Kitchen upgrades. What should I do first?

[billbrasky]

Originally Posted by Lucky7

Absolutely NOT! Laminate flooring is nothing more than compressed sawdust and glue with a picture of a floor on the top. For the price of a quality laminate, you are not far out of the reach of real hardwood. Though laminate does have applications where it serves its purpose, it really doesn't have the longevity of true hardwood.

preach it. real hard wood with dents and stuff is character, dented laminate looks like you got your floor off the clearance rack at wall mart. It doesnt age well, patina, gain character, etc. It has a short half life, looks good in brochures, looks pretty good new, then its all down hill quickly in my opinion. For the price i think most /all laminates are a very poor value. If they were like 1/5 the cost it would be compelling. For the price step up to real wood floor, it will out last you and your kids. And real wood just looks better the older it is.

[fastboy]

Ok I think we will wait on the cabinets and concentrate on the countertops and later floor. After second thought the cabinets look to be still in quite good shape, not to mention they are wall to wall plentiful. Will probably stain them for a fresh look.

The interesting thing we didn't think about until we did a bit shopping on the countertops is, the installer will not remove our old countertops. Yike! I will have to either do it myself or pay someone to do it....

[UncleBuck]

If you piece it together like that it won't look right and you also risk that something might change in life where you do not get all of the work done and then it will become a huge negative if you try to sell.

You should either wait until you have all of the money to do it all at once and/or get a home equity loan to do the work.

[Ride the Lightning]

How much time do you spend in the kitchen? If you or the other half spend a lot of time in there some kind of vinyl might not be a bad idea. No, it's not as nice and it doesn't last as long, but it is much easier on feet. I hate spending lots of money on something just to suffer because of it. My feet don't like tile or hardwood, or maybe tile and hardwood don't like my feet. I don't know which, but I know that the vinyl we have now is a lot more comfortable to stand and walk on than the tile and wood I grew up with.

I helped my dad with a few remodelling jobs and it always made sense to me that you should work from top to bottom. No matter how careful you are, things happen. It would suck to drop a cabinet on a new countertop or floor and damage them. As someone else said, you never know for sure what you are working with until you tear it apart and if the floor is junk you need to fix that first. That's why it's best to do it all at once if there is any way to swing that.

On the cabinets, you can almost pull off the image of complete replacement with a door change. That will change the look drastically. You could even put two short doors vertically where there was only one and add some crown molding. Most people will think new cabinets when they see them. This is a good option that falls between full replacement and just a refinish in cost. You might even get lucky and be able to buy ready made doors and install them yourself, but that's a longshot.

[XD in SC]

Originally Posted by UncleBuck

If you piece it together like that it won't look right and you also risk that something might change in life where you do not get all of the work done and then it will become a huge negative if you try to sell.

You should either wait until you have all of the money to do it all at once and/or get a home equity loan to do the work.

MAN do you speak the truth! Been there!