apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

i work at an architectural firm in norfolk va and have known some interns to help people on the side/weekends to plan small projects like this. if you can throw em a few bucks, it helps them practice & add to their portfolio of drawings. i would ask around your area, like call a school with a drafting/arch program or ask around. an interior design intern could help too.

I recently renovated my kitchen with custom cabinets, in order to visualize the space i used the ikea kitchen planning software. in my experience i found the basic ikea cabinets to be a common dimension equal or close to equal to the standard cabinet sizes. you might try it since it's free and not too difficult to use, it will allow you to visualize your space in 3D. the only thing it won't accomidate is no-square corners (which i don't think you have from the photos). good luck, if all else fails post on Craigs or follow rstrtz's advice.

have you tried the Ikea kitchen planner? It's pretty adaptable and user-friendly.

I dont think you can put enough value on a tape measure, c pencil, a ruler, and a piece of paper. It may not help you get the perfect visualization of what the kitchen will look like in the end, but it will help you to decide within reason what you are expecting to get out of your renovation. Collect as many images as possible of kitchens that you like or like elements of and show them to your carpenter in an organized fashion, laying out exactly what you are looking for. And lastly ask you carpenter to show you a portfolio or work. Choose someone whose aesthetic choices line up with your own design sense and I'm sure you will feel more comfortable leaving all of the unresolved details in capable hands.

We went with an independent (i.e., non-affiliated) kitchen designer. It was the best money we spent on our renovation, and very reasonable. I forget how much it came in at, but it was around $600 (and we moved a couple of walls and dealt with an exterior door).

A good kitchen planner can save you money, stress and confusion, and help you come up with things that never would have occurred to you.

Our planner then worked with the carpenters too (and when they made a mistake, had them fix it).

I am a kitchen and bath designer and about a year ago, I started playing around with Google's Sketch Up to supplement the usual drawing software I use every day. Sketch Up is amazing, full-color, 3D, all the bells and whistles. Best of all, there's a FREE version available for download on Google's home page. The learning curve on it may be pretty steep if you're not used to rendering software, but it's worth the effort to learn how to use it. I use it all the time and encourage clients to play around with it to help them understand the renovation process a little better. Get thee to Google!

i completely disagree with the advice to use the ikea kitchen planner. my husband and i have a weirdly shaped small kitchen. it appears like most of our cabinets were altered in someway by the builder when they were installed in the 80s. every single time we would attempt use the ikea kitchen planner, we wanted to tear our hair out. *nothing* fits. ikea does not enough odd sized cabinets in its collection for people with "weird" cabinets/kitchens/layouts like us (and i'm assuming this poster).

we actually had the best luck going to home depot with a contractor. between the contractor and the creativity/knowledge of the kitchen designer at home depot, they were able to draw up a good, workable kitchen plan from the kraftmaid cabinet line. (for full disclosure, the contractor and the cabinets ended up being way out of our price range and we decided not to get new cabinets after all that! but the kitchen would have been gorgeous! :) )

I would agree with both staintpetpaul and gretchenalexis (she is my wife, after all. ;) ). If you want to do some DIY planning, SketchUp is great. However, the tools that Home Depot and Lowes have are going to be a lot more specific to a kitchen and allow you to setup basic cabinets very quickly. I think SketchUp is great for laying out a floorplan or something incredibly custom, but a kitchen design tool is probably best for designing a kitchen.

I second the Ikea planner and if you're stumped go to Ikeafans and post the dimensions of your room (even if it's odd, I've seen them design triangular kitchens and all types of odd shapes) and let the ladies there help come up with a plan. It can be done!

I'm an architect. Recently I consulted with a friend who had purchased about $30k worth of cabinets through a kitchen designer. I looked at their plans, which were beautiful, and oooh'd and ahh'd over the 3d renderings. All that was left was to build the thing. Unfortunately, the kitchen designer failed to take into account some of the existing window sill heights -- the cabinets actually ran right in front of them! I recommended that the windows be replaced with shorter units, thus raising the sill heights and allowing for the already-purchased cabinets.

Moral of the story, don't get swayed by pretty pictures. Make sure all of the dimensions work prior to ordering the cabinets. A contractor/builder can help you with this.

Even with a custom kitchen you're going to find that the vast majority of your cabinets are still standard sizes. Any basic kitchen design program is a good reference guide for dimensions and I for one second the suggestion to use a pencil, ruler and some draft paper. Everything you do is still just basic planning before an expert takes over and a ruler is a lot easier to use than some of the more advanced kitchen design programs.

Wow! Exciting project! I second katalyst on this one ... my father was a carpenter, and saw oodles of money fly out the door when folks tried to DIY kitchen design. There's just no substitute for years of experience. Think about what you're spending on the remodel (thousands!) and what a comparatively small price it is to hire a designer ($500-600) who will:
1) Be more resourceful than you can be about ways to save money
2) Be wily about how to tackle the unique challenges of your custom kitchen
3) Be able to answer design/function/technical questions you don't even know to ask!
Good luck!

why does the header say "bathroom udpates"?

Thanks to everybody! We live in a very remote enclave of south-central Virginia, and no ASID designers are willing to drive out here, although I recently heard about one in a nearby college town (with no drafting/arch school, sadly). I'll try out the online tools suggested, as well as put measuring tape, pencil & paper to use.