3 years ago
We knew our small and boring 1980s kitchen needed ...
We knew our small and boring 1980s kitchen needed an update when we bought our 1920s expanded ranch-style house in 1994, but financing a mortgage and raising kids were our top priorities. Once we paid off the mortgage and college tuitions this year, we decided to update, and Alure was there every step of the way.
Kitchen and bath specialist Rich Reese walked us through design plans and the daunting selection of materials in the East Meadow showroom, then continued to e-mail us more mockup designs until we agreed on a style. We opted to keep our existing stainless appliances, as they had all been replaced within the last 5 years. We contracted Alure to gut the kitchen, open up the narrow 3-foot doorway (into the dining room) to an open-feel 6-foot wide space, and install new quartz countertops that resemble marble, textured ceramic flooring, and painted, soft-close Waypoint cabinets. Without changing the footprint, they would move the refrigerator from an awkward placement in front of the mudroom door to the opposite wall, install an outdoor vent for the oven/microwave (no more strong smells when cooking fish or steak!), replace a 6-foot baseboard heating with a small 2-foot vented heating duct on one side, and add tons of cabinetry and drawers including Lazy Susans, convenient pullout dual-garbage cans, and a tip out tray for sponges. They would also add flush-mounted lighting to the ceiling and underneath the cabinets.
Project manager Stan Szlamka visited us several days before the job was to start with a calendar in hand, detailing what would be done on each of the 10 days, and then gave us a reminder call the day before and several times during. Rich even contacted us a couple of times to ensure things were going as planned. First day, the demolition crew began and finished so quickly. Subsequently, the carpenters, framers, and electricians arrived, each on their appointed days. There were days that the plumbing schedule went awry, but all in all, there were no great surprises when they opened up walls in our 90+-year-old home, which has been notorious for odd infrastructure problems. Painting was left for us to do.
Alure promised us a 10-business-day kitchen and it took a few days extra (mostly because of a missing dishwasher part), but oh, what a difference! Our 23-year-old son who never gets excited about home improvements walks into the room every day and says, I love this kitchen. Four of us can comfortably be in the room at the same time, whereas before, two people would bump into each other. Again, we didn t change the square footage: Rich showed us that by reconfiguring the space and opening up the doorway, the kitchen would feel larger and ultimately, work better for our needs. He was absolutely right! Now, the adjoining dining room feels larger, and we didn t even contract Alure to do anything to it. We are now the proud owners of a gorgeous, contemporary kitchen we ve always seen on home improvement shows.
Thank you, Alure!