1) First up, don't install the hardwoods yet. Three reasons:
a) Find out from the manufacturer of the intended hardwoods if cabinets can be installed on top of them or if the floor should be installed around the cabinets.
We're installing a floating hardwood floor, and we were told in no uncertain terms not to install the kitchen on top of the floor because it would cause a "pinch point" where the floor could not expand/contract naturally because it was pinned in place by the weight of the cabinet/counter/sink-full-of-water. That apparently can cause terrible buckling in the floor.
If you should not be installing cabinets over your floors, you'd need to know the final cabinet layout before these floors go in.
b) Since you are redoing your kitchen, you may end up wanting to widen doorways or open a wall or whatever. You want to lay the floor AFTER these changes are made, or you'll have weird-looking floor patches where the moved walls were.
c) You want as much work done as possible before the floors go in because every workman, every tool, every job is one more opportunity for your floors to be damaged. You can protect the floors after they go in, but it's still better to have your framing, electrical, plumbing, insulation, and drywall done before the floors go in.
2) This is related to number one, but don't do ANY expensive work until you have a complete plan for what is going in your kitchen. Down to which lights and where, which size cabinets are going where, etc. What trim, etc. A kitchen remodel is like dominoes -- if one of the first tiles is not placed correctly, the rest can't fall the way you want them to. It is very costly -- in time and money -- to fix an early domino that was placed rashly, and anything you feel like you're gaining by just getting SOMETHING done now will be lost a hundredfold several weeks from now when you have to undo it after a lot of stuff has been installed over it.
I really can't stress this enough: No plan? NO work. I know it's really difficult, but try not to let your urgency to restore order dictate what you actually do. You will thank yourself later.
2) As everybody else is saying, argue with your insurance for more money.
3) Start googling and pinteresting and find some inspiration pictures of kitchens you love. Get at least five, but more is better. Then sit down and figure out what are the common threads running through the pictures and how those might be put into your new kitchen. Gardenweb can help you brainstorm about this if you post your inspiration pictures. As you pull pictures, make sure you are going in a direction that fits with the architecture/style of the rest of your house. It doesn't need to be a perfect match to the rest of the house, but it should be compatible. (For example, our place is rustic Spanish-style. I like more clean, simple, and modern places. So for my kitchen, I went with more of the Spanish-revival art deco inspiration pictures -- not incongruous with our building, but also not incongruous with what I like.)
4) Concurrently with fighting your insurance company and looking for inspiration pictures you like, get gardenweb started working on a layout for your space. Post:
a) a floor plan of the entire floor of your house where the kitchen is (not just a floor plan of the kitchen -- we need to consider traffic flow, so we need to see where the kitchen is in relation to other rooms in the house)
b) pictures of the space (this helps with visualizing things that aren't clear on the floor plan)
c) the details of who uses this kitchen and how and what features you like in a kitchen
Make sure to include measurements of everything on the floor plan and preferably have the floor plan on graph paper with a 1 sq foot = 1 square scale.
5) Set up a functional kitchenette space in another room so you don't go bonkers in the meantime and you minimize the impulse to make rash, expensive decisions out of frustration. My husband had an old Ikea dresser, and Ikea sells glass tops for their dressers for $30. I put dishes in the dresser drawers, and we use the glass top as a counter top. I bought a $50 hot plate to go on our "counter," and we already had a mini fridge and a microwave. It's not perfect, but we can still eat sort of normally, and it works.
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