Your kitchen renovation plans are set and that gorgeous-ness can’t happen soon enough. But before the new can come in, the old has to go out. What do you do with your old kitchen? You’ve already offered it to everyone you know and had no takers. Do you really have to demolish your perfectly functional kitchen before the renovation can begin?
Not at all.
Sarah Robertson, Owner and Lead Designer of Studio Dearborn in Westchester, NY loves to tell her clients about the many recycling options available to them. “It’s not just about keeping waste out of landfills,” she says. “It’s about promoting the sharing of usable items with those who cannot or choose not to purchase new. Kitchen cabinetry and appliances, no matter how old, have value to someone.”
Peter Deane, Principal at DEANE, Inc, a firm based in Connecticut, agrees. “It is very uncommon that the existing kitchens we are replacing are not recyclable unless they are extremely old.”
Certainly you can go the Craigslist or direct-to-charity route, but that still leaves you doing the demolition and removal. Both Robertson and Deane advise their clients to send photos of their outgoing kitchens to responsible luxury kitchen recycler Renovation Angel, first. If Renovation Angel accepts the project, they’ll send a white glove professional removal team to quickly and carefully remove the kitchen, says Robertson. Even better, they hand you the paperwork to set you up for what’s often a pretty sizeable tax dedication.
“The dollar value for the client donating is far and away better than their next best option,” says Robertson. “It’s just icing on the cake that the environmental and societal benefits are there too.
And it’s more than tax write off. You benefit from the actual kitchen dismantle, says Deane. “[Clients] save money on the labor to remove the product and then also save on dumpster fees.
With this path your donated kitchen continues to do good. After removal, Renovation Angel sells it and then contributes to worthy non-profits in the areas of addiction recovery, at-risk-youth and job training. They have donated over 2.3 million dollars so far.
Clients really love being part of this virtuous renovation cycle, says Robertson. When I tell them about the program, “’their usual response to me is “say no more, sign me up!’”
