need and store everything you do in another location.

2) Set up your temporary kitchen beforehand.

  • Make sure it’s close to a water source such as your laundry or bathroom.

  • Bring in a folding table of some sort to use as a working surface.

  • Set up your microwave, toaster oven and hot plate. These will be your go-to appliances for a quick meal.

  • Keep one old drawer cabinet (or purchase a plastic drawer organizer) to store handy utensils, spices and napkins. Try to keep yourself as organized as possible so you can feel some sort of normalcy and control.

3) Preferably don’t live in the space.

  • Sometimes there is no other choice, however if you have the option to move out temporarily (hotel, air bnb, family member’s home) that is highly recommended. Some homeowners also opt to take a vacation during this time to shorten the amount of time they’re actually in the remodel. This helps the individual trades work efficiently and focus solely on their work.

4) Don’t rush the project.

  • We never recommend you to remodel 4 weeks prior to a major holiday (especially if you’re planning to be the host!). In a perfect world, a major kitchen remodel would be fully installed and completed in 4 weeks. However with the reality of remodeling and retro fitting to an existing home, things can come up that push the completion date out. This can be anything from product delays, unexpected plumbing or electrical, etc. A standard kitchen remodel can run anywhere from 4-8 weeks …. Depending on the size / complexity / types of cabinetry it can also take up to 12 weeks. Give yourself a realistic timeline of completion based on the scope of your project and keep this in mind when planning your remodel date.

The main point to take away from all of this is to plan ahead. Your project manager and the whole team at JLI is on your side and we want to make the experience as positive as possible.

Have any questions about the remodeling process? Comment below and our team will get back to you!