Kitchen Remodeling

A kitchen is the most demanding room in a remodel because everything meets there. Cabinets have to be level to the floor, the floor has to be level to the slab, and the slab under a central Oklahoma house moves. Red clay expands when it takes on water and shrinks when it dries, and over twenty or thirty years that movement shows up as a cabinet run that has drifted out of level and doors that no longer sit flush. We shim and scribe to the room as it is today rather than assuming the floor is flat.

The other constraint is the housing stock. Ranch homes across Warr Acres, Bethany, The Village and Del City were built in the 1950s and 1960s with the kitchen closed off from the dining room by a wall that is frequently load bearing. Opening that wall is the single change that transforms those houses, and it is a framing job with a header and a real load path, not a demolition job. We work out what the wall is carrying before anything comes down.

Newer construction in Edmond, Yukon and Mustang has the opposite problem. The layout is already open and the finishes are builder grade, so the work is replacement rather than reconfiguration: better cabinets, a real countertop, a backsplash and lighting that was value engineered out of the original build.