Condominium Kitchen Renovated

Lots of details for a small kitchen

This is a kitchen renovation recently completed in Fairfield, Ca. It’s a condominium, so the square footage may be somewhat limited but the wow factor for the owners was huge.

We kept the existing cabinets, which were previously refinished by the owners using a Rustoleum cabinet refinish product. I must admit that I was fairly impressed with the looks and durability. I was a little uneasy at first about needing to tear out the existing tile countertops with no previous experience with this particular cabinet refinish product. I always use caution when removing tile countertops with intentions of reusing the cabinetry, it takes brute force combined with finesse to accomplish, and can end terribly if not done correctly. The last thing you want to have happen is damage to the cabinet boxes structurally, as well as any damage to the faces of doors and drawers. Happily, as usual when care is taken, there was no damage to the cabinets or the new finish.

There was about a 6″ ledge between the sink and pass through to the dining area. We lowered that down to cabinet height to make a smooth transition for the Quartz countertops to flow uninterrupted into the dining area. A deep under mount stainless sink fit the design nicely, backed up with noise reduction undercoating and one of the quietest garbage disposals readily available resulting in no real vibration through the sink that happens sometimes with the thinner gauge sinks when using the disposal. The Wave activated Moen kitchen faucet was a nice upgraded touch as well. Around the entire back splash area above the counter tops we used travertine 2″ square tile with an accent mosaic strip running about half way up through the whole length. The natural tile was sealed as it needs be be and urethane grout was installed, the advantage is easy cleaning stain resistant grout that never needs sealing.

We replaced the under cabinet fluorescent lighting with Juno ULL series LED lighting. These are lower profile than the fluorescent fixtures we replaced with an improvement in light quality. Some of the benefits of using LED lighting is eliminating the need to change bulbs, as well as very cool operating temperatures, and very low power consumption. Also the surface mount fluorescent ceiling fixture was replaced with recessed can lights also using LED lighting and trim.

Topped off with some higher end stainless steel appliances and this kitchen went from “yawn” to “wow”
Oh and, don’t want to forget the USB charging ports that were added for convenience in today’s modern world.