We participated in a kitchen tour just after ours was completed - it was a fundraiser for the NICU in a local hospital (where I sometimes work), which is the only reason I agreed to do it! We were told NOT to be home during the tour, but I trusted the volunteer staff to keep an eye on things. They were stationed at the front door, and posted in several places inside, directing traffic to the correct place. Visitors either took off their shoes at the door, or put on disposable booties, so dirt was not an issue. The flow of traffic from room to room was clearly marked, and the adjacent rooms were roped off. A local upscale housewares company set my dining room table with stunning crystal and china (no, I didn't get to keep it!) My house never looked so good! It was fairly stressful, because I changed my dining room light fixture at the last minute (something I had been meaning to do for quite some time), and thoroughly cleaned up the whole place, inside and out, ahead of time. I removed all pictures of family and identifying information from view, so it felt more anonymous. Yes, I still felt a little vulnerable letting strangers into my home, but it was a trust thing. I was very flattered to be asked. Tickets were pricey enough that only people really interested in houses/kitchens came through - not the casual/curious tag sale crowd. It was not judged, but we got really nice compliments and feedback (reported to us by the volunteers who were stationed at my house). Most people just looked and didn't touch, but some opened cabinets/closets, etc. like they were buying a house, so I suggest you clean the inside of your cabinets, too!

boy i'll second that, jeffinmonterey. we waited over 6 months for our city to approve our plans and grant us the honor of a permit. they also put us into the design review fasttrack (which dinged us 1800 bucks) all because they couldn't visualize and, ostensibly, are biased against modern design. need to keep the mayberry aesthetic up you know. luckily our architect really pushed us into doing a model early on so when we plunked that down on the table during the design review meeting, the two bluehairs looked back and forth between their bi-focals and said "you know, this doesn't look anything like your drawings." they were wrong, though, it did. anyway, sorry for the rant. we interviewed 4 architects. three i found on the AIASF website and one was a friend of a friend who is a one woman operation in the city. we wound up going with her because we liked her vision and her personality. all four architects came to our house to scope things out and wound up staying between 1 to 2 hours. we did pay a retainer to get things going with the one we chose. she works on a percentage basis, 12% - 15% of the finished price tag. we never felt completely comfortable with that so we agreed to pass the baton after her initial drawings were complete. they were actually very detailed. my husband and i felt we didn't need so much hand holding through to the end and we have brought her in to tweak some things along the way. for that we pay her an hourly fee. we have had some stumbling points when things moved from her to the contractor's draftsman but our contractor is great at working these things out as we progress. it's been about 5 weeks since they kicked us out to start and the framers are really buzzing along. so far i'm quite happy. i'll happily pass on names and numbers if you'd like to contact me directly.

Hello I believe her question was to see if they should get estimates from architects or contractors. Of coarse an architect can provide you an estimate but most of the time it is completely off in left field. I can't tell you how many times we speak with homeowners and they show us their plans. The architect designs a $500k alteration when the homeowners budget is in the $300k range. Contact some reputable contractors. Get as many bids as you feel are necessary but 3-5 should be suffice. Contractors like myself have in house architects and will include the plans as part of the package. You can also contact an architect. More times than not, his plans will cost more than it would if you went with the contractor. You can read more on our blogs if you like: Here is a link that might be useful: Bergen County Contractors

We have signed a contract - with a different remodeler and it's in budget! We're so excited. The GC we were so frustrated with did lower his proposal, but was still $14K over budget. In the end, we feel that we are not his target customer and that's okay. We have found a GC that fits us and we are moving forward. We have a rough estimate of when work will start and will have a more exact date once he has a chance to plug us into their system. He expects they'll start work the end of October or the beginning of November. Monday we meet with our cabinets guy to go over things one last time before placing the order. We called and secured our granite today and then I had to swing by to ogle it and touch it. LOL I also started looking for alternative backsplash tile options, because the glass tile we picked out before is ridiculously expensive it turns out. I've found a good alternative that is $8.99 sq. ft compared to what The Tile Shop estimates the other one ran at $35.00/sq ft. We love that the GC we are going with will tell us that Option A costs $x more than Option B. That's the information we need so we can do our part to keep things in budget.