Opening up an old kitchen
The request I hear most is to take down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. In a Springfield colonial or cape that wall is very often bearing, carrying the second floor joists or the ceiling joists across the middle of the house. Taking it out means installing a beam sized for the span and posts that carry down to something solid in the basement.
That is straightforward when it is done right, and a real problem when it is not. I have seen kitchens where a previous owner removed a bearing wall and hid the sag with a dropped ceiling. Part of my first visit is finding out whether that has already happened to your house.
Floors, walls, and the level line
Before cabinets go in, I establish a level line around the room and see how far the floor drifts from it. An inch of drop across the kitchen is common in the older neighborhoods. I fix that in the subfloor where I can, so the base cabinets sit on a flat plane and the countertop does not need a wedge of shims showing at one end.
Walls get the same treatment. Plaster walls are rarely flat, and upper cabinets hung on a wavy wall show gaps at the doors. I plane, shim, or in the worst cases strip and re-drywall the cabinet walls so the run is true.
Windows over the sink and the exterior side
A lot of kitchen projects here involve the exterior wall: a bigger window over the sink, a slider out to a new deck, or closing up a door that never made sense. That is exterior carpentry and flashing work as much as interior finish, and it is where a kitchen remodel and a roofing and siding background overlap. A new window opening in a clapboard wall needs a sill pan, proper head flashing, and siding woven back in so the wall stays dry for the life of the house.
When the kitchen wall is also under an eave that ices up every winter, I deal with the ice dam cause at the same time, since a new window under a leaking eave is a waste of money.
Working with cabinets, counters, and the trades
I install cabinets from any of the major lines, or from a local shop, and I build the fillers, panels, and trim that make a stock cabinet run look custom. Countertops are templated after the cabinets are set and shimmed dead level. Plumbing and electrical rough-in happen when the walls are open, with licensed trades I schedule and coordinate.
The sequence I run is demolition, framing and beam work, rough-in, inspection, drywall and paint, flooring, cabinets, countertops, tile, and finish trim. It is boring and it works.
Kitchens in three-family homes
Springfield's triple-deckers have kitchens that were built for a different century: a pantry, a chimney chase, a back stair. Owners who live in one unit and rent the others often want one kitchen brought up to date without gutting the building. I work within the existing walls, fix the floor, replace the window on the back porch side, and fit modern cabinets into the old footprint so the unit rents or lives better without a structural project.