Budgeting for the High-End Kitchen
The High-End Kitchen
The kitchen has the potential to be the most expensive room in the house and it most certainly will be when you venture into the incredible range of choices available when the sky’s the limit (or at least a piece of the sky). While there are many very expensive kitchens in which virtually every aspect is custom designed and fabricated, we will be limiting our subject to kitchens having an ‘average’ high budget. This high budget gets you excellent design talent, impeccable craftsmanship, the best materials and world class appliances. Or, at least it should. Unfortunately it is quite possible to throw enormous resources into a kitchen and still end up with a bad design, poorly executed.
It is tempting to dwell on the potential for disaster at this level because too often, high end means a lot of money was spent rather than a lot of creative effort. Anyone with deep pockets can fill a room with a zillion cabinets, $20-30,000 worth of major appliances, imported tile, 18 color hand screened French wallpaper, hand polished silver plated sinks and Neo-Georgian moldings. Whether this conglomeration of excess actually works is up the designer and if you’re spending this kind of money for a kitchen you should seek out a good one.
While talking about money and the upper end of the kitchen world it is best to focus on how a designer can help you get what you want while spending enough but not too much. It is rare for a homeowner to spend $50,000 to 60,000 or more on a kitchen without using a designer. The more you’re aware of the process involved from day one, the more likely you are to get a great kitchen in exchange for your money.
Expensive kitchens have an element of fantasy about them. Recreating a restaurant kitchen in your home may really be about living out an unrealized dream of being a chef. Or it may fulfill a very real need for a workplace to seriously pursue an interest in cooking. Either way (and its likely to be both) that kitchen is still about the same things that the basic kitchens we discussed earlier are: Comfort, socializing, preparing and serving food and clean-up. The big difference from a monetary point of view is that every decision involves a lot more money.
Budgets and Perfection
One of the challenges in designing and budgeting for a great kitchen is the desire to achieve perfection. In our experience perfection is seldom found on this world with possible exception of great art, Zen gardens and Olympic athletes. Yet we persist in this futile search for a kitchen that fulfills our dreams of a perfect space. And, during the initial creative part of kitchen design, there’s nothing wrong with setting high goals. The problem occurs when we try to combine that search with the real world of existing house, stubborn contractor, undelivered necessities, and a dwindling checkbook.
The solution lies in putting together a working timeline and budget for your project before you tear out a wall or shop for appliances. Time and money are inexorably intertwined, especially when you are facing a construction delay in the middle of a long kitchenless period of your life because a range hood you had to have is backordered. It is important to start thinking about money and time now, while you’re gathering ideas.
Here’s some strategies you should consider:
• Give yourself back-up choices on everything if possible. Availability of almost any component of a kitchen can suddenly disappear, throwing well laid plans awry.
• Research price ranges for various items when starting a budget. If you budget $2000 for a range rather than choosing a specific brand, you’ll be thinking in terms of a process in which content (the range) can be substituted if things change.
• Walk through your space with an architect or a skilled carpenter and make sketch showing structural walls and the location of utility lines, drains, etc. This information will help you budget for major moves of these potentially expensive structures.
• Catalog existing features that stay like windows, moldings, flooring, appliances, built-in cabinetry, etc. Working around them can both save and cost money.
Budgeting is about planning and choices. Every dollar you spend will be affected by the planning and choices you make now and later. Projects go over budget because of last minute changes, inflexibility, indecision, underestimates that are often the result of going with the lowest bid on an item, poor scheduling and unsuspected obstacles uncovered as you go. Good planning can help with all of these.
Financing Your Kitchen
We’d like to cover a few relevant areas regarding where to get the money to do your project. Kitchens are improvements to what is usually the biggest investment most of us will ever make, our homes. Because they are fixed improvements with a long life, taking out a mortgage or home equity loan to fund them may make sense. However there is no guarantee that they will improve the market value of your home and if you are planning a move in the near future you should be careful about how much you spend, especially if you don’t have a lot of equity in your home.
Wherever you get it, it takes cash to build a kitchen. Contractors must be paid upon completion, appliances stores expect payment or credit with interest and you’ll seem to be spending everywhere you go for zillions of little things you didn’t expect. Keep track of every expenditure and check it against your budget. Set up a spreadsheet to track where you’re spending money and don’t forget the little things like those innumerable trips to the hardware store.
If you go over budget and you don’t have a cheaper alternative to fall back on, ask for advice. Designers, suppliers and contractors know a lot of ways to save money on almost any aspect of the job. Sometimes a simple design change can save significant money. Compromise is required but its better than ignoring the problem or going into debt for something cosmetic.
Designing and building anything as complex as a kitchen is an incredible learning experience. You’ll know many things you wouldn’t have dreamed of prior to getting down to the actual process. Some of them will be good and others will involve stress and a degree of fear. Much of these potentially negative experiences revolve around money and how it flows through the project. Plan now, do your research and make a budget and schedule and you’ll avoid a lot these problems.
