kitchen reno part 2

From the living room. I'm getting a light fitting put in over the dining table. I have a Tord Boontjie garland light fitting I was thinking of putting there but am worried it'll be too small - thoughts?

Slowly, slowly the place is starting to resemble a house again. I spent the weekend putting the doors on and the shelves in place and tidying up the endless supply of sawdust lying around the place (thanks to the rain, the benchtop and sink hole was cut inside. So you can imagine how pleased I was about that). And this is how it looks now.

The view from the hallway.

I had to go back to Ikea today to get the plinths (kickboards to cover the legs) and a few other things they either didn't have before (like LACK wall shelves) or that I totally forgot to buy last time I was there (shelves for the end cabinets that face into the dining/living room). I also was desperate to get the benchtop oil because it hasn't been treated yet. I'm hardly precious about things and quite like the timeworn look of wooden benches and tables. But I'm NOT happy that on the second day of the sink side being completed I discovered this...

Naughty naughty

Luckily, this should easily sand out (hope so anyway!). But people are still banned from my house now because I also discovered yesterday that the electrician had damaged one of the doors while leaning over to fix one of the power points with his tool belt. I'm going to turn it around and swap with the door next to it so problem solved but still highly annoying.

Plates and random glass collection!

Not annoying, however, is the fact I can access my plates and glasses by simply shoving my hand through the top of the cupboard (I haven't put the handles on the doors yet so the less opening and closing of doors, the better!). Obviously this is temporary until the benchtops get put on next week!

The sink, gooseneck tap and dishwasher - my true love! How did I put up with handwashing for sooooo many years?

So this is the sink side. I bought shelves for these base cabinets today and there will be an open shelf the full length of the wall just above the tap and then three horizontal wall cabinets above that. Now, my dilemma. I wasn't going to get a splashback for either side - just one little piece behind the stovetop. But I will, because I think it'll finish off the space and also because I'll need one!! The wall is so uneven there is a rather large gap between the benchtop and the wall. Plus, while being extra careful because of the non-oiled benchtop, I've realised how much water goes everywhere in a kitchen. Never noticed this before! Glass is out of my budget, stainless steel won't go and so I'm starting to lean towards tiles which I was sooooo against just days ago. Any other suggestions? I seriously considered pressed metal (a friend has it in her kitchen and it looks amazing) but I can't imagine that being very practical or easy to clean. So if you have any brilliant ideas/suggestions, I'd love to hear.

Here are the holes the electrician cut in the wrong space. Steve patched them up today, but the eventual splashback will cover them anyway. Phew. But note to oven manufacturers: I'd happily pay an extra dollar or whatever it'd cost to put on vinyl stickers instead of those crap cheap ones that DON'T COME OFF. Gotta get some metho or something. Grr

Still to do....

- Paint the back wall properly (and the little wall with bathroom door in it - plasterer only finished patching it up with this most recent job)

- Paint the ceiling

- Paint the window architraves

- Sand back and re-stain the floor

- Build and attach the wall cabinets and open shelves

- Place the other benchtop

- Hook up the rangehood

- Attach the plinths

- Oil the benchtops

- Get a splashback

- Figure out what to put above the fridge - there will be cover panels on either side of it so you won't see the sides of the fridge. Wall cabinets will be too shallow and base cabinets too high for the space, so maybe shelves? But they'll be too far back too. Might need to custom-make deep shelves for the space.

Hmm, that should keep us busy!!

kitchen reno part 1

What I'm looking at right now. You should see the other side of the living room!

Am completely knackered, so not going to bore with all the details just yet, but let me update you in numbers and pictures...
Number of days without a kitchen: 8
Number of sandwiches eaten: 42
Number of arms incredibly sore from sanding and painting three times in one day: 2 (they would be mine)
Number of hiccups so far: 6
Most number of trips to the hardware store in one day: 6
Number of cabinets in place: 5
Number of cabinets to still be put into place: 10
Number of taps working: 0
Number of appliances working: 0
Number of holes in the wrong place the electician cut into the wall that was already sanded and painted? 2
Number of flies killed because the doors were open all day every day: 723. Wait. 724
Number of times we've fallen onto our butts because the floor is so damn slippery from all the swept up sawdust? Me: 2; Steve: 1; Z: 4
Number of days before my dad can come back and finish putting the kitchen in: 12 :(
Number of hours before we can get water and power on in the kitchen: oh god please let it be no more than 15!

Day 1: Looking better already!

The mouse's house (left) and grass growing inside the wall!!

Several floorboards had to be replaced. We nearly had this gaping hole overnight, but luckily the new floor was put in on time.

Day 2: Electrical and plumbing work

Day 5: new walls in and plastered and lights installed

Day 6: dad and his little helper putting together the cabinets. Funnily enough, that plastic hammer worked: teh nails actually went in!

Day 7: Pantry done. The other cabinets on that wall are not flush with the wall yet. Dad needs to come back and put the benchtop on. Am hoping the electrician can connect the oven and cooktop tomorrow. I'm tired of sandwiches and takeaway!

My temporary benchtop!! These are the offcuts from the other side's bench and the cut out from the sink hole!

And just because I don't have enough things in my life to keep me busy (!) I signed up to Twitter last week and actually spent longer than two minutes on it tonight working it out. I think I've got it. Here is where I'll be sending all those little quirks, annoyances or snippets of news too minor or time-consuming to blog about. And much excitement is the fact I can SMS the updates and they'll appear magically on my Twitter profile. How genius. Not sure how long I'll follow this fad (am really good at losing interest in things - Facebook? I only get on to look at friends photos now!), but for now, you can follow me at twitter.com/belindagraham

is this the world's ugliest kitchen?

The missing door: poor bugga nearly made it. Was hanging on by one tiny nail. But Steve kept forgetting its state and it fell on his foot one time too many and spent its last few days beside the fridge.

It might well have been. But unfortunately it can't claim this distinguished title because it NO LONGER EXISTS!!!! It's sitting all partly smashed up on my front sandpit (what pathetic grass we had has been fried in the heat). And it's never looked better. Even Z is glad to be rid of the "kitchen mess" as he calls it. Gee, do you wonder why I never posted pics of this room? I'm completely embarassed to show this, but seeing that it's all in the past, let's have a laugh, shall we? Yes, I've put up with this for five years. My medal better be in the mail...

A few incredibly exciting facts:

* I painted the doors white when we moved in because I couldn't imagine living with green doors for any amount of time. I did such a crap job, I was wishing for the green to come back.

* The previous owner's son thought himself a handyman. He wasn't. He installed the taps himself did such a bang-up job they didn't work properly. They were replaced numerous times and ground back and had lots of work but no makeover could save the cold one which exploded one day. I'm so used to using warm/hot water for everything I rarely turn the cold water tap on in the bathroom. He also cut a hole too big for the tap nozzle and didn't bother doing anything about it. My non-handyman husband figured expanding filler would do the trick temporarily. It sealed the hole, but, well, look at it! Ugh.

* The tiles are on big sheets of some asbestos-ridden material and weren't the same depth as the rest of the wall, so there was a weird uneven gap no one ever bothered fixing. I don't remember how the piece of wood make its way there but there it is!

Hmm, what's sadder? The contact-covered sheets? The mssing door? The paper towel stuffing the hole where the cold water tap used to be? The lovely aged yellow stains or the fish plug that for some INSANE reason I never replaced??????

One of the delightful tile prints I could admire while cooking. They clearly shopped at the Ugly Tile Shop - same place they got the sunflower tiles that were in my old bathroom!

And another one - I guess they just couldn't decide between the two beauties and chose both...

On a happier note, I did wonder if I was utilising the space enough with the new design. Would I fit everything in? Considering I was ruthless and thew out half the contents of the kitchen cupboards as well, I have a feeling I'll be just fine. Aside from another bag out of sight, this is all I have! I sense a shopping spree coming on!

I started building the cupboards so I had something to store it in. Four packages down, 48 to go...

So I was feeling the pressure with all your "can't wait to see the new kitchen" comments. But I guess, looking at this, anything is going to be a huge improvement isn't it?

bye bye hideous kitchen

Oh the memories....

It's finally happening, people. THIS WEEK. Am so very excited. Builder starts on Wednesday to start ripping out the old one. This is how it looked the first week we moved in. We had all our stuff crammed in the bedrooms and former garage while we attacked the walls removing all the lovely mismatched wood panelling and scraping all the CRAP some genius thought would look great sprayed on the ceiling. There it is all over the floor, which is shame because it's hiding the delightful multi-coloured, animal-hair-covered carpet, which was actually better than what we discovered under the carpet... Once I've finished emptying the kitchen I'll take another pic of how it looks today. I'm afraid to say, it's actually worse: one of the doors recently fell off, the cold tap is no more and we changed the wall cabinet handles over years ago but never bothered to patch up the marks left from the old ones because "we're doing the kitchen soon..."

So soon has arrived. I'm going to start the new blog to coincide with this reno. I've called it The Happy Home because that's what it'll be with a new kitchen. Hopefully. So I'll redirect you when it's time - so far I've been blindly finding my way around Wordpress. Doesn't help that when I finally work something out my computer crashes and I have to start all over again. Am a little over technology... Have a good week. x

my kitchen: update

I wish I could say this is it, but nope, mine is still how it was a month ago only with less cupboard doors and more ants (does anyone else have this problem? What is going on with the ant invasion?) This, however, is a rather lovely looking kitchen from our October issue. Image by Dan Magree/Real Living magazine

Before I start, you just might think this week's lot of posts is sponsored by Ikea, but for the record, they're not! There just happens to be a whole lot of Ikea-related things to write about, so I thought I'd cram them all into one week.

On Friday I convinced my parents to come all the way up from Canberra to meet me at Ikea and help me get my head around the whole kitchen design thing. Well, they were coming up to Sydney anyway, but I used the babies as bait so they'd make a detour to Ikea. So mum babysat Zak and Layla and I put my blinkers on again and bypassed all the cool stuff and headed straight to the kitchen department (I did spot one thing - tomorrow - but that's because it was right in front of me. I swear I didn't look to the side once.)

It was rather helpful having Dad along - I can't imagine doing this with someone who hasn't done it before. He had clever inside knowledge such as how the wall microwave cabinets they have aren't deep enough for a lot of microwaves so I should just get a normal base cabinet and smaller door. And how the Gripp handles will avoid a repetition of my wardrobe handle debacle because unlike most handles you just screw them into the side of the door instead of drilling through it. And how I can use any size wall cabinet for the fan cause he'll adapt it. And that yes, I can use two small wall cabinet frames (because they're not as deep as the base ones) on the end of one bench side as open shelves into the dining room. Excellent.

I also - finally - put to good use a commenter's suggestion from way back and took a stick of wood in my wall paint colour to match the colour. On my last Ikea trip I was horrified to discover that the Applad white is actually not that white at all, rather a cream. However, it seems my Whisper White paint is also not that white and so the two together should come up a rather good match after all. So it's back to Applad! With Gripp handles. And birch wood benchtops. And a stainless steel sink with mixer tap. And if Domayne can't beat a price on the appliances, it'll be their ceramic cooktop, silver oven and rangehood too.

This almost made me want to reverse my materials, but I have a feeling - as lovely as it is - the wood bottoms will date quicker than white. Image by Dan Magree/Real Living magazine

So, if my estimations are correct (oh please let them be!) I'll be forking out around $2350 for cabinets, $2018 for benchtops, plinths, legs, handles, sink, cover panels, taps, and $1310 for the appliances. A total of $5678. My carpenter quoted me $3650 for all the other stuff (ripping it out, putting in a new window, resheeting the walls, the plasterer, the plumber and electrician) so that brings it all to a grand total of: $9328 which is UNDER the $10,000 budget we set out to do. Oh, hang on I forgot to add the dishwasher, but still, close enough. We can afford more, but why go crazy when I'm happy with this? Plus, we won't be here forever, so I can design and do my dream kitchen in the next place if it doesn't have it already.

My only drama was that when I checked the stock availability at Ikea I noticed some base cupboards and oven cabinet weren't in stock. I was all ready to call them to ask when they can expect more in when I discovered this nifty little tool: Ikea Webchat. It's like instant messenger - you ask a question, they answer rather quickly, and I found out the actual frames are in, it's the doors that aren't in stock, but they'll be in in a week and a half. Everything now rests on when I can get my electricty box upgraded because it's not going to be able to handle anything else and I'm not keen on finding out what will happen if it gets overloaded.

Soo, it finally looks to be happening. In fact in needs to be happening because my little '50s kitchen is literally falling apart: the cold water tap came off a while back and we didn't bother fixing it because "we were doing the kitchen soon". And then the other day the door under the sink fell off. We discovered that one tiny nail (not even a screw!) had been holding it on for the past five years. I think it was tired of holding up the fort and just gave up. Damn good job though. So, yes, it's time!

In celebration of my near kitchen renovation, I thought I'd share these pictures of two pretty kitchens from recent issues of Real Living I'm adding to our website's brand spakin' new image gallery (from next month, fingers crossed!) Aren't they lovely?