With over 30 years of Kitchen and Bath Design under his belt Eric gives you the best tips to designing that kitchen and managing your remodel project from start to finish. Check it out all right here.

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Mentioned in this episode:

Baldwin Hardware

Baldwin Hardware

[00:00:22] Eric Goranson: And we started to talk about this a little bit cabinetry and let's give a little primer on cabinetry. If you haven't seen cabinetry out there, really thought about it. There's three different styles of. In the United States, typically you see an American face frame where you have this 1x2 face frame that goes around the cabinet face of the box.

[00:01:02] Eric Goranson: If you want to find out more about us, head over to around the house online. com, and you can find out more information there about us, or just give us a call here in the studio at 833 239 4144. That number again is 833 239 4144. We got a great show lined up for you today, and this hour we're going to be talking about my tips for designing a kitchen.

[00:01:52] Eric Goranson: So really, no matter what you do here, the first thing that I want to say is Is the design is [00:02:00] probably the most important step out of this process. And not just because I'm a designer, but this is your blueprint for the entire project. This is all the planning is based off of this one document. And so my first advice is to hire a good kitchen designer for this project.

[00:02:43] Eric Goranson: To be really good where I start to feel like, Hey, I can let them go on their own and really start doing it without having to micromanage the project because there are thousands of things that can go wrong in the planning stages and you as a homeowner or even as a [00:03:00] contractor, unless you've been doing it for a decade, this is the thing it takes forever.

[00:03:26] Eric Goranson: So here's what happens so many times. And I see this and this is one of the biggest mistakes that I see of people going into the home centers They will sit there draw up their kitchen. Okay. I've got an 18 inch base cabinet. I got a 24 inch base cabinet I got a 36 inch sink cabinet 24 inch dishwasher and they go into the home improvement store and say I want this They figure out the base cabinets.

[00:04:09] Eric Goranson: It had not been remodeled yet. And so when you look at these kind of things, you realize what was it like in 1982? You had maybe a microwave. And you had a vent hood, you had a range top or a range. You had a vent hood, you had a dishwasher and you had a refrigerator. That was pretty much what you had in storage wasn't really as a big a thing.

[00:04:57] Eric Goranson: This is a workspace and the [00:05:00] tools that you use in this workspace are completely different than they were in even 1995. So you have to think about how am I going to store all these little tiny things back then. You might have one bank of drawers, a four drawer cabinet, maybe 18 inches wide, and the rest of it was doors and drawers, or even doors just to keep it cheap.

[00:05:42] Eric Goranson: On average, that drawer cabinet is going to be twice the money as the one next to it. So, so many people go into builder homes, they've got a builder, great home, and there's nothing wrong with that spec builder cranked it out, but they only put so many drawers in because they're trying to save on the budget.

[00:06:17] Eric Goranson: And I worked on a big high rise in the Bellevue, Washington area, for instance. And I had corner cabinets throughout this high rise in the design and in the budget cutting phase, we took out every single one of the budget out of the corner cabins to save money and put in two filters fillers there, sorry, we just had two fillers there so we could absolutely save on every one of those corner cabinets.

[00:07:09] Eric Goranson: So really this is the time as you jump in to update everything. You want to have that designer that's going to say, Hey, where are you putting this? I want that designer to come over to your house, look through the cabinets, see what you have, see what you might want to add to it and make sure that they create a better home for all your stuff.

[00:07:48] Eric Goranson: You can go, Hey, it worked perfectly. There's no problem with it, but you know something, if it's been over 15 years, which most kitchen remodels are, it's time to update it and be more efficient. And then afterwards [00:08:00] you'll realize, Oh my gosh, I'm so happy I did this. It's so much easier to access, access things in the corner.

[00:08:21] Eric Goranson: So there's really a lot of things that you can do to really use that space and use it efficiently. And when we come back, I want to talk about cabinets because the style of cabinet you use, whether it's a face frame or a frameless or an inset will tell you how much storage space you have and how easy it is to access it.

[00:08:57] Eric Goranson: And of course, you can find information on the [00:09:00] podcast there if you're listening to us on the radio. But more importantly, if you want to see the TV show, which is around the house Northwest, Which is broadcast on Fox 12 plus here in Portland, Oregon, and all over the Northwest and streaming on a lot of different streaming services.

[00:09:30] Eric Goranson: If you click on those. That will take you over to our playlist, which is on the Fox 12, Oregon. And we've got almost 300 videos sitting over there, ready to rock for you of all these different home improvement projects, from building a pizza oven to really tips and tricks around your house. So that is there to help you out around the house.

[00:10:16] Eric Goranson: show the next generation. Of home improvement. Thanks for joining me today. I'm Eric G we've been talking today about designing a kitchen and finishing the project. And if you want to find out more about us, head over to around the house online. com we're just talking about hiring a designer and getting this project off on the right foot.

[00:10:50] Eric Goranson: Typically you see an American face frame where you have this one by two face frame that goes around the cabinet face of the box. And of course the doors overlay that [00:11:00] and those doors are going to be called either a full overlay where there's like a three 16th gap between them or on lesser expensive cabinets, you'll have what they call a half overlay.

[00:11:28] Eric Goranson: If something's off by a 16th or an eighth of an inch, you don't really see it that much. And so it hides a lot of sins in the cabinet making progress. So here's the thing. Now, when you're talking about the, basically that frameless cabinet is the next style that you have. And so instead of having that one by two face frame around the outside, they actually build the sides of the box out of either five eights or three quarter inch.

[00:12:16] Eric Goranson: If you make that out of. A frameless style box versus a face frame. You can add as much as an 18 inch cabinet to your storage space down below. And that makes a big difference, especially when you're trying to use a lot of drawers, because it gives you so much more space to use. And so that really makes it handy.

[00:12:52] Eric Goranson: And that is a more expensive cabinet to build. It gives you that inset furniture look. Something very old world and a really nice luck, [00:13:00] but there's a lot of in intricacies in building that type of cabinet. So that's something you gotta be really careful with. And especially in areas where high humidity on a coast or on an island, someplace like that is probably not the best for you because there's literally no adjustment when things are inset like that.

[00:13:41] Eric Goranson: Nothing wrong with a face frame cabinet, but you will get a little less storage space that's easier to access that way. And that's really one of the things that you see. When it comes to cabinetry is how much can you put in there and how much can you store? Now here's another thing. This is a big debate and this is one that I have my personal [00:14:00] opinion on.

[00:14:29] Eric Goranson: I have seen on a 14, 16 foot wall of cabinets, I've gained an inch before. I tell you what, that changes things when you're trying to put custom cabinetry together, because most companies do not go through and mic out and adjust for that unit of plywood and what the difference is. And so if you start adding a 16th or a 32nd or two 32nds, whatever, or 16th, it just adds up.

[00:15:16] Eric Goranson: And when we used to have side mount glides or the white epoxy ones that were the bottom kind of bottom side mount glides, the cheap ones used to see in the eighties and nineties, the drawer box construction carried all the load. And then you had the hardware that was fastening that to the box. Now, With most of the just even low end decent cabinet companies up to the better ones.

[00:16:04] Eric Goranson: That's going to hold up for you. It's not going to be a problem. If you've got sleetier bloom glides in there, something decent, even some of the nice cross ones. Guess what? That's going to work great for you and it'll hold up for years to come. And so that's super important. So really when it comes down to that hardware that you're using for the glides, whether it's soft clothes or whatever, that's the king.

[00:16:44] Eric Goranson: And this can be a big problem. If you're out there and you buy a brand new kitchen for one of the import places, it came in. There's a couple issues that you can run into. One of them being that a lot of those plywoods and stuff coming in, you don't know what chemicals are in those, any of those offshore [00:17:00] plywoods could have formaldehydes, things like that.

[00:17:26] Eric Goranson: And that can be a big problem. So I don't want to see that happen to you. So really make sure that you've got that hardware dialed in. Because that's something that's going to be important. Now, one of the next ones here is finish. And I want to talk about this before we go out to break, because finish is key right here.

[00:18:01] Eric Goranson: So I do not buy cabinetry that has just a regular lacquer finish on it. The water based stuff is great. There's some great new finishes out there. So I'm looking for. A two part finish system that has a catalyst on it. And if it's baked on it's even better. That's how you get that good finish. We come back.

[00:19:11] Eric Goranson: Back to the Around the House show, the next generation of home improvement. I'm Eric G. We've been talking about designing a kitchen and getting that thing finished. And with my 30 years of kitchen about design, I wanted to make sure and get some of this knowledge off to you. If you're thinking about tackling that kind of project.

[00:19:45] Eric Goranson: So let's talk about this. So we've been talking about kind of quality materials and the right things here. And the last one I want to talk about. Is custom and the word custom has no bearing on the word quality. It just means somebody [00:20:00] is building something custom for you. And that's something important because so many people go, Oh yes, I'm having custom cabinetry made.

[00:20:30] Eric Goranson: And so when you look at how larger cabinet companies make cabinets. They quite frankly do a better job when it comes to finishing until you get into that high end luxury stuff. That's where it starts to pay off, but really custom means absolutely nothing when it comes to quality semi custom in most cases.

[00:21:13] Eric Goranson: But just understand that you're looking for the stuff we've talked about earlier, like the finish, a conversion varnish or urethane finish stay away from the lacquers and all the other quality pieces that go in to making a cabinetry. Now, when it comes to design, this is a big one right now. I want to make sure when it comes to the quality of the materials in the house, it depends on the quality of the house.

[00:21:56] Eric Goranson: So, you know, if you have a 500, 000 house, I want you to look [00:22:00] around in your neighborhood or other 500, 000 houses, and at least. Think that you're putting in something like that is what you would see in a newer one or something in that price point. Because last thing I want you to do is spend the money on a kitchen and actually get less value out of it.

[00:22:29] Eric Goranson: This is where you can make those mistakes. So just spend some time and really understand that whole process of where that money is going to be spent. So you can get that in case you do need to sell down the road, or if you're planning on this, hold it up. Maybe you spend a little bit more to get the most durable that you can find.

[00:23:06] Eric Goranson: And with today's computers and designing with the programs out there, like a 2020 design pro kitchen, those kinds of things, these are programs that are meant to do this. And you can make sure and get those things designed correctly. Now, one other tip when it comes to design here, before you get into contracting or doing it yourself is that designer, one of the catches that you always have to work through as a designer is all the different appliances and making sure that corners work correctly, that you can open up a drawer in a corner.

[00:23:52] Eric Goranson: So we've been talking about, so if you're going to DIY this or hire a contractor, if you're going to be hiring a contractor, making sure that your [00:24:00] designer. Is working hand in hand with that contractor and they have a solid relationship is going to be key. And quite frankly, I want to make sure that they're going to work seamlessly together because that can be a huge step in the process, right?

[00:24:37] Eric Goranson: When I was a kitchen about designer doing this day in and day out, six days a week, basically what I was doing is I was working for four or five different contractors and I always had projects rolling through and that's who generally I worked with. So I had those relationships, those were going well. I could just work within their customer base, which made it a lot later.

[00:25:26] Eric Goranson: So that's a really big one right there. Now, if you're going to be doing this as a DIY project, I still think you should have that designer on retainer. So you can walk through that process. You can get those questions answered. And there are so many things that can go wrong in this. And this is why I wanted to talk about this for a minute here, because.

[00:26:03] Eric Goranson: You've got a lot of things going on. And of course you want to redesign that lighting, that lighting after about 10 years ago, if you've got those big six inch can lights in there, time to tear them out, put in something that's much more visually appealing and it'll give you a better workspace. So going down to maybe a two inch light and putting a few more of them in there, as far as a recessed light.

[00:26:44] Eric Goranson: It's a really big difference as far as how that looks and the light that you give there. So it's less distracting. I think it looks really beautiful. And it's something that goes a big way to having a completed project. Now, the thing is, if you're doing this as a [00:27:00] DIY project, my best advice to you is know your skills, know your work schedule and how you want to have it done.

[00:27:23] Eric Goranson: So unless you're working from home, unless you're a small business person, this could be a big problem for you and your schedule. And that's where things can go sideways. So just make sure that you're available during those times or generally available. If you're gone an hour here, gone an hour there, but you need to be available for those questions.

[00:28:05] Eric Goranson: That can get expensive really quick, which is why many times I like to let the trades by their own materials. The electrician brings the outlets in, the plumber brings in the plumbing parts of the contractor buys the stuff because it's all under them. And it, guess what? If something's defective or wrong, generally they have to cover that and they have to go do that on their time.

[00:28:46] Eric Goranson: We'll do that just as soon as around the house returns.[00:29:00]

[00:29:31] Eric Goranson: Every single time and beautifully. So here are some of my tips on the project management side. We've already talked about materials and the importance of design earlier in the show. And if you're catching us on the radio, don't worry. You can always go back and catch the podcast on your favorite podcast player.

[00:30:08] Eric Goranson: And this is one of those things that really, let me see if I can help you walk through that process of wondering if you can project manage this. Or if you're better, just hiring a general contractor that does this day in and day out. So here's the thing, and this is what you run into when you try to general manages or project manage this yourself.

[00:30:48] Eric Goranson: And so when they say they're going to be there at 7am on a Monday, usually they try to be there at 7am on a Monday. Cause they don't want to lose the next five jobs. The problem is that when you're the homeowner [00:31:00] and this is unfortunate, but it's just the way that it works out. They have to figure out, oh my gosh, I'm behind on this project.

[00:31:29] Eric Goranson: So what happens is many more times you're going to have that electrician plumber or somebody in the trades. Going to show up and they got stuck going to another job site because they need to keep their bread and butter going. And it's just an unfortunate situation with the shortage of trades we have out there.

[00:32:04] Eric Goranson: And they're unfortunately going to give them the first shot at all this stuff. So their schedule might matter more than yours. And that's unfortunate, but it's one thing that happens. And don't shoot the messenger here. I'm just trying to be realistic with the schedule. Now, here's the thing with the schedule as you're pulling building permits.

[00:32:43] Eric Goranson: A lot of cities have cut back in the building code department. So even though there might be less construction going out there, there ends up being a lot more of a backlog because there's less building permits for big homes, and that means less people in the building department many times. Cause many times those [00:33:00] building fees.

[00:33:16] Eric Goranson: And this is tough. I struggle with this every single week. And I'll be the first to say that staying on schedule with projects, And I put a lot of hours in between the radio show and the TV show 60 or 70 a week, at least putting stuff in and you know, something that just plain gets exhausting. So give yourself some breaks in the schedule and give yourself some time.

[00:34:06] Eric Goranson: Or at least in the warehouse with your name on it, that's sold before you start demo day, those cabinets need to be in, they need to be sitting in a warehouse. They need to be built. They need to be ready to go. You ready to ship those things out. They are down the street kind of thing or in your garage.

[00:34:43] Eric Goranson: Something gets on backorder three times in my 30 year career. Have I had cabinet trucks getting into accidents where they flip over on their side or the containers that they were in and they are lost and have to be built. And that took [00:35:00] another six to 10 weeks for that to happen. So I don't want to see you have a stall of your project for a couple of months because the materials were not available, even though you thought they were making sure that those things are in and ready to rock is important and appliances that can be tough too, but they could be in stock down there and all of a sudden some builder comes in and buys a dozen of them and yours went out the door.

[00:35:45] Eric Goranson: That can be a problem. And then make sure if it's an older house, are you going to find anything strange when you open up a wall? Is there going to be bigger issues? Just give yourself some pad in there to make sure you can get it all done. Now, the last thing here is I want to make sure that we talk about, [00:36:00] And this is the longest part of it.

[00:36:25] Eric Goranson: And there'll be weeks that you're like, man, we're spinning our wheels. We're not getting anywhere. Don't let that frustration get to you because it's just part of this process. Now, one of the tricks that I like to do once this project is all said and done, and this is something I've been telling contractors for almost nearly a decade now, put in the budget for a furniture repair person to come out and do the And touch everything up.

[00:37:14] Eric Goranson: They came in there, the airbrushed it, they added the grain. It looked absolutely gorgeous. And a lot of sins have been covered up by somebody coming in and doing that furniture touch up at the end of a project. I don't care if you're the homeowner, you're the builder, you're the remodeler. This is one of those things that gets you from 95 to a hundred percent, and it can make everything look gorgeous.

[00:37:57] Eric Goranson: Now, all these woods will catch up many [00:38:00] times, but where you run into problems is if it's maple or something like that in a lighter tone. That would, could be a different tone than everything else. And all of a sudden that brand new door sticks out like a sore thumb, and that can be a massive issue. And that can get really expensive when you're reordering doors and reordering doors.

[00:38:41] Eric Goranson: Do not expect. That finish on those cabinets is going to look like it came off the line at Mercedes Benz. Don't expect it. Painted is good. It is still mother nature and wood down below it. So wood will move. If you have mitered corner doors, you will see cracks where every [00:39:00] wood seam is on that face frame or on the styling rail on the doors.