The Accidental Renovation Part 5: Making a Splash

The splashback caused me quite a bit of angst and indecision. I would have liked glass or perspex, but that turned out to be rather exy, and we were going for a budget kitchen, not an all-singing-all-dancing extravaganza. I toyed with the idea of doing a blue/green/grey watercolour wash like I do on my silks, or even a block print, then put clear perspex over the top. But it got too complicated, the rest of the family thought it would look too hippie,  and anyway, even clear perspex spec’d for behind a stove is still expensive. So in the end I settled for the nearest thing, the IKEA Lysekil laminate panels.

These are thin melamine, double sided, and of course I chose the drama side. Cheap and cheerful, and easily cut to size DIY, they are a very cost effective solution. We put up several of the panels yesterday, and I love the look! The only thing that made me hesitate is that the distinctive design immediately identifies an IKEA kitchen, I would have liked to be a bit coy about the low cost of my wonderful new culinary installation, but that horse has possibly bolted anyway, as the handles we chose are very IKEA looking too.

We only got to work for one day this weekend, as we had friends down from Townsville. They left early Sunday morning and we started around 11 after taking them to the airport. Putting in the exhaust took a fair chunk of the day, and a few fiddly bits like the under-cupboard lights for the benchtops and finally the panels accounted for the rest.

Mr Rivergum at work

Mr Rivergum fending off the paparazzi

It has been almost exactly a month now since the flatpacks were delivered and all the cupboards have been installed, the drawers and shelves are in and the doors on. We are avoiding cutting in the hob after our experience with the sink, but that will be done next weekend. I am starting to realise how much easier the sink would have been if we had followed the instructions, instead of trying to wing it. When I saw Mr Rivergum use the template provided to cut out for the exhaust, I happened to comment what a shame it was there had been no template for the sink. He looked a bit sheepish. Apparently it had been tossed with the packaging. Grr!

Now that some of the backsplash is in, it is getting really hard to leave the protective plastic on the cupboard fronts. For a start the bright blue is a bit jarring with the panel colours. I am dying to see what it will look like with the light grey, so I have doctored this photo in Photoshop. But is it really what the colour will look like when the plastic is off? Patience is a virtue, but it can be tough!

Not much sewing happening here, needless to say, but I did make a jacket just before we embarked on the kitchen, which I have not blogged about yet because blogging about the kitchen is more exciting. I have also started a Marcy Tilton jacket, a very simple design that ought to be a quick sew, but with a couple of seams sewn per weekend it is taking its sweet time. And now I am prevaricating whether I should do a lining.

It is only 5 weeks or so before I am off to see my family in Austria again, and kitchen or not, getting my wardrobe organised is starting to figure large on my mental horizon. So if you are missing the sewing posts, there will be more of them soon!

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The Accidental Renovation Part 5 Getting to the Fun Part

We are starting to put stuff back into the cupboards. Deciding where everything is going to go and finding that there is room to spare is such fun! Of course we are jumping the gun again, you are probably supposed to finish the whole kitchen before you put your things away, but it’s impossible to resist. I am also trying to do a Mari Kondo, but I have so much storage space now that I can afford to hang onto a few things that don’t spark any joy but may come in handy one day. — Spoken like a true hoarder.   🙂

Mr Rivergum, that prince amongst husbands, has installed my sink and it is now fully operational! I can’t tell you how wonderful it is for normal standards of domestic hygiene to be reinstated because I don’t have to run to the laundry to rinse every little teaspoon. And I now have this uber-sexy tap that has a hose attachment so I can spray water wherever I want. Well, around the sink anyway.

So here is my new sink, with a very attractive pile of empty cardboard from the flatpacks as a backdrop outside the window.  🙂

 

Last weekend we spent a good chunk of Saturday picknicking with family, but we still managed to make a lot of progress. The hallway wardrobes now have doors and are finished except for the handles.

In the kitchen we fixed almost all the cabinets to the wall rails, and clamped and screwed the lower ones together. The wall cupboards are in place, but the middle one still needs to come out again to have the exhaust fitted. In the meantime it has become a spot for a few things Mr Rivergum likes to have to hand.   🙂

We built and installed all the drawers and put on most of the doors. Last night we installed the carousel in one of the corner units and put the double hinged door on. The sink cupboard now has two joined drawer fronts that pull out the single drawer, with the garbage and recycling bins behind it. It even has handles!

The best things is that everything works, everything fits and it perfectly aligned. That is what makes this reno so enormously enjoyable, and it is very much due to the clever engineering that has gone into these cabinets.

Most things are perfect out of the box, but if they aren’t there are inbuilt adjustments. All the hinges and draw fronts have screws that allow 3-way adjustments: in-out, right-left and up-down.

I know this is pathetic and I should get a life, but I am totally blown away by this ingenuousness. Mostly because I am very much aware how much the alignment matters in the final look of the kitchen and if it is even a little bit off it will look shoddy. So when the joined drawer fronts in the sink cabinet stuck out a bit at one side and also did not line up perfectly parallel with the dishwasher next door, Mr Rivergum and myself were really worried. But after a minute’s search online we found the answer (thank you, YouTube!), that all we had to do is adjust some screws in the side of the drawer mechanism to fix it. How good is that! It is probably somewhere in the instructions too, but YouTube and other online resources have been an invaluable help with this project. IKEA’s pictograms are ok, but there is nothing like being able to see something in a video or in real photos to help you when you are stuck.

That said, not everything turned out perfect. Mr Rivergum’s DIY building and carpentry skills have been immensely helpful with this kitchen build, but sometimes a bit of extra research can make life so much easier. We were nervous about drilling the hole in the sink for the tap, so we researched it carefully and it went without a hitch. But when it came to cutting the hole in the benchtops for the sink it seemed pretty straightforward, so we didn’t bother to look for advice online. We did get it done ok, but we rushed because it was getting late and did not stop to work out how to attach the reinforcement rails underneath. Bad mistake, because the hole is large and weakens the long and heavy benchtop, so when we wrestled it into place, with the sink and big tap in a confined space, we managed to produce a hairline crack. Thankfully it is small and in a spot where it won’t be visible, but it still upset us. It will need to be sealed so water doesn’t get in and this seal might wear over time, causing the chipboard to swell. The benchtop is only $90 and we could replace it, but decided to leave it for now because I hate waste and throwing out an otherwise good benchtop that can be repaired does not sit easily with me. Mr Rivergum is not that keen on having to do the work all over again either, so we will chalk it up to experience and try to learn from our mistake when we cut the hole for the hob.

Here are some pictures of what the kitchen looks like now, still with the protective blue covers and with lots of stuff on the benchtops still waiting to be put away. That kitchen is being used! I promise I will tidy up for the big reveal photo shoot at the end.  🙂

The dishwasher is not in properly yet, and I have a towel on top to prevent steam getting to the underside of the benchtop when it is opened. This is not a permanent feature, there is a filler piece waiting to be fitted.

Mr Rivergum fleeing the scene because I am taking photos.

 

There is no denying that painting the walls would have been good before installing the cupboards, but who wants to do boring stuff when there are exciting flatpacks to be installed. The backsplash will cover a lot of it and painters tape will be our best friend for the rest. I am picking the backsplash up today!

Mr Rivergum is planning to install lights behind a white perspex cover to infill between the top of the wall cupboards and the ceiling. This should produce a nice soft light to wash across the ceiling, but we’d better patch and paint the bits that won’t be hidden behind the perspex!

The oven is in, but not yet connected. The sparkie has to come back because we didn’t realise that we needed 30 amps for the induction cooktop, not 15. So he will connect it all up once the cooktop is finally in. The oven cabinet was a bit of a challenge too, to get everything to fit neatly.  Once we had found the right page in the instructions it was easy, but trying to wing it first cost us a bit of time and frustration.

The Accidental Renovation Part 4 The Return of The Dishwasher

Oh, how I love thee, dishwasher, let me count the ways!

Nobody could ever describe me as a neat freak, creative chaos is more my thing, but everyone has their limits. Dirty dishes on top of all the other mess are just about mine. So imagine the utter blissful bliss of Mr Rivergum heaving the dishwasher into position, connection the pipes, plugging it in, looking deeply into my eyes and murmuring into my ear what I have longed to hear for an eternity: “Go ahead!”

And they say romance is dead!

The quiet burbling sound of the dishwasher busily doing its thing is a heavenly accompaniment to the noise of hammering and electric screwdriving that is punctuating our evenings at the moment. The cupboards are fun to put together, but there are 20 of them, not to mention the 17 drawers and other assorted bits. We have just finished the third weekend of our reno. So far we have assembled all the base cupboards, high cupboards, some of the top cupboards and several of the drawers. That has made a dent in the flatpack pile, but it isn’t gone. If you are wondering at the different shades of blue on some of the cupboard fronts, they are a protective film. We are leaving it on for now, partly to stop scratches while we are working and partly for the big reveal at the end.

Mr Rivergum has installed the rails for the top cupboards and we have hung a couple. We would have hung the lot, except one of them turned out to be a base cabinet, same measurements but no top because base cabinets are covered by the benchtops. So that has to go back, along with the cupboards over the fridge, which are too high, now that we decided to make the top cupboards lower so they won’t cause grief with the cornice. We forgot that they all needed to be the same height. Oops.

This is one of the nice things about DIY, you can change your mind and adjust your ideas as you go along. Exchanging items seems to be no problem, which is great.

But two wall cupboards are up, a place to put things were they won’t be moved all the time!! It is hard to appreciate fully how wonderful this is, unless you have spent the last couple of weeks constantly looking for things because they are no longer where they were the last time you used them. Want a cup of tea? First hunt for the kettle, the tea, a power point, cups, a spoon, etc etc? You get the idea.

But the absolute highlight of the weekend have been the wardrobes in the hallway. They are in, including the shelves!

The doors will have to wait until they are no longer in danger of being damaged, as large and heavy objects are carried through in the direction of the kitchen, but I can already put stuff away. Just have a look at our shoes, no longer cluttering up the entrance but neatly put away, behind closed doors eventually, and best of all, there even is lots of room left. How good is that!

 

 

 

The Accidental Renovation Part 3 Walled In!

After the old kitchen cupboards had been removed and the floor was done, it was time to attend to the walls. Originally the kitchen had half-height part walls on two sides, to the lounge room and to the hallway going from the front door into the house. The latter was not a great idea, especially since the entry to the kitchen was right where you walked in the front door.

Mr Rivergum had demolished both part walls. The kitchen would now be accessed from the lounge room and be completely closed off from the entry hallway. The drawing below shows the hallway on the right, with the entry door at the top. The two ‘doors’ at the bottom of the drawing are actually openings, leading to the lounge room.

This necessitated a new stud wall to be constructed between kitchen and hallway, which would support a bank of floor-to-ceiling storage cupboards on the hallway side and the kitchen cupboards on the other.

That was the easy part. Mr Rivergum has good DIY building skills and the wall was soon up. What was a much bigger headache were the old splashback tiles which had been continued all the way to the ceiling as a back to the top cupboards.

 

 

Those tiles weren’t going to come off easily! Mr Rivergum said he had two choices, pull out the tiles together with the plasterboard they were permanently stuck to, or put a new layer of plasterboard over the top. The latter was less work, not to mention the dust and rubble that would be created by the former. The kitchen would shrink by 1cm in all directions, which would be neither here nor there, and because of the kitchen cupboards the extra layer would not create any finishing issues either at the top or at the bottom of the walls. All the power points and light switches would have to be redone either way.

A bit of a no-brainer, and we will now have extra thick walls and a hermetically sealed kitchen. Forget it, mice, rats, cockroaches and ants, you aren’t going to find a way in through that lot!

So this weekend we bought the materials and constructed the stud wall, but then could go no further because we realised that getting the rest of the plasterboard installed would have to wait until after the electrician had worked his magic. So to forestall precious weekend time wasted, we jumped the gun and put together all the carcasses for the bottom and high cupboards. It will make installing the remaining large sheets of plasterboard a lot more awkward, but on the upside we can try out how it all fits. This yielded an unexpected bonus: because I had been very conservative when planning how many cupboards I could fit in, and there was wriggle room deciding where exactly we placed the new wall, I realised that if I stole 5cm out of the hallway, I could fit in an additional 20cm pull-out cupboard next to the dishwasher. Score! I always wanted one of those. It will only pull out as far as the handle of the corner unit it butts onto, but that is almost all the way. A girl has to be lucky sometimes!

Putting the cupboards together is fun. After a bit of head scratching and brow wrinkling getting used to the IKEA modus operandi, we can now put a carcass or drawer together in less than half an hour. You’ve got to love that! Of course there are the hinges, doors and handles to go, but even though that will be a bit more fiddly, compared to the building work the cupboards are so much easier!

The Accidental Renovation Part 2 Getting Floored

I have a strange fascination with flatpack. I love the puzzle. The way it all resolves itself to go together nicely to create this shiny new piece of furniture gives me a deep feeling of satisfaction. Bit like sewing really.

So the 130 pieces of flatpack on my back veranda were a special kind of torture because of one giant problem: the floor had to be layed first. Mr Rivergum had done a stirling job getting rid of the old tiles (some of which required a mini jackhammer, covering the mess in my house with a nice even layer of dust). But while the new tiles weren’t expensive, the quotes for laying them most certainly were. The gentlemen doing this kind of work must all get around in their Porsches on the weekend, judging by the kind of money they are charging, tax free from what I can tell.

We were outraged, upwards of 2k for a little bit of floor? One chap wanted 2.5, claiming the work would take him 4-5 days. We thought that hilarious.

So we would do it ourselves. How hard could it be? The tiles are huge, consequently there aren’t many of them to lay, you put them down on a bed of cement, one after the other, then wipe the grout into the spaces in between with a sponge. Job done!

There are lots of videos on YouTube showing you how to lay your tiles, but let me tell you, the time-lapse used in those videos is quite deceiving! Laying our own floor has given me a whole new appreciation of tiling. It is really hard work, not at all kind to your knees and your back. Good luck to the tradies, they probably need all that money they are charging for regular knee replacements and back operations.

But while it gives your back and leg muscles a workout, it isn’t really very difficult. You get lots of help these days, with little bits of plastic to keep your spaces even between the tiles, and a nifty clip and wedge system to make all the tiles nice and level on the slightly uneven surface of a previously tiled floor.

It did take us more than 5 days, a week in fact. Because it was DIY in our own home, we could take it easy and work in stages in the evenings, an hour or two at a time. This made it much less physically demanding than doing it solidly for a whole day, like a tradie would have to do.

Doing it ourselves was not only cheaper, but also tremendously rewarding, because I am so happy with the result. If the floor had tuned out badly it would have been a much less positive experience. I wish I could show you now a beautifully washed pristine floor, but there is no point washing it just yet. We can’t grout anyway because we need to be able to walk on the floor to do work on the walls over the next few days, so this work-in-progress pic will have to do for now.

After the walls are done we can finally get stuck into the flatpack pile properly, but as an hors d’oeuvre, after a fair chunk of the floor was good to walk on, we did put together a couple of the base cabinets to support a worktop, still in its protective cardboard cover.

We now have a kitchen surface! After one take-away dinner we decided we really needed somewhere to put together our own meals, even if they came out of the freezer. Weeks on take-away are just too horrible to contemplate. Yay for a kettle, a toaster and a chopping board!