Our Affordable, Luxe Kitchen Remodel

Bamboo Plyboo Cabinet Fronts

It took us nearly a year to renovate, but now I can say that our kitchen is finally done! It is now my favorite room in the house by far. I feel like sitting in my kitchen everyday when I get home from work. I enjoy cooking in the kitchen more too, and I even think the food comes out tasting better. I also kind of enjoy cleaning the kitchen, which is saying a lot coming from someone who abhors cleaning.

One of the main goals behind our renovation was to upgrade our 30-year old kitchen and appliances which came with our mid-70's condominium. The kitchen cabinet structure had deteriorated beyond salvaging and all of the appliances were no longer functioning well. We needed to do a complete over-haul, beginning with selecting new appliances, and extending to installing new cabinets, flooring and back-splash.

Carrara Marble Subway Tile Backsplash

Unfortunately, our day jobs got in the way of kitchen progress, and it took a YEAR before the kitchen finally got done. The appliances stood in our dining room for months and cramped our style before we finally admitted that we couldn't do it all ourselves. Thus began the unpleasant process of selecting a general contractor, which was unpleasant due to the sticker shock and the snooty condescension that we got from a couple of general contractors. You see, we live in the Silicon Valley, and due to the high density of Google millionaires in our neighborhood, some GC's act arrogantly and deliver unrealistic price quotes. We got 3 quotes which were orders of magnitude off from each other. The highest quote was on the high end of 5 figures for labor alone, which is ridiculous considering the size of our kitchen.

Here are some highlights of our kitchen renovation:

• We wanted a modern, luxurious kitchen. We decided to go with Bamboo plywood cabinet fronts reminiscent of Zebrawood. We also decided to go with durable Silestone countertops, porcelain tile flooring, and a Carrara marble tile backsplash.
• We selected IKEA kitchen cabinets for the price. The tipping point behind our decision, other than the unbeatable price, was the fact that my father-in-law who used to be a professional cabinet maker recommended them. He likes IKEA kitchen cabinets for their clever modularity and assembly methods. Our general contractor, whom we contacted through IKEA to assemble the kitchen cabinets, did a great job of squaring up the cabinets and making them look just as expensive as custom cabinets. Ignore the kitchen displays at IKEA which are poorly assembled and which look sloppy by comparison. 
• We decided to fabricate our own cabinet doors and drawer fronts out of Bamboo plywood to fit over our cabinets. We knew very little about wood working, but we are members at a public woodshop which offers a CNC router for cutting highly accurate shapes. I will be writing instructions on how to CNC route your own doors, so keep posted. We decided to cut our own cabinet fronts because we wanted a look similar to Zebrawood, and IKEA did not provide that look. Nor did companies which specialize in cutting custom doors, such as Scherr's, and Semihandmade, provide this high impact look, or if they did so, it was at an unreasonable ocst. Using the bamboo plywood was also very convenient because there was no veneering necessary on the sides. The cross ply on the plywood looks polished enough to stand on its own.
• We mounted powerstrips underneath our wall cabinets. This adds to the stream-lined modern look of our kitchen. 

We learned quite a few things in doing our kitchen. If we were to do it all again, here is what I would recommend:

DO

• Better to over-light the kitchen and provide a dimmer, than have too little lighting. Our galley kitchen is small and windowless, so we ended up using high wattage LED recessed can lights and LED under-cabinet lights. The lighting effect on our beautiful striped wood doors, and patterned backsplash is gorgeous.
• Do dare to customize your cabinets. There is an entire cottage industry out there designed to customize the bare IKEA box cabinets. You don't have to choose the IKEA door fronts. In our case, we ended up cutting our own doors, which was a tremendous amount of work, not including the time it took to learn the software packages, tools and skills to create the product.
• Seal the Carrera marble tile with a marble sealant, such as DuPont Bullet Proof. Marble is gorgeous, but notoriously porous and stainable. Almost a week after I sealed it with DuPont Bullet Proof, I splashed coffee all over our backsplash. Had I not sealed the marble in advance, I am sure that it would have left a stain. I was initially concerned about altering the luminescent quality of the marble with the sealant, but I can honestly say that I can barely tell the difference with the sealant on it. 
• Choose the deepest sink you can. This will make the mountain of dirty dishes less overwhelming to clean.
• Do hire contractors. If I had known that from the beginning, we could have saved 8 months out of our year where large kitchen appliances were standing around cramping our living space, because we thought we could do it all ourselves.
• If you are using a bamboo product, I highly recommend the EZ-DO polyurethane finish. We also tried the Minwax version from Home Depot, and the EZ-DO finish gave the wood pattern more character and texture.
• Do choose materials that will hide dirt well. Our gray porcelain floor tile looks great, even after a lot of foot traffic, whereas our previous white vinyl tiling did not put up with the wear at all.
• Do hire an honest, and good contractor. I highly recommend our contractor, whom we contacted through Ikea, who not only squared up our kitchen cabinets beautifully, but also threw in extras, such as the custom under-cabinet panelling.

DON'T

• If you're cutting your own cabinet doors, or commissioning doors to be fabricated, don't wait until the last minute to choose pull hardware. Had we planned in advance, we would have probably preferred to get edge- mount pulls, which would have required a special cut out on the CNC router. Because we did not create a special cut out, we were not able to select the edge-mount pulls that we wanted without a whole lot of extra work.
• Don't skimp on materials, particularly for high-wear surfaces such as the countertop, and floor. We got Quartz countertops and Porcelain tile floors. The Quartz countertops are nearly impregnable, and the Porcelain tile floors have borne out excellently against dropped objects and scratching while we moved appliances, and stuff around. 
• Don't neglect how opened doors affect your lighting. When opened, one of our kitchen cabinet doors block our celing lights so that it is dark inside.
• Don't be afraid to mix patterns. We mixed highly patterned “Carrara” marble subway tile which could have potentially clashed with our dramatically striped cabinet fronts. One of the store designers thought that our material choices could be too overwhelming, but I am glad that we stuck to our vision rather than kow-tow to popular taste.

Our kitchen before our remodel