Three Reasons Why You Will Need Three Contractors For New Kitchen Pipes
Discovering that you need brand-new kitchen pipes is never fun. In fact, when the old pipes have been continuously wetting your lower kitchen cabinets for months, and sending rivers of water into your basement, you may cringe at what it will cost to replace the pipes. Actually, the pipes aren't necessarily the biggest part of the problem. It is everything else you have to fix afterward. Here are three reasons why you will need three different contractors when you replace the kitchen plumbing.
The Plumber
Obviously, you will need the plumber to come in first. He or she will rip out the areas in your cabinets and/or kitchen floor to expose the old, rotting pipes. Then he/she will cut these pipes out with a saws-all reciprocating saw and remove them. Then the plumber will install fresh, new PVC plastic pipes that cannot rot. Now your home can look forward to another sixty years of a dry kitchen and drier basement. Companies like Walt's Plumbing can be a great resource for this stage.
The Mold Remediation Specialist
Before you do anything else, you will need a mold remediation specialist/contractor. This expert comes in, cleans up all the mold created by your leaking pipes, and guts anything that is rotten to prevent the further spread of mold and mildew. Without this contractor, the next contractor will not repair or replace your cabinets or flooring.
The Cabinet Maker
When your cabinets were a nightmare, and the holes put in them by the plumber are scary, the cabinets have to be replaced. Plumbers only fix pipes, not cabinets or mold damage. Ergo, once the plumber has finished his/her job, and the mold remediation specialist has done his/her job, you can (and should) get a cabinet maker to pull out the rest of the damaged cabinetry and replace it.
Unfortunately, this may mean that you will have to get all new cabinets for your kitchen. Most cabinets over ten years old cannot be matched from products currently in stock at any home remodeling and construction store. You could have a cabinet maker recreate matching cabinets to replace the damaged ones, but that may cost you almost as much as replacing ALL of your cabinets combined!
All of the above, and Possibly a Fourth Contractor, Too!
Usually, the three contractors listed above are all you need to redo pipes and clean up the mess left behind by the damaged pipes. However, you may need a fourth contractor. This fourth contractor is not always necessary, but if the water from your damaged pipes rotted out the wood floors or wooden sub-floor in your kitchen, then you will probably need a flooring contractor as well. The mold remediation contractor will be able to tell if you need a flooring contractor on top of everything else.
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