Chubs' bedroom makeover/ renovation

One of the last things that we needed to do as part of the renovations was to fix up Chubs' room a bit. We intentionally didn't buy her a chest of drawers, shelves or any other furniture when she was born. We didn't really set up a 'nursery' as such or do much decorating, it seemed like a bit of a waste of money for something which would only be used for two years. Apart from the cot, all the other furniture that was in her room was stuff which we already had or bought very cheaply (eg discount shop wire shelving). We planned on getting a matching set of shelves, drawers etc when we bought her a bed for her second birthday - which is approaching all too quickly!

While we were doing the renovations, a lot of stuff got moved into Chubs' room. All of the items in the kitchen, living and dining room had to get moved out, and three people really do have a lot of stuff!

Today Chubs was dispatched to my wonderful sister's house who was keen to have a day with her niece which was perfect for us. Dear Husband and I got stuck into the room putting things away, giving things away and throwing things away. Everything got covered in dust during the building work, so the dishwasher and washing machine have run non stop all day. Did I mention how much I love the dishwasher? It would have taken literally hours to have washed up everything that was covered with dust, but thankfully the machine did it all for us!

There is SPACE now, both in the living room and in Chubs' room. It's great to see her run around and have room to play and dance! Her bedroom is also a play room now, just perfect for our little girl.

New shelves

We got some cube shelving for Chubs' room which I think looks great. The idea is that she can bring one or two of the fabric drawers out to the living room each day, and then we can pack up at night. Before hand we were keeping toys in the living room (since that's where she played) but we can now keep more space free. The lover shelves are toddler height so she can get out and put away her own toys.

The colours of the drawers were more or less chosen for us, by what was available. However, it's actually worked out really well. Unfortunately I didn't get it in the photo, but you can just see the teeniest tiniest bit of the top of a rug at the bottom of the picture. It's the same rug in the background of these photos. It's made of hand felted pure wool balls which are stitched together. My mother gave it to Chubs for her first birthday. The rug was hand made by Nepalise women and sold through a fiar trade business. Because it's pure wool felt it's monstrously heavy and we haven't really hand any space for it (since all the floor was covered with junk) so it's really great that Chubs can have it in her room, and it matched perfectly and totally by accident.

change table

This is Chubs' change table. It's the same one that we've always had for her (and that I had a long time before that) but the position and arrangement is new to fit in the shelves. Nappies are in the pink shelves on their back and poo bins you can see in the front of the photo. Underneath the table are bulk items (wipes and disposables), overgrown sized nappies, some filing and my sewing machine and overlocker.

Repurposed shelves

The shelves on the wall actually used to hold our crockery in the kitchen. We were able to get them off the kitchen walls and thankfully they were in such good condition that we could put them up here. I have planned on using them for display, but we needed them mostly for storage in the end. I made the curtains when I was pregnant, there is also a sheer white and pink spotted curtain underneath for privacy during the day.

As I said above, much of this side is a mishmash of old shelves and drawers and cheap flimsy stuff, but it's doing it's job. As I said when we started the renos, everything we have been doing is a bonus. We have a home with food in it, electricity, safe water and love, everything after that is just the icing. When Chubs gets a bed in here, we will change this side a bit but it is certainly perfectly adequate.

We still have some more unpacking and sorting to do, although we did get a lot done today. It's hard not to lose momentum now that most of the work has been done, but we're almost there!

The kitchen is coming along

Slow progress today, but we're moving along.

On Monday it became apparent that the damage caused from when the slab was cut was more extensive than we first realised. All has been repaired now, but with much expense and stress sadly. It also delayed the work further. Sigh - a renovation with unexpected costs and delays - surely that's never happened before!?!?!

On Tuesday the plumber was able to return and finish the dishwasher installation, and it's pretty much been running non stop since then! As well as our regular dishes we have had to wash pretty much everything else before it is put away in the brand new clean cupboards. I put it on again just before Dear Husband and I went to bed last night and we couldn't hear it at all with the bedroom doors open. It's very quiet and we don't have to talk over it which is nice. I'm really, really appreciating having it and I promise to never take it for granted!

Slow progress today (Wednesday). We got the holes in the wall filled in, the handles on most of the doors and the baskets installed on the inside of the pantry. Hopefully we will get further tomorrow.

I bought a few shelves and add ons for inside the cupboards to make the space more useable. I also bought the photo boxes on the top of the overhead cupboards. I didn't want to waste the space up there, but I also didn't want it to look cluttered. I would have prefered all one colour but I cleared out their stock with the black and white! I'm loving the handles, I'm really glad that we picked those.

We're getting there!

Good news for today. Firstly I found my camera, and secondly we made some real progress today. Still lots of little things to do but we are closer to the finish than the beginning!

Here's the photos that I wanted to post yesterday of the cabinets screwed to the walls. We also got one of the bench tops on after I took this photo.

After a slow start today and many delays, we actually got somewhere this afternoon! All of the cabinets are in, the bench tops are on, the sink is in (but not connected) and most of the doors are on.

Still to do:
- The plumber is coming tomorrow to connect the dishwasher (woo hoo! DISHWASHER!), the taps and the waste pipe for the sink. All the hard stuff has been done (drilling into floors/ walls/ cupboards, copper and PVC pipes etc) so it should be fairly easy. We've had some problems with the water in the bathroom since the plumber was here on Saturday so we need him to check that too.
- The corner cupboard needs its shelf cut (since it has a pipe runing through it) and the under sink shelf needs cutting too.
- The corner cupboard needs the doors fitted
- All the doors need handles fitted
- The foam door stops and the screw caps need to be fitted
- The kiddy safety latches need to be fitted
- The holes in the wall need to be filled
- The tiles for the splashback need to be fitted
- The fridge and freezer need to be moved into place
- We aren't going to repaint the whole kitchen at this stage, but we need to do patch painting where required.
- The electricians damaged the bathroom wall when jackhammering the kitchen; this needs to be repaired.

Of course, all the kitchen things also need to be washed and replaced in the cupboards!

We are getting the floors replaced in the next few weeks. After that happens the pantry needs to be attached to the wall and the kickboards need to be installed.

It is really starting to look like a kitchen, rather than a building site!

My pantry!
It's not from the same company as the rest of the kitchen,
but I think it's a pretty good match as long as you don't look too closely.

Inside the pantry
I can't wait to start stacking in here

It's really looking like a kitchen now.
That's the back of the pantry on the left.

From the other angle, with doors open

Slow progress...

There's no photos for today's post, since I can't seem to find the camera... :(

We made slow progress on Saturday. Thnkfully the plumber came out in the morning to finish the hot water which is good. All the base cupboards were attached to the wall, one benchtop was put on and the sink was put in to the bench. Hopefully today we can get all the cabinets and bench tops finished. After that the plumber needs to come in on Monday to connect the dishwasher, install the tap and install the waste pipe for the sink. Since the hot water was reconnected we have lost a lot of water pressure (hot and cold) in the bathroom so we also need him to check that.

Kitchen work

Today was a bit of a stand still. We couldn't really do much more until the plumber and electrician did some more work. We think that all the electrics are finished after today, thankfully, although there are two more small plumbing jobs to be done. Once these are finished we are then back on 'our own time' and won't be reliant on anyone else which will mean we can get stuck in!

Shiny shiny brand new plumbing
Note the new power point for the DISHWASHER!!

Consequently we didn't really get much done today. We decided last night that the microwave box was far too deep, so we took it off the wall, cut it down and then reinstalled it. We started to put the doors on the overhead cabinets. Since it's a kit kitchen it's all predrilled and marked which makes things much easier.

The cut down microwave box and the first doors on the overhead cabinets

We did get some things done in the laundry while we were waiting for the tradies today. There isn'y much storage in there, or rather, there wasn't but there is now! These shelves used to be the cabinet over the old kitchen sink. They were still in good condition (despite being over 40 years old) so we kept them in the laundry. No more keeping the detergent on the floor!

Repurposed shelving

I also got some hooks for the walls which we put up, and I'm wishing that I bought more of them! They were less than $2 each and can hold up to 30kg, so I'm going to go back and buy some more to put up. I got the laundry door open all the way for the first time in years today! Getting all the storage in the house soret out is a big job but I'm very much looking forward to when it's all finished.

New hooks - more to come!

Kitchen work

The work continues steadily on the kitchen.

Some of the overhead cabinets installed.

The electricians came today. It turns out that it was the stove cable that was cut (as we suspected) so thankfully it was easily. We also had the old stove disconnected and the new one put in. The existing power points needed replacing and moving, and we needed new power points as well. The new cables were put in for the hot water system. The electricians and the plumbers will all be back tomorrow, hopefully to finish all the specialist work off.

We started putting in the overhead cabinets today. The underbench cabinets were all put together yesterday (although I didn't put a photo up then.)

The underbench cabinets and drawers assembled

We had decided to change the pantry plan (again.) The one which is available with the kit we are using is as deep as the underbench cabinets - that is, 580mm deep. Now that we can actually see where everything will be, it confirms a thought that we had earlier - the pantry will simply stick out too far. It will take up too much floor space and will cut the large room off. We were really wanting a more open room but the pantry will prevent that. Since we can't get one to match the kit, we are hoping to find a narrower one which will match. Hopefully we can do so by just swapping some handles over. The pantry will be stand alone against it's own wall, so it doesn't need to click in with anything which opens up our options a bit.

Kitchen yet again

Hopefully this is the 'bottom end' of pulling it all apart. Now the 'rebuilding phase' begins.

Newly cut channel in the floor
Newly jackhammered wall to give us access to the hot water pipes

Today the pumbers took out the hot water system. The pipes were running through the middle of the cabinets which, whilst a bit of a pain, was still acceptable when the cabinets were used for storage. However, this wasn't doable for the dishwasher so we needed to set the pipes into the concrete floor (which is as much of a hassle as it sounds.) The jackhammer and the concrete saw went all morning.

The good news:
- The hot water system is in great condition and was removed and is ready to be reinstalled. The plumbers were able to contain the hot water system and associated pipes more compactly than we thought, so we can fit it into a 600mm cabinet. This leaves us with room for a 300mm cabinet (we were thinking that we could get a 150mm cabinet in at best) and will be perfect fit with the dishwasher.
- There were some issues with the safe tray on the hot water system which we didn't know about. It seems that it didn't drain anywhere (and therefore is totally useless). Now that we know about this, we can fix it.
- We were able to get all the under bench cabinets put together this afternoon (except for the doors) and the drawers (with covers).
- We worked out a good configuration for the overhead cabinets and purchased them today.
- We found some great, huge tiles for the splash back. They are very large (300 x 600) and super shiny white. We will add some coloured tiles to the top of the splashback to add some brightness.

The bad news:
- When the plumbers were cutting the concrete floor they cut through a cable that none of us knew was there - and we don't know what the cable is for. We need to wait for the electrician to investigate and fix it. This meant that we couldn't finish the hot water system reinstall, so we couldn't do the cabinet installation and so on. The electrician can't come until tomorrow afternoon and we can't do any more installation until he can fix this problem.

Kitchen with everything removed
The old taps (removed) are the three grey spots in the middle of the photo right at the top.
The new tap will come out of the sink, not the wall.  

More kitchen renos

The kitchen is out! Everything in the kitchen has gone except the stove - the electrician will remove that later in the week.

Pulling the cabinets out

Today we bought the some of cabinets and benchtops, screws, hinges, handles and other associated drill bits etc. We removed the sink, the rest of the cabinets and the splashback tiles. We took the floor coverings out (vinyl) which took a great deal of work to clean up (almost three hours). The stove and the dishwasher were delivered today, and I bought dishwasher tablets at the supermarket (which was incredibly exciting!)

Three cubic meters that used to be our kitchen

We're on easy and disposable tonight since we have nothing but the microwave and a tap coming out of the wall. I'm so excited about it all going in!

Kitchen renos update

Well, one day in and the plan has already changed!

Cupboard doors and some shelves gone
Overhead shelves gone

It turns out that we won't be able to fit in the corner pantry without huge effort and expense. To do so we will need to move plumbing through cavity brick walls which is a bit of a disaster. I will still have a big pantry but it will be a straight one (900mm).

The hot water system placement is giving us a bit of grief, but we're hoping that it can be contained without too much fuss. We will need to get a single sink rather than a double since we won't be able to fit the dishwasher in around the hot water system otherwise. I don't really mind - I've always had a single sink and I would prefer the extra cupboard and bench space with a single.

We pulled out about half of the kitchen today including the 'wall' of cabinets which closed it off from the rest of the living area. The room looks so much bigger already!

I'm standing in the living room looking through what used to be a wall of cabinets and shelving.

Kitchen renovations begin

Our kitchen renovations start today, I'm so excited!

Starting to move the food and gear out of the kitchen before pulling it out

I have kitchen which is part of a home, it has electricity and running water and food in it. This puts us in a better position than many, many more people in the world and I try not to take it for granted.

I am, however, VERY excited about the renos! They are long overdue - we were going to do something about the kitchen when we moved in seven years ago. The changes about which I am most excited:

5. The newness of it all. I've never had a brand new kitchen and I'm really looking forward to being in a kitchen which I've planned for our needs, where all the cupboards close properly and which looks nice and shiny.

4. A working stove and oven. The oven broke years ago and we couldn't really replace it without doing the whole kitchen, and to be honest I was keen for an excuse not to bake! I am looking forward having everything back on track though.

3. New floors. Once the kitchen is in we are getting new floors in the kitchen, loving and dining area and hallway. The carpet is in dire need of replacing, and as much as I prefer carpet sanity dictated that hard floors are the way to go.

2. A big corner pantry. Out kitchen is probably too 'cosy' for a large pantry and I'm sure the design types would be quite horrified that I'm squeezing it in. I'm desperate for all the space and I can't wait until it's in.

1. A DISHWASHER. We're getting a dishwasher! I've never ever had a dishwasher, just a single sink for me and I'm so excited. I can't wait to see how much time it saves us