Kitchen Remodeling in Reseda, CA

Reseda is 1950s tract housing almost block for block: single-story ranches of 1,100–1,600 sq ft on flat 6,000–7,500 sq ft lots, built fast after the war with a small closed kitchen on the back wall, a service porch beside it and a detached garage at the end of the driveway. The kitchen is usually 90–120 sq ft, which is why the first decision in nearly every Reseda project is the wall between the kitchen and the living room: take it out on an engineered beam and the house becomes the open plan it never had.

Two jobs hide inside every Reseda kitchen remodel. The first is the finishes: cabinetry, stone or quartz counters, tile, lighting and appliances. The second is the house underneath. The electrical here is typically 60- to 100-amp panels from the 1950s; a 200-amp LADWP upgrade is usually part of a full kitchen. The plumbing is typically galvanized supply lines and original cast-iron drains in the 1950s houses, slab floors on most blocks, and cripple walls on the raised-foundation streets that were never bolted after 1994, and the galvanized lines are replaced with copper or PEX while the walls are open. Opening the wall to the next room means an engineered beam and a structural permit, and the new lighting has to meet Title 24.

Our office is in Valley Glen, about 15–20 minutes away, and the project lead who does your estimate runs the build. On these streets logistics are simple: a small dumpster on the driveway, deliveries staged in the garage, and the site cleaned every evening. Most Reseda families stay in the home for the 5–8 weeks on site, with a temporary kitchen set up and the dust contained to the work area.

Reseda sits in the west Valley between Tarzana and Northridge, gridded flat from Sherman Way south to Victory Boulevard and beyond, with Reseda Boulevard as its spine, Reseda Park and its lake at Victory, and the Metro G Line busway station at Reseda and Oxnard on the south edge. Our office is in Valley Glen, about seven miles east along Sherman Way or Victory, a 15–20 minute drive, and the LADBS counter that reviews every Reseda permit is the Van Nuys Development Services Center on Van Nuys Boulevard, on the way.

Block by block the kitchens are the same floor plan with different decades of patching. Near Reseda Park and along the Victory side the houses have had two or three owners' worth of cabinets screwed over the original ones; the tracts north toward Sherman Way often still have the 1950s steel or plywood boxes. Either way the win is a wall out, a peninsula or small island, a window enlarged over the sink, and the service porch folded into the kitchen as a pantry or laundry. Reseda was the epicenter of the 1994 earthquake, and on the raised-foundation blocks we check the cripple walls and anchor bolts while the kitchen floor is open, because that is the cheapest moment to bolt a house that was never retrofitted.

Reseda is City of Los Angeles, so the kitchen is permitted through LADBS (City of Los Angeles) at the Van Nuys Development Services Center. The electrical and plumbing permits are pulled before demolition, inspections are scheduled around the framing and rough-in stages, and the permit is closed at final so the work shows as permitted when you sell.