Consider hiring professional home improvement services to make your kitchen and bathrooms more efficient and stop high energy bills. These experts in home remodeling can refocus your kitchen and bathrooms with form and functionality in mind. The two most essential areas, besides the bedroom, are the kitchen and bathroom. The kitchen, for one, is where many memorable meals are prepared and intimate conversations are held. Conversely, the bathroom is your home spa, where you retreat to recharge and unwind. Making your kitchen and bathrooms more efficient and comfortable is crucial, and here’s how you can do that.
1. Remodel The Kitchen
If getting around in this critical area of your house seems more or less like a scavenger hunt, upgrade it to make it more functional. Order hates clutter, and a disorganized kitchen could demotivate the most experienced chef, let alone someone looking for an excuse to order out. A functional kitchen doesn’t only have the right tools, cutlery, and implements. It should also be organized to make finding these items as effortless as possible.
Before upgrading your kitchen, consider how you and your family use it. This must be the crux of everything you do here. Which part of your kitchen is most frequently used? And how much traffic does it receive daily? To organize your kitchen around functionality, engage in a mental discourse of how you use it. While this stage of your kitchen remodel may not seem crucial, it sets the tone for what happens next.
Organizing anything works best from a clean slate, and a kitchen remodel is no exception. Pull everything apart and leave the space empty. Next, clean the drawers, cabinets, and shelves, and ensure the table and countertops are safely stored away. Replace whatever needs to be replaced, such as drawer and shelf liners. If something needs to be repaired, do it.
2. Get Rid Of Kitchen Items You No Longer Need
Now that your kitchen is spread out before you, it’s time to decide what to keep or toss away. Label four containers based on what you wish to do with the items before you. One should be labeled ‘Donate,’ another ‘Keep,’ and yet another ‘Recycle.’ Label the last one, ‘Return to Proper Spot.’
Next, sort all the items based on their function. For instance, keep all bakeware, appliances, and to-go cups together. Do this for all the items in your kitchen. This exercise is critical as it helps you compare items and only keep the best. A great rule of thumb for items you should donate is to toss anything that’s broken or has a part or two missing or anything that’s in duplicate. Consider moving some rarely used items to areas in your kitchen you hardly use.
3. Restore Your Kitchen
Now that everything is sorted, whatever you don’t need is donated, and the rarely used items are set aside, the next step is to put your kitchen together again, but this time more strategically than previously. Place daily-use glasses and dishes close to the dishwasher so that you can unload them quickly. Next, based on your daily routines, zone your kitchen to have a coffee station, requiring filters, mugs, and coffee beans close to the coffee maker. The rest is as easy as placing every item where it’s used. For instance, place dish towels within easy reach of the sink and pans and pots not too far from the stove.
Next, ensure that items you often access are stored in top drawers or shelves within easy arm’s reach. Remember the rarely-used items we talked about? Store them elsewhere to free up space for items that require daily or routine use. For instance, your prized roasting pan is only used during the holidays, so it can go in the basement, attic, garage, or a closet you rarely open. Also, store away seasonal items, such as holiday decorations, outdoor cooking equipment, and camping gear. The goal is to keep anything you only use seasonally out of your kitchen.
Kitchen cabinets only carry a few items at a time and rarely require further organization. Use organizers in your drawers to separate your categories and avoid shifting items. Remember to optimize vertical space to ensure every inch of space is used. Use hooks or shallow racks inside pantry doors and cabinets to ensure every inch of space is used. Alternatively, mount a pot rack on the ceiling to free up cabinet space, and add magnet strips for storing knives and other utensils or for hanging paper towels.
4. Remodel Your Bathroom
There are many reasons one would want to upgrade, repair, or replace items in their bathroom. The overriding goal, however, should be to enhance efficiency in the bathroom. Besides ambiance and aesthetics, the goal should always be to make the kitchen and bathrooms more efficient. We dealt with kitchen remodeling, took everything down, and restored it. In bathroom renovations, seek to go beyond restoring bathroom cabinets and do a complete makeover that’ll make your bathroom look and feel new.
5. Beautiful, Energy Efficient Bathrooms
Remodeling a bathroom aims to balance form and function. First, you want a bathroom to be functional, but it’s also where you go to unwind; bare it all for some much-needed self-care after a hard day at work. It needs to be beautiful and comfortable as well. Kitchen and bathroom renovations are as crucial as roofing repairs or replacements.
While the latter may be a trifle more important, don’t stop at keeping the elements out. A comfortable bathroom has more to offer than you think. This is where you get to soak in and treat your tired muscles to a time of relaxation.
Energy efficiency options you can choose from include improving the lighting, ensuring the correct temperatures, and adjusting water pressure to desired levels. To make your bathroom more energy efficient, use low-flow showerheads and toilets. If these aren’t energy-efficient, replace them with low-flow varieties. This will translate into less water disappearing down the drains for no reason. The good thing about low-flow toilets and showerheads is that they don’t affect the water pressure, which is a great way to gain more efficiency without compromising comfort. Energy-efficient toilets can also apply lighter and heavier flushes depending on what must be flushed down the drain.
6. Use Extra Insulation
Insulation is the single most crucial bathroom renovation. Don’t just insulate the walls; install extra insulation around water pipes, and here’s why: heating water takes a lot of energy. If most of the heat is escaping through the pipes, water will take longer to heat, and as the water moves from the tanks to the faucets, more heat is lost. The solution? Foam pipe insulation conserves the heat by ensuring it doesn’t escape as the water travels through the pipes, saving you money.
The best time to add insulation is when carrying out large-scale bathroom renovations, as they involve drywall insulation. For the best efficiency, go for R-rated insulation, but that’s not all. Get a professional to do the job. You’ll understand why this is important later, but the most important reason is to ensure you don’t end up with damaged or mold-ridden insulation.
7. Lower Your Water Heater Temperatures
Much energy is lost during water heating, sometimes accounting for as much as a quarter of the total energy consumed in your home. Usually, the water heater regulates your water temperatures and keeps your tank at a constant 140 degrees, which is pretty high. You can, however, adjust your water to lower temperatures to cut back on energy consumption and reduce your energy utility bills. Besides, it’ll cost you nothing to make this adjustment.
8. Use Energy-Saving LED Lights
Small rooms are darker than other areas in your home. Consider using LED lights in these rooms as they reduce energy consumption and are brighter than your usual incandescent bulbs. Since the bathroom is one of the small spaces in your home, using LED lights here is clever as they last longer than their incandescent counterparts. They’re a significant investment with considerable savings in the long run.
You can also use motion detector lighting in your bathroom to enhance energy efficiency and save on electricity costs. Remembering to switch off lights is one of most homes’ notorious energy-consuming habits. Luckily, you don’t have to remember as long as you’ve installed motion detector lighting. The motion sensors periodically turn off lights, so you don’t have to, saving you the hassle and money.
9. Why Hire Professional Home Improvement Services
Whether your kitchen and bathroom renovations require custom home builders or general professional remodelers, you are better off working with professional home improvement services. Unless you know what you’re doing and can pull off a home remodeling DIY like an expert, let the professionals do it, even if the job only requires upgrading the bathroom cabinets or kitchen remodeling. Leave these tasks to professionals who can make your kitchen and bathrooms more efficient.
When hiring home improvement services to make your kitchen and bathrooms more efficient, start by briefing them about your expectations and the extent and scope of your project. Show them your current bathroom and kitchen layout and invite them to provide a professional perspective to improve form and function. Let them come up with a proposed floor plan that takes into consideration your budget and anticipated issues.
Look at the proposed plan in the context of the rest of your home to see if there’s a need to make structural changes. In the kitchen, the professionals will focus on your family’s lifestyle, but more importantly, its functional experience. The organization will also be at the design’s core, making the kitchen and bathroom stand out.
The professional would advise placing items in the kitchen and bathrooms to enhance traffic and workflow. They’ll also ensure the renovations don’t disrupt your home’s design integrity. For instance, making the kitchen and bathrooms more efficient doesn’t have to affect other installations, such as the alarm system.
10. Benefits of Hiring Professional Home Improvement Services
When you hire a professional home remodeler, you’ll sign a contract that includes everything from tools and labor costs, which means you won’t be required to spend vast amounts of money to buy tools that you might only use once in your quest to make your kitchen and bathrooms more efficient. To understand how much you’ll save by hiring a professional, list all the tools you’ll need to perform appliance repairs and the time it’ll take to carry out the enhancements.
Ultimately, you’ll find that hiring a professional home improvement company to do the work is more cost-effective and time-efficient. Just as you need roofing services to fix or replace a leaky roof, let professionals fix your kitchen and bathrooms to make them more efficient and functional. They do this daily and have the requisite experience and skills.
If quality workmanship and expertise are critical to making your kitchen and bathrooms more efficient, let the professionals do the work and leave you to focus on other priority areas of your life. They understand coding and compliance with applicable laws to keep you in good books with the local government. Since home improvement professionals handle a comprehensive range of projects, your every need will be met.
The same guys who will fix your bathrooms and kitchen could be the same ones you need for other services. For instance, you won’t have to source for deck builders or carpet installer as the same company will do the job for you if they are any good. They are your go-to source for every service you need to improve your home. And what’s the use of hiring a door company if this is part of what your home improvement service package comes with?
Professional remodelers are insured to take care of damage or injuries. If you’re doing the task yourself, these costs are on you. Besides, since they are professionals, they understand the importance of safety and will ensure the project meets all the safety standards and local government regulations and codes. The fact that they use appropriate equipment and tools means your project will be delivered on time and with precision. They come with advanced technology tools that not only make work more accessible but also more precise.
Hiring professional home improvement services can make your kitchen and bathrooms more efficient. One reason to renovate your kitchen or bathroom is to increase energy efficiency. This is your chance to introduce energy-saving upgrades with huge savings. It may be as simple as adding extra insulation to your piping, so less heat is lost between the tanks and the facets or overhauling your kitchen to make it more functional. Whatever you do, remember that doing it yourself may deceptively appear less expensive, but if you want a sure bet with the resulting time and cost savings, hire professionals to make your kitchen and bathrooms more efficient.
