The Hawaiian Home
Kitchen's During Construction


Ordering:
Once the final kitchen design has been accepted and the choice of cabinetry made the contractor or homeowner orders the cabinet. It’s always a good idea to check and double check the cabinets, spacing and needed fillers and panels that are being ordered. There’s often a period between placing an order and the start of cabinet construction when some minor detail can be changed or additional items purchased. This is where kitchen construction experience comes in handy. It helps to visualize the kitchen and its various systems to make sure doors and drawers can open all the way and there are not conflicts between components.

Getting Ready:
Murphy’s Law says you don’t start demolition till you know when your cabinets are going to be available for pick up. There’s nothing more embarrassing for a contractor or inconvenient for a home owner than to have a kitchen area gutted and no work taking place

Before all this demolition and hopefully speedy construction takes place the kitchen has to be emptied of its stored items. Box’s come in handy for the various items, drawers and there content can be removed from the old cabinets and put in your storage area.
The refrigerator stays in operation and the trusty microwave needs to find a place where it can be useful. The hardest thing is no sink. For those with laundry sinks it makes cleaning up less of a chore but for most it’s a mini kitchen set up in the bathroom and a lot of paper plates and eating take out.

The Clock is Ticking:
Once demolition begins on an average job it should be 1-2 weeks for the cabinets to be installed. After the base cabinets are in the counter tops can be measured and fabricated this is why you concentrate on putting base cabinets in first when your own a tight time frame. This will often allow a few days head start on your counter tops.

Counter tops can take days to 2 weeks + depending on your fabricator. During this time the installers can be finishing all items of cabinet installation. The new floors can go installed and if possible electrical work can be finished and painting done. The point being to keep the job going so when the counter tops are installed the sink and faucet can be hooked up as soon as possible. Though there may still be some items to work on and complete and the entire kitchen needs to be restocked with the items in storage.
Having a sink again represent an essentially operational kitchen and assurance that the kitchen will soon be up and running again.

Paul Mossman
http://pfcremodelinc.com/