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Reno – Work and its not even my fulltime job

Posted by Jeffrey on Apr 6, 2009

How long till I had a chance to sit down and write a post? I thought it would only be a day or so and I could keep posting on a day by day basis to update the progress of the reno, but so far no luck… it seems to be really taking up a lot of my time to keep the trades going and get things sorted out.

Lets go back to the beginning. We decided that it would be cheaper for us (that’s me) to take out the existing kitchen and the vinyl tile flooring. So my good friend Tim and I made pretty short work of the kitchen and actually had someone from Freecycle take the whole thing off my hands! Including the sink and dishwasher too. I felt pretty good about not having to put the whole thing in the bin and they were very appreciative of it as well.

So the flooring… not a big deal, but it did take somewhat longer than I had thought originally…. The problem was that there were 3 types of tiles. One looked pretty old and hardly stuck down. The other was ugly and I covered it up a while back and thought that they also would come right up. Little did I know that there was some sort of trowel on adhesive put down before the peel and stick tiles went down?  I know! So it took a bit longer but really once I got a system they came up in about 4 hours.

So the packing took a long time too and we are pretty cramped in the basement, but making ends meet using the bathroom sink and the microwave setup we have on the bookcase under the fuse panel. I just keep thinking “it’s like camping, but without the mosquitoes.”

After the first day, they had about ½ of the floor ripped up and the electricians had roughed in a lot of the pot lights in the living and dining room.

Flooring coming up. Right Winston?

After some work on the next day they turned them up and they look fantastic! It is great to get good quality light in the room and finally be able to see what the room is going to look like.

The subfloor was kinda rough. But it is about 80 years old.

After the rest of the old flooring was ripped up they screwed and glued down 5/8” tongue and groove ply and the floor feels really tight and strong. Its nice to know that when I did the work to the joists before finishing up the basement that it went to good use.

And the kitchen is moving along. The plumber roughed in the supply and drain lines in a couple of hours and put the vent down the drain run, about 8 feet from the fixture. He says it will be fine and actually is much cleaner than taking the vent up the wall across the joist space and drilling through a few ceiling joists to get it to tie into the existing vent stack. So we will see!

Lots of patching was done on the kitchen to fix all these holes.

The last few days have seen a lot of patching in the kitchen where the electricians fished wire, but my latest efforts are in the living room where I thought it would be a straight forward task to take out the last remaining galvanized piping supplying the upstairs bathroom… but as you can see it has expanded as the original reno in the 70s never took it out.

I think we’ll have some ceiling left at the end of this…

They just tied the copper into it, can you believe it?

Ugh. Thats all I can say

Finalizing construction drawings

Posted by Jeffrey on Mar 9, 2009

Since we signed the contract, we have been moving forward to get the schedule locked down and all of the drawings for the cabinets in place so they can be sent to the cabinet makers to get started.

On Friday I was supposed to finalize the drawings with my comments, but came down with brutal flu bug and stayed in bed basically for 36 hours. After the weekend [and feeling much better] I am going over to the contractor’s office today to co-ordinate. Just a few small things and confirming that we are all on the same page because its easier to make sure that things are aligned at the drawing stage rather than later on!

I have to also confirm the window size so I can order it from the same people who did the rest of the windows in the house. I am glad I waited to order it now as with a few changes, I think the width of the window changed and once you take possession of the goods, its not like you can return them.

On another note, I secured someone to take away the kitchen! I used this online board called FreeTOrecycle (which is a Yahoo Group) and put all the cabinets, etc (and the dishwasher) up and a fellow contacted me and said that this was exactly what he was looking for and will rent a truck to pick them up when we take them out at the end of the month. Its great because I didn’t want them going to the landfill if someone else could use them.

We also started packing away things from the rest of the main floor, because with the new floor going in, everything has to be out of the way for the floor removal and the new subfloor and 3/4″ hardwood installation. I met with the flooring contractor last week and he said that it would be 3 days to do all the work, which seems pretty quick, but hey lets be optimistic at this point!

So, all that being said, I have a few things to do to get everything kickstarted, but can’t wait to get this project underway!

We have contract!

Posted by Jeffrey on Feb 23, 2009

We got a draft copy of the contract today and after a few revisions, will be able to start the project! [Of course the first thing is putting a deposit down, but after that we will start.]

So now that we have pretty much locked down the scope of work, we have to figure out how to schedule the work to make the most sense. Because we are doing not just the kitchen, a few things have to happen first. Of course the floor will have to be done before the cabinets go in, but even before that the window should be removed and the new opening cut.

So I am using this online project planning software called wrike to help me get a sense of what order things need to happen. Now I just have to pass it by the contractor to see if it makes sense.

Picked up sink and hood

Posted by Jeffrey on Feb 22, 2009

I was going to be out in the east end so I made a trip out to Bathworks to pick up our Franke sink that had come in. While out there I took a look at their shiny fixture things like vanities and tubs, just in case we ever get around to ripping out our retro-70s main bathroom. Its not like the bathroom is broken – it just doesn’t function as well as it might with a bit of rethinking on the layout and the floor to ceiling mirror still scares our guests.

Then I got the hood (Zephyr Cyclone 30”) and stuffed that also in the back of the car and, oh yeah, swung by LeeValley to pickup a sampling of handles so we could decide on which ones would suit the cabinets. Lee Valley is a great source for handles and knobs: most are available online, but I wanted to feel what they were like before we chose one. This is the one we are going with (the one marked “A”).

Both boxes were large but I got them downstairs and relatively out of the way. Now a check on what we’ve purchased so far:

• 460 square feet of Hickory Old Mission hardwood flooring from St. Lawrence Hardwood (still in the Brampton Hardwood warehouse, thank goodness!)
• Miele G2170SCVI dishwasher (scratch and dent at MTC, also still there)
• Faucet- Hansgrohe Metro (from Home Depot)
• Franke Regatta RGX160 double bowl sink (from Bathworks; in the basement)
• Zephyr Cyclone 30” Range Hood (The Brick (no really!); in the basement)

The really tricky task will come when we get close to starting; we are moving out while the really messy work is done, but that means we will have to empty the main floor, get rid of stuff we don’t need, find a place to store the stuff we do, and clean up the basement storage area so the plumber and electrician can get in there to do their thing. More to come on this for sure!

Getting closer to starting kitchen renovation

Posted by Jeffrey on Feb 22, 2009

Its been a while since the last post and most of the time has been going over budget with the contractor and figuring out where to save a few dollars. I will do a few things that will save some money like taking up the old vinyl tile  in the kitchen and removing the cabinets and countertop, but really the big ticket items I am leaving to the pros.

We will have a lot of work to do just packing up the whole main floor of the house and finding somewhere to store the stuff because we are replacing all the hardwood throughout. I think we will take the opportunity to purge some stuff we’ve been hanging on to for a while which will help once we need to put it all back! [It will seem like we have increased our storage space!]

We agreed to move forward with this company who have been really great about going through the quote very thoroughly with us and even bringing in his subs to visit the house and discuss their work! So now we have to go and sign the contract and leave a deposit to begin the detailed  investigation for a few more areas, such as removing the current window and moving the opening over so we can get a proper run of uppers in.

Once this is done, I will order the window and hope there are no delays in getting it fabricated!

Contractor visit

Posted by Jeffrey on Dec 4, 2008

I met the contractor this week and we discussed not only the construction work that has to get done, but also ways to cut back to reduce the cost of the boxes and doors. He had a few suggestions which were interesting and make some sense. Now he just has to go back, sharpen his pencil and see if we can get down to a figure that fits our budget.

As far as the flooring goes, we are going to take up the old (original!) hardwood in the main floor as it was crudely patched during another owners bad 70s reno. I was out last week to a hardwood retailer to look at a selection of solid hardwood products and selected one that I think will look really good throughout the whole floor and into the kitchen. Since it will be in the kitchen I selected hickory, which is arguably the hardest North American species according to this chart. We are interested in avoiding if possible exotic woods that have to get shipped from far away.

Then we have to get coordinated with an installer to come in after the cabinets are gone and any rough construction is complete to take up the old floor, put down 3/8” plywood over the existing fir sub floor and then lay the new hardwood. Its going to look really good as I will rip out the existing cheap baseboards which again went in during the 70s and replace with the original-style deep baseboards.

Speaking of new, the windows for the front of the house are being installed this coming Monday and it will be a relief not only because they will look way better (and suit the house), but we won’t have a draft blowing over the bed during the night!

Money, money, money

Posted by Jeffrey on Dec 1, 2008

Yes, we got the news…
The preliminary pricing came in higher than we were forecasting so now we have to look into what we can do to shave down some costs… I was expecting this as in my experience, the costs rarely come in at what you’ve budgeted; must be a universal law or something.
I am meeting with the contractor tomorrow to find out about his part of the work and figure out areas for savings, so hopefully we can maintain the basic layout and concept.
Stay tuned for more!

Lets hope the price is right

Posted by Jeffrey on Nov 13, 2008

Late last week we had a meeting with our designer on the kitchen reno and formalized the plan. She brought in a Richlieu catalog with all sorts of organization devices so we could go through it and pick the things that we thought would be useful. Its pretty seductive to look at all the “labour-saving” products, but as we are sure to find out, they really can inflate the price of the job!
After the meeting we ran out to get a sense of what fixtures would be (sink, faucet). I had no idea that these things were pricier than rhinestones at an Elvis convention. (And just as flashy too!) We took a look at some tiles for the backsplash and got some pictures so we could get some direction from Carol. So far, the elevations show a recessed niche in the wall which would be highlighted with feature tiles and would be for oils, pepper grinder etc. The field tile would be simple and not too busy as the space is too small for a lot of detail.

Backsplash tile v1.0.

or maybe this one? Backsplash tile v1.1.

The next step is to get high level pricing on the boxes and doors so we can see if we are in the ballpark. Then we can estimate on the cost for the construction elements (electrical, structural, HVAC etc.). I am crossing my fingers!

Kitchen plans and priorities

Posted by Jeffrey on Oct 27, 2008

Late last week we had our second real meeting with our designer Carol and we got to see the plans she drew up based on the output of our first meeting.

Design at the early stage is fun. The budget prioritization comes later.

One reason that a designer is a real solid addition to a renovation project is their perspective as an “impartial” outside observer (in addition to their skills in assembling trades, know how about the process, design sense… I could go on.) During that first meeting Carol was quite detailed in her approach to finding out how we use our current kitchen and what we’d like to see in an improved one especially what some of our priorities are. This really helped as I think when you live with a situation for a while you overlook some of the big moves you could undertake that would help out further down the line.

One thing I mentioned was currently the fridge sits almost right in front of the rear door, so even though we put in a full glass door (see this post for more on that!) the bulk of the appliance blocks out a fair amount of light from coming into the kitchen. Now normally this wouldn’t be too much of an issue, but given that our house is so narrow and close to our neighbours, we don’t have any side lighting. (We have a narrow window on the dining room, but after about 12:30pm the sun moves around the rear of the house and that area goes into shadow.) The predominant light source is the back of the house since it faces south.

But one of my top 3 frustrations with the current layout is that when all of us come in the back door it is a traffic nightmare with boots, coats, dogs, bags flying everywhere, especially if it is cold or raining out. But I understand that because of the size of the space adding more program to a “kitchen” would be even more of a challenge. But there are always tradeoffs in any type of design job; so rare are those optimum conditions where all the stars align and things work out perfectly. So how are we doing so far?

Carol brought over two sketches: one moved the sink to the extreme south end of the kitchen and moved the range to the opposite end of the counter run. The big move in this one was closing up the existing window (what?) and replacing it with two thinner ones on either side of the HVAC duct. Did I mention there is a duct which supplies the second floor right smack dab in the middle of the rear wall?
The second one moves the fridge pretty much diagonally opposite to where it is now and the sink moves to the west wall. Now it becomes interesting! We took this concept and tweaked it a bit on the weekend so that maybe if we can move that HVAC duct a foot or so to the right, we can have a larger window.

Very rough sketch but you can see that the west wall is alot cleaner as the fridge is now tucked away behind the stub wall.

We are now trying to figure out how to maximize the amount of counter run on the east wall by putting the microwave into the uppers and maybe putting the sink into the corner on a diagonal, but I am not convinced of the diagonal sink and if we did this we’d have to swap the range over to the other side and figure out how to duct the range hood.

Next stage when we see if all this fits is to get preliminary costing on a scheme. Never the fun part because it usually means really getting down to what is important and what is only a nice to have because like everything else, it will come down to priorities and tradeoffs.

Ever had a diagonal sink? Let me know your thoughts!

Starting at the beginning

Posted by Jeffrey on Oct 9, 2008

Those of you with a sharp memory will remember that when I did the basement reno, I neglected to document it until I was a few weeks in. Not to make that same mistake again, I decided to bring you all the details (at least as many as I care to put pixel to screen) in our upcoming kitchen renovation.

Yes that’s right; I said kitchen renovation. The two words that strike fear into any man. Because there are issues with the kitchen. That’s right issues. In our case its a distinct lack of storage and organization on the surface. But of course it goes deeper than that and maybe over the next 6 months or so, we can start to get into how we address those issues.

But for now we’ve brought in a specialist; an Interior Designer who has done many kitchens. So after our first meeting and a long questionaire that we went over, she is putting together a plan to address our ‘wish list.’  I think that our list is so long we’d have to have a kitchen 10 times the size to fit it all in but I am hopeful she can prioritize what we need versus what we want. Tall order yes, but its still the beginning of the project!

Don’t go look at Custom Kitchens

Posted by Jeffrey on Feb 21, 2008

We made the mistake of going to look at a fantastic high-end custom kitchen store called DOM which sells Valcucine kitchens imported from Italy.  The sample kitchens are all beautifully put together and everything fits perfectly. In fact, the way the Valcucine product goes together reminds me of an airplane: everything has a machined quality and uses just enough (not excessive) amounts of material to get a cohesive look.

We ended up in the store by accident; we were down in a certain area of town that has funky cafes and galleries and wandered into the store just to quickly take a look. Well once you’re in, its hard to leave because its like being at the premier of a Hollywood movie. You can see the stars and it looks like you could reach out and shake their hand but you know that you’ll get in really big trouble if you do. Which means in this case that it seems perfectly logical to spend that amount on a kitchen, but if we do, we’ll end up having to do a whole bunch of other stuff to make sure that it all goes together properly.

Things like making sure all the walls are square (yeah, right) or the floor is level (ha!) or that all the appliances match the design (how much is that integrated double oven?) Because the way I see it, something this nice requires total committment to making it look as good as it does in the showroom. They even have one show kitchen in the store with a tempered acid-etched glass countertop!

But after getting home (and back to reality) we realized that in our pretty small house a kitchen this good would require us to upgrade everything else in the house, including furniture and other fixtures. (Just look at some of the pictures on the site to see what it looks like.) So really you have to commit to the whole package before you plunk down the chequebook.

Renovating- how far is too far

Posted by admin on Dec 31, 2007

One of the things I think about often is the level of finish and overall look that would be appropriate with our house.

You see our house is small, rather old (1920s or so) and in a nice (although, not ultra fancy) neighborhood of the city. So in looking at for instance, redoing the kitchen, would granite be out of place? How about a 6 burner commercial-look gas range? (not that we could fit one in anyway…)

Friends of ours have a house of approximately the same vintage that was renovated just before they bought it about 5 years ago. They have a fantastic kitchen with heated floors, commercial style range and awesome Sub-Zero fridge. Every time I go over there I want to come back and get the crowbar out to take on our kitchen. But as I have been told before, the kitchen will take weeks and I want to at least have a plan or end up as part of one of those HGTV reno-rescue candidates!

Kitchen’s done, at least this project

Posted by Jeffrey on Jun 27, 2007

Well, I finished the $100 kitchen reno and as you can see in this earlier post, we managed to stay under $100 even including some other items, like the mirror I put up and the ‘blackboard’ I created by painting the end of one of the cabinets (just out of view in the foreground).

The new counters and floors make the kitchen feel more included in the rest of the house.

Lets start with the floor: it took a lot longer than I thought (but of course you knew that by now!) I put the tiles on the diagonal for more interest and it also seems to make the space bigger. Even though it is way more graphic than the original, it seems less busy since the pattern is more simple.

It took a lot longer because of the diagonal the number of cuts required on the tiles sometimes 3 cuts per tile to get around all of the various angles in the room. Even though I included some waste in my calculations, I ended up with just one black and 7 white tiles left! (These tiles by the way, were really hard to come by. In fact I had to go to 4 Home Depots (no luck there) and 3 Ronas to finally find them and I think I got the last package of white tiles in the city.) There was a lot of selection for $2-3 per square foot, but I couldn’t do it for this budget.

Knobs were from Lee Valley, a package of 20 for $5.95 on close out sale! They are actually metal (not plastic) so hope they hold up better than the plastic that were originally on the door.

I think the countertop makes the most difference in the feel as it really brightens the room up and makes it appear less busy, although we have started to clean up the kitchen more!

The mirror came from IKEA and had a really thin frame which I built up with chair rail trim from the Depot which I cut on the mitre saw and glued up, before painting the whole frame to match the rest of the trim in the house.

So there we are and I hope it ties us over for the next few years as we save money and ideas for what we really want to do. It may end up being longer than that if past experience is any indication!

Just for a laugh, I dug up a picture of the original kitchen

The orignal color has the space looking like a hospital waiting room.

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Progress on the Kitchen Makeover

Posted by Jeffrey on Jun 5, 2007

Here are the latest numbers as I am getting into actually doing the work on
the kitchen makeover.

Knobs (bulk Pack of 20!, Lee Valley)	$5.95
Backsplash embossed wallpaper (roll, HomeDepot)	$19.99
Silver paint (1 can, HomeDepot)	$11.97
Sandpaper (leftover from another job)	$0
Primer (leftover from another job)	$0
Floor Tiles (Black and White, Vinyl, Rona)	$45.00
Melamine Paint (leftover from another job)	$0
PaintBrushes, tape etc.	$8.99
Blackboard Paint (1 can, Benjamin Moore Store)	$19.99
Mirror (IKEA)	$7.99
Trim for Mirror (Home Depot)	$8.00
Trim for Blackboard section (leftover from another job)	$0
Total	$123.88    $95.92

OK, so I was over 100, but we added in a couple of things to spruce it up on top
of the things that we were originally planning. Like for instance the Blackboard
and the mirror. The blackboard paint is really thin and has a strange
consistency so it was hard to apply smoothly. The melamine paint on the counter
in contrast was like painting with glue; very thick, but hard to apply even
though I sanded the counter to rough it up. Definitely requires two coats to
cover well.

Now the good news is that we are back under $100 (even with the other items) as
we have decided to get rid of the backsplash wallpaper and paint, so when I
brought all that stuff back, it saved us like $40!

Its taken a fair bit more time because we were travelling 2 weeks ago and I have
waited until we got some nice days where we could have the windows open to do
the counter paint. It really brightens things up and streamlines the look of the
small (10′ x 9′) kitchen.

The paint brightens up the space. (The cake is courtesy of our good friend JS).

I have also taken some extra time to go back and fish some wire up from the
basement for the eventual under counter lighting which took a bit more time, but
fortunately I could use the holes that the original electrician put in the wall
to feed up the rewire of the kitchen. I decided to do this now as I am going to
patch up the holes as its been over 2 years since they put them in and we are
starting to get tired of them!

The $100 Kitchen Reno (taxes not included)

Posted by Jeffrey on May 22, 2007

What do you think it takes to make a kitchen more livable? That’s what we’re trying to find out as the cost for really doing it right is quickly spiralling out of control.

By ‘right’ I mean that in addition to new cabinets, countertop, backsplash in the kitchen itself the floor needs to be leveled. Since this will make the rest of the floor look funny (and we can’t match the old worn out floors in the rest of the house) we want to carry new flooring front to back.

Now it is open concept, but a very small space as you can see in other pictures here, so it isn’t out of consideration, but kinda out of reach for now.

The current state of the kitchen. I have taken off the old plastic handles and started patching the holes, ready for paint touch ups.

So we are planning a bit of paint, some new knobs, maybe some cheap and cheerful tile and patching up some, ummm, holes left over from some wiring done at the same time as the basement. We’ll see how close we get to $100, but as always, I will be providing the “free” labour.

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