If you want to know where to start with a kitchen remodeling project, we’d suggest this: kitchen design trends for 2010 and beyond from Susan Serra, a certified kitchen designer. Among them: people trending toward more open layouts and creating “the social kitchen.”

She writes:

More than ever before, we want our kitchens to be social. So social, that I see islands becoming larger as walls continue to come down, even taking center stage to include a sink and a cooking appliance, and seating. I see soft furnishings (the kitchen sofa for example, a concept that I strongly believe in, which is raised to meet the breakfast room table) in the kitchen and is all about comfort. I see finishes and colors which do not match, but blend. Fireplaces and larger windows in width and height create an open feel and add architectural interest as they do in surrounding rooms. … Multiple work stations providing optimal function for various social lifestyle situations will be designed into the space. A desire for real comfort is strongly connected to the social kitchen trend.

Susan also writes, on Houzz.com (she’s prolific!), about the usefulness of a good kitchen window, saying they’re “one of the most important features in our kitchens! … [T]hey provide light, a connection to the outdoors, a green catalyst to control temperature in the kitchen, depending on the window’s directional exposure, and of course, great architectural interest in terms of proportion and style.”

The bloggers at CalFinder identified a few of their own kitchen design trends, including custom cabinets and hardware, designer and built-in appliances, and even unique features like warming drawers. But it’s not all modern flashiness: CalFinder also found a wealth of awesome retro kitchen appliances and furnishings.

As you get set to embark on your kitchen remodeling project, consider these tips from Home Design Find and these nice before-and-after shots.

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2010 is shaping up to be a year heavy on remodeling — as opposed to building or buying new homes or even making major additions to existing homes. With good reason, too, as remodeling can be a great way to get a lot bang for your home-improvement buck.

We write a lot about remodeling here at MLuxe, and today’s article continues the quest to help you fight the good fight — against troublesome remodeling projects, that is. So let’s get to the goods.

Todd Fratzel at Home Construction & Improvement offers these great starter tips on making your remodeling project a success. His top ten tips list includes proper planning through patient budgeting and design as well as getting multiple bids and working with only qualified contractors.

To get you started on thinking about what you could do with your home, try this article about 10 home improvement projects for 2010. You could take on somewhat larger projects like a kitchen or bathroom remodel, or you could start a bit smaller by refreshing your home with a new paint job, fresh molding and trim, or some better lighting.

If you’re focused on adding more than just aesthetic value, consider these ideas for adding dollar value, too: ideas from Re-Nest and HGTV’s FrontDoor.com.

Photo via Flickr

Coming into a new year, you might be tempted to do some serious home renovation via a remodel. If you are satisfied with your current location, or don’t wish to sell, remodeling can make your house feel completely new.

But there is one important caution: Please do some serious thinking and planning before embarking on a remodeling project. Not only can it be an expensive proposition, but unless you have a breezy beach house or cozy cabin to escape to, you will be temporarily living in a construction zone. Even the best remodeling experiences can be fraught with frustration. So you will want to make sure that the end result is something that you love and that enhances your home’s livability and your enjoyment of it.

To find a good remodeler, we recommend visiting The National Association of the Remodeling Industry (NARI). The website provides a remodeler locator as well as good information.

To prevent some common remodeling mistakes, our friends at Calfinder present five of the worst remodeling mistakes:

• A raised ceiling can give a sense of spaciousness, but take care: it’s often times not built on a human scale and full of wasted space. Don’t forget that very high ceilings means that noise isn’t muffled and the room can be harder to heat and cool.
• Who doesn’t want a big kitchen with plenty of room to prepare feasts and get the whole family involved? Plan carefully to ensure that your work triangle is compact and you aren’t walking across the room to grab milk for your cereal.
• Proportion your garage to the rest of your home (see photo). Although adding or expanding an attached garage is a convenient use of space, make sure it doesn’t overshadow your house.
• We talk a lot about the importance of light in a room. Don’t go overboard, though! With too many permanent light fixtures, you lose design flexibility for future lighting.
• Be careful where you put a porch. It shouldn’t be tacked on just anywhere. A common mistake is to end up with the porch blocking light from the original space.

Spend some time thinking about good design, and your remodel will be a success! For more information and images that illustrate these remodeling mistakes, visit Calfinder.

Image courtesy of Calfinder.

Renovating a bathroom is second only to a major kitchen remodeling project in terms of “Interior Home Remodeling Return on Investment,” or IHRRI (which we just made up and promise to never use again). It can have great benefits – improving your happiness with the home and improving its resale value down the road – but it can also entail great work.

Always used and often overlooked, one or more of your bathrooms night have fallen in to disrepair or out of style. And either of those problems can affect the value of your home. Even if you’re not in the market to sell, perhaps you’ve just grown tired of the old tile, peeling plaster, or powder blue toilet and tub.

With that in mind, here a few tips for getting the job done on time and on budget – and according to your tastes.

Dollars and cents need to be well spent

Much like the kitchen remodeling project we discussed in an earlier post, make sure you have your arms around how much you want to spend on this project, and then dive into some pricing – both online and in your local shops. You might have some tough choices to make, as that towel warmer could fall by the wayside if you insist on the whirlpool tub and steam shower. The more you know about the pricing of these items, the better your chances are of getting the most value out of your purchase.

Make it the right room for you

Since the last time that room was done, a lot has changed. Cool products, stylish design trends and more can make time spent in the bathroom both more comfortable and more enjoyable. Review some of these ideas and decide what might work well for you.

Be smart about your contractor

This job is going to cost a lot, take awhile, and make things tough around your house. Hiring the right person can minimize the impact of this job on your family and your wallet. Here are some tips from the Federal Trade Commission on finding good contractors.

Plan ahead

Planning to sell your home? Use neutral tones and be conservative about your bath, shower, toilet and sink. Prospective buyers won’t want your style, even if you think it’s great. They’ll want to see a relatively blank canvas on which they can make their own mark, or a house or room they can easily envision themselves in. On the other hand, if you intend to stay awhile, make sure your design decisions are something you will enjoy for a long time.

Green is good

There are numerous options for making your bathroom remodel more energy efficient. The biggest resource-burner in a bathroom will always be your water usage. You can save thousands of gallons of water a year by installing a low-flow toilet or a toilet with dual-flow options so you can choose when you need a little extra water to get the job done. You can also install low-flow shower heads and faucets in the sink to minimize your water usage.

For heating and cooling purposes, consider adding radiant heat to your flooring. In many cases, this heat source can replace your furnace as the primary method of warming the room. Once you’re efficiently heating the room, make sure to trap as much of that heat as possible by properly insulating the walls and installing the most energy-efficient windows possible!

For a few more ideas, check out these tips from CalFinder.

Photo courtesy of urbaneapts on Flickr

With a faltering economy and a slow-recovering housing market, more and more homeowners are choosing to upgrade their existing homes rather than make a move to larger or newer home. Whether they’re trying to increase the value or make the home more livable, one sure fix for a homeowner is a new or renovated kitchen.

Your kitchen is the centerpiece of your home. It’s the room that sees the most traffic and, more often than not, becomes the gathering ground for your family and friends. With that in mind, here are a few tips for planning and smooth and effective kitchen remodeling project.

Plan a budget and stick to it

You should always be aware of the potential return on investment of your kitchen project. No other project in your home will be as effective when it comes to adding value, but if you let things get out of hand, you will be losing money fast. Do some research on the big-ticket items like flooring, cabinets, countertops, windows and appliances.

You might have to make some decisions on where your “luxury” dollars where be spent and where you might have to make some sacrifices. The folks at HGTV have some great ideas here about how to manage your money.

Be thorough in the design process

Hire a designer if you’re not sure of how the whole thing should be put together. Elements to consider include lighting, where your appliances and water service will be located, layout of the cabinets and countertops, energy efficiency in heating and insulation, window treatments and the natural lighting of the room. Since your kitchen was last done, there have been huge advances in energy efficiency and other design elements. Take advantage of these advances to make your kitchen easier on your wallet in the long run.

Who’s going to do the work?

Most homeowners will choose to work with a contractor who has experience in kitchen remodeling, who will therefore have a list of subcontractors he or she uses and works well with. If you make the right choice in a contractor, you should end up with a well-oiled machine that works efficiently enough to get your job done on time and on budget.

Never, ever get just one bid on the job from one contractor. Do your due diligence to avoid trouble down the road. Here is the best advice we can find for you on hiring a contractor, courtesy of your federal government, no less!

Go green! Be energy efficient!

There is no shortage of ways to be energy efficient and be a green consumer when remodeling a kitchen. Start with windows and insulation. Depending on the age of your home, your level of insulation in the walls and windows can probably stand to be seriously upgraded. Your contractor will likely take care of the insulation issue for you, and there are plenty of resources for you to use when it comes to choosing a window. Keep in mind that you won’t have to sacrifice design when it comes to window efficiency, so have a little fun and make your windows pop!

When it comes to appliances, you can also have a little fun. There are seemingly endless design and functionality options with kitchen appliances, and today most of them are designed for energy efficiency in mind. One word of warning: Kitchen appliances can be real budget-busters, so keep an eye on the bottom line when you’re choosing your oven, stove and refrigerator.

One other tip for energy efficiency: Consider a heating system under your floor treatment. Whether you choose vinyl, tile, or wood, a heated floor can save you money and feels great on a cold winter morning!

The finishing touches: Cabinets, countertops and flooring

Like every choice you’ve made, the options for these final touches are almost limitless. In fact, there are far too many to mention here, so take a look at a couple of these links to help you come up with some ideas:

• http://www.calfinder.com/library/kitchen/cabinet/material
• http://www.calfinder.com/library/kitchen/countertops
• http://www.calfinder.com/ideas/kitchen/kitchen-flooring

Patience is a virtue

Unless there are TV cameras around, a kitchen remodel is almost never finished overnight. There will be dust and there may not be running water. You might have a microwave but not a conventional oven. You’ll have to deal with your home being turned upside down, but if you keep your eyes on the prize, stay on budget, and keep your contractor moving to stay on time, you’ll make it through and come out on the other side with a beautiful, functional, and energy efficient kitchen that you and your family will enjoy for years to come!

Photo courtesy of Susan Serra, CKD

As the heart of the home, the kitchen is arguably the most-loved and used room in the house. When it looks outdated or the traffic flow becomes inefficient, most homeowners choose to remodel. Traditionally, the process includes pricing cabinetry, choosing the flooring and picking out the perfect appliances.

More and more homeowners, however, are looking at ways to update the kitchen and remodel in a green way. It makes sense: Not only can you choose green kitchen materials, but you also have the chance to up your home’s energy efficiency with new appliances. Cathy at Olio United chose to make green remodeling a priority in her kitchen re-do.

Here’s how it looked before and after:

Beautiful! One of the best parts is that Cathy chose to support local business. Her tile is from Portland-based Stardust Glass and she used Ecohaus and Canopy Home, also local businesses, to find sustainable materials.

If you are considering remodeling your kitchen, and want to go green, check out Green Home Guide’s Tips for Efficient Kitchen Space. There are some things you can do to make your kitchen remodel efficient, energy and otherwise:

• Think about what you really need, not what advertising tells you that you need.
• Not only do lighter-colored cabinets and counter tops make the kitchen feel spacious, they also lessen the need for more lighting, saving electricity.
• Don’t forget the windows! Daylight is a free light source, and it also helps to make the kitchen feel larger.

Happy remodeling!

Photos courtesy of Olio United.

This classic San Francisco row house was transformed from an old, drab house into a light-filled modern home by Jonathan Feldman of Feldman Architecture in San Francisco. The goal was to transform the confined feeling of the house into an airy, spacious place to live.

In order to do this, Feldman had to make some changes, including moving the living spaces to the top floor, where the light is best. Almost all walls that could be removed were, to create a more open floor plan. Windows were added along the length of the house to let daylight flood in.

The owners of the house wanted to take advantage of the renovation to make the house as green as possible. A solar-powered radiant heat system, a large photo-volatic roof array and recycled materials for insulation, flooring, cabinets and countertops were added. Marvin’s double-paned clad casements and Ultimate Double Hungs with Low E II coatings also help Pierce House be energy-efficient. To add even more “green-ness” Feldman used a portion of the upper floor for a roof top garden.

Pierce House is now a true San Francisco treat! For more information, visit the myMarvin Architect’s Challenge page.

Major renovations can strain domestic relations; here are four steps to keep the union happy

My friends Mike and Judy are, to me, the ideal couple for tackling home renovation. They’re ambitious, able to focus on the goal rather than griping about the gathering heap of rubble around them, and eager to pitch in together to do some of the work themselves. As a result, their house looks great, but what is most remarkable is that they actually seem to thrive on the projects they undertake.

Not everyone is so well suited to living through construction projects, of course. Mention “home renovation” to the average divorce lawyer, for instance, and a knowing smile will reveal everything they know about the havoc that these projects can create — not just to the home but to the family that lives there.

Too often we focus on the pretty pictures in the magazine that we want for ourselves and forget that the process of achieving it can be a long slog through the construction wilderness. There are delays as well as cost overruns. And that mess! Even with the neatest contractors working in your home, you’ll find yourself sweeping plaster dust and sawdust night after night, and wondering if things wouldn’t have been better off left unrenovated.

Despite the difficulties, I believe there are four essential steps that can help minimize the impact of any construction project. They have served me (and my wife, Mary Beth) well through more 50 renovation projects of our own.

Know what you’re getting into. Let’s say you want a new kitchen. Sounds simple, right? Most people flip through some magazines to choose cabinets and backsplashes, and consider their work done. But take a close look at what the kitchen renovation will involve: weeks and perhaps even months of a ripped up room in the center of your home. How will you cook and get everyone ready in the morning? Where will you store food, or feed the dog, or leave refrigerator messages? If you answer these questions in advance, and make a plan to handle them, you’ll be better prepared to weather the renovation storm. In this case, building a temporary kitchen in another part of the house to sustain you through the renovation may be the best solution.

Plan your finances in advance. Mess and inconvenience are bad enough, but when an extra digit suddenly appears in the running total, that’s when things become even worse. Finances rank as one of the top causes of family discord, as everyone knows first-hand, but these can become even more extreme when combined with renovations. The result can be a project that either grows or consumes the entire family budget or a project that is left in a perpetual state of non-completion because there’s no money to pay for it. The way to avoid this is to create a real budget for the project, based on numbers a contractor tells you and not numbers that you dream up yourself. Then, add 15 to 20 percent as a buffer against any cost overruns.

Choose the right contractor. This is probably the single most important component to a successful renovation, as well as domestic harmony. Too often, the choice is based on cost alone. And while everyone likes a bargain — especially me — the problem is that a poor contractor will most likely cause additional problems, such as delays, shoddy workmanship, and cost overruns. Instead, ask friends and family for recommendations, visit a few places the contractor has worked on, and be prepared to pay — and to wait — for the right workers.

Create a safe haven. This is a place where nothing is being touched. An oasis from the storm, a place where you can enter free of dust and debris and with a door to close. During one renovation of a home, our master bedroom was completed and the rest of the house was torn apart. Many a morning would come when my wife did not want to go through that door. Trust me; it works to keep everyone’s sanity in check.

A renovation can be a great experience, and by following these steps you can help guarantee that when it’s over your house-as well as your family life-will be a thing of beauty.

Photo courtesy of jaygoldman via Flickr

The Home Know-It-All, a site that covers all things home improvement, recently published a piece full of advice for anyone looking to save some money on a remodel or renovation project by acting as your own general contractor.

Highlights from the post:

Do your homework.
Study up and be prepared. Know what lies ahead…

Expect the unexpected.
…but understand that you’ll never be able to prepare for every potential hurdle. How will you deal with obstacles?

Find experienced subcontractors.
Just because you’re overseeing the project doesn’t mean you’re doing every bit of the work.

Get help.
General contractors cost money, but they bring experience to the table. If you’re new to the game, don’t shy away from helpful resources that can make your life a lot easier.

Of course, that’s just an overview of the advice. Be sure to check out the original post, and follow the links there for even more tips and advice.

Photo courtesy of jreed on Flickr

Two of our friends over at do-it-yourself home-improvement community Curbly.com — the DIY Maven and Mod Home Ec Teacher (who’s also a columnist for the Indianapolis Star) — shared some great information recently on bathroom remodels.

First, we have a collection of beautiful photos from a series of nice refinished bathrooms, which should serve as some quality inspiration for folks considering bathroom overhauls of their own. You can find more in the original post at interior design blog Cocozy.

Next, let’s take a peek at some before and after photos of a bathroom remodel. This isn’t a big, expensive project. This was done by the two homeowners, who even designed and built the pieces within the bathroom.

Think you’re not skilled or creative enough to design and build your own pieces? Well, you don’t need to be a design guru to try it yourself:

We based our design [for the vanity and mirror] on one we found in a local big box store. Their version was constructed rather poorly and not out of real wood either! We did like the marble vanity top and bowl sink, however, which were paired up with the store-bought version.

As the blogger known as the Remodeling Guy recently wrote, there’s great reward in taking the time to develop even some basic do-it-yourself skills.

Photo courtesy of DIY Maven at Curbly.com