The Furnished Kitchen differentiates itself in the Denver marketplace by our unique consultative approach to remodeling kitchens. The owner, usually the husband and wife, are crucial participants in the design to conceptualize and approve a new kitchen construction project. The Furnished Kitchens’s budgetary process produces a kitchen our clients envisions at a price they expect. Our consultative approach consists of the following stages: discovery, education, budget, and quotation.
Discovery Stage
Typically, the kitchen is the center of the house for family and guests. The Furnished Kitchen creates cooking spaces that are intimate and engaging, but the skill comes with understanding what a customer wants for their kitchen. We clarify the design of the kitchen through a discovery process, starting with a meeting with the husband and wife decision-making team. We ask the following questions to get up to speed on what the owners are thinking about their new kitchen.
- What kitchen design do you have in mind?
- Are you just starting the process?
- Have you talked to neighbors or friends to get kitchen ideas and contractor references?
- Have you started to shop for materials for your kitchen? Cabinets, countertops, appliances, etc
- Have you hired a kitchen designer?
- Is this your forever home? If not, how long do you plan to stay in your current home?
Design
- What are the most critical features each owner wants in the new kitchen?
- Please describe your current kitchen. What do you like and don’t like about it?
- What features or results would you like to see to get the best outcome?
- What are your thoughts about appliances, cabinets, hard surfaces, and flooring?
Budget
- Have you established a budget?
- How can we help you create a budget for your kitchen remodeling project?
Education Stage
Our kitchen modeling approach is unique because of its project management focus. Exceptional project management is all about obtaining results and accountability. We take what we learned from the Discovery Stage and start educating the owner on how to complete a kitchen that they will value and love. The Furnished Kitchen strives for transparency, high customer satisfaction, and a finished kitchen result that meets their expectations.
The kitchen design process starts with defining where the owners want to cook. A well thought out workflow between the refrigerator, stove/oven, cabinetry, and countertop work area produces an enjoyable cooking experience. The next issue is style. Does the client want a modern or traditional look or an eclectic design that is a unique mix of the two? To help conceptualize the kitchen, we discuss the following design issues:
- Kitchen aesthetics and functionality
- Feel/comfort/flow
- Design enhancing the value and enjoyment of the home
- Storage at your fingertips
We encourage the customer to trust their visual senses to find a plan that meets their cooking needs and how they want the kitchen to fit into their home’s layout. The Furnished Kitchen asks them to visit showcase displays at appliance stores and go to Houzz and Pinterest to find pictures of kitchens they like. We encourage the client to collect their ideas in a scrapbook.
Budget Stage
Material selection accounts for 45 to 70 percent of the budget. The difficulty comes in making value judgments when pricing items like appliances, cabinetry, flooring, and countertops. Manufactures do the same with their entry, mid-range, and premium product lines by making material choices to achieve a particular price point. The options can be overwhelming. It is like going to a golf store to buy a putter. The golfer walks into the store, and there is a wall of a hundred putters. Where do you start?
The Furnished Kitchen’s value proposition comes into play here. We are an experienced kitchen remodeling contractor with many happy customers. We continuously educate ourselves about pricing, value, and quality of each component of a kitchen so we can make pertinent product recommendations. We provide a supplier list (Mitch’s list) to the owners and ask them to visit showrooms to select the appliances, cabinetry, flooring, and hard surfaces they want for their new kitchen. The Furnished Kitchen has cultivated great sources for our clients that offer value, wide choice, and great pricing. The client can also expect to be treated well by these vendors. We start with the large ticket items listed below:
- Appliances – We educate the customer on brands, rough pricing, and the benefits of one brand over the other.
- Cabinets – We educate them on the different types of cabinetry and describe cost differences.
- Flooring – We educate them about flooring options. In the case of hardwood floors, we discuss the correct way to finish the wood to maximize its durability and beauty.
- Hard Surfaces – The countertop choices are wide-ranging from natural to manufactured materials. We explain each option and how to gain the best value.
By using The Furnished Kitchen budget process, the owners see where their money is going. They add each kitchen component to the budget, then adjust the numbers to what they can afford. By using Mitch’s List, they obtain any available builder’s discounts when they purchase the materials directly from each vendor. Assuming the owners follow The Furnished Kitchen’s budgetary process and take our large item and material recommendations, we are proud that the budget at the beginning of the project remains the same at its conclusion. At this point, there is no obligation to use our sources or to hire The Furnished Kitchen for their remodeling job.
An important consideration in deciding what to buy for a kitchen remodeling project is how long the client will be in the house. Longevity helps define what value the customer strives to achieve and the total cost of ownership of the kitchen. If the customer plans to stay in their home for over ten years, there is enough time to recoup a high-end kitchen investment. If their stay is less then three years, the materials selected for the kitchen should reflect a shorter time to recover their investment. After all the large items are selected, The Furnished Kitchen produces an initial design that hopefully gets at least an 85 to 90 percent grade. Then, all parties sit down, and we use software to make design modifications on the fly until everyone is satisfied.
Quotation Stage
The Furnished Kitchen uses the information gathered in all the stages described above to produce a budget and design for the kitchen remodel. We add the construction and installation estimates to the client’s efforts to define materials cost. Once the budget and plan are complete, we present the owner with a quotation to construct their kitchen.
The Furnished Kitchen takes great pride in this design and budgetary approach since the customer gets the kitchen they envisioned at a price they can afford. We limit the number of projects we take on to maintain the speed and quality of construction. If hired, we retain our unique consultative approach to kitchen remodeling by focusing on the following:
- Professional design with excellent flow
- Line item based budget
- Outstanding builder/contractor pricing
- Convenient large item selection and purchase
- Care and pride in work
- Customer satisfaction
- Speedy installations
- Trust
- Open and clear communications
The Furnished Kitchen offers the owners a list of ten references before a kitchen project starts. We hope that after all the due diligence conducted by both parties, the owner chooses us to remodel their kitchen. Do not take our word for it, below is a video of one of our customers describing The Furnished Kitchen’s unique design and budget process. For more information on how to choose a contractor, click here to view our white paper titled “How To Choose A Kitchen Remodeling Contractor.”
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