3. You can expand the kitchen without busting the budget.<\/h4>\n
Unless your house was built within the last few decades, your kitchen is almost certainly undersized. If you\u2019re doing a major renovation (in other words, tearing things out and starting over), now is the time to expand the kitchen; here\u2019s how to do it affordably.<\/p>\n
- \n
- Steal space.<\/strong>\u00a0By repurposing square footage from an adjacent hallway or a no-longer-needed chimney, closet, or porch, you can expand your kitchen at perhaps half the per-square-foot costs of an addition. Exactly how much you\u2019ll pay depends on the project and location, but you might pay $100 to $300 per square foot for recapturing space vs. $200 to $400 for building new.<\/li>\n
- Open the floorplan<\/strong>. Even if you don\u2019t expand the kitchen at all, you can make it feel much bigger by taking down a wall and creating an open floorplan between the kitchen and adjacent dining, family, or living room. In the context of a renovation project, this may cost $1,000 to $6,000, depending on whether the wall is load-bearing or contains major plumbing or electrical lines.<\/li>\n
- Bump out.<\/strong>\u00a0If you need to expand, you may be able to add a two-foot extension along one whole side of the kitchen by hanging it off the house like a bay window rather than putting it on a foundation. That could save you several thousand bucks compared with a full-fledged addition.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
4. To cut costs, hold on to what works.<\/h4>\n
You can slash the price tag for any kitchen renovation by limiting how much of the old kitchen you replace. Keeping original windows can save you $500 to $1,000 per window; keeping the original wood floor hiding underneath all of those layers of linoleum and vinyl could save you $2,000. And simply keeping the plumbing fixtures and appliances in the same locations likely means you can reuse existing plumbing, saving you perhaps $200 to $500.<\/p>\n
5. Stay skin deep if you\u2019re moving anytime soon.<\/h4>\n
If you expect to put your house on the market within a decade, skip the $60,000 renovation and go for a cosmetic upgrade instead. You can have old cabinets painted for $1,000 to $5,000 or refaced with a new wood veneer and new doors and drawer fronts for some $5,000 to $7,000. A new faucet and fresh cabinet hardware can be yours for under $500, new lighting for $500 to $2,000, depending on how far you take it; even replacing Formica countertops with granite might cost less than $4,000.
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- Open the floorplan<\/strong>. Even if you don\u2019t expand the kitchen at all, you can make it feel much bigger by taking down a wall and creating an open floorplan between the kitchen and adjacent dining, family, or living room. In the context of a renovation project, this may cost $1,000 to $6,000, depending on whether the wall is load-bearing or contains major plumbing or electrical lines.<\/li>\n