local kitchen reno advice

[flowbee]

We're finalizing buying a house and want to redo the kitchen...expand it, knock out a wall if possible, add gas, make it more functional. Does anyone have any recommendations as to local kitchen/bath reno companies that can do work in south/east van? (Please PM me if you feel that that kind of info is inappropriate to be promoting in a public forum)

Along the same lines, any recommendations on gas ranges? I've been using electric coil ranges forever, and have no idea what brands are good in gas ranges. Should I check out Edmonds Appliances or Trail or wherever? Are those wok attachments any good?

We're excited and overwhelmed, so any advice would be appreciated!

[canucklehead]

Try: http://www.arnesalvesen.com/

Arne is better known as Daddy-A here on egullet. He is a good person to talk to and works out of a storefront on Cambie St.

[HKDave]

Try: http://www.arnesalvesen.com/

Arne is better known as Daddy-A here on egullet.  He is a good person to talk to and works out of a storefront on Cambie St.

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Better known as? I think you mean 'formerly known as'.

Seriously, Arne's your guy. 3000 Cambie St.

For gas range recommendations, there are several threads in the Kitchen Consumers forum. Here's one: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=66325

[canucklehead]

Ha!

[BCinBC]

We reno'ed our kitchen last summer, and went with Frigidaire pro or gallery series just about everything (except the microwave / hood, which was a Panasonic). I didn't want to go overboard with the appliances; function and form were both important, but in that order. Once you step up to the Vikings, Wolfs, Sub-zeros etc, well that is a completely different tax bracket that I'm in. I'm very happy with what we got.

Frigidaire CPLGF390DC gas range

Trail gave us a very good quote, that is until we got a contractor's line at another place.

Another plug: we got Silestone counter tops from Kingsland Stone Works in Richmond. Very happy with these - they are "engineered quartz", which is like granite except they are not porous so if you spill say red wine on them, they will not stain. They don't have a website, just a small company - but their quote was a fraction of everyone else's and they did a quality job including install. Good guys.

Google map for Kingsland Stone

Otherwise it was Ikea for cabs (note: other friends were reno'ing concurrently and they went with a "custom" cab millwright. Not actually custom, from what I gathered they do basically what Ikea does, which is make cabs in several standard sizes, and then work with you to fit what they have into what you have. But they worked out to be a similar price point to what we got, which was I think about as high end as you can go with Ikea), Home Depot for floor tiles / drywall etc. Oh yeah and these guys for faucets, refered by our very own Snacky_cat:

Save More on Kingsway

And a lot of blood, sweat and beers. (Ha, on that crappy joke of a note, remember to turn up Classic Rock 101 when you are working the Skil saw.) And yes some sage advice from the ex-Daddy-A.

Good luck.

[gingerpeachy]

I second the silestone counters - excellent. We got ours from Home Depot, believe it or not. Cheaper - and they outsource the fitting to a specialist company.

[BCinBC]

GP - just out of curiosity, HD was cheaper than who? In our case, we actually discovered the product at HD, got it priced, then found the same product with a small guy (Kingsland) who priced it a lot more reasonably. YMMV of course, market forces and workloads and all that, but yeah just curious.

I always feel like I'm not necessarily getting the best deal on stuff at HD, that I am paying for a measure of convenience - but good to know that sometimes that may not be the case.

[fmed]

Frigidaire CPLGF390DC gas range

Trail gave us a very good quote, that is until we got a contractor's line at another place.

...

Otherwise it was Ikea for cabs ...

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I'm doing a reno right now and I'm considering that exact range (specifically for the continuous grates). BCinBC, do you do a lot of wok cooking? If so, does the 16K burner put out enough heat for wok hei goodness?

On cabinets, I'm doing Ikea Akurum/Abstrakt. It seems like a reasonable bang for the buck proposition.

[BCinBC]

I like the range because it has 5 burners including a simmer (none of them turn off when you set them to the lowest setting, so the 16,000 btu burner will still boil on its lowest setting), the convection oven is good (though I am still learning roasting times with it), it had the best grate configuration IMO, and it was the most aesthetically pleasing of all the mid-high end units. Basically the best bang for the buck that I could find.

For wok hei, to be honest I don't know if you can ever truly replicate commercial Chinese in a home kitchen (without buying something like this). You know when you see Chinese cooks working those gas valves with their knees while flames are leaping into the hood? I'm pretty sure those valves are 3/4" minimum. Even if they are only 1/2", compare that to what is likely a 1/2" feed to your entire range (probably totaling about 70-80,000 btu) - the amount of gas going to one restaurant wok is, well, a lot. The previous link said even that home wok ring produces 100,000 btu's.

But the Frigidaire range works for me, the 16,000 btu burner gets pretty hot - and I'm pretty sure it was the highest heat rating that I found in the comparable model range. Plus if you got a heat diffuser / ring to concentrate the heat on your wok then I'm sure it would produce pretty good home results.

For cabs, we went with Liljestad - the colour is very rich, and even though it is dark, we get enough natural light (south facing kitchen) to offset. You know what, though - unfortunately the pic on the website is not very flattering, now that I look at it.

PS - Above I meant to say Coast Appliances gave us a very good quote on appliances, not Trail.

Edited March 19, 2008 by BCinBC (log)