ln most communities, a major remodeling project requires a general permit from the city building inspec- tions office. Your general contractor (or you) will apply for a building permit. Permits for the plumber, electrician and HVAC contractor may be included with the general permit or they may be separate permits. You’ll pay for the permit […]
From a design standpoint, flooring is far more than the surface you walk on and mop up. Designers and remod- elers routinely use flooring to alter the way a room looks and works; with a little planning, you can reap the same benefits. A custom-designed floor can be a cost-efficient solution to an awkward kitchen […]
Once you’ve defined your goals, draw a scaled floor plan of your kitchen on graph paper and make several copies of it. Use the drawings to experiment with patterns and colors. To see how a pattern will look in the room, borrow flooring samples and tape them to the floor. This can help you decide […]
Resilient flooring is both the least expensive material you can use to cover your kitchen floor and the easiest and quickest to install. ln addition to being durable and easy to clean, it’s available in a wide range of colors, as well as in patterns that mimic the look of ceramic tile, natural stone, marble, […]
If you’re shopping for resilient flooring, you’ll need to choose between sheet vinyl and vinyl tiles; however, in a kitchen, this choice is fairly clear. Vinyl tiles are easy to install, and many come with peel-and-stick adhesive backing. But since the floor ends up with a lot of seams, moisture can easily seep in between […]
Plastic Laminate Flooring Plastic laminates are made with medium-density fiberboard (MDF) core topped with a layer of plastic laminate similar to the material used on countertops (but about ten times denser). Like the countertop material, the laminate has a photographic image, or photo, layer that can mimic wood, stone and many other materials, as well […]
Installing & Finishing Installing solid-wood strip flooring is a fairly straightforward process. It all starts with a clean, sound subfloor, over which a layer of building paper is laid. This protects the subfloor from water damage and prevents squeaking. The strips are nailed to the subfloor, one-at-a-time, by means of a hammer-operated or pneumatic nailer. […]
When you are planning a new kitchen or refurbishing old kitchen furniture, the first decisions that have to made are about what you are going to put in it; which items of equipment, and then which brand and which models of those particular items. The choice is bewildering, so brace yourself to bring a really […]
If you intend to buy new kitchen storage cupboards, they will either be custom designed (by you or your architect), or they will be bought from a proprietary range of which there are many on the market. It is also possible that you are considering some hybrid arrangement made up of old cupboards originally intended […]
lt is fairly rare now to find custom-made units in a new kitchen. The standard ranges, as I have described, are so varied, the permutations of finishes so large and the quality so good (if you choose carefully) that most people are not prepared to go to the extra trouble of having furniture specially built; […]
