Five year labor guarantee
Kitchen and Bathroom Remodeling
Cabinets, backsplashes, bathtubs and showers, sinks and flooring, done in the order that keeps the job from costing you twice.
Chapter 01
Where a kitchen remodel goes wrong
Most of the kitchen remodels C.B.E. gets called to fix, not build, went wrong before anyone touched a cabinet. Cabinets get ordered off a single measurement, taken before anyone checks that the wall is actually square or the floor underneath it is level. A wall that leans half an inch over its run will not show up on a piece of paper, but it shows up on install day, when the crown molding will not sit flush and a filler strip has to hide the gap.
The same rush shows up lower in the room. A finished floor goes in before the plumbing and electric under it have been moved, so the first change order tears the new floor back up to reach a drain line that should have been relocated first. An island gets set where it looks good in a drawing, and then the dishwasher door swings straight into the only walkway in the kitchen. A backsplash gets run tile by tile with no plan for where it stops, so it ends in mid air against a window casing instead of a clean edge.
None of that is expensive to avoid. It only gets expensive after the fact, which is why it gets planned before demolition starts, not worked out room by room as the crew goes.
Finished kitchen remodel by C.B.E. Construction with maple cabinets, a dark counter and an island with black bar stools
The order the work has to happen in
A kitchen comes apart in one order and goes back together in another, and the sequence is not up for negotiation. Demolition first, then the rough in for plumbing and electric, since that is the only point in the job where a drain line or an outlet can move without tearing anything back open. Drywall and paint come after the rough in is inspected and covered.
Cabinets go in next, and only once the cabinets are actually set can the counter be templated. A template taken off a drawing instead of the real installed boxes is a template for a kitchen that does not quite exist. Backsplash, flooring and trim finish the job in that order. Skip a step, or run two of them out of order, and the cost shows up twice: once for the work itself, and again to undo whatever the wrong order damaged.
Chapter 03
Living in the house while the kitchen is out
A kitchen remodel means living without a kitchen for a stretch, and it is worth knowing up front which room becomes the temporary one, and for how long. A folding table, a microwave and a mini fridge in the dining room is normal for the middle weeks of a job. Dust containment matters more than most homeowners expect going in; plastic sheeting and a taped off doorway keep drywall dust out of the rest of the house instead of settling into every room down the hall.
If the house was built before 1978, the lead safe rules apply to the demolition itself, not only to work done on the outside of the house. That is why C.B.E.'s lead safe EPA certification matters on a kitchen job in White Heath as much as it does on a roof: old paint under a decades-old cabinet run has to be handled correctly the day it comes down, not treated as an afterthought once the dust is already in the air.
What the five year labor guarantee covers
All remodeling work from C.B.E. Construction, kitchens and bathrooms both, is backed by a five year labor guarantee. That covers the labor itself: the way the cabinets were hung, the plumbing was run, the tile was set. It does not replace the manufacturer's own warranty on the cabinets, the faucet or the appliances; those come with their own paperwork from whoever made them.
A homeowner in White Heath calling two years later about a cabinet door out of alignment, or a sink that was set slightly out of level, is exactly the call the guarantee is for. Call (217) 762-5432 and Blair Brown, who has owned and run C.B.E. Construction with his wife Lorie since 1998, will know which job it was.
C.B.E. Construction has remodeled kitchens and bathrooms around White Heath since 1998. Call (217) 762-5432 for a free estimate.
A named job
The Kane kitchen
White raised panel cabinets, a granite island in dark stone, an emerald green glass tile backsplash and a cherry island with room to sit. It is one job, not a catalog photo, and it is the same order described above: cabinets set first, the counter templated off them, backsplash and trim to finish.
A remodel like this one uses honey oak, maple or white cabinetry depending on the kitchen and the homeowner, but the sequence behind it never changes. Also see how the same crew handles a build from the ground up rather than a remodel of an existing room.