The new cabinetry for our flip has been ready and waiting for almost two weeks now – can you believe it?  I can’t – I mean, we only closed on the flip 15 days ago!

You might be asking why the cabinets are ready so ridiculously early.  Well, in all honesty, this is exactly where we want to be – you see, timing is everything when it comes to flipping houses.  They key is to have everything timed and organized so that all of your materials (like cabinets, appliances, tile, lighting fixtures, etc.) are waiting on you, rather than you waiting on them to be ready.  Time is money, people!  And the only way to make that happen is to make lots of decisions, and to make them early.

For example, we had to make each of these decisions before we closed on the flip and, in some cases, before we even put an offer in on the house:

• Were we going to change the layout in the kitchen, or leave it the same? This decision was made right off the bat, before we made an offer – we had to make sure that we knew exactly what we were going to do with the space so that demo could go smoothly – we didn’t want someone to demo a wall or move a gas line that we actually needed.  It’s the same story with the master bath.  Ultimately, we kept the layout of both rooms the same, with a few minor tweaks – we created a half wall for a breakfast bar between the kitchen and the den and moved the fridge over to that wall, and we stole a bit of the closet in the master bedroom to make a larger master shower.  Not huge changes, but significant enough so that everybody needed to be on the same page from the get go.
• What appliances were we going to choose? This definitely sounds like a detail that could be left until the end, but when you’re having custom cabinetry built you want to make sure that the cabinets fit around the appliances like a glove.  Because of that, we went appliance shopping weeks ago and settled on the Euro-series of stainless steel appliances by Jenn-Air.  Our decision was actually made relatively quickly, because Jenn-Air is pretty much the only mid-level manufacturer that makes a gas range with a built-in downdraft.  We quickly learned that we needed a range with a downdraft because the range is in the peninsula that separates the kitchen from the den – we didn’t want a big range hood blocking the view but we still needed ventilation, so a downdraft was the only way to go.  Sometimes your decisions are just made for you!  (And I’ll tell you more about the great deal we got on our appliances later . . . )

• What did we want the cabinets to look like? We met with our cabinet guy, worrying that we were going to have to get the most plain-looking cabinets ever created to stay within our budget.  Not so!!!  We were pleasantly surprised that all of his cabinet doors were priced the same, no matter how fancy or intricate the design, as long as he already had a template for the design and it could be created with a single pass of his machine.  We were thrilled because we got to choose cabinet doors that are almost identical to the ones in our kitchen, which we absolutely love:

Here’s a close-up so you can see the detail on both the frame and the inset – I’m a sucker for some detailing!  The cabinets in the flip will virtually the same, except for some fluting that we had added in various places around our kitchen.

Now that the cabinets are ready to go, we should probably pick out some countertops, right?  We’re off to see the granite and tile guys today, and I’ll fill you in on all the fun later.  Yay, I’m excited – this is all the fun stuff!!  Until then, we’d love to hear what brand of appliances you guys have in your kitchens – we have Kenmore Elite in our own home, and Jenn-Air will be in the flip.  Do you guys like your appliances, or wish you had made a different choice?  Dish the dirt!

Don’t forget to leave a comment on any post through Monday, June 22, for a chance to win a ton of awesome products from Gorilla Glue in the IGTBH Gnarly Giveaway!!!  More details about the Gnarly Giveaway can be found here.

Image courtesy of Jenn-Air.