Kitchen remodeling in Westborough, MA

The houses this is written for

The stock here is antique and Victorian housing near the centre, post-war capes and ranches, and a large volume of colonial and townhouse development from the 1980s onward.

Opening up a compartmented Victorian kitchen

The antique and Victorian houses near downtown were built with a working kitchen, a butler's pantry, a cold pantry and a back stair, each behind its own door. Today's owners want one room. Taking those partitions out is possible, but the pantry walls often carry the ceiling joists and the back stair is a structural box that cannot simply be removed.

Our approach is to keep the stair where it can be kept, remove the pantry partitions with a beam if they carry load, and steal the back hall for a run of cabinets. Floors in these houses are rarely level, so cabinets get scribed and shimmed, and we check the old joists for notching from a century of plumbing repairs.

The colonial kitchen and the wall to the dining room

The 1980s-onward colonials are the other half of the town. Their kitchens are closed, with a doorway to a formal dining room that has become storage. Removing that wall is the standard request in these houses. The framing is usually simple, but the wall often hides the HVAC trunk or a return duct, and rerouting ductwork can cost more than the beam.

We open a small section of the wall and the ceiling before we finalise the plan, so the duct and any plumbing stack are located rather than guessed. If the wall is bearing, a flush beam keeps the ceiling flat. Then the old dining room becomes the eating area and the kitchen grows into it, usually with an island in the middle.

Plumbing, venting and what the old houses hide

In the Victorian stock the kitchen drain may be original cast iron running through a stone-walled cellar, with galvanised supply lines that have narrowed with age. We replace both back to the main when we open the kitchen, because tying a new sink to a failing drain is throwing money away. Range hoods vent outside through an exterior wall, never into an attic.

In the colonials the drains are PVC and the supplies are copper, so the plumbing is rarely the problem. The hood is. Many of these kitchens had a recirculating microwave hood over the range, and getting a real duct outside means a run through the upper cabinets or a new soffit to the closest exterior wall, kept as short and straight as the layout allows.

Town services, the panel and the disposal question

Most of developed Westborough is on municipal water and sewer, which makes the kitchen simple on the services side. Pressure is good, a dishwasher and a disposal are fine, and there is no septic system to protect. On the few outlying properties on private septic we leave the disposal out, because a Title 5 system is not built for ground food.

The electrical picture splits by age again. A Victorian may still have a small panel and a mix of old and new wiring, and a new kitchen is the time to sort that out. A 1990s colonial has a decent panel but is often full, so adding circuits for an induction range and a second oven may need a subpanel.

Sequence, access and working near the centre

Every Westborough kitchen we take on follows the same order: assess the house, design and scope, demolition, rough plumbing and electrical, any beam work, the inspection, then drywall, cabinets, counters, backsplash and paint. In the old houses the assessment stage is longer and more of the estimate stays provisional until the walls are open, and we say plainly which parts are firm.

Access is easy in the newer developments off the corridors. The older streets near the centre have narrow side yards, on-street parking and neighbours close by, so we plan where the dumpster goes, keep deliveries to agreed hours and carry material through one protected route. It slows the demolition day slightly, keeps the neighbours on side, and avoids a blocked street on delivery morning.

Questions we get asked about Westborough