Kitchen Remodeling Tips & Trends: 2023

Whether you plan on entertaining more, spending more time at home working (and cooking), or just want to increase the appeal and value of your house; a kitchen remodel may be the key for many reasons.

There are many custom solutions to improve the efficiency of your kitchen to meet the needs of you and your family. Integrating more energy efficient appliances with advanced (smart) technology, as well as green building materials and processes for improved health for your family and the global community.

Many houses in Havertown and in our surrounding communities were built prior to the 1950’s when layouts and priorities in the kitchen were much different. Cumming Construction has helped many homeowners like yourself upgrade layouts and create warm, welcoming, and inviting kitchen spaces.

There are a couple different overall directions you can go with a kitchen remodel depending on whether you want to optimize your kitchen for your family’s comfort and convenience, or if you want to maximize resale value and keep to more standard designs and layouts that will be popular with the largest number of future buyers. (Of course, we will work with you to put together the right combination of options that can also come somewhere between those two ends of the kitchen redesign spectrum)

When it comes time to design your kitchen, or other home remodel, many homeowners turn to the trendy looks on social media or home improvement TV shows for inspiration. Color, texture, material variance, like different types of flooring, backsplashes, and countertops lead the way in trends.

Let’s focus now on 7 Top Tile and Style Trends for 2023…

  1. Glossy not Matte
    Since 2023 continues to keep surfaces and fixtures with a matte look the glossy tile backsplash adds a nice complementary look.
  2. Classic Tiles Rule
    Classic ceramic and porcelain tiles continue to provide timeless beauty to many kitchens in 2023 and beyond – great for resale value as well.
  3. Mixed Material Mashups
    The previous policy for backsplashes especially was that you only use one type of tile in one pattern. Now a unique look for your personality can include a combination of glass, marble, porcelain or other tiles is becoming more widely accepted.
  4. Glass and Mosaic Tile Designs – Unique Shapes
    Increasingly gaining in popularity are glass tiles, which have many bold and unique colors. Some even come with Mosaic options or that can be created with an artistic effect. Can be used for visual focal point for a great conversation starter at your next party or get together. May best be complemented with simple tile for larger spaces.
  5. White or Natural Look
    White tiles continue to be extremely popular in kitchen upgrades and remodels. Colors that have a very natural look are close behind in popularity with an overall trend in green tiles. (As a side note, maybe you want to include some Eagles green in your kitchen…as we write this article our Philadelphia Eagles are on the verge of getting to the Superbowl…fingers crossed. )
  6. Texture and Stone Tiles
    Stone tiles, textured, and three-dimensional tile (aka tactile tile) has also gained quite a bit of momentum for 2023. Stone tiles come with either a weathered or acid wash look and can add a bit of interest to plainer floors and countertops. Tactile tile can create visually dramatic walls without the use of wild colors or patterns, depending on your preferences.
  7. Match Materials?
    For many years homeowners have been choosing to use the same tile for both the kitchen floor and the backsplash. That was so 2022! Just kidding, sort of…The popular trend is to have a Matte hardwood floor and a marble look backsplash (using either marble or porcelain with marble design) that matches the countertop…making for a smooth and seamless transition from one part of the kitchen to the other.

In this article we shared tips and trends for the overall kitchen home remodeling industry, this does not mean you have to take any of these as gospel. Each kitchen we create at Cumming Construction is unique to meet the needs of our local clients. We are based in Havertown PA but serve the greater area including Philadelphia, Montgomery and Delaware Counties. We look forward to the opportunity to discuss your remodeling or home improvement needs in the near future. Please contact Jon Cumming at 610-519-0245 or by email at info@HomeImprovementPA.com.

Havertown whole house remodel

Some great Pictures of a kitchen and bathroom renovation completed in November 2013. The bathroom was expanded by removing wall and relocating it 2′ over to provide for larger floating vanity and custom bath tub/shower enclosure. Hydronic radiant heat was also used set in wet bed under tile floor.

Radiant hydronic heat under new tile wetbed

 

 

Timme-2013/rooftop deck

MoistureShield decking in Cape cod grey

Other color options in the MoistureShield brand

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Roof Decks: Why Spend the Money?

Cost versus benefit is one question clients weigh in their minds.

Outdoor living space is limited in cities like Philadelphia, so one of the only options is to go up by having a deck built on the roof. Cost varies for different reasons; the materials used to build the deck range in cost from $4 to $12 per square foot (the more expensive being the exotic hardwoods).

Another big factor in cost is the railing or guard rail. Anything goes for railings as long as it meets code requirements. We build traditional vertical spindle or picket type railings as well as using horizontal stainless steel cables or glass panels for the railing infill. The only problem we have found is that the glass is difficult to keep clean on the outside of the railing.

In considering having a deck built, access to the deck is something that needs careful planning. If you have a closet or a small bedroom on the top floor, we have used that space in the past to create a stairway to the roof and build a pilot house on the roof to gain access. Another way is to convert a hall window to a door and then have steps built on the outside of the building to get up on deck. This seems to be the most popular way because it does not eat up living space inside your home. Some homes have a balcony or a deck already built on the upper level of the home that can be used as a foundation for a steel spiral staircase leading up to deck above.

The sky is the limit when it comes to roof deck design. You just need to be creative in the planning stage to make sure that in the end you get a functional and beautiful living space that adds value and appeal to your home.

Cumming Construction LLC is the Philadelphia area’s premier rooftop deck design and build firm, creating beautiful outdoor living spaces. We visit your site to review and provide a plan and proposal for your rooftop deck built with Pau Lope, Ipe, Exotic Brazilian Wood, Western Red Cedar, Timbertech, Trex and MoistureShield Composite Decking. Multi-level flooring designs, arbors, pergolas, rails in aluminum by Deckorators, glass, or wood are available.

We also feature stainless steel horizontal cable railing infill, outdoor kitchens and bars for entertaining, horizontal or square style lattice panels, benches, cocktail tables, spas and lighting. We handle city permits and construction is built by our staff.

Fall Projects/Preparing for Early Spring

I have always loved the fall — the cooler weather, changing leaves and a busy workload. This time of year is usually quite busy with people anxious to get planned projects completed before the colder weather, at least the outdoor work. Roof decks, paver patios, masonry work, roofing, and siding, and window replacements have been some of the improvements made this time of year. Just this past year we have completed four roof decks in Philadelphia alone; this has been a trend the past three years.

We are just now in the finishing stages of a finished basement in Bryn Mawr, as well as a concrete and stone patio in West Chester that we have been working on most of August and September. We are working with potential clients now in anticipation of the coming year. Some of the projects that I have been looking at include an addition to a three-story Victorian home in Wayne, as well as smaller projects such as composite decks, EP Henry paver patios, finished basements and a couple of bathroom remodels.

I am optimistic about where the economy is going, just based on the sheer volume of new calls. There is definite growth in at least the residential community. People seem to want to increase the value of their homes, not just to make them more saleable, but because they plan on staying. The fall has always seemed to be a time for folks to do the things they wanted to get done but couldn’t find the time over the summer. Clients often tell me that the fall has been a time of planning for the future. There is an old saying that goes, “a failure to plan is planning to fail.” I can relate to this in business as well as my personal life.

So, I encourage anyone reading this blog to act now in the planning stage of doing any remodeling project that you want to have done. Some projects take months to plan for. Having an architectural drawing made up for review and submittal to a local building department for approval can take some time.

Don’t wait till the spring to start thinking about projects you would like to have done.

Have a happy holiday season. I hope someone has benefited from this little bit of information.

— Jonathan Cumming

Choosing The Right Contractor (Part 2)

We have our own simple, yet delicate, solution to the problem outlined in last week’s blog entry. I confess: our initial proposal fees tend to be somewhat higher than other bidders. When evaluating a project, we try to anticipate the unanticipated. We expect to spend a substantial amount of time on final details, despite what issues arise in earlier stages.

Rather than bid the project lower and charging clients extra as we progress (or, as explained previously, simply skipping steps in finish work), we give ourselves that 10–20% cushion from the gate. As a result, we have an extremely strong record of staying within budget. Also, we have that flexibility to deliver exactly what clients want and spend that critical time on details without always thinking of our own checkbooks.

Believe me, after spending a month or longer in your kitchen, we want that room to look flawless. Caulk the trim on the recessed lights and outlet covers. Make sure the cabinet doors are plumb and level. Install the dimmers on pendant lights. Running around frantically with a paintbrush is not how we envisioned it from the beginning. And, I’m sure, neither did you.

But what should homeowners do? How do they know why one company charges $10 a square foot to install tile when another charges $14 or $18?

The answer is: take the time and ask. It’s not as simple as getting three estimates and taking the middle one. Unless you can read and thoroughly understand a proposal and anticipate all the variables, ask each contractor to talk you through it in detail.

Make sure you’re comparing apples to apples. How does the heating mat under the tile in your bathroom work? Does every bid include the required dedicated circuit and thermostat for the mat, or are you going to have to pay for them later? Or will one contractor simply skip that step and attach the mat to an existing outlet?

Will he install cheap, lightweight hollow doors or the more attractive, durable and noise-reducing solid-core?

Does the contract specify simple, builder-grade trim and baseboard? If you’d like something a little more interesting or authentic to the character of the home, is there room for that in the bid or will you have to pay extra for labor and material later? Or simply sigh and accept whatever the contractor buys at Home Depot?

Perhaps one bidder will make sure your shower walls are level before tiling, rather than simply building on the existing studs or furring strips. Maybe that’s not important to you. But maybe, in the end, it will be.

No one expects every homeowner to be a remodeling expert, especially in the early bidding phase of a project. It’s my responsibility to educate my clients, and they should ask the questions. Sure I may quietly sigh when the client asks why I’m using green versus blue lid spackle, but that’s simply part of a healthy working relationship.

There’s no science to estimating jobs. It’s an educated guessing game, and both builders and homeowners can easily get into trouble by stacking the odds against themselves.

Remember, it’s your home. There’s no reason to live in a cloud of dust for a while only to see cracks when it settles.

Choosing the Right Contractor

We’re awash in horror stories about contractors. Almost every time I meet potential clients, I feel penetrating eyes search for how I’m going to take their money and ruin their homes. Will they need to call “Holmes on Homes” when the project’s done?

Of course there are those, as in any field, who are dishonest and do sloppy work. What can I tell you — they’re out there.

But I work with Jon because we are impassioned with the craft. We are both possessed of the potential and intelligence (I think) to pursue any number of different fields, yet we genuinely love building and remodeling and seeing projects through from vision to fruition.

So I try to learn from and avoid the mistakes that can leave people so exasperated.

“It’s the details,” people usually tell me. “The contractor didn’t finish it correctly. And when I called him afterwards to come back, he never even returned my call.”

Amazing, I think. Someone does all that work and then ruins a relationship because he doesn’t see it through all the way. At Cumming Construction, we’re blessed to get almost all of our business from referrals and repeat clients. Why would someone burn those bridges — and so late in the process?

The simple answer is, despite how able and conscientious a contractor is, he may not be the best businessperson. Let me explain.

On every remodeling project, the homeowner will get three bids, sometimes more. If I’m a contractor who’s hungry and desperate enough (as many are), sure I’ll bid a job at the lowest workable figure to get that contract and assure steady income for several weeks.

But later, when we’ve gotten 80% of the pay for the job and still have 30% of the work to do, we’ve got big problems. While our work to this point has been high quality, the truth is the finish work is the most critical phase of the project to the homeowner.

Is the grout consistent, are there drips marks on the paint, are the nail holes in the trim filled, is the towel bar installed and level? How does it look? These items, left unaddressed, will ruin a remodeling project.

But when we bid the job at such a low fee, we ignored all the unseen issues that inevitably arise in any job (leaky shut-off valves, sub-standard floor support, mold, shoddy existing wiring, late-stage design changes — the possibilities are infinite). But now that we’ve paid to tackle those issues and are entering the finish phase, we’ve run out of time and money.

The only solution for the contractor is to sign the next contract, get a new deposit check, and begin the process somewhere else.

The result: unfinished work, unreturned phone calls, unhappy clients.

Check back next week to find out how, as a homeowner, you can help prevent being the next remodeling victim.

Roof Decks: Another Story for the City

Groundhogs aside, the coming of spring is marked for us by people calling for new roof decks.

Roof decks are possibly the easiest, least expensive, and most rewarding way that urban dwellers can increase their private living space without the trauma of building a large addition or the aggravation of relocating.

The finished deck with Philadelphia in the background.One of my favorite projects was a roof deck we did in the Fitler Square neighborhood of Philadelphia. The client is a designer for an architecture firm, and he had been creating plans and drawings for his home’s pièce de résistance for several years before we embarked on the project. Its features include a galvanized steel spiral staircase, a corrugated tin roof, granite countertop, working sink and extendable body sprayer to cool off, a barbecue pit with exhaust hood, hard-wired lights, and electrical outlets throughout. We even installed a galvanized steel bucket on a pulley system to easily raise ice, food, and beverages from the first-floor kitchen.

We’ve employed the same structural approach on a half-dozen or so roof decks since then. We remove the existing tar and roofing on the shared “party” masonry walls on either side of house, upon which we form and pour new concrete caps. These footings support the pressure-treated 2×10 joists for the deck. This approach allows the deck to span from masonry wall to masonry wall, with absolutely nothing touching or potentially harming the existing roof below. Also, the weight limit upon the deck is virtually limitless; the deck is framed exactly as the floors within the house.

Finished multi-level roof deck.Except in very rare occasions, the gradual slope of city roofs can result in a cool design element. Rather than a single level deck starting a foot or so off the roof on one end, and ending three or four feet in the air on the other, we build bi-level decks. In the end, the two levels result in a more attractive and sophisticated look than just a single deck anyway.

I don’t think we’ve used pressure-treated wood as decking on an unenclosed space since I’ve been with the company. The new composite decking products on the market are simply too affordable, environmentally friendly, and maintenance-free to consider any other option. And there are new, more attractive lines coming out every day; while we have used the popular Trex and ChoiceDek carried at the large home stores, we like the natural appearance and color choices of brands such as MoistureShield, TimberTech, and others. These decks are created from up to 90% pre-and-post-consumer recycled material and require no sealing, staining, or painting and will not rot or warp from water or sunlight. MoistureShield Decking, for example, contains an average of 289 plastic grocery sacks or 92 plastic water jugs per 12-foot board.

Nothing sings spring to me like the sound of a cool breeze over city rooftops, children laughing in playgrounds below, and the buzz of a circular saw that only we can hear. Seems like most folks enjoy their new rooftop deck more than they originally thought they would

Learn more about our deck and patio services and view more of our portfolio.

Renovating St. Luke’s Methodist Church (Part 2)

The roof at St. Luke’s that we’re replacing presents a bit of a challenge because it’s a steep, 45-degree slope. So we have to remove and replace the shingles in sections, setting up our roof jack and platform scaffolding once to remove the old shingles and then again to install the new ones. We tackle about 20 feet across at a time, leaving the end shingles loose so we can weave the beginning of the next section before nailing them. It’s a bit of a painstaking process — the shingles and nail gun are now the easy part though it wasn’t always that way — it’s the preparation, ladders and scaffolding that require the most work.

I’ve mentioned that I started working with Jon at Cumming Construction in the fall of 2003. I had recently returned to Philadelphia after 10 years in New York City, dragging boxes of suits and client files behind me. I decided I didn’t want to open those boxes for a while.

So about a week in on this new job, Jon asked me to join him on the roof of an addition he was finishing in Wayne. There was a small section that still needed to be shingled. I climbed the 40-foot ladder and found him scooting around the roof like a squirrel. He tossed me the nail gun, which I trapped between my elbow and the roof, refusing to let go of the ladder. He held a shingle in place and told me to nail it, but upon pulling the trigger, the kickback blew the gun right out of my hand. Luckily he was also holding the air hose, saving the gun from shattering three stories below on a concrete patio.

“Is everything ok?” he asked (or some expletive-soaked version thereof).

I quickly reminded him of my sheltered upbringing and decade in Manhattan rental apartments. “I’ve never used a power tool before.”

Jon looked at me as if I had just told him I was a 31-year-old virgin. And (cue the melodrama) in a moment that changed both our lives forever, he thought a moment, took a deep breath, and said: “OK. This is how you hold the nail gun. You hold the shingle in this hand like this…”

Seven years later, those boxes remain closed. And I happily scoot around roofs without a care in the world (much to my wife’s chagrin).

I like to think it’s a testament to my progress (with a dash of obsession) that Jon will sometimes forget my prior inexperience with all things technical. We’ll have our heads buried deep in the engine of our 1986 Ford 350 dump truck, which sometimes has trouble starting. “Well of course it’s the starter solenoid,” he’ll say. “Haven’t you ever rebuilt an engine before?”

Renovating St. Luke’s Methodist Church in Bryn Mawr (Part 1)

Historically our frenetic pace slows a bit in the late fall, as people settle down from the summer and start preparing for the holidays. This lightening of the load is actually a blessing, so to speak; Jon and his family are very involved with St. Luke’s Methodist Church in Bryn Mawr, which is well over 100 years old and usually in need of some cosmetic updating.

The church was founded in 1876 and its structure completed in 1879; of course the sanctuary and surrounding buildings were added onto as the area’s population increased (though the original sanctuary remains, safely ensconced in a section of the much larger one built in the 1960s).

When I first came back to Philadelphia in 2003 and began working with Jon, after nearly 15 years away, I spent a decent amount of time at the church, helping them set up for their annual Children’s Festival and other large events. I met a lot of good people, which was nice since I didn’t have a large circle of friends or my own family yet. They’re a group that focuses on spiritual growth and positive living, rather than a strict or harsh interpretation of the Bible — not the kind of crowd to get upset when they see a Jewish boy like me wandering the halls.

So during the months of November and December we’ll often set up shop on the corner of Montgomery Avenue and Pennswood Road (next to Harcum College) and give the church’s buildings their required and earned attention.

In past years we installed all new windows in the large Lurwick Hall educational building, re-drywalled and painted the interior of the building, excavated and re-poured the cement sidewalk and walkway along Montgomery Avenue, and installed new siding on the church’s parsonage (which isn’t the candlelit cabin I associate with the word, but a beautiful 6-bedroom house with a detached garage. This is the Main Line, after all).

This year we’re removing the original, cement shingle roof of the Lurwick educational building (built in 1950) and replacing it with dimensional asphalt shingles. The entire process should take about two weeks. Although not roofers by trade, we do roofing pretty regularly in the course of our projects. Almost always when we build additions (a few times a year), we’ll re-roof and then usually re-side or re-surface the entire house so it looks uniform.

Check back to see the work in action and find out if we’ve fallen off any ladders.