cooking with gas

how a taste-created master plan ignites action in the kitchen

Did you just finish a Thanksgiving cooking marathon in your Kitchen? Did your Kitchen work for you, or make you work harder?

If it left you frustrated with a lack of flow, limited work space or over crowded gathering areas for friends and family, you may have already started thinking about how to fix it. And if you’re like many of our clients, you have MANY ideas you’re trying to sort through and prioritize. You’ve probably looked through Houzz or Pinterest, stood in a friend’s Kitchen with a similar (but not quite) layout as yours, or even sketched some ideas and taken on a 3D on-line design tool.

That’s all good food for thought. And now, you’re ready for some additional guidance to a) help you confirm your ideas and b) understand how to apply your budget to the value of your ideas.

That was the case for longstanding clients who reached out earlier this fall. Over the years we’ve worked our way through their home, designing and renovating key areas at a time. (She loves to tell the story of my hand-drawn plans for their master suite, long before the days of CAD and Sketch-up.)

Since then, we’ve renovated their bathrooms, the mudroom, the family room, the living room and the three season porch. I’ve been yearning to take on the Kitchen and this year, they were ready, too.

The conversation started with their rough idea of three layouts, all with varying (yet unknown) budget levels. They needed help answering key questions, like:

Is each layout achievable from a building/structural perspective?
Would one layout be any less disruptive to our family life than the other? (They have two sons in their Junior year of high school with heavy workloads and big decisions to prepare for. Unraveling the family Kitchen this year wasn’t ideal but becoming critical.)
What are the cost differences between each plan?
How long would the renovation take?
What are we missing? We aren’t designers, so tell us what we haven’t considered so we don’t make a mistake with a large investment.

All good questions. And ones we’re used to helping answer. It was time to get to work and develop plans for each concept they brought to the table. And, as I always experience, another design option presented itself during the creative process. (I love those moments of discovery.) We brought in a general contractor from our extended team who is a pro at providing ball park estimates. With their help, we presented four plan options, along with a ballpark budget for each.

This combination of taste-provided guidance + plan + budget enabled our clients to select the right option for their family and their investment level. Once the plan option was selected, we developed a creative concept for the space and finishing details that will help make the Kitchen live up to the rest of their home.

Construction starts just after the holidays. Next holiday season, they won’t be fighting with their Kitchen. Will you?

If so, reach out to understand how taste can create a master plan that brings clarity and action to your space, too.

Only the best,

prw signature