Kitchen remodels

[OakLeaf]

I haven't done it either, but we may be in the next few years, and here are some things we'll definitely be doing:

Electric outlets in the island, if you have one. One on each side.

LED lighting. It's expensive now - what you might do to save $ is to put in an incandescent setup for the time being, because the price of the screw-in LED bulbs is dropping very quickly.

Cork flooring. We have cork in our downstairs, not in the kitchen, but when we do the kitchen it will DEFINITELY have cork. It's resilient, comfortable to stand on, insulates both temperature-wise and sound-wise, easy to clean, beautiful, nearly indestructible ... and if you try really hard to damage it, the variegated appearance will completely hide the damage anyway. Best illustration I have to compare tile vs. cork: I dropped a plastic spatula on my tile kitchen floor a couple of weeks ago and it shattered. Shattered. Counterpoint: a couple of years ago I dropped a small TV on its corner on the cork floor. You have to look really hard to find the dent ... and the TV still works.

[ny biker]

Cork flooring. We have cork in our downstairs, not in the kitchen, but when we do the kitchen it will DEFINITELY have cork. It's resilient, comfortable to stand on, insulates both temperature-wise and sound-wise, easy to clean, beautiful, nearly indestructible ... and if you try really hard to damage it, the variegated appearance will completely hide the damage anyway. Best illustration I have to compare tile vs. cork: I dropped a plastic spatula on my tile kitchen floor a couple of weeks ago and it shattered. Shattered. Counterpoint: a couple of years ago I dropped a small TV on its corner on the cork floor. You have to look really hard to find the dent ... and the TV still works.

Hmmm. I'm hoping to rip up the hideous wall-to-wall carpet in my living room and bedroom and get new wood floors in a few months. Maybe I will take a look at cork. If only it could dampen the noise that comes from the condo upstairs...