Are you ready for a dream kitchen renovation by Hammerdown?

Before we can effectively start your dream kitchen renovation, you need to answer a few key questions. These questions ensure you’re prepared to renovate your kitchen with home renovation professionals. While you don’t need to know all the answers in detail, we will ask you these questions.

The good news is, if you’re unsure of your answers, we can guide the conversation and help you reach conclusions you’ll feel great about. Our personalized approach ensures that you are comfortable and confident throughout the process.

These questions will help you ensure you get what you want from your dream kitchen renovation and that we can help you.

Let’s answer the key questions to help you get your dream kitchen!

Are you willing to invest in high-quality materials for your dream kitchen renovation?

When we say “high-quality materials,” we don’t mean splurging on needlessly expensive materials. As part of your dream kitchen renovation project, we would never ask you to do that – unless that is what you wanted. If you want to have marble tiles, gold-plated finishes, exotic hardwoods, or custom millwork – we’re more than willing to work those into your budget.

What we mean by “high-quality materials” are materials that are durable, long-lasting, and easy to maintain.

Your dream kitchen renovation should be built to last. The last thing you want to deal with is replacing your countertops, cabinet fronts, leaky faucets, or stained floors shortly after having your renovation completed.

To ensure the best outcome, agreeing to use products and materials like these lays the foundation for superb craftsmanship to shine through. Even the best contractors will be challenged with making inferior products look good. High-quality materials are a smart choice for a long-lasting and beautiful kitchen.

If you’re struggling with the costs surrounding high-quality materials, in most cases, the higher-quality option is marginally more expensive—usually 10-25%. However, what you spend to replace lower-cost options in the future may be as much as the original investment or more.

If you’re unsure which products or materials you should use for your dream kitchen renovation, we can help! You can read our article on “Selecting kitchen renovation materials,” or if you’re ready to contact our team, we are more than happy to guide you to kitchen renovation materials that will work for you now and in the long term.

Do you have a vision for your dream kitchen renovation design, and are you open to professional advice?

We don’t expect you to have everything figured out, but we can’t help you move your project forward without your collaboration and input.

Perhaps the most significant success factor for your project is the information you can communicate about your likes, dislikes, dreams, everyday life, and future plans. With this information, we can begin to shape your kitchen design to meet your needs.

There is a lot to consider when it comes to renovating your kitchen. We may ask you things like:

• What reasons or motivations do you have for your kitchen remodelling?
• What goals do you have for your new kitchen – hosting gatherings, baking, multiple-use space, etc?
• How does the rest of your family use the kitchen, and what are their needs?
• Do you prefer specific design styles, materials, and products that we should use for your kitchen renovation?
• What layout changes are you hoping to make with your new kitchen?
• Are you planning to keep your home for an extended period?

On the flip side, we ask you to be open to new ideas. We are on your side and want to ensure you get the kitchen renovation of your dreams. But sometimes, we must guide you to meet building codes, work within budget and time constraints, address opportunities to splurge and save, and more.

While designing your kitchen might seem like an artistic endeavour, we base many of our recommendations on scientific design principles and technical knowledge.

If you want to learn more about how we will design your kitchen with you and what design-based recommendations we might make, read our article “Kitchen design tips to improve your functionality and efficiency.”

What is your desired timeline for completing your dream kitchen renovation?

Most of our clients live in their homes during their kitchen renovations. While this is entirely expected, it is also impossible to complete a renovation without a slight disruption to everyday life—hence, having a short timeline is important to many clients.

We understand the difficulties renovating one of your home’s hardest working spaces can cause. As part of our renovation planning due diligence, we ensure that every hour spent at the job site—your home—is productive and thought through.

Our attention to detail in the planning phase actually begins at your consultation appointment. Due to our ability to work at this level, our kitchen renovation timelines and quotes are the most accurate in the business.

The planning goes beyond just our Hammerdown team. We meticulously determine the schedule for all product and material deliveries or sub-trades like electrical and plumbing—whatever your kitchen renovation needs; it’s planned using our project management software, CoConstruct.

If you’re interested in knowing more about what goes into our home renovation planning, we encourage you to read our “home renovation timelines” article. It covers more details about planning timelines and includes ballpark timelines for each type of home renovation need – kitchen, bathroom, and more.

Are there any must-have features you want for your dream kitchen renovation?

As part of your dream kitchen renovation, we want to ensure your new space has all your “must-have” features. We typically work with our clients to help them formulate ideas for their new kitchen. As part of the initial planning, we may create a “must-have” and a “nice-to-have” list of features.

What’s the difference between “must-have” and “nice-to-have” features?

We do this exploration to help you define what you need. Items on your “must-have” list are things you’re nearly never willing to compromise on. They must be part of your kitchen renovation as they align with a particular need or lifestyle. For your “nice-to-have” list, you may want to include some of the items, but they are much more dependent on things like budget constraints.

No two client’s “must-have” lists are the same – they are entirely your choice and work out best when they align with your wants, passions, and needs. Examples of when to put something onto your “must-have” list might be:

• If you love baking, create a separate work zone or install a double oven
• If you love hosting, build your design around a kitchen island or wine rack 
• If you need more storage, install a pantry or floor-to-ceiling cabinets

As part of our guidance, we help you determine what’s truly important for you to achieve with your dream kitchen renovation. If you’re unsure what ideas you want, our article “Kitchen renovation ideas for your design must-have list” can help kick-start your creative juices.

Do you have any specific design preferences or styles for your dream kitchen?

Your interior design style will affect all aspects and decisions of any kitchen renovation, helping your project progress. Working within a specific style allows us to recommend materials, products, colours, textures, and finishes that can all work together cohesively in your space.

When first meeting with us, our clients often are unsure what specific design style they like the most. Our interior designer can help you hone in on an interior design style you’ll love through a series of questions, selections, and examples.

We can also work with multiple styles, drawing inspiration from each and blurring the lines between them. This style mixing can lead to unique spaces that perfectly complement our client’s taste.

When using multiple interior design styles for your kitchen renovation, we usually look to one style as the dominant style and add subtle pops of other styles. Having a more predominant style ensures your space has a viewpoint and foundation. We can get quite creative with how we incorporate mixtures of styles.

To help you get inspired, we cover 14 of the most popular interior design styles in our article. The styles range from modern to minimalist, bohemian to rustic, and everything in between. Towards the end of the article, we cover five recent home renovation projects, where we used a blend of interior design styles to incorporate the perfect look for our clients.

You can also visit our Instagram and Houzz accounts, to look through past projects for additional design ideas and styles.

Do you have a budget set aside specifically for your dream kitchen renovation?

Budgeting, sometimes a taboo question, is critical to creating your dream kitchen renovation. While it can be a limitation to your project, in the right hands, a healthy budget can go a long way.

We feel it’s important to discuss the budget early on in the project and even before we meet. While we can’t supply you with exact costs, we can give you a budget range so you know what to expect before you work with us.

Many things can affect your dream kitchen renovation project budget. Often, these raises are related to material or product selection, layout changes (e.g., wall removal), and electrical or plumbing updates. 

However, due to our meticulous review, estimation, and planning process, your budget rarely increases from the initial price we quote you.

To help plan your budget, we also guide you through questions and exercises to establish places where it makes sense to spend more – splurge – or to save (for more splurge opportunities). The areas where we splurge are always aligned with your needs and expectations, which ensures a high level of satisfaction with your completed kitchen renovation.

We wrote our article, “Kitchen renovation costs in Winnipeg,” to include many factors that can cause your budget to rise or drop. We also cover ballpark cost estimates for your kitchen renovation based on a couple of scenarios and offer a breakdown by expense for all the items you need for your kitchen renovation.

Do you want Hammerdown to renovate your dream kitchen?

Perhaps the most crucial question of them all! If you feel the information in this article matches your needs and expectations for a contractor to complete your dream kitchen renovation, then chances are, we’re a great fit.

Are you concerned about what you’ve heard in the news about contractors in general? When you work with us, we will do our best to understand your concerns and show you, through our actions, that we can help you overcome your fear of contractors and be trusted to complete your renovation on time and within budget.

If you still have questions about our company, we encourage you to read “Why our home renovation company as many repeat clients.” This article will give you great insight into how we treat our clients and their homes and the quality work and craftsmanship we bring to each renovation.

We’d be delighted to discuss your dream kitchen renovation plans – contact us today!