We rely on our household appliances to make life easier. So, when your dishwasher no longer rinses as well as it used to or your stove top won’t turn on, your efficiently run home can screech to a halt. Determining whether to repair or replace a broken appliance can be tricky. In this article, you’ll find some guidelines to help you decide whether to call a local appliance repair technician or head to an appliance showroom to find something new.  Read more

Back in 2011, Chris Bjorklund, the Savvy Consumer, wrote the original version of this article. Kitchens have changed since then, but the sentiment is timeless: for those of us who live in the Bay Area, there simply isn’t room for space wasters in the kitchen. With that, read on to learn how to replace those space wasters with space savers.

Out: Kitchen desks

In her original post, Chris mentioned that the only family member to ever use her kitchen desk was the dog. Even in 2011, laptops and cellular devices were making traditional desks obsolete. Read more

A complete kitchen renovation is expensive. The average cost is about $23,000, with high-end transformations costing upward of $50,000. The priciest part of these renovations is the cabinetry, as it requires significant planning, resources and labor to install. However, homeowners looking to save money and time may find that cabinet refacing is an easier and less expensive option for achieving the results they want.

What is cabinet refacing?

Cabinet refacing is a method of updating your cabinets without enduring the expense and hassle of ripping out the old ones. It’s different from simply painting over the old cabinets. During refacing, workers remove doors and drawers, sand down all the original cabinet surfaces, Read more

We break down the steps for hiring a kitchen and bath contractor with this handy infographic. We hope you find it helpful, and let us know how your kitchen or bathroom remodel goes! Read more

Do you make avocado toast in Tiburon? Do you cook mac-and-kale in Cupertino? Maybe you read nutrition panels in Pinole, prepare recipes from Pinterest in Palo Alto or pickle in Petaluma. Whatever you cook and wherever you do it, if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you probably use your kitchen a lot. So, this year, it’s time to make that kitchen work for you and your family. Whether you’re ready for an entire kitchen remodel or just need some helpful hacks, we have some suggestions about how to organize a kitchen. Read on!

Kitchen Work Zones

Start by understanding your kitchen work zones. Most kitchens have three core zones:

• Cooking
• Food preparation
• Cleaning

In addition, Read more

We can usually get the little things in life just the way we want them: our coffee can have the perfect amount of sugar; our pizza, the perfect toppings. Unfortunately, when it comes to the big things, we’re expected to compromise. We’re supposed to ignore the little flaws of our partners, muddle through the less-than-glamourous parts of our jobs and accept the fact that there’s no such thing as the perfect home…or is there?

Rather than deal with the continual maintenance of an older house or attempt to shoehorn remodeling plans on a pre-existing structure, some people choose to build a custom home from scratch. Read more

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” ―Henry David Thoreau

Welcome to January. Last month, you cooked up your dream home in a heady mix of holiday punch, gingerbread and champagne. Now, both metaphorically and literally, it’s time to build those foundations. We’ve written often on this blog about how to get started on a house remodeling project (for examples, see “How to Choose a Contractor” and “Choosing Appliances for a Kitchen Remodel”). Carefully choosing a licensed contractor, budgeting attentively and understanding local building laws are all important preliminary steps, Read more