Kitchen Planning Continues: Decision Overload

When I approach a problem, I like to break it down into its fundamentals. Don’t look at writing a book as tackling a 100,000 word problem. Look at it as 100 different 1,000 word goals, and suddenly it’s much more attainable. That’s a process that has served me well over the years, but it’s one that’s being severely tested by my plans to renovate the kitchen.

The basic problem is that there are just too many decisions for me to process at once, especially since I like to find The One Best Answer to each problem. If I want to fly to Orlando, I do research to find the best flight to take me there, accommodating for price, time, comfort, and convenience. That’s a problem with a solution. Kitchens are problems with solutions as well. But there are so many of those individual problems . . .

Case in point: Denisa and I want new cabinets, but we don’t want to break the bank to get them. So to figure out what the “best cabinets” for us are, we have to balance cost, materials, colors, design, and construction. But each one of those breaks down into further decisions. I could have someone come and make custom cabinets. It would be expensive. But even then, I’d have to decide what I want them to look like, where they should go, what should be inside them, etc.

Right now, I’m looking at using Barker Cabinets. They’re a company out of Oregon that makes ready-to-assemble (RTA) cabinets out of really solid materials. I’ll know exactly what I’m getting with them, and the cost is cheaper than custom made, but more expensive than other RTA cabinets (of questionable quality). But even having made that decision, I still need to tackle color, size, function, and the like.

It’s tempting to just throw my hands up and say, “I want cabinets. I don’t care what they look like. I just want ones that work.” But that’s not going to get me what I really want in the long run, so instead I just have to bite the bullet and take the time to churn through the decisions, one by one. Still, some of the decisions get to be so nitty gritty. There are options for what sort of hinges your cabinets have. Soft close? Do I want the doors to be pure maple, or maple frames with MDF centers? Do I want toe kicks that are recessed or flush?

And this is just for cabinets! I have to do the same process for countertops, appliances, electrical outlay, flooring, and more?

Thank goodness I’m starting this well in advance . . .

Anyone else out there handle a kitchen renovation on your own? How did you wrangle all the countless details into something manageable?

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