How To Kitchen

how to build the second kitchen in basement old laundry area?

my laundry room at basement has furnace, water heater and sump pump and dryer washer. I want to move dryer/washer to washer room at basement, and build second kitchen in laundry room. Please suggest how to do it. who should I contact? how to budget it? thanks

Public Comments

1. The first thing I would do is measure my space and draw a schematic of the area. You can do this with paper and pencil or use one of any number of planning programs. Think about the cabinets and appliances you want to have and how they will fit. Do you want full-sized appliance or apartment sized appliances ... what do you think will fit in the space. Think about how much you want to spend and how much you can afford to spend. Go to Home Depot or Lowes or Menards and look at the cabinets to ball park your costs. You might also want to check out someplace like Sears or Best Buy for appliances as well. You might want to spend some time watching some of the remodeling shows on DIY, Discovery and TLC ... watch what they do and how they do it... Determine if you can do any work yourself. You may want to do your own demolition and some minor work. I would leave the big stuff to the contractor. S/he will hire qualified sub contractors like electricians and plumbers to do that work. You want licensed people to do that work because you want to make sure it is done correctly, otherwise you could have issues with your insurance company should anything happen later on. Now that you have done some research and have some ideas about what you can do and what some of your items cost, you want to look for a General Contractor. This is could be your most difficult task or your easiest. There are a lot of contractors out there ... Again, research is very important. Ask your friends, relatives, coworkers about any work they've done and how they would rate them for reliability, price, honesty, quality, etc. Get a list and check references, look at their work, review their prices ... After you do that, double check all that again. Your contractor is very important. Also call your state licensing board or use their web site to check their license. May sure you get a contract with an end date and reasonable payment schedule. No 50% up front ... maybe 10-20% down the installments until the job is done. My husband is an electrical contractor and on our website, we have some calculators and other helpful links and some frequently asked questions to help you find your way through this. best wishes, cez