3 Important Considerations When Remodeling Your Cabinets

There’s nothing like a kitchen remodel to increase the value of your home and just plain make it more fun to be in there. People all over the country are investing in kitchen remodels, with San Francisco leading the way in terms of money spent (average large kitchen remodel there: $70,000). American, in general, are remodeling more than 10 million kitchens and more than 14 million bathrooms every year.

Remodeling Your Cabinets

Cabinets are some of the most important parts of any remodeling project. Putting in some new drawer slides or some cabinet furniture knobs can transform the simply blah into the truly elegant or functional. Cabinet lighting can turn a dark place you want to avoid into a place to display something beautiful. Since remodeling cabinets typically account for close to have of the total cost of your kitchen remodel, you want to make sure you do it right.

What Are Your Needs?

Your first consideration should be understanding the right look for your needs. If you are an extremely organized person, open shelving can be the right way to go. This is less expensive and doesn’t require the hardware necessary to install doors and slides. However open shelving is going to look terrible if you don’t have a really well-organized space.

You could also try overlay cabinets, so named because the door overlays the frame. This type of cabinet doesn’t need a knob because there’s enough room to get your finger around to open the door or the drawer. If you need lots of space for a large item such as big serving platters, double door cabinets with full overlay are probably the way to go. Just be aware that that lots of sticky kid fingers are likely to make the corners grimy over time.

Finally, you might choose inset cabinets. In this style, the door is inside the frame of the face and utilizes hidden hinges. This tends to give everything an extremely clean and elegant look, although they are more expensive to install. The lack of frame is also excellent if you want a contemporary style in your room.

Choose Your Stain

General Finishes water based gel stain is a great way to get a wooden look. These thick gel stains come in a wide variety of colors and styles, from Golden Pine to Georgian Cherry to simple Black. If you want to get really feisty, General Finishes water based gel stain also comes in blue, cinnamon, and even yellow.

With General Finishes water based gel stain, as with any type of stain, it’s important to do a small spot test first to make sure things are going to look just the way you want them to. For the most part, though, your General Finishes water based gel stain is going to go on very easily and might not even require stripping to look good.

Non-Wood

If you don’t want the look of wooden cabinets in your kitchen, glass can be a great option. Glass shelving with an opaque glass sliding door will make your kitchen look bright, modern, and up-to-date. The sliding doors will help a bit with keeping the space looking less cluttered.

You can also go with plastic, and this is a very economical choice. Of course, you get what you pay for and plastic cabinetry is not renowned for its elegant look. It can be very functional, however, and if you have a lot of small children it’s easy to clean and won’t need to be re-stained every few years.

Cabinet demand in the United States is projected to grow to over $17 billion by the year 2021. Whether you’re looking for elegant General Finishes water based gel stain wooden cabinets, functional and modern glass cabinets, or just want to upgrade some existing cabinet with accent lighting or different pulls, make sure your cabinets are working for you and your home value.