Kitchen and Bathroom Remodeling in Garden Grove, CA

A city that was built once

Some cities take a century to fill in. Garden Grove took about fifteen years. The tracts went up through the 1950s and 60s, and that stock still makes up most of the city — single-storey three-bedroom houses on regular lots, laid out to a handful of builder plans.

For a remodeler that is unusual and genuinely useful. The kitchen is a closed room at the back with a pass-through to the dining area. Above the wall cabinets there is a soffit. The boxes are plywood and, more often than not, still square. The counters are tile. We have measured a great many of these, which means the conversation starts a long way in and there is much less unknown to price defensively against.

The standard Garden Grove project

Four moves, in this order. Turn the pass-through into a proper opening — the wall was already framed to be interrupted there, so it is usually straightforward. Remove the soffit. Reface the boxes with new doors, drawer fronts, veneer and hardware. Replace the tile with a slab worktop and, where the budget reaches, a full-height slab backsplash.

That is not a compromise version of a remodel. In a house of this type it is the remodel — the boxes are the part worth keeping, and the money is far better spent on what you see and touch than on replacing carcasses that are doing their job.

West Garden Grove opens differently

The homes west of the 22 tend to be a little larger, on wider lots, and many already have a separate family room behind the kitchen. That changes the answer: opening the kitchen into the family room gives a better-shaped result than opening it into the dining room, because the family room is where the household already sits. It is worth checking which of the two you actually have before deciding.

Where the extra storage comes from

Widening an opening costs you a stretch of wall, and in a compact kitchen that matters. It comes back from height — a full-height run above the removed soffit adds a whole course — and from better base-unit interiors, which recover more space than most people expect. Between them, the opened kitchen normally ends up with more usable storage than the closed one had.

Continuous flooring through the opening is what makes the two rooms read as one rather than as a room with a hole in the wall.

Bathrooms in Garden Grove

Compact hall bathrooms with a tub-shower, one vanity and almost no storage. The wins are the same as the kitchen: use the footprint better, get real storage in, and choose materials that suit a small room. See bathroom remodeling.

Getting started

Kitchen Cabinets and Beyond has worked in Orange County since 1995 and holds California contractor licence #902246. Garden Grove is about fifteen minutes from the showroom.

Book a visit or ask for a free estimate — a photograph of the pass-through and the soffit gets us most of the way there.