Kitchen and Bathroom Remodeling in Santa Ana, CA

The county’s oldest housing, and its densest

Santa Ana was the county seat while much of Orange County was still farmland, and its historic neighbourhoods have the housing to show for it. Floral Park, Washington Square and French Park carry Period Revival, Spanish Colonial and Craftsman homes from the 1920s and 30s — formal proportions, arched openings, plaster that has moved over a century, and original casework that is a large part of what the houses are worth.

Kitchens in those houses are the same shape as every other kitchen of that era: small, at the back, with a service porch beside them. And they cannot be solved from a catalogue. Ceiling heights vary, walls are out of square, and the trim has no stock equivalent. This is custom cabinetry work — inset doors, matched profiles, carcasses built to the room. The extra counter run nearly always comes from absorbing the service porch, which changes nothing anyone sees from the street.

The tracts are a different job entirely

Around the historic core, Santa Ana is dense post-war housing on small lots. Kitchens are closed rooms reached through a doorway, with original boxes that are usually still square and tile counters that are not.

The answer here is the county’s standard one, applied harder because space is tighter: open the wall to the dining room where the structure allows, take the soffit out, reface the boxes, and run cabinetry to the ceiling. In a small kitchen the full-height run is not a nicety — it is where the storage you are losing to the opening comes back from.

Small rooms, so the surfaces carry more

In a compact kitchen there is simply less of everything else, which means the worktop and the backsplash do a disproportionate amount of the visual work. A full-height slab backsplash instead of tile, and a quartz or stone worktop with a considered edge, change these rooms more than the same money spent anywhere else in them. Continuous flooring running from the kitchen into the next room is the other change that makes a small plan read larger.

Bathrooms in Santa Ana

The period homes have small bathrooms, often with original tile, and the honest conversation is what genuinely survives once the waterproofing is brought up to standard — some of it usually can, and we will say which. The tract bathrooms are compact tub-shower rooms where storage and layout are the win. Both are covered under bathroom remodeling.

Getting started

Kitchen Cabinets and Beyond has built across Orange County since 1995 and holds California contractor license #902246. Santa Ana is about fifteen minutes from the showroom.

Ask for a free Santa Ana estimate — and if you are in one of the historic districts, bring a photograph of the trim.

Near Santa Ana

We also work in Orange, Tustin and Garden Grove — see every Orange County city we serve.