Kitchen remodeling in Grafton, MA

The houses this is written for

The stock here is antique houses around the common, dense nineteenth-century mill housing in the villages, mid-century stock, and substantial newer colonial development.

The narrow mill-village kitchen and where it gains

The nineteenth-century village houses have long, narrow kitchens with the sink under a window on the exterior wall and the range across from it. There is one door to the back hall and another to the dining room, so the room is a corridor. Cabinet space is rarely the real problem. The room is dark and you cannot pass someone at the stove.

The gains come from light and circulation. A wider opening into the dining room, a second window or a bigger one over the sink, and a run of cabinets on a single wall with a slim island or peninsula opposite. We keep the sink on the exterior wall where its drain already is, because moving it in a village house means opening an old waste run that has been patched for a century.

Two-family and three-family kitchens carry code scope

In a multi-family village property the kitchen is not just a kitchen. Fire separation between units, egress from each floor, and interconnected smoke and carbon monoxide alarms all come into scope once we open walls and pull a permit. The ceiling between your kitchen and the unit above may need a rated assembly. We put that in the written scope so the number on the page is the whole number.

The electrical side is similar. Village houses have been rewired in stages, and it is common to find two generations of wire in one wall and a shared feed that should have been split years ago. Each unit needs its own panel with capacity for a modern kitchen. We have an electrician trace the feeds before design, because a shared or undersized service reshapes the whole project.

Antique houses on the common and the rear-ell kitchen

The antiques around the common keep the kitchen in the rear ell, where it was moved when indoor plumbing arrived. The ell floor is often lower than the main house, the ceiling is lower, and the foundation under it can be rubble or brick rather than poured concrete. Opening the ell into the main house means dealing with the step, the bearing wall of the original back of the house, and whatever sits on top of it.

Plumbing in these houses drops through the ell to a crawlspace or a shallow cellar. Supply lines were retrofitted through closets and along the outside of walls. When we redo an ell kitchen we usually replace the waste and supply back to the main, insulate the ell floor properly, and level it. That work is invisible when we are done and it is the part that makes the kitchen last.

Hoods, panels, water and sewer in Grafton houses

In a village house or an antique the range often sits on an interior wall, so the hood duct has to travel. We route it through the ceiling framing to the closest exterior wall and vent it outside there, using rigid duct with as few bends as we can manage. In the mid-century ranches and the newer colonials the range is usually near an outside wall and the run is a few feet.

The villages and the developed areas are on municipal water and sewer, so pressure is fine for a dishwasher and a disposal is not a problem. The older mill housing sometimes still has original waste runs, and a disposal on a rough old drain will clog it, so we inspect the line with a camera before we connect one. Houses on the outskirts on a well and septic get a different answer: no disposal, and a check of the pressure tank and any treatment gear.

Staging a kitchen job on a close-set village street

The mill villages have houses a few feet apart with little or no side access and shared driveways. A dumpster cannot always sit in front of the house, and material may have to come in through the front door and a narrow hall. We plan where the dumpster goes, where the truck parks and how debris leaves before day one, and we tell the neighbours and any tenants what to expect.

The sequence is the same in every house. Assessment first, then a design and a written scope. Demolition, then rough plumbing and electrical, then the rough inspection. Insulation and drywall, then cabinets, then counter template and install. Tile, plumbing trim, lighting and paint follow, with appliances connected last. In a multi-family the life-safety work runs alongside the rough-in so there is one inspection visit, not two.

Questions we get asked about Grafton