The House Renovation Saga

We've spent the last weekend moving the majority of the contents of the kitchen into boxes of varying size. We're now mostly living out of the dining room.

This long weekend (three day weekend thanks to the ANZAC holiday), we've started demolishing the kitchen. We firstly removed all doors which involved unscrewing the hinges. The doors were moved outside where we removed the handles and hinges for easy transportation to the recycling depot.

The following picture shows some of the doors that have been removed. I'm a bit worried about the water staining that you can see in the photo. Our plan is to waterproof the area after we take the old kitchen out.

After the removals of the doors, we tackled the wall cabinets.

Removing the wall cabinets were a bit of a challenge. We forgot to remove the power point first, so we struggled with the removal (lots of pulling and shoving), then realised that we had to shut off the power to that area so we could plug the powerpoint for now.

It took a while to remove the wall cabinets. Fortunately the cornice came off fairly easily.

When we finished for the day (around dinner time), this is what it looked like.

Things left to do:

• Finish packing the rest of the kitchen
• Remove pantry cabinet
• Remove drawers
• Remove main kitchen cabinet framework
• Remove all tiles
• Patch holes and sand walls
• Silicon any gaps to the outside (to stop those annoying ants!)
• Waterproof wet areas
• New kitchen to arrive!
• Organise for kitchen installation guy to install new kitchen

It's been quiet on this journal but hubby and I have been busy sorting out our stuff, decluttering and holding a massive garage sale on the 15th and 16th of March.

Our next big project is tackling the kitchen. Hubby and Glen removed the oven this afternoon, which wasn't as painful as I expected. The oven is now sitting in the car port. Know anyone that wants a free gas oven? It's still working but needs a good clean and possibly a new door seal.

Next on the agenda is to pack up the rest of the kitchen into boxes. I've started the process by packing away my baking tins and trays. I just need to find more clean boxes to pack the rest of the stuff away.

Here's a photo of our very ugly kitchen and even uglier floor in the current state. Please excuse the various tools and bits and pieces in the kitchen. I'm aiming to post more photos of the kitchen progress!

After months and months (well...years, really) of hard work and procrastination, our ensuite is finally finished! We officially commissioned the new ensuite yesterday evening, 10 February 2008. It looks great and I'm really pleased with all of it.

On to the pictures...

The original ensuite

Here are some photos of the original ensuite. Note how dark and dirty it looked.

The following picture is of the old shower recess. Notice how dirty the shower recess looked, despite repeat attempts at cleaning.

The following picture is of the old vanity unit - note the water damage.

One of the banes of my existence - the filthy tiny tiles that made up the floor of the old ensuite. They looked constantly dirty despite lots of cleaning.

The renovated ensuite

Here's the finished product! The first picture was taken looking into the new ensuite.

The following picture is of the new shower recess and feature tiles! I love our feature tiles

The next picture is of the sink area, including our new designer tap mixer we got from ebay.

What a difference! I love how much larger the bathroom looks and feel. I'm definitely loving how clean everything feels too :)

Some interesting information:

• We started the renovations on 23rd April 2006!
• It has taken nearly two years to complete the ensuite.
• Everything you see in the renovated ensuite is brand new, including the walls.
• Other new things include new shower rail, shower screen, shower head, cabinet mirror, downlight, tap handles, stainless steel power fittings, toilet, vanity unit.
• The cabinet mirror is partially recessed into the wall, creating a much bigger storage space.
• Check out the renovation photos on flickr.
• Read all posts associated with the renovation of this ensuite, including photos in some of the posts.

We're very pleased and happy with the ensuite. It was a pretty tough challenge as we've never done this kind of stuff before. There was lots of tears and frustration on my behalf although Alastair took to it like a duck to water. We learned a lot during the process, which will be handy for our next project - renovations of the main bathroom (yes, we're crazy enough to do this all again)!

We paid a visit to the Queanbeyan Auctions today to look at options for a new kitchen for the current house and to check whether our shower screen installation was going ok. We were fortunate to speak to the owner, Simon, who provided really good advice for the kitchen and general renovations.

Some of the key things we learned:

• If you're renovating to sell, choose items that appeal to the 80% of people coming through your house (the 80/20 rule).
• Floating floorboards aren't the best choice for Canberra due to the extremely dry climate. Floating floorboards work best for costal regions of Australia. Simon suggested going with hardwood flooring, or tiles which are going through a huge resurgence at the moment.
• Pick a gas cooktop with a wok burner as the Australian market makes use of this cooking function, in particular the Asian, Italian and Greek markets.
• Beech coloured floorboards are too light for Canberra. They're more suited to the coastal regions.

Simon helped us to choose a new kitchen. The layout is basically the same but with everything brand new. The key differences are:

• The gas cooktop being moved in about 45cm (for safety reasons)
• The fridge moving so that we end up with more cupboard space
• We're going with white panels, and a dark granite benchtop
• We're including a nook for the microwave and moving the oven and grill to under the cooktop
• New gas cooktop, new multifunction oven, new rangehood and new one and a half bowl sink

We just have to confirm some measurements then we're looking at placing the order early next week. The estimated delivery date is in about eight weeks.

How exciting!

Who said that the lead-up to Christmas is usually quieter? I've been busy at work helping out with proposals writing. On the home renovations front, things have all been happening!

Our mixer taps arrived on Wednesday. We've installed it and tested it. It works beautifully! I was initially concerned about the possibility of water spilling over the round glass plate but even at full blast of the tap, this didn't happen.

Once the mixer tap was in and tested, Alastair siliconed the edges of the vanity unit. It's was a nice neat job!

On top of that, we also installed the toilet roll holder and towel holders. We had fun doing mini usability tests for both fittings, making sure that we can reach both items comfortably (also keeping in mind, future users of these fittings). We ended up relocating the towel holder to the same wall as the toilet fitting. The original spot for the towel holder would have resulted in a very cramp spot if you needed to stand in front of the sink (which you'll need to do on a daily basis).

It's all looking very good and coming together nicely. Our next biggest thing is the installation of the shower screen, which I have some slight trepidation about. We're going to have a go at it tomorrow before our friend's Christmas get together. I hope it all goes well as I want this completed before we fly back to Perth!

Things left to do:

• Install drainage for vanity
• Silicon vanity edges
• Buy taps
• Install shower screen
• Do a overall clean of everything
• Reinstall downlight over sink
• Paint architraves (nearly completed - need to redo a small section of the door)
• Install dynabolts for toilet
• Install waterfall mixer taps