Kitchen Renovations in French Creek

Building near the harbour

What turns up behind a 1970s galley wall?

The subdivisions near the harbour went up through the 1970s and early 80s, and the kitchens still show it: a closed galley, a soffit dropped over the uppers, and a doorway that makes the fridge awkward wherever it lands. Once the drywall is off we frequently find aluminum-era branch wiring, and where that turns up a licensed electrician re-feeds the circuits under permit before any cabinetry goes back. Floors in this era of build have usually settled, so we level the sub-floor before setting a single box.

What happens when older wiring turns up mid-job?

Houses of this era were often wired with aluminum branch circuits. When we find it feeding a kitchen we do not simply reconnect the old wiring to new devices — a licensed electrician assesses it and either re-feeds the circuits back to the panel or makes the connections with hardware rated for the job, under permit and inspected. The other thing we look for is circuit count: a modern kitchen needs dedicated circuits for the fridge, the dishwasher, the microwave and the counter outlets, and a kitchen wired forty years ago usually has a fraction of that. Nobody can be certain what is in a wall until the wall is open, so we flag the possibility in the quote, agree what we will do if it appears, and price it then rather than presenting it as a surprise later.

Why level the sub-floor before setting a single cabinet?

A floor that has settled by fifteen or twenty millimetres across your kitchen does not look like a problem until the cabinets go on it. Base units set on an uneven floor sit out of plane, the counter above them telegraphs the dip, doors and drawers stop lining up, and a dishwasher fitted under a sloping counter will not sit square in its opening. Shimming individual boxes absorbs a small amount, but past a certain point it just moves the problem into the toe-kick. So we level first, either with a self-levelling compound or by sistering and packing the joists where the deflection comes from below. Every box then lands on a flat plane and the counter run reads straight. It matters for a barrier-free finish too, because a threshold that is flush on paper is only flush if the floor either side of it is true.

A recent French Creek project

What does a finished French Creek kitchen look like?

An acreage owner needed a hard-working kitchen that could age with them. The 1970s cabinets were failing and the floor was no longer level. We replaced the low cupboards with full-extension drawer banks, levelled the sub-floor for a barrier-free finish, and wrapped up 7 weeks on site.

Common questions

What French Creek homeowners ask us most.