When my husband and I designed our new kitchen we focused on two things. We focused on appliances and kitchen cabinets. We read to find out what reviewers thought were the best dishwashers and French door refrigerators. I wanted an under counter refrigerator with an icemaker. I thought that I might buy a Jenn-Air refrigerator or an GE Monogram refrigerator. Surprisingly I ended up buying neither. We also decided that we didn't need a complete kitchen remodel. We decided to use kitchen cabinet replacement doors. That way we could save thousands and thousands of dollars so we could splurge on other things.
I really thought that I would stick with one particular brand of appliance. Most people do. I thought that I'd buy all GE or Maytag or LG. It didn't work because we found features we liked between various brands. I knew that I couldn't afford a kitchen filled with Jenn-Air appliances but wanted to look at their refrigerators. I liked the Jenn Air Oiled Bronze Collection of appliances. Unfortunately they didn't have this in a French door style. Also, it would be impossible to match this color appliance outside of the Jenn-Air collection. I chose a French door refrigerator, or what is also known as a side by side refrigerator with a bottom mount freezer from the Whirlpool line of appliances.
My husband was in charge of narrowing down our choice of kitchen stoves. He read lots of information and visited several stores. In his opinion an induction cook top kitchen stove was the way to go. I had hoped that we could have a dual fuel stove, one with a gas cook top and electric oven, but unfortunately we don't have gas hook up. We decided that we wanted a slide in kitchen stove, not a freestanding kitchen stove. Slide in kitchen stoves do not have sides and are meant to be mounted between cabinets. I liked the idea of a double oven stove too but we don't have the room. He looked at kitchen stoves from GE, Amana, Maytag, Frigidaire, Sharp and others. We chose the highly rated GE Profile JGBP85WELWW.
We also had to choose an under counter refrigerator. In our search we learned about beverage centers. Beverage centers are refrigerators without freezers. We both liked this idea, more storage room for drinks. Neither of us has seen an under counter refrigerator with a decent freezer anyway. We splurged on a U-Line beverage center with a built in ice maker. There are many brands to choose from, Sub-Zero, Summit, Haier America, Dacor, Marvel and GE Monogram to name a few.
OK, so we'd chosen our appliances except for the dishwasher. We read all the reviews to find out what were the best dishwashers. We had to decide what was important to us. A quiet dishwasher was important to us as the kitchen and family room are connected. We learned that dishwashers need to run between 42 and 43 dB. to be considered quiet. The average dishwasher runs at 48 dB. We looked at features and decided we wanted a water saving dishwasher.
The last new appliance we bought was a microwave oven. Just like with the dishwasher we read reviews to fine out what were considered the best microwave ovens. As I like to cook on my kitchen stove we use our microwave for reheating. We didn't need a lot of features such as browning. We did however want a convection/microwave oven combination so that I wouldn't have to heat up the big stove to cook for just the two of us. We found out the microwaves from GE, Sharp and Whirlpool got good reviews.
Then there was the decision of kitchen cabinets. We had a very good kitchen layout. It just needed a bit of modernizing. We decided that if we used kitchen cabinet replacement doors we could save thousands. Kitchen cabinetry eats up roughly 70% of all kitchen remodeling budgets. Replacing just the kitchen cabinet doors meant we could update and splurge on other things. In order to give our kitchen a designer look we used the matching moldings and valances that were available to give a nice finishing touch to the kitchen.
Remodeling a kitchen is a very personal thing. Make sure you think about your choices long before you're standing in the appliance section of your local home store being pressured by a salesman. Do your homework, research reviews. It'll save you a lot of time, money and heartache.
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Tom
Posted 308 days ago
An FYI . Many of today's appliances have very large handles. When we replaced our dishwasher and stove with new models the handle on the bottom door of the stove stuck out so much we could not open the dishwasher door all the way. Lucky for us we were able to replace the stove handle with a smaller one easily. We bought LG and Kenmore appliances from Sears, got good prices.
Cathy
Posted 309 days ago
We have a very small kitchen and no way to add more space, so we updated the space with a new counter top and replaced the kitchen cabinet doors. We put the new kitchen cabinet doors up ourselves. My husband is handy with things like that. We ordered them online. We got the same type of wood as the existing cabinets so the wood frames would match. Just these two things make a world of difference in our kitchen. We're very happy.
Sharon
Posted 309 days ago
We just had our kitchen renovated. It was much more stressful than I thought it would be. There are so many details and things to think about. Luckily we had a great planner to help us. We used Home Depot and were happy with their work. Make sure you have a planner if you plan to do something like renovating a kitchen.
