Kitchen Remodeling

New Kitchen Cabinets in Santa Monica, Culver City, and Brentwood

by Marc Jannone on February 20, 2012

As with any project, installing your own kitchen cabinets requires good prep and planning. Before you start, make sure your surfaces are finished, including walls and floors. Having your flooring done is very important as it will affect your measurements and could result in a bad installation if you do it after the fact.

Start off by giving yourself an easy visual template to follow. Draw lines with a pencil to mark the location of all your wall studs, and then the cabinets themselves. At this point, make sure you are allowing space at the corners so you don’t have to cram the cabinets too tightly. Then you should inspect your cabinets, especially if you have purchased them ready assembled. Many times, mass produced home store models are not built to perfection, and you will not be able to return them once they are marred with screw holes. After you assess your items, you must take a look at your walls and your floor to determine if they are plumb and level. If they are not, you may have trouble fitting everything in, and you will want to know this beforehand. In this layout phase, make any adjustments with your drawings to head off problems before you encounter them later.

With your helper and stepladder on hand, you are ready to go. Following these basic steps you can install your cabinets piece by piece with success:

1. Secure a straight 2×4 with its top edge where you want the bottom of your cabinets to be. Level the 2×4 and attach it to the wall with a few screws in the studs. This piece, called a ledger, is the best way to put up cabinets correctly as it provides a sturdy, fool proof level for you to balance your cabinets on as you fasten them to the wall.

2. Begin attaching cabinets in a corner. Have a helper hold the cabinets, using the ledger for support, and check again for plumb in both directions. Once positioned, drive in your 2 1/2 to 3 inch screws through the cabinet framing pieces and into the wall studs. At this point your markings for the studs are going to be essential.

3. Each cabinet is then installed completely flush to the next. Check both the front and top surfaces and clamp them tightly before you drive in your screws. It is recommended that you drill pilot holes and sink in the screw heads for both aesthetic and structural reasons.

4. Where the last cabinet meets a wall, you are going to need space for the door to operate properly. Install your spacer that you left room for previously and then attach the cabinet to the wall with the same technique.

These two setups show how we installed new kitchen cabinets in Santa Monica and Culver City. As you can see, no two setups are created equally, but by following our simple rules of thumb, you can have a new, great looking kitchen in about a day.

A few months back, we had the pleasure of installing this new kitchen cabinetry in Brentwood, with a sleek modern design. Any number of arrangements are at your disposal to make your space not only functional, but visually striking with some good planning.

Jannone Construction and Development
502 San Vicente #105 Santa Monica, CA, 90402 USA
marc@jannonedevelopment.com • 310-989-3499

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Installing a Custom Built Outdoor Pizza Oven in Your Backyard

by Marc Jannone on December 18, 2011

Who doesn’t love spending time in their backyard entertaining friends and family? The backyard barbecue is an American tradition enjoyed in every state, county and town. Commonly, free-standing gas or charcoal barbecues are the preferred method of cooking outdoors. But what do you do when your entertaining needs outgrow your stainless steel barbecue? If you have the space required, many home owners choose to build a built-in cooking area complete with custom countertops for preparation and seating, barbecue, and even a wood fired pizza oven. The main considerations for installing an outdoor cooking area, or really any outdoor building project in Santa Monica, are your available space, your needs and your budget. Built-in cooking areas can be a simple brick barbecue or an elaborate outdoor kitchen with exotic materials, complex structures and state-of-the-art appliances.

When a client of ours in Santa Monica, CA remarked how nice it would be to have something like a pizza oven in the backyard, we took out the sketchbook and started jotting down ideas based upon the layout of the property. After careful consideration, we formed a plan to build this one-of-a-kind item right off the end of their existing wooden patio deck. When considering the specific place for an outdoor kitchen, it is important to take into account the location of entry & exit doors, distance to the main entertaining area, and proximity to existing structures—such as a house, garage, guest house, etc. And always be certain to consult local building codes to ensure code compliance.

Here is the process from start to finish as it unfolded:

After sketching out the lay of the yard we gave the homeowner a number of options, and the ideal space landed right on the corner of the existing deck. With the deck’s unique shape, it was easy to see how the new oven would wrap around, giving them lots of staging space for food prep and entertaining. Above, we started by building a basic form, and then we poured a new concrete slab to act as a solid foundation for the structure.

Once the foundation had properly cured and reached it’s maximum psi strength, we began forming the bones of the oven. With great service from our friends at Industrial Metal Supply, it was no problem getting custom pieces to exactly suit our needs.

The guys then started to frame out an additional concrete form on the top of the structure, which was going to be the actual housing of the pizza oven.

With the base in place you can see now how we began to build out the rest of the structure. The two sides flare out giving our clients a whole lot of countertop and storage space to accompany their new feature. After setting in a fire blanket (the white stuff surrounding the brick) and stovepipe we could begin to see the pizza oven really coming to shape.

With the structure now built, we covered it all up with fireproof cement board, making openings for storage space where we installed sharp looking steel doors. The space below the brick opening of the oven is where the fuel wood is stacked. The fireproof cement board was the ideal choice as substrate for the final touch of the piece, which the clients chose to be natural slate tile.

And here is the finished product! With the insulation we provided, including the fireblanket and sheathing, this oven will burn at a toasty 1200 degrees Fahrenheit on day one, giving you an optimal temperature for making your fresh pizza pies with a perfect crust. On day two, the oven falls down to 500 degrees, which is perfect for baking fresh bread. And then on the third day, with the oven at around 300 degrees, you can throw in a batch of fresh cookies. The possibilities are endless for this type of feature, in terms of both personal use and for entertaining large groups. Imagine having your own outdoor pizza party on the patio—now that would be a great way to spend a sunny, Southern California afternoon that your friends and family would not soon forget.

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Helpful Tips from Your Contractor to Update Any Kitchen

by Marc Jannone on August 24, 2011

Glass tile backsplash in West Hollywood kitchen.

If you are trying to sell your home, rent it out, or just thinking about updating it, the kitchen is a great place to start. Kitchens and bathrooms are the most popular rooms in a home, especially when upgrading. Even though the thought of a kitchen renovation seems expensive and time consuming, there are several things you and your contractor can do that are budget friendly and will make a world of difference to your home.

First, you can go to a local home improvement store and find various colors and shapes of tile backsplash. If on a stricter budget, there are often clearance items in this area. Pictured left, is an example of one kitchen backsplash we did in blue glass tiles.

Another good way to update an outdated kitchen is painting or staining your cabinetry. If you have wood cabinets and they look worn out, chipped or just out of style, there is a vast array of stains and paint colors that you can choose from. There are even kits completely set up with all the equipment you need to sand, prep, and stain your cabinetry. Further, if your cabinets are in decent condition, simply updating all of the hardware can make a huge impact.

Additionally, upgrading laminate, linoleum or old tile floors can make a very big difference to your kitchen. Either hardwood, laminate wood (if you have a tighter budget), bamboo, or updated floor tiles are good options for any kitchen. This can also add a lot of value to your house if you ever want to resell; sometimes it can add more value than you actually paid for them because flooring is such a huge selling feature.

Lastly, another main way homeowners are finding cost efficient options to upgrade their kitchens is replacing countertops and surfaces. Great, and obvious solutions are stone slabs such as granite and marble. A more cost efficient option is tile countertops, there are even granite tiles that you can purchase for countertops. However, if you want something more smooth and don’t want to clean grout, there is a new option on the market called granite overlay. You get 100% granite countertops without the expense and mess of slab granite. Also, it is more eco-friendly because these granite overlay countertops are manufactured from existing granite pieces, and granite slabs are actually mined out of the earth. They are going to be much cheaper than any other slab stone, but more expensive than laminate or formica counters. There is minimal cleanup and no demolition also, because they can be installed on top of whatever existing countertops you have. If any of these stone options are still too expensive for your remodel, you can try updated laminate or even concrete countertops. Some newer laminates are made to look like granite so they look nicer, and these will be much cheaper than using any kind of natural stone. Concrete is another material that is used for countertops these days, and there are many colors to chose from.

All of these cost efficient updates around your kitchen will improve the look of your whole house and can even add significant value to it! Check back soon for more information on kitchen renovations!

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A Guide to Projects That Bring You Outside!

August 10, 2011

Although summer seems to be winding down, here in Southern California the amazing weather will stick around for some time. With that in mind, putting your money into an exterior remodel could benefit you and your family, as well as the option of resale. Being a development company in Los Angeles, we have completed several [...]

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