Kitchen Add-on and Remodeling Tips You Might Not Have Considered

A kitchen remodel is something that you have been planning for months, and now it’s time to begin. But wait! There are still a few things to stop and think about including in your remodel that might add convenience to your day-to-day life. Let’s look at some things that make food preparation and cleanup faster, give your kitchen extra storage space, and make your kitchen a much more pleasant place to spend time, shall we?

Oatmeal, instant coffee, tea, thawing foods- the list goes on forever! “What list?” you may ask. Well, it’s the list of reasons why you should strongly consider incorporating an electric hot water dispenser into your new kitchen sink. Hot water dispensers usually float around the $200 range, but when you consider that time is more valuable than money, they pay for themselves. Just the amount of time you save boiling water for hot cocoa during one winter justifies the purchase. It can also make cleaning crusty tomatoes off of your pots and pans a much quicker experience. Usually you can find a dispenser with a faucet that fits in with your style of remodel.

Backsplash! No, it’s not a painful dive you do to impress your friends at the pool, it’s an effective way to improve the look, and value, of your kitchen without spending a whole lot of money. Usually made out of some sort of tile, backsplashes go on the wall of your kitchen behind the counter. Behind the stove is a good place to focus your backsplash. Some people will even shell out for more expensive tiling behind their stove, and use less expensive tiling elsewhere in their kitchen. A backsplash only needs to be big enough to cover your wall in areas that might get splattered with tomato sauce or the contents of a poorly-covered blender, but sometimes people run them throughout the entirety of their kitchen. It’s really up to you, but stick with what looks good, otherwise what’s the point?

Now, most kitchen remodels and upgrades include a replacement of cabinets, but don’t get so caught up in how they look that you forget what they’re there for: storage! One thing we all waste too much time and energy on is shuffling through our kitchen drawers and cabinets as we either search for what we’re looking for or try to make room for something that we’re unloading out of the dishwasher. By using drawers that extend out further and incorporating taller drawers, dealing with the organization of your pots, pans, Pyrex, and all the assorted lids that come with them can become a much easier and streamlined process. For years, I had to bend over and reach far underneath my stove and restack all of my pots, but in my current kitchen the entire bottom of the cabinet acts as a drawer that extends out for much easier access to my cooking wares. Not only does it save time, but it also saves my back.

Speaking of drawers and cabinets, did you know there might be some more places you can add storage in your kitchen that you may not have thought of before? Measure the space that will be above your fridge and see if it’s tall enough to place matching cabinets. Cabinets above your fridge are perfect for storing things that you will only use seasonally, or perhaps not at all (the recipe book your parents gave you). If your fridge is going to be near a corner of your kitchen and will have a wall near the left or right side of it, make sure you leave enough room to open its door without it banging into the wall. If you have to create a gap to keep the fridge away from a wall to its side, you can use that gap to install a tall cabinet with shelves on the inside of it (perfect for storing wine or spirits). The more storage your kitchen has, the less cluttered it will feel.

One thing that always makes my kitchen feel cluttered is the trash. That’s right, you have a giant receptacle in your kitchen meant for collecting trash. The best way to deal with it is to give yourself some space to store your trash underneath one of the counters or behind a corner in your kitchen. You can install a TrashRac to the inside of your kitchen cabinet door to keep the trash out of your sight and away from your naughty dog(s). The only problem with the TrashRac is that it’s only 3 gallons, so you have to empty it frequently.

One last thing to consider before you commence your kitchen remodel is how easy it will be to clean. The two pointers that I can give from experience are that tile is much more difficult to sweep than linoleum or hardwood flooring, as the grout between the tiles is recessed and will collect and hold dirt and that recessing your sink into your counter will make cleaning your countertops way quicker, as you can just brush all the crumbs and other junk into the sink and wash it down the drain (as opposed to having it stick to the sides of the sink that are coming up over the countertop). I’m sure there are plenty of other things you can add on to your remodel or consider to make your life much easier, but sometimes you don’t figure out what they are until it’s too late; so be sure to spend as much time researching and thinking about your remodel as you can.

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