Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Kitchen Retrofit & Renovation Design

This entry shares something that I really enjoy doing...

Renovating, Recycling, and Design....

The following pictures are a kitchen remodel project that I designed and installed.  The thing to remember about this project is, it is a retro-fit kitchen.  This means, I took the kitchen out of one home and put it in another home.  The home the kitchen came from was getting a new kitchen (one that I participated in the re-design).  The home that the kitchen is going into...has a kitchen, and it's in a completely different room.

In the home that is getting a new kitchen, there is a kitchen already.  It's a small simple galley style kitchen.  The new kitchen - the re-purposed & recycled kitchen, is going to go into what was formerly the family room.

Here are some pictures of the existing family room - as it were, a family/office/school room.

The existing fireplace wall

The existing rear/exterior wall.


The cabinets, after transporting them from their old home in VA to their new home in PA.

The Design Proposal
Using all the existing cabinets (except for one wall cabinet).  I design a layout that is functional and appealing, while reusing as many of the existing pieces as we can. We removed 3 windows and 1 door, and  installed one new window and one new door.

Re-purposed materials as a utensil rack.
Using some left-over 3/4" copper pipe and 12 gauge copper wire bent around the pipe, we have an effective and somewhat industrial looking utensil rack.

We could not reuse the counter from the other kitchen, since the cabinet layout is not the same.  But we were able to have one manufactured for us to fit our new layout.

A view of the "finished" kitchen 
Another view of the 'new' kitchen.


The refinished fireplace wall


This was a fun project.  One of my favorite types of remodeling is when I get to help people save money while improving their home and living.  For the cost of a U-haul rental trailer, and a few new materials - this kitchen was designed and installed for under $6,000...and added a whole lot more than that to the value of the home.  The old kitchen from this home was donated to Habitat for Humanity, and the space is currently being re-purposed to make a 1st floor laundry room and a new bathroom.