Kitchen Cabinet Basics - What to Know Before You Remodel

If you are considering a "Full Kitchen Remodel" then the first place you will want to start (with regard to material choices) is with your cabinets. Cabinets set the tone for the style and color scheme of your entire kitchen. Answering the questions below will get you on the right track.

Design Styles: The most common design styles these days include Shaker, Modern Contemporary, Traditional, Casual Country and Eclectic. Determining the style will direct you to the wood species that work best.

Door Styles: There are basically three door styles to choose from: Raised Panel, Recessed Panel and Slab. With regard to the raised and recessed doors, you will then need to choose from square, arch or cathedral style.

Types of Wood: Cabinets are made from a multitude of wood species; however the most common these days are (in order of hardness and durability):

Oak, Hickory, Mahogany, Laminates
Maple, Cherry, Birch, Pine
Alder, Poplar

Cabinet Quality: The qualities of cabinets available range from all solid wood construction, partial wood construction with plywood veneer, particle board and veneer and (at the lower end of the spectrum) particle board and photo finish and laminates: Of course the prices range (with all wood construction) from very expensive to very inexpensive (photo finish) or laminate construction. While the old adage "You Get What You Pay For" holds true in most cases, there are a number of ways to reduce your overall cost and still have the quality and look you want. For instance, you can have solid wood fronts and on the exposed ends (doors, drawers and face) and use plywood or particle board on the sides and backs (which are not seen). This can save you thousands of dollars.

Other Cabinet Options: The final choices that are worthy of note are the additional options for your cabinets. These include Lazy Susans, waste basket cabinets, spice racks, wine racks, pull-out trays (instead of fixed shelving) "soft close" drawer hardware, dove-tail drawer or butt-joint drawer construction and (for upper cabinets) crown molding, under mount light molding etc. Glass doors (typically on upper cabinets) also lend a certain 'jene se qua' to the final look.

Cabinet Finishes: Yet another consideration is the finishes available: They are laminates, painted and stained. Regarding stain finishes: You can choose from the standard finishes and (if so inclined) add a "glaze finish" to further accent the wood grain and design of the cabinetry. *** Note: When you choose to add a glaze finish, there will be additional costs and (equally important) additional production time. Glazes can increase your cabinet expense from 6% to 20% and add one to two weeks on to the normal production schedule.

Hardware: The sky is the limit with regard to choices of colors, styles and designs of knob and handles. You can literally spend hours online looking at designs and styles. *** Note: Remember to add this into your cabinet budget from the outset as prices range from $3 or $4 dollars for simple knobs & handles to as much as $20 or more for the more ornate ones! Do you homework and research to find the type you want and the lowest cost producer of same.

In conclusion, remodeling your kitchen can be an exciting and rewarding endeavor and add value to your home. With proper planning, you will get the result you want within the budget you wish to keep. Perform your "due diligence" and you will have a final result for you and your family to enjoy for years to come! Good Luck.

If this article has been helpful and you would like more information on our kitchen remodeling services, please visit our website at http://www.pdremodelingsandiego.com

For a no obligation consultation, simply send us an e-mail at sfrick@pdr-sd.com or call us at (858) 560-0444. We service all of San Diego county and have been in business over 22 years.

Remodeling Help In Carlsbad

What you are thinking about remodeling your house and you live in Carlsbad. Let me give you some advice about some local contractors and some of the people involved. I used a company called Service Magic to find a local heating and air conditioning contractor. All I had to do was go on the internet , type in some information about my self and what I wanted to have done to my home. This didn't seem that bad of a idea at the time. But look what I found out.

I went to their web site, filled in my information and with in minutes I had received the names of at least 4 contractors. Wow this is neat. I didn't even get to start calling any of them when my phone rang. It was one of the contractors secretaries. She introduced herself and asked what would be a good time for someone to come out to look at the work I wanted done.

I was surprised at the speed things were taking place but in a way glad that I had a reputable contractor from one of the largest construction referral services on the internet. I told her 10:00 would be fine. I got a call shortly after that from one of the other companies. He wanted to meet me that mourning at 8:00 if it was Ok with me. I told him of course, let's do this. Then the next one called and I thought great you can come at 1:00. Well you guessed it the next one was coming over at 2:30.

The first contractor showed up as scheduled at 8:00. We talked about what I wanted done and he whips out his note book and starts figuring out a price. This took place around 15 minutes into the meeting. This guys good I thought. Being a General Contractor in Carlsbad myself, for a job like this I would go back to my office and figure out a price and then double check my figures for a accurate estimate. It took this guy less than 5 minutes to create a proposal of around 10,700 dollars for every thing.

Well I was thinking to myself, the job should be around 7,000 dollars but what do I know about construction. I informed him that I would think about it and that I was going to meet with a couple of other contractors that day. He ask me who the other contractors were. I proceeded to tell him that I probably shouldn't tell him who they were. Well your not going to believe this. He put on his physic hat and told me who was coming over. The only thing he didn't know was what time they where coming over.

Oh I forgot to mention before he left he told me he would knock ten percent off the job if I signed the contract right now. I pretended like I was excited just to see his reaction. He looked at me like he had won the gold metal in sales. I told him thanks but I bet your new offer with the ten percent discount will be good for the next few day. Right I asked. He wasn't looking that excited any more as he replied with a Yes it will be good for a while. I thanked him and he went on his way.

My 10:00 never showed but his secretary gave me the old, " He had to go do a emergency job and could he reschedule tomorrow at the same time. I said that would be fine. As a contractor myself I have always put the work I had to do first and foremost.

About 12:30 I get a call from my next heating and air conditioning contractor. He is running late but will be there at 1:30. I appreciate the call and I will see you then. The only problem now is that I have another contractor coming at 2:30. That give the next contractor less than one hour before the next guy shows up. I never liked going over to someone's house and running into another remodeling contractor.

The next contractor was very informative and knew his stuff. I listened and learned. He told me he was going to have to go back to his office and would have a price back in the mourning. Great I told him as I hurried him out the door.

The last contractor of the day shows up and wants to know whose been over to the house, was it these guys or those guys. I told him I wasn't going to tell him who was over. Now this guy was a salesman. He did a little more probing before he let me in on the fact that his company doesn't do complete home installations. He made up some story that his company only replaces the forced air units. I could tell he didn't want to do the job once he found out I knew what I was talking about. So I said my good byes to Mr. Salesman.

The bad part about him was latter on that week his company sent us some mailers. The kind that doesn't have your name on it and everyone in the neighborhood get's one. I couldn't believe my eyes when I started to read this letter. It said we would be glad to give you an estimate on all your heating and air conditioning needs or services. " We Do Complete Installs". I told my wife we could have used this a few weeks ago. Then I recognized the name of the company and now knew that the salesman had lied to me for sure.

That night I started to think about what was going on here it seemed like I was being set up. Everyone knew what was going on but me. It seemed clear to me that these people knew each other.

Well as time went on we ended up hiring the first guy that came over. He seemed to have the best product at the most reasonable price. His company also did a great job. Keep one thing in mind here out of five contractors that I gave the opportunity to bid the job. Only three showed up and from them I only got two bids. Why didn't I get more bids? Quite frankly I was to busy working at the time and of course the other two guys were always going to show up and that kind of strung me along. My mistake.

Here's the kicker to all of this. Service Magic calls me up one day to tell me they would like to start sending me construction leads as a General Contractor.

I listened to what they had to say and was almost ready to sign up with them again. That's right, I was signed up with them when they first started until they changed the rules on me. The salesman that originally contacted me said if I paid them the 100 dollar sign up fee they would let me pick what jobs I wanted to do. That lasted about 5 months before I noticed that they were not sending me siding referrals to pick from. I called them up only to talk to someone who didn't understand the State Of California Contractors Licensing Board.

Well I wasn't about to reinvent the wheel. I simply told them that I should a least get my money back, right. They said they would look into it further as I never heard from them again about my 100 dollars. Well things have changed at Service Magic since I was with them when they started.
As a home owner you don't think you are paying Service Magic because all you do is fill out a simple form giving some information about yourself.

I found out that Service Magic sent all four of these contractors my original information. Each contractor then had to pay 55 dollars each to Service Magic for a total of 220 dollars. All I have to say is how are they getting away with charging this much money for sending a out a simple referral to these contractors.

The contractor unfortunately passes this expense on to his customers. You as the home owners end up paying these fees as a cost of doing business with them. Some contractors think this is a great way of doing business but you might think differently in the future if you start paying over 100 dollars for a simple construction referral.

Greg Vanden Berge has been in the home building and remodeling business for over 30 years. With this knowledge he has created a few websites that provide useful information for home owners as well as contractors. His main goal is to educate professionals in the home related businesses, dealing with problems that can easily be avoided with just a little bit of information.

His website http://gregvan.com provides all kinds of answers to remodeling and new house building issues that could create major damage as well as possible damage to your pocket book.

Visit us now for Home Improvement Tips

Minimum Access In Crawlspace

Garden Fencing For a Better Exterior

Garden fencing is not all about the fence panels and fence posts. A personal touch makes it more attractive. At the same time you should stick closely to the exterior of your home so that the garden fencing matches the aesthetic of the rest of your house.

When carefully considered and planned, the chosen fence type, fence panels, fence posts, and other accessories add to the external beauty of the house, and may help to add value to the property too.

Why garden fencing is installed?

People install garden fencing for a variety of reasons. The most common purpose of the standard garden fence is to clearly mark the boundaries of the property, but can also be used cleverly to break up the outdoor space into smaller parts, perhaps depending on what the different areas of the garden will be used for, potentially making it easier to maintain.

Many people prefer to plant trees of different types separately. You can install fencing to keep your Agapanthus well separated from Amaryllis and Lilly. Distinct areas for different flowers and trees look great.

If you plan to place a garden table with chairs, a swing, aquarium and/or fountain in the lawn, why not discuss this with the fencing product supplier and ask for their suggestions. Garden fencing can be designed specifically for the needs of the users. Custom fence panels and fence posts can be used together to form an attractive fencing surround for your garden or lawn.

You can choose the fencing material that goes best with your garden furniture, patio awning, deck furniture and the exterior of your home. Most people prefer using wood as the garden fencing material.

Wood garden fencing:

Wooden fence panels, fence posts and garden gates assign a natural look to your garden.

Post and rails, wire netting, chainlink, hurdles, timber palisade, chestnut paling, closeboard, closeboard panels, and lap panels are other common types of garden fencing that are available.

Bamboo fencing:

Bamboo is also often used for garden fencing and screening as well as landscaping. Bamboo fence panels and posts look attractive and are available in a wide range of designs, colors, styles and textures.

Border edging:

Wire netting, post and rails, chainlink and different types of mesh are commonly used for border edging. Wire garden fences or mesh are helpful to outline curvy and rounded borders of your garden and they are also quite attractive too when done properly.

Net, wire or mesh can also be used to protect a newly planted tree from animal or bird attacks. Planters or recently planted trees are often surrounded with wires or nets in the middle of the garden for this purpose.

Once you get in touch with a garden fencing supplier, you can learn more about your options. Fencing product manufacturers and suppliers can suggest to you the best fence posts and panels.

Tory Lane is a gardener and has authored many articles on gardening. For more help on garden fencing, fence panels and fence posts, he recommends you to visit: http://www.avsfencing.co.uk.

Advantages Framing With Steel

Stair Building Books

Where do we go to buy stair building books? Do we go to the major retailers like Amazon or Barnes & Noble? I have found over the years the information in most of these books I have purchased from these stores has a lot of fluff with very little common sense stair building application.

I bought one stair building book that had information on handrails. The front cover looked great and I thought this was going to be a great book reading the reviews from Amazon. When I finally got the book in the mail, I would say about one third of it was math tables for building elaborate wooden hand railing's. These tables were not easy to understand along with the rest of the book.

Back when I bought the book on building stair handrails it dawned on me that most of the construction workers I have met during my 30 years of working in the field were not very good outside of basic math. Now I knew a lot of carpenters that could read a measuring tape and use a framing square pretty good. But when it came to advanced geometrical construction projects like a stair hand railing system this was out of our league.

Reading this book or should I say parts of it gave me an idea to write a book of my own, starting with basic stair building I took all the fluff or the hard to understand advanced stair building applications out of my book, How to Build a Straight Set of Stairs.

I put a lot of time into creating an illustration for every possible part of building a simple set of stairs. I have probably built over 2000 sets of stairs during my lifetime and have explained and taught basic and advanced stair building to other carpenters. Understanding what parts of the stair construction process they understood, I was able to improve my skills as a stair building teacher.

Most people do not need advanced stair building skills to construct a simple straight set of stairs. If you are building a straight set of stairs and would like a stair building book with lots of easy to understand illustrations along with simplified directions you have found it.

We're building more stair building books to help contractors, carpenters, handymen and homeowners understand the stair building process.

Greg Vanden Berge is working on the internet to promote the education for creating simple to follow guides and home building books to help professional building contractors as well as the weekend warriors. He is currently working on more building stairs books and adding useful content to help solve problems created by the lack of construction knowledge in the building industry.

Recommended Teen Reading List

Moisture Against Gravity - Destroying Walls

Well I'm going to start this article with a little information on a job I did once.

I had been repairing a rental house for one particular homeowner for about three years when all of a sudden I got a phone call from him telling me the rental house was destroyed and he had never seen nothing like this. He sounded so upset over the phone I told him I would meet with him immediately.

On my way to the house I was trying to get an idea in my head what the house was going to actually look like. Since I have been repairing rental properties for over 20 years at this point of my career, nothing really shocked me. I had pretty much seen everything that could possibly be done to rental property by the tenants that lived there. There is a lot to be said about taking care of it as if it were your own.

He was waiting for me at the front door and he looked thoroughly disgusted. As I approached him he was shaking his head and yelling at the same time can you believe these people, can you believe what they did to my house. I was expecting to see the front door ripped off and all the windows broken out of the house but this wasn't the case.

As he led me through the home and I could see the usual clothing on the floor, broken cabinets, a few holes in the walls and of course that awful smell of mold and mildew. All of this stuff was nothing new to me because I'm the guy they call to fix it when a renter moves out of the property.

As I entered one of the bedrooms I got my first glimpse of something I had never seen before but heard stories about and could not believe my eyes. Looking at the walls in the bedroom about 3 feet from the floor all the way around the room, the plaster was soft. It actually looks like someone shoved popcorn into the wall somehow.

The homeowner wasn't even looking at this because of the rest of the damage in the home. I started to explain to him I'd never seen nothing like this but I could guess it was water damage somehow since the plaster was soft. I could actually stick my finger into the wall, that's how soft the plaster was.

My first thought was to examine the carpeting a little closer to see if it was wet. Well it was damp but it wasn't as wet as I would've expected it to be with the amount of water in the walls. With a little more home inspecting I had found the culprit, it was a broken water bed. The water bed was now in the backyard looking innocent.

I couldn't believe a broken water bed could do this much damage so I looked around for broken or leaking water pipes and could not find any. The other bad news I had to inform the homeowner was that the water had damage the bathroom and closet walls also. These walls of course were on the other side of the bathroom walls that were damaged.

Well the point of this story is that water will actually wick its way up or worked its way up into a wall. I had to remove 4 feet of drywall all the way around the room. The plaster or drywall actually acts like a sponge pulling the water into the walls. Hard to imagine that gravity in this case seems to reverse. I would've never thought that water would've traveled so far up the walls creating that much damage.

To repair the rental property I had to remove the damaged drywall, remove the carpeting, dry the wood framing out and put the whole thing back together.

I'm still amazed and will remember that project for as long as I live.

Greg Vanden Berge is working on the internet to promote the education for creating simple to follow guides and home building books to help professional building contractors as well as the weekend warriors. He is currently working on more Building and Remodeling Library and adding useful content to help solve problems created by the lack of construction knowledge in the building industry.

Visit us and get more information on House Water Damage

Building Stairs With Old Concrete

What a great idea using your old side walk or driveway to build a nice stairway for your front or back yard. Using the old concrete instead of sending it to the landfill. Wow talk about earth friendly. Who would have thought that using recycled concrete would create a beautiful center piece in your landscaping plans.

That's enough about that lets get to the nuts and bolts of building the stairs. I came across the idea by visiting one of our favorite breakfast stops in Fallbrook. I had been walking down these stairs for quite a while when it dawned on me that the stairs where kind of jagged. When I took a closer look I couldn't figure it out, What kind of building materials did they use.

Then I realized it was recycled concrete in other words someone's old side walk. They even used the old concrete to make some nice planter boxes and retaining walls. The whole area really looks nice. The landscaping created natural look with a old world look to it.

How do I build the stairs using recycled concrete? Simply put first thing you need to do is get some recycled concrete. If you are going to be tearing up a old sidewalk, driveway or patio then you won't have to look far.

If not you can contact some local general or demolition contractors. They would love to have someone haul away their concrete. The reason for this is they have to pay around five hundred dollars for every ten tons hauled away from the jobs they are working on.

The more recycled concrete you need the easier it will be to get it. If you need a lot you will be able to contact a concrete recycling plant and get the phone number to a local contractor that hauls broken up concrete to their plants. These people can drop off a large load if you have a large area to drop it.

Remember that most contractors don't want to be bothered because they are busy working or planning on working. The easier you can make it on the contractor the more likely you will get what you want from them. They usually aren't interested in doing extra work just to make you happy. You can get a lot by being courteous from most people.

Now that you have the concrete you can start building. The concrete will be stacked on top of the other concrete to form the steps. Depending on how long of a stairway you are building you will have to level the dirt and stack the recycled concrete to make the stairs.

Greg Vanden Berge is working on the internet to promote the education for creating simple to follow guides and home building books to help professional building contractors as well as the weekend warriors. He is currently working on more building stairs books and adding useful content to help solve problems created by the lack of construction knowledge in the building industry.

Visit us now for more great Home Remodeling Tips

High Tech Solution to Calculate Construction Costs

If you are planning to build a house, then the first thing you have to do is to calculate construction costs. Although you can easily ask for estimates from builders and contractors, it is still best if you can determine the actual expenses of materials you will use for the project.

Here is a high tech solution to accurately estimate the construction costs for any house building project.

Using Architectural Design Software

In the past, estimating construction costs was very expensive. First, you need to hire a licensed architect to design the house structure. Professional fees of architects are costly and this could take away significant portion of your budget for the project.

After getting the final blue print of the house design, then you have to ask several contractors to give you an estimate for the construction costs. However, most estimates will exceed your budget which could dent your finances.

By using architectural design software, you eliminate the need to hire an architect and you can easily determine the actual cost of materials for the project. There are lots of user-friendly design applications you can use and some of them you can download for free.

The Process of Computer-Aided House Design

The first thing you have to do is to select a house building and design application that would be easy to use. This way, you will not spend much time learning to use the software.

You have to find a construction design application that has a drag and drop utility. This will allow you to simply point and select the types of building materials you will use and drag-and-drop these to create a house structure.

All the elements of house building will be included in such applications. You can start by creating the structure of the house. Then you have to build walls, floors, windows, and roofing.

Once you created the basic house design, you can now switch to interior design mode. You will be able to select floor tiling, kitchen construction, plumbing, electrical wiring, and other aspects of house building.

If you can master the software, you will be able to create a complete house design with accurate measurements of dimensions in less than a week.

Automating Construction Costs

Now that you have a complete house design, the next step is to estimate the costs of materials you used on your design. You can run a complete inventory check from the software.

The design application will generate an accurate count of materials used for the design. You will get a complete accounting of materials that will be used for the house down to the smallest kitchen tiles.

Once you have the data, simply print out the list and start calling several construction material stores. You can also use to Internet to get different pricelists of house building materials. Base on the prices you gathered, you can now calculate the actual cost of your project.

Estimating construction costs nowadays is easier and faster if you utilize computer aided design software. All you have to do is to add the labor cost and other contingency expenses and you will be able to get an accurate estimation of the entire construction costs.

George Edmondson is an accomplished writer on construction costs estimation. There are numerous articles and resources about construction costs that you can find. Simply visit http://www.aboutconstructioncosts.com and learn how to accurately estimate construction costs.