Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Kitchen remodel

Wood cabinets are the only natural materials I want in a kitchen.
We cook in ours, and even though it's how people enter our home,
eye appeal doesn't mean Schmitt.

It doesn't have to be ugly, but function is number 1.

Countertop. Stains vs heat? It's easy to avoid burning a "plastic". Stains in natural materials
happen by accident. Basically unavoidable.

Flooring? You use water in the kitchen, spills will happen. And they won't all be clean water.
Sinks, dishwashers, and refrigerators can leak over time. What deals with that?


I would love to have a beautiful kitchen to show off when you make appetizers.

And an ugly full commercial one I could hose clean for real cooking.

One just needs to balance it.

LVT flooring with the thickest mil wear layer you can get or Hardwood. Quartzite tops, maybe granite or even soapstone if you like the look and not afraid of maintaining it..
Cabinets in out area, if you go mid to high quality, custom are no more than factory. I'd go to a good cabinet shop and spend the money for high quality hinges and drawer slides. Lots of Chinese box cabinets coming over in flats and smacked together over here. Beware of that garbage.

We went with quartz countertops. Quartz doesn't have to be re-sealed every six months the way granite does. It's actually a manmade product, so it doesn't have imperfections like hidden cracks. What ever you get, insist on having a built-in drainboard in the countertop by the sink. They mill one into granite, and cut a slab out of quartz, then tilt the slab and glue it in.

We also went with stainless steel tile for our backsplash. It's a booger to work with, but great looking and dead simple to clean. Our flooring is solid walnut in most of the upstairs (kitchen, hallways, entrance, and around the outer 36" of the living/dining area.) Spendy but gorgeous.

For the floor look no farther than the tile square size Armstrong Luxury Vinyl. We have that at home and love it. Warmer than tile, softer to walk on, no grout lines, looks just like tile, easy to clean, no dog toenail scratches like wood or laminate, more forgiving to drop dishes on. We have tile in the house in Florida and just got a grout cleaning estimate of $1,500. and grout lines do get dirty and stain in the traffic areas. I have Corian counter tops at two places and they scratch and stain and discolor if you use a bleach product on them. We have granite counter tops at the house and down here and it chips, stains and needs to be sealed. Drop a china dish on it and the dish about explodes. The wife likes high definition Formica for a center island because it is lighter and we didn't need to reinforce the basement to help support it. It looks just like granite and most people think that it is. Moen faucets for their lifetime guarantee.

what was your sq ft price installed on that vinyl?

We don't know because we bought the house with it in already and it wasn't until after we were in the place that we realized that it WASN'T tile. No comparison and the wife would trade the tile even up to get that Armstrong Luxury Vinyl in our other places. I bring up those dog nail scratches because my step-son was a building contractor and you wouldn't believe how that laminated wood floor got scratched up by their dogs.

We recently remodeled a kitchen, we went with quartz for the countertops, sinks, backsplashes, (didn't replace flooring, it's stone) refinished cabinets, painted and replaced all appliances with KitchenAid. Looks great, happy with it. The bad news is it cost way more than $20,000. Good luck.

Our new home has quartz counter tops, as stated above it is pretty much maintenance free.
We also didn’t go with tile floors as we had them in a previous house and didn’t care for them after living there a few years.
We have some sort of wood laminate that looks real.
I would also look at an undermount sink, they are great.

Install on floors vary widely by region, Florida is 1.25. North Dakota 2.65. In northern Illinois 2.00. The retailer adds 35 to 50percent on top of that. That's for lvt/lvp.

We put granite on our counter tops.Hate it. Drop anything on it and it breaks.Have to reseal it about twice a year.Either new or old cabinets,you have to have them within 1/8" of level.

When we did it ,we put a Kitchen Aid gas stove top and a Kitchen Aid electric oven..The oven has been a PIA. Look at reviews on Kitchen Aid.Crappy products/Replaced the glass door that cracked, just replaced the blower fan, replaced the thermostat three times, replaced the control circuit board. So far the repairs have now exceeded the original cost.Only reason we have not replaced the whole thing is it will take re-plumbing of gas and rerouting of electric service

There are some vinyl looking strips that look like wood flooring. Very attractive and hold up very well. My consider that. That's what we are going to so when we remodel.

Kitchen's are bigger holes than boats to throw money into.

Luxury Vinyl tile or plank is a good looking and durable flooring option that is for sure an upgrade over vinyl....without some of the negatives of hardwood in the kitchen. Quartz tops are more durable, non porous (don’t harbor bacteria) and more stain resistant than granite, but not quite as heat resistant as granite is.

Quartz is also able to have a hot pan put on it without discoloring it.
I don’t do that but it is an option.

Wife does like the granite for cooling homemade cookies. Trouble is it will do the same thing sucking the heat right out of your cup of coffee too.

Our countertops are all 'butcher block' maple. I love them.

Love the look of butcher block tops, especially with the right cabinet color

I been doing lots of LVP (laminate vinyl plank). Finishing up a 1800 sft job in a house mon. I get a 1.50 a sft labor here.I'm also putting in 600 lft of baseboards at a dollar a ft. Any prep/floating/ tear out is extra, i had to bust out about 200 sft of ceramic tile on this job plus some floating.

Another thing with LVP is its easy to install you could watch a you tube video and do it yourself.

Wife and I have bought 3 houses since 2009. First thing we do is put granite in. I like the look and the ability to put hot pans on it. Maintenance isn’t that bad. We clean up messes as they happen.

Flooring, I like wood. Current is the old standard narrow red oak. I like the look of hand scraped hickory. But won’t drop the coin to redo our whole house in it.
Or wood look tile. Currently laying 6x36 wood look in our basement. Have been for a year....

Next project is wood in the three bedrooms, thrn we will have eliminated all carpet. Hooray.