Help me plan a house update project

[krystee]

Hello! I want to have our house updated within the next year, but I am overwhelmed. I know great companies/referrals who do each of these things, but I have no idea what order to go in. Would it be better to hire a general remodeling company, or would it be more expensive? If I could do them individually, what order makes sense? I want to:

1. Replace all flooring on the first floor
2. Paint wood cabinets
3. Paint the whole first floor (including painting wood trim white)
4. Replace wood doors with white doors.
5. Replace countertops
6. Replace backsplash
7. Knock down a bank of upper cabinets and fix trim
8. Add recessed lighting

Also, we aren’t ready quite yet, but I would love to get an estimate to know how much we need to save. Is it severely wasting someone’s time to ask them to come out for a ballpark estimate? I imagine we’re about nine months out from being able to do this.

[Susie]

We've done basically everything except #5 and 7, one thing at a time, over a period of 5 or so years after we bought our house.  You don't need a contractor to deal with these separate tasks as subs (and flooring, counters, paint, etc. would indeed likely all be separate subs), I think you'd be unnecessarily spending money if you tried to go that route.  You can just deal with individual installers/pros as needed.  Many are readily DIY-able if you were so inclined, and most can be done as discrete tasks.

1. Replace all flooring on the first floor
You can just go to a flooring store and pick out flooring and have them install it.  If you are changing materials (e.g. tearing out carpet and replacing with HW, tile, etc.) you might need some work on baseboards, etc., so consider that when thinking about order of wall and trim painting.

2. Paint wood cabinets
You can hire a painter, or you can DIY.  It's pricey to hire out, or time consuming (but not particularly hard) to DIY.  I DIYed our kitchen cabinets, from honey oak to gray.  It's pretty much a standalone project.

3. Paint the whole first floor (including painting wood trim white)
I prefer to paint trim before walls, but I've done it both ways as life demanded.  Prep work is key, mine required sanding, wiping down, good primer, and then 3 coats of paint over the primer.  I'm almost done, I had the entire house to start with, and am now literally counting down the last few linear feet left that aren't white.

4. Replace wood doors with white doors.
This can mean a lot of things, and if you don't know what you mean, give this some thought.  First, many of the doors that you see that are white, ARE wood.  They're just painted vs. stained.  So before you rip yours out, what material are they?  Do you like the style?  Could you be happy with them if they were painted?  Or are they cheap and crappy and need to be replaced for reasons other than not being white?  Our house came with luan hollow core doors, which we replaced with solid pine 6 panel doors that we painted white.  I disliked their flimsiness, lack of panels, cheapness, as well as preferring white.  But there are a variety of materials you can choose from for new doors.  Solid, hollow, pine, maple, manufactured wood, etc., plus lots of different styles.  You'll also need to decide whether you want to buy slab doors or pre-hung.  Slab requires skill to hang the door, including trimming to the opening, sanding as needed for a nice close, routing for hinges, cutting the doorknob hole, but on the plus side, you don't have to take down trim to do it.  Prehung doors involve replacing the whole door frame.  Less fiddly, but this needs to be done before you go to all the work of painting trim around the doors because it'll all end up coming down.  Another consideration is that you may want to replace floors first, because if you are ripping out carpet and replacing with a flatter flooring, you want to avoid unnecessarily big gaps at the floor under doors.

5. Replace countertops
I would do this before the backsplash, maybe after painting cabinets but I don't think that's necessary.  It can be done separately from other tasks.

6. Replace backsplash
I would do this after the countertops, but otherwise it's pretty stand-alone.

7. Knock down a bank of upper cabinets and fix trim
This I haven't done before but is certainly severable from most of these other projects.

8. Add recessed lighting
I've done this in the family room and it had no real tie to any of the sorts of projects on your list.

[mccallister84]

You will pay more to have a GC oversee this and you definitely could just sub out all the parts yourself, but you’ll have to decide if it’s worth the hassle to you. We just sold a rental property where we had the floors replaced and the entire unit painted and honestly it was a bit of a nightmare for me just dealing with two contractors. This was in direct comparison to hiring a contracting company to finish more of our basement. Everything went really smoothly and it was nice just having one person to talk to. We have decided it’s worth it to us to spend the extra money.

We are doing a mini kitchen “facelift” - counter tops, painting cabinets, new sink and faucet, and new backsplash and they are quoting us around $8000. Painting the cabinets was only $700. We originally weren’t going to do it but when we found out the price we decided to do so.

[krystee]

Thanks, this is helpful! Floor pricing looks like it is more than I anticipated, so I think we’ll do the floors first with the chunk of money we have and then as we get enough for each individual thing after, we’ll do that thing.

What I really think I might need is a decorator to help me choose colors and floor and backsplash that all goes together, and then help me decorate the new room. I would love to have a few options shared with me after I share some inspiration photos nstead of having the entire internet to peruse through!

[penguingrrl]

I would personally paint the walls first then do the floors. But I’ve never hired professional painters and while I try to be careful, sometimes I get spots of paint on the floor despite my best efforts. When we bought our house we knew we were ripping the bedroom carpets out before moving in (there was hardwood underneath) so it was nice to not worry too hard about the drop cloths and know that if I ruined the floor it was going to the dumpster that week anyway.

[mrsukyankee]

Yup, paint first. So much easier when you don't have to worry about spills/mess. Then flooring and then I'd have someone in to do all the kitchen work who knows the order.

[winecat]

I'm in a kitchen cabinet painting FB group. Most people said to paint the cabinets first. Pros: You can adjust the cabinet color, if needed, after seeing the countertop in place. If any shimming needs to happen to make the new countertops level, that's done before you paint the cabinets and it'll all match. The cure time for the cabinets can delay the countertop installation.

If you like your door style/quality, I'd paint vs replacing.

[winecat]

In a fit of hating my carpet, I tore it out. And now I have a giant gap. I don't plan on putting it back so I agree with PP who said to wait to replace doors, if you're going to do that, until after you finalize the flooring.

[Roc A Bee]

I would do the wall painting first. That is usually cheap or a diy. Then I’d do the flooring. Save the door replacing for last.

I’d also do the kitchen things together - tear down cabinets, paint them, countertop then backslash.

[krystee]

Dec 29, 2020 19:10:54 GMT -5 winecat said:

I'm in a kitchen cabinet painting FB group. Most people said to paint the cabinets first. Pros: You can adjust the cabinet color, if needed, after seeing the countertop in place. If any shimming needs to happen to make the new countertops level, that's done before you paint the cabinets and it'll all match. The cure time for the cabinets can delay the countertop installation.

If you like your door style/quality, I'd paint vs replacing.

Do you mean paint them last, or am I misunderstanding?

[winecat]

Dec 29, 2020 22:06:07 GMT -5 krystee said:

Dec 29, 2020 19:10:54 GMT -5 winecat said:

I'm in a kitchen cabinet painting FB group. Most people said to paint the cabinets first. Pros: You can adjust the cabinet color, if needed, after seeing the countertop in place. If any shimming needs to happen to make the new countertops level, that's done before you paint the cabinets and it'll all match. The cure time for the cabinets can delay the countertop installation.

If you like your door style/quality, I'd paint vs replacing.

Do you mean paint them last, or am I misunderstanding?

Yes!  I edited my post and forgot to change that.  Yes, paint the cabinets last so you can see how the countertops look and test cabinet paint colors with them in place.