Kitchen Remodel - Advice?

[yojivi]

With the financial details agreed upon, my wife and I are finally starting to move forward with planning our kitchen remodel. It's a 25-26 year old home, with a kitchen with a fine floor plan. We're not looking to move plumbing or electrical, our appliances are all in fine shape, and for the most part it'll be a very nearly identical layout of cabinetry and island. Flooring will also remain the same.

That said - and with some feedback from a previous posting in the PF forum - I think we're game for using a designer, so that we don't do something foolish and regret it for the next 20 years! We have checked out NKBA (.org) and identified a few local people that we'll likely invite over for a very preliminary chat/evaluation. However, we're finding that most of these people are also general contractors. As in, I think that they are more intent on designing and implementing themselves, likely including their own suppliers. We know some people (friends of friends) that *could* be good contractors to do the work (and maybe offer a fairer price), as well other people that might be good sources of material (i.e. we are good friends with a countertop granite guy), so we weren't necessarily intent on rolling the design and construction crew into one. I'd rather isolate these two if it makes sense, as it seems like it could save some money and conflict of interest. It seems like CAD should be at a place these days where any decent contractor could read/implement the plans from any unrelated decent designer, assuming the latter didn't design to some specialized ($$$) cabinetry that they're trying to get a cut from. Is this a fair assessment? The whole thing just seems a little murky, but I guess that's the industry.

In addition to getting the granite countertops from a buddy, we are very content with just purchasing cabinetry online. In this perfect world in my head, the designer helps us select cabinetry from an online source, sizes it for us ... we order it, and the contractor installs. Can it be this easy?

Any additional advice would also be much appreciated. We're obviously new to this and I'd love to harness the experience of my fellow 'Heads where I can! Thanks!

[vanhouse]

getting a designer is definitely the way to go!

[larkimpressive]

Pay attention to the location of the stone table if your family has young children. Do you want to match your stone design with all your interiors?