If you’ve ever completed any type of house project you know it can be stressful, slow and frustrating.

We’re at the halfway point of completing our kitchen and I thought I’d share some updates and tips if you are attempting your own renovation.

Before I begin here are some before pictures of our kitchen, the design board I created and our final renderings from the Home Depot kitchen designer.

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As you can see the wall with the shelving was turned into a pantry wall. We now have more coutnerspace on either side of the oven and proper corner cabinets. The cabinets above the dishwasher were removed to add in custom walnut floating shelves.

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Tips for a kitchen renovation:

1. Determine how to make your space more funtional

What in your space is not working?

How could the flow of the room be improved?

What do you like about the space?

What areas are being under utilized?

Our kitchen lacked storage, counter space, overhead lighting and the area between the kitchen and living area wasn't very open.

I thought for a long time how I could make the space more functional. I noticed one wall of our kitchen was completely blank. For a short term solution I made shelves to hang above our microwave.

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I knew long term we could use that space to add more funtional storage. However, I didn’t know if I wanted a full pantry wall, extra countertop space or even open shelves.

Eventually we decided to move our fridge onto that wall, surrounded by tall cabinets and a little counter space for a coffee bar. Our wonderful kitchen designer at the Home Depot configured a few different designs so we could get a clear picture of what our space would look like, before deciding.

As a result we got more counter space and storage on our oven wall.

To further open up our kitchen and bring more light into our living room we removed our front closet. My father in law first ensured it wasn't a load bearing wall.

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For the finishes in our kitchen we are keeping it very neutral, modern and simple. We do eventually plan to sell, so we want to keep everything appealing to a future buyer.

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2. How to finance a renovation

Of course the best way to update your house is to use cash. In an ideal world I would have prefered to do that. In our scenario and that of a lot of other home owners we decided to consult a mortgage agent to see what options were available.

To be upfront my sister Jaclyn, a mortgage agent with Champion Mortgage (@mortgageladyjaclyn) helped us with this process. She is writing an awesome post to share more about how a mortage agent can help with your fixer upper. Look out for that!

She presented us with a variety of options, competitive interest rates and budgets. At the same time we got quotes for the work we wanted done, to give us a clear idea of how much money we would realistically need. Jaclyn also made sure we budgeted extra to ensure we could complete our renovation.

After a lot of back and forth, meetings, talking with a realtor and thinking about the long term we decided what option was best for us.

We plan to stay in this house for at least the next 5 years if not longer. We have ample space, a large basement and second bathroom. The main hurdle was our kitchen layout and lack of storage.

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3. Get multiple quotes

As I mentioned above while we were speaking to Jaclyn we started getting quotes for the work we wanted done on our kitchen. This included:

• electrical
• cabinets
• counters
• flooring
• drywall
• painting
• tiling

For electrical we needed to upgradge our panel and some outlets needed to be moved to fit our new kitchen plans. Our electrician also suggested adding in pot lights and remote switches to make our house more functional. This small upgrade has made a huge difference in our space. Electrical was expensive but in my opionon very worth it! If you are local we used Kraun Electric.

Next for cabinets we knew we wanted help desigining our kitchen so it would funtion well for years to come. We got a free quote from a Kitchen and Bath design and installation company but decided since we will not be here long term it was too much to invest. Although we fell in love with the design and features!

The only place other than I think Ikea that offers in store design services is Home Depot. We ordered all our cabinets from Home Depot from the Rhett by Thomasville.

Our designer did a wonderful job and really listened to us. We used one step above Ready-to-Asemble cabinets because that line was missing a few cabinets we needed. The line we used is

For countertops I got quotes from local companies over email. We finalized everything after our cabinets were installed and looked at the countertops in person. We decided to go with a dark granite for resale purposes.

Lastly we ordered our flooring from Decorner which is an online store we found through Home RenoVision DIY on YouTube. It's a small buysiness run by two Ontario women. Their site was closed when we first looked, but it opened back up and we got 20% off our entire order.

We chose a luxury vinly flooring in Whitfield Gray.

Before this we had looked in several local stores and gotten various quotes. The 20% saved us a good chunk on the floor and by that time we knew what we wanted, even though we were ordering online.

Decorner is a great website, we had a few issues with shipping but they have fantastic customer service.

For drywall we hired a guy off of Facebook to help mud and tape, we haven't done tiling yet but that is something we will do ourselves.

We painted the ceiling in our kitchen and did some touch ups around the kitchen.

Our paint colours are by Benjamin Moore:

Revere Pewter on all the main walls

Simply White accent wall, side hallway

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If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out to me!

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Keep an eye out on the post from Jaclyn on How to Pay for Your Fixer Upper!

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