Last winter I tore a poorly placed pantry out of our kitchen to open up our great room. We are happy with the change but now need to get the cold-air return and electric back up to code so we can have the home appraised/inspected and drop our mortage insurance.
We’d like to put in an island that fits with our long-term remodeling plans and move the electric and cold-air return to that.
Our long-term plans include a gas cook top in the island and wall ovens where are current electric range sits. But we can’t afford to do the entire kitchen right now so we’re deciding whether to add the cooktop to the island now or waiting until we remodel the rest of the space.
Here are my choices.
1) Put in the island with a stone countertop AND the gas cooktop. Seems like the smart choice but we’d like to save the money and put it into other areas before our inspection. And it would seem kind of strange to have a high end gas cooktop and an electric range nearby.
2) Put in the island with a stone countertop but pay to have the cooktop added later.
3) Put in the island with a laminate countertop and just throw the whole thing away when we’re ready for stone.
For options 1 & 2, we are not worried about matching the stone later on as we’ll probably go with an entirely different countertop for the rest of the kitchen.
The downfall to #3 is that my wife is really wanting to go ahead and do this island “nice”, and I tend to agree. We are considering soapstone, slate, or granite for the island. I feel like if we go with soapstone it will best lend itself to adding the cooktop later on.
Any thoughts?
Replies
Unless you plan on a very fancy cooktop, the cost of the stone will probably dwarf the cost of the cooktop. Having someone come to your kitichen and cut a hole in the island top later will be a messy and costly project. If the money isn't available now, I think doing a formica top and tossing it out later makes sense. Formica is cheap and an easier DYI project than fabricating stone.
We had a soapstone countertop installed several months ago and we love it. Oiling takes a few minutes. We also got a soapstone sink.
Fabricated (cutouts for sink and cooktop) and installed it cost about $110 per square foot, although the two other estimates we got were much higher. While some soapstone is fairly easy to work with carbide tipped routers and saws, some (like ours) is very hard and not a DYI project for most of us.
Thanks. I think that's what we'll do and put the extra money into buying enough hardwood flooring for the rest of our remodel. I'll let the 200 square feet or so we need for the kitchen area acclimate while we save our pennies for the rest of the project.
Been there, if you buy your formica from a fabricator (i.e. the same folks who supply HD and the installers), then this may even be cheaper than doing a cut-out in the home later.
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright