Ready to Renovate? Book with Monarch and Get the Kitchen You Want in Time for Fall!

After a winter spent indoors, you may be ready to say goodbye to your drab, outdated kitchen and ready to embrace a brighter, more efficient living space.

No matter how well you plan for the disruption of a major kitchen renovation, there's nothing that quite prepares you for the daily inconvenience of preparing meals and doing dishes in a temporary kitchen. As the heart of the home, your kitchen is more than a place prepare and eat meals; it's the central gathering place for most families.

Renovating your kitchen during the summer months has its advantages:

You can go on vacation.

If you have young children, it's often easier to leave for a week at the cottage or an extended road trip once they are out of school. You may not be able to avoid living at home during the entire period of upheaval, but you can reduce the amount of stress your family feels by planning to be away during some of the "messier" periods of your renovation.

Weather permitting...you can eat in your outdoor kitchen!

Polish up the patio set, turn on the portable CD player, set the table and VOILA! You've got yourself a temporary kitchen away from the dust and mess of your kitchen renovation.

You can barbecue more and eat take-out less.

Eating at restaurants and bringing take-out food home is not only expensive, it can be tiresome, as well. Fortunately, the Internet offers seemingly endless creative ways to use your barbecue to grill meat, poultry, seafood and vegetables.

You can breathe easier!

With any renovation, there will be dust. Sure, you can close off rooms, shut all the doors...but the dust will follow you everywhere―except outside. Grab a book, your laptop or a deck of cards and head outside for a breath of fresh air.

You can clean less -- nice weather means less mess!

From the time tear down begins to the moment you sit back and enjoy your new kitchen, there is an enormous amount of traffic in and out of your home. When renovating during the summer months, you reduce the amount of dirt tracked through your house. And with any major renovation, a table saw is often a contractor’s best friend. During the warmer months, the saw won’t need to be set up in your garage, porch or basement. That means less dust floating around your home.

Are you considering a kitchen renovation? Monarch has been making homeowner's kitchen renovation dreams a reality for over 30 years. Drop by our showroom or call us at 905-686-2001 to book a consultation with one of our kitchen designers. But hurry, Monarch’s summer schedule is booking up!

Should You Have Your Heating Ducts Cleaned After a Kitchen Renovation?

The heating ducts in your home: to clean or not to clean?

It's a controversial topic with air duct cleaning companies boasting huge benefits on one side of the argument and disbelieving home owners questioning the value of the service on the other side.

First, let's turn to Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) for some information:

A hot air furnace heats and distributes air through its ducting system. The ducts are usually made of sheet metal and are most obvious in your basement, where they hang from the floor joists. The return, or cold air, ducts bring air to the furnace, usually collecting it centrally in the house. The return air trunk duct is the big rectangular duct along the basement ceiling that enters the bottom of the furnace. The supply, or warm air, ducting usually exits from the top of the furnace. It starts with a trunk duct on the basement ceiling. The individual supply ducts, in round or smaller rectangular sheet metal, branch off the trunk duct and go to each room, where they terminate in a floor or wall register. Over time, dust and debris will collect in these ducts, particularly in the return air ducts.

What we found inside a cold
air return duct after a renovation.

While CMHC questions the reasoning behind having your ducts cleaned on a regular basis to improve your  indoor air quality, remove house dust and improve your energy costs, they do agree that duct cleaning after a major renovation--or upon moving into a newly built home--is a good idea.

"If you are moving into a newly constructed house, and have doubts about the diligence of the construction crew, duct cleaning can be useful. Drywall dust, fibreglass pieces, and sawdust have no place in ducts. Duct cleaning will also catch the odd occurrence where lunch bags or soft drink cans have fallen or been swept into ducting. For similar reasons, duct cleaning may be advisable for older houses following major renovations." 

Debris found inside a cold air
return duct after a renovation.

Monarch Kitchen and Bath Centre president Neil Samson couldn't agree more.

"It's always a good idea to have your ducts cleaned after a major renovation," says Neil. "Ripping down cabinets, tearing up flooring, installing new electrical and drywall...it all creates a lot of dust and debris. Even when you cover the vents, bits and pieces of material can make their way into the ducts. These pictures are just one example of the what we find in the ducts during a kitchen or bath renovation."

Are you considering a kitchen or bath renovation? We'd be happy to help. Drop into our Pickering showroom and speak with one of our designers or call us at 905-686-2001.