Kitchen Remodeling in Medina, Ohio

Medina kitchens fall into two rough groups, and they need very different work. The homes close to the square and along the older residential streets tend to have the kitchen tucked at the back of the house, walled off from everything else, with one small window and a single run of upper cabinets. There is usually no pantry at all. The fix is almost always about taking down the wall between the kitchen and the next room, then rebuilding the storage so the room actually holds what a household uses.

The other group is the newer subdivision housing spread out toward Montville, Granger and the streets off Fenn Road and Guilford. Those kitchens are large, but the storage was planned to a builder budget. Deep blind corners nobody can reach, an island that is mostly decorative, and a lot of wasted vertical space above the cabinets. Nothing is wrong with the footprint. The interior of the cabinetry is the problem.

Both situations get designed the same way here. We measure, we look at where you actually stand when you cook, and we build the cabinet plan around that instead of around a standard layout.

The single most common request from Medina homeowners is more usable storage without making the room bigger. That usually means deep drawers instead of base cabinets with doors, pull outs in the corners, a full height pantry cabinet where a half wall used to be, and taking the uppers to the ceiling instead of leaving a dust shelf.

The second is flow. In a lot of Medina houses the refrigerator sits in a spot that blocks the walkway, or the dishwasher opens into the only path through the room. Moving one appliance and shifting a run of cabinets by a foot changes how the room feels far more than a new finish does.

Resale comes up too, and worth being plain about it. A kitchen that photographs well but works badly does not hold value the way a well planned one does. Buyers in Medina County walk through a lot of similar houses. The kitchen is usually where they decide.

Start with measurements, even rough ones. Wall lengths, ceiling height, and where the windows and doorways sit. Bring that to the showroom and a designer can talk about real options rather than generalities on the first visit.

Know which permit office you fall under. If your home is inside Medina city limits, the work goes through the city building department. If you are out in Montville, Granger, Lafayette or one of the other townships, it goes through Medina County instead. We help with that paperwork either way.

Plan for how you will live during the work. Most Medina homeowners set up a temporary kitchen in the dining room or basement with the microwave and the coffee maker. It is worth thinking about before demolition starts, not after.

Finally, look at finishes in person and in daylight. Cabinet colors read differently under showroom lighting than they do in a north facing Medina kitchen in February. That is the main reason we keep doors and slabs on the floor rather than in a binder.