Builder Grade Kitchen Upgrades

Changing the Finish Package, Not the Whole Room

A builder kitchen is assembled from a short list of options. When a planned community goes up, the design center offers a handful of cabinet door styles, a few stain colors, three or four granite choices and a backsplash tile or two. Buyers pick from the menu months before they move in. Fifteen years later, the kitchens on a street in Bressi Ranch or Robertson Ranch look like siblings, and the choices that seemed safe at the time now date the house.

The good news is that a builder kitchen is usually built on a reasonable plan. Appliance circuits are where they should be, the island sits in the middle of the room, and the cabinet boxes were installed square on a new slab. That makes these kitchens good candidates for selective upgrades, where the structure stays and the visible surfaces change.

What We Look at First

The cabinet boxes

Everything hinges on the boxes. We check what the sides, backs and bottoms are made of, whether the cabinets are framed or frameless, and how the drawers are built. Plywood boxes with solid wood face frames are worth keeping almost every time. Particleboard boxes can be fine if they have stayed dry, but the sink base and the cabinet next to the dishwasher are where a slow leak shows up as swelling. If those two are damaged and the rest are sound, replacing just those boxes is often an option.

The countertops

Many kitchens from that period have slab granite with a bullnose or ogee edge, or in some tracts granite tile with grout lines. The countertop is usually the most expensive single change, and it sets the order of everything else, because the backsplash comes off with it and the sink may change at the same time.

The ventilation

An over the range microwave that recirculates catches some grease and blows the rest of the steam back into the room. Before we plan a new look for the upper cabinets, we find out whether a duct can run to the outside through the wall or a joist bay. A proper hood is sized by the cooktop and how you cook, and larger hoods can trigger make-up air requirements, so that decision comes early.

The Upgrades That Carry the Most Weight

• New doors and drawer fronts. Shaker, flat slab or inset style fronts, painted or stained, fitted to your existing face frames. Most of what a guest sees in a kitchen is door and drawer.
• Soft-close hinges and full-extension slides. Retrofitted into existing boxes. Deep drawers that open all the way are more useful than any new cabinet with the old side-mount slides.
• Countertops. Quartz for low maintenance, quartzite or granite for natural stone, porcelain slab for a thin profile. We check cabinet level before template, because a fifteen year old run has often moved a little.
• Backsplash. Removing a tumbled stone or small mosaic backsplash and replacing it with larger format tile or a slab backsplash with fewer grout lines.
• Crown and stacked uppers. Builder uppers often stop short of the ceiling. Adding a stacked cabinet or trim to close the gap makes the room look taller.
• Sink and faucet. Moving to a larger undermount or a farmhouse sink while the counters are off, which means a new sink base front and sometimes a modified cabinet.

When Upgrading Is the Wrong Call

Selective work only makes sense when the layout is right. If the aisle between the island and the range is narrower than about 42 inches, if two people cook together and keep colliding, or if the sink sits in a corner where nobody wants to stand, new finishes will make a good-looking kitchen that is still frustrating to use. In those cases we will tell you that a layout change, with the plans, permits and possibly an engineer’s review that come with it, is the better long-term spend.

How the Job Runs

We order doors, slabs and hardware before demolition so the kitchen is out of service for as short a time as possible. Old tops come off, any electrical or plumbing changes are roughed in and inspected where a permit applies, cabinets are modified, counters are templated and installed, and the backsplash and fronts go on last. On damp marine layer mornings we give paint and grout more time rather than rushing coats.

Call (760) 548-0946 to have us look inside your cabinets and tell you what is worth keeping.