Heart of the home gets CPR

t's often said the kitchen is the heart of the home. If that's true, then Pat and Kelly Lipovski's kitchen used to be on life support.
But that's no longer the case today. They recently had their kitchen and parts of their main living area remodelled, turning what was once just a place to cook meals into the most-used space in their entire Signal Hill home.
"The kitchen wasn't functional," says Pat Lipovski. "It wasn't a livable space that was used very well."

Pat says his wife wanted a space that was inviting, warm and more than a place just to cook meals. Her vision was for an open concept where the family living area melded seamlessly with the kitchen.
"My wife, Kelly, spent a huge amount of time going through magazines, and she put together a number of different ideas and images to give to the contractor to design our kitchen," he says.
Preparation, in fact, took almost as long as the three-month renovation during which the family moved into their basement.
Chris Eden, with Legacy Kitchen Design Group, says kitchen renovations are by far the most costly and involved renovation anyone can undertake in their home.
And the Lipovskis did exactly the right thing: spending the time to figure out what they were looking for in a new kitchen.
"There are so many ideas and options out there, you don't want to be going out blindly to start," he says. "It could be just that you're taking out the existing kitchen and putting a new one back in, but generally, you at least want new appliances, new flooring, a backsplash and countertops and new paint."
Others -like the Lipovskis -go all out, completely reconfiguring the space, moving walls and windows, installing new cabinets and even adding an island countertop.
And that's why planning is among the most integral parts of the process, Eden says.
"Designing a kitchen is like a process of elimination," he says. "You've got a space with walls, doorways and windows, and once you put your appliances in, whatever space that's left is for the cabinets."
Where many people get into trouble in the design process, where they replace old appliances with fancier, larger ones that require even more planning and reconfiguring of the space.
"If you've got an existing range and you want to take it out and replace it with a cook top and wall oven, now it changes the layout of the kitchen," he says
While Kelly Lipovski spearheaded the vision, the couple relied on Legacy's designers to help them realize their dream kitchen.
"They really worked to understand how we live in our kitchen and how we wanted to live in our new kitchen," Pat Lipovski says. "They helped us make it more livable."
Eden says anyone looking at getting a kitchen renovation should remember one thing -patience.
Designing and building a kitchen is costly, running at about $15,000 at the low end to sky's the limit for cost. Lipovski says their renovation cost almost $200,000.
"You're not buying a push-bike that's $200," Eden says. "This is an investment."
But all the planning, time and money was well worth the trouble, Lipovski says.
"We got what we wanted in terms of the living space -something more functional for our family," he says.
"It was like we wrapped our personality around it."

Source http://www.calgaryherald.com/