It's Like Magic

Every once in a while renovation projects take a giant leap forward, completely transforming in a single day. The kitchen project made a leap last week, and then made another one yesterday. They’re exciting – really exciting – because they are obvious progress, and because they look so good. But let me back up a little bit. The team had been methodically working to get the space put back together for a while. Plumbing, electrical,

Designing a Kitchen

We thought that designing a new kitchen would be relatively straightforward. Really, how hard could it be? Pick a cabinet design, choose the appliances, then the finish details, and away we’d go. We already had a good idea of what we wanted in a kitchen, so we thought the design part would be easy. As it turned out, there were a number of challenges that we did not foresee. The shape of the room was

Remodeling Cost versus Value

The November 2009 issue of Remodeling Magazine included the 22nd edition of their annual report about the financial impact of various home improvement projects. They look at both midrange and upscale projects, and hit on all the major renovations, calculating the percentage of the cost that could be recovered in a sale. Data is broken down by region and even by major cities within a region. I was excited to discover that Hartford is one

Remodeling Our Kitchen

Late this summer Kyle and I started thinking about the possibility of remodeling our kitchen in 2010. It’s been on our list of “eventual to-dos” since we moved into our house about 6 years ago. That’s me to the left in 2004 when we were evaluating the house and figuring out if we wanted to buy it. Notice the skeptical look on my face regarding the kitchen… We knew a kitchen remodel would be a