It’s been a crazy year so far in the renovation sector, with lots happening in the home improvement world.

Like most homeowners with a dated cooking and gathering space, you may be thinking about a new kitchen, and you might be curious if now is the right time to pull the trigger. I’ll explain when it’s a good time to renovate your kitchen and when it’s not, and it has less to do with the state of the world and more to do with you and your families needs.

A Good Time to Renovate: You’ve Been In Your Home For a While, and You Know What Needs to Change

You’ve been in your house for a few years, a few decades and you know how your kitchen functions. Sometimes, your kitchen is set up in such a way that it doesn’t work with the way you live. Maybe wish you had a wall oven, maybe your flooring hasn’t stood up to daily abuse like you thought it would. Perhaps those faux granite countertops finally have enough burn marks in them to justify their replacement. When you’ve lived in your house long enough to know how things work and how you’d like them to work, that’s the time to start thinking about an overhaul. We have families call us all the time, looking to renovate their kitchen, when they haven’t even taken possession of the home. While we appreciate the enthusiasm, it’s always best to give yourself time to feel out your spaces, and imagine how things could work better in them. This might take a few weeks or a few months. That’s why, n our opinion, it’s a mistake to renovate your home before you’ve really given it a chance to see how you live in it. Practical renovations are based off of real world experience in the space and when you renovate based on your functional needs, the investment you’ve made in your renovation feels like the right choice.

A Good Time to Renovate: You’ve Done Your Research On Materials & Design

When embarking on a kitchen renovation, there’s plenty of websites and magazines with seemingly thousands of options for counter-tops, faucets, cabinets and in-cabinet storage solutions. There’s a lot of information out there, so it helps to narrow things down and start making progress. You want your kitchen to be beautiful, not just functional, so we always recommend getting started by visiting Houzz’s website, which is basically the ‘Pinterest’ for home renovating. There you can build out an IdeaBook, and drop photos direct from Houzz or from the web. It’s a great exercise to start feeling out what you want and what elements look good together. If you’re not tech savvy, popping post-it notes in magazines, or fetching samples from suppliers works great too. The most important thing is to start finding out what works for you early on. When you do this, your designer/builder will have a great place to start when it comes to planning out your project and you’ll save time and money in the process.

A Good Time to Renovate: You’re Ready To Beautify Your Home & The Investment Makes Sense

Kitchens, living spaces, dining spaces, they not just practical areas anymore, they’re places to celebrate the beauty and joy of life. Your home is your castle, it’s your place to have fun, relax and enjoy yourself. A new kitchen is a gift to yourself and your family, a place where you can spend your days cooking amazing meals and celebrating life’s great moments. A place that needs to be as beautiful as it is functional. If you’ve decided that it’s time to do something truly for you, something that will improve your enjoyment of life in tactile way and have the budget for it, then it’s time to cook up a plan for a new kitchen.

Final Thought: Don’t Get Caught Up

The important thing with any renovation is to look internally. The world is going to do it’s thing, but if you’re renovating for the right reasons, those external factors won’t really matter. Just make sure you have a set schedule, you get everything in writing, and you make sure you’re renovating for the right reasons.