Jackadaw

Kitchen: Shaping Up

We've come a long way ... albeit slowly ... with our kitchen renovation.

It is shaping up into our dream kitchen and we've ticked off a lot of things on the list to get it this far.

The oven, microwave and induction cook top are all installed. All the Ikea cabinets are in ... we just need some extra hinges and drawers (naturally). This involves an 3 hour round trip + instore time. We know we'll have some items to return at the end, so we're waiting another week or so before making the trek.

Don't you love the composition of this photo with the step ladder in the foreground ... kidding of course. I just like to keep it real. If you look closely, you'll see my lunch heating up in the mircrowave while I snapped these photos today.

Under the bench there you can see cupboard doors. We put narrow depth cupboards along here for extra storage as our house has almost none.

This shows a little more of our lovely benchtops, littered with construction debris of course. We chose Ceasarstone in Oyster. An option that's available direct from Ikea, but it was actually cheaper for us to get it through a local stone mason who just happens to be one of the best there is. More about that later. The hole under the bench in the top right corner above is for our dishwasher. Yes, it's on the opposite side of the area to our sink. No, we don't think that is a problem. We're not 'rinse before it goes in the dishwasher' people - unless there's a load of sauce/gravy on the plate so we don't think there will be a lot of need to drip water across the floor. On the odd occasion that there is, there are these wonderful things called dish towels or even paper towel which can mop those drips right up. Amazing!

This beast of construction will eventually be our walk in panty. The fridge goes in the hole on the right there with the (already in use) wine rack above it. There will be bifold doors (leaning against the wall over there on the left of the hallway door) right across the front of the pantry which will allow the whole thing to open up and be easily accessible. Inside there is lots of shelves and a couple of baskets - see some of them on the floor in the fridge hole and the rest of the shelves on the bench.

I haven't shown it in any photos but the left hand end of the pantry is a big blank wall. It's just crying out for a chalk board for our Little Miss and some art, maybe it will become her area with a chalk board and rotating gallery of art sent home from day care, colouring in and sticker collages.

My goal today is to finish painting the uprights so that Handsome Handy Hubby can finish the shelves and reinstall the doors. We could have made the pantry a little shallower and still been able to step into it, but we're pretty happy with how it's turned out so far.

Still to do...

Finish painting the pantry
Reinstall all the pantry shelving
Reinstall the pantry doors
Put the screws in the back of all those drawers and level everything up
Connect the plumbing
Put crown moulding up so that the pantry/fridge cabinet goes to the ceiling as well as the oven and small appliances cabinet.
Relay the bamboo floor boards
Bring in the fridge and dishwasher
Find all the kitchen stuff stashed in various places around the house and in the garage and get it all where it belongs
Find all the laundry stuff stashed in various places around the house and put it back in the laundry/temporary kitchen
Add some styling and fancy accents
Clean the rest of the house which has been descending into chaos while our time and energy are focused on the kitchen.

We are hoping to be finished by the end of this month. I think we can do it but boy is it going to be busy. I've got until mid April to return anything we don't use to Ikea so that's my backup deadline but honestly, we're both over cooking out of the laundry, having the rest of the house in total chaos all the time and can't wait to have this project done.

Kitchen: Slow going

It's been a while since I posted about our kitchen progress. That's because it's been a while since there has been any. Between work, life and the weather it's been slow going for the last few weeks. But that's all about to change. We have definitely made some good progress and tomorrow, the stone bench tops are due to go in. My hope is that once that is done, the rest of the work will happen quickly. Dare I hope that we'll be finished in another 2 weeks? And by finished I mean not only having everything functional, but moving all the kitchen stuff out of the laundry, all the laundry stuff out of the other places I have it stashed around the house, painted, styled, and photographed. Hmmmm .... maybe three weeks.

Kitchen: Worse

Every renovation gets worse before it gets better right? We're definitely at the worse stage. There's plaster missing, half built cabinets stacked up, tools littering the floor. But there is also lots of progress. The wiring is where it needs to be, the frames for the cabinets have been built and most of the cabinets are together.

Come on in ... that's right, we have a door ... kind of.

The old tile backsplash wouldn't come off neatly ... so the plaster had to come out with it

The frames that the cabinets will sit on ... and a couple of cabinets in situ

Rather than use the legs that came with the Ikea cabinets we decided to build 30mm MDF bases for them to sit on. It'll make things more stable, add some strength and help hold up the hugely heavy stone benchtop that will go on the island bench.

A close up of the chaos that will eventually become the oven and cooktop

This is where the fridge and walk in pantry will be. That's the pantry walls there on the floor. Oh, and we'll plaster over that sliding door of course.

Looking at the dining area ... yes, we're eating in the lounge room for the duration.

Order will emerge from the chaos ... eventually!

Most of our preparation work is done. Handsome Handy Hubby has the plumbing to move as we are relocating both the sink and dishwasher. The plasterer will be here to set the walls on Friday which should mean I can paint on Saturday and we can place all the cabinets on Friday. The appliances arrive on Friday (hmmm, where on earth am I going to fit them!) and the stone bench top (a drama for another post) will be measured up once that's all done.

Deep breath ... carry on!

Kitchen: Progress?

I should have taken pictures this morning! Why? Because this morning we had an empty room that I had cleaned. It looked huge! Sure, it showed us how much plaster we were going to have to remove and replace, made us think about where the light switch was going to fit and no, we haven't yet taken out the plumbing from the old layout.

But now? Well ... here's where it's at.

Handsome Handy Hubby arrived home with the sliding door and immediately started going about moving the arch 20cm to the right and installing it, the old kitchen was sold on eBay and picked up in the afternoon, just an hour before all the Ikea cabinets were delivered and piled up in the corner.

Next up ...

cleaning up the mess from pulling out the plaster
checking all the Ikea items to make sure they match the delivery
unpacking all the Ikea items to check for any damage
ongoing work with the door way
putting all those Ikea cabinets together - thank you Handsome Handy Hubby for my baby drill that also came home from the hardware store with him and to my Dad who I've got booked in to help me out with this step

In residence

Some new residents have arrived at our place. Can you see where?

Look closely at the right end of the steps

A few days ago, Little Miss and I collected a bunch of sticks from the front yard that had blown out of the tree. I said that it was 'so Daddy won't mow over them'. They've sat by the front door since then ... waiting.

Our collected sticks & my building supplies

Today, with the help of a little string, scissors and some stones from the garden, it seems that fairies have started to move into our garden. At least that's what I'm hoping Little Miss will decide when she discovers it.

As soon as I can get hold of a battery operated tea light, I'm going to bury it into the ground cover that's growing up between the steps and the wall in the hope that Little Miss will think that this is the door to the fairy house under the stairs and the light peeking out is the fairies inside.

Why this sudden interest in creating a fairy garden? There has been a fairy garden my Mum's back yard for years. My nephew and niece have loved playing with it and now our Little Miss loves it too. She moves the fairies and the fairy stones around regularly. Thanks to the magic of Pinterest I recently discovered a book called Gardening in Miniature by Janit Calvo. I also discovered two beautiful Bonsai - a Wisteria and Japanese Maple. A Christmas Amazon voucher a few days later and I've devoured the book ... and been more inspired.

I've always planned to create a fairy garden under the 'Taj Mahal', the cubby house that was Little Miss' last birthday present. And I've loved the idea of creating a garden under the deck when we rebuild that. In the meantime, there are a few nooks and crannies around the garden that I can build some fairy houses into for Little Miss to discover. I've also got some Christmas money burning a hold in my pocket that could become my first container miniature garden.

Could this be my new addiction?

The kitchen renewal begins

We're doing it ... renovating the kitchen that is. After a year and a half of living in this house and doing not much since we moved in, lots of discussion and floor planning, we've hit the go button and are renovating the kitchen. Completely!

What we started with

What we currently have

Where we're heading ... I can't even give you a great mood board for this as it's in my head. But, the elements are white cabinets, stone bench tops, a walk in pantry, glass splashback with picture shelves for art and cookbooks and our existing beautiful bamboo floorboards. And hints of aqua and turquoise to bring in that beachy vibe that I'm aiming for in the whole house. In my head it looks beautiful ... let's hope it turns out even better! Phase 2 will include turning our super wide window into a pass through out onto the deck. But that's going to wait until we rebuild the deck.

What we'll be doing (other than retiring sentences that start with the letter W)

Pull up the bamboo flooring which Handsome Handy Hubby laid himself
Pull out the existing kitchen ... everything is going
Move the arch which leads to the lounge about 20cm to the right and square it at the top
All new appliances - pyrolytic oven, induction cooktop, glass range hood, dishwasher, double door fridge & freezer, undermount sink
Ikea cabinets all round with lots of drawers
Building a step in pantry
Re laying the floors

The layout and spacing will be similar. Floor plan to come ...

It's going to be interesting as we're doing all the work ourselves and so it's going to have to fit in around work and family commitments.

Will there be disagreements? Yes. I'm a planner, a scheduler, a list maker. Handsome Handy Hubby is a wing it kinda guy. So, my calendar of when things are going to happen freaks him out, and I've just got to take it one step at a time and not expect it all to go to plan.

How will we keep ourselves fed while we have to kitchen? The fridge will relocate to the laundry, the washing up will get done in the laundry tub, and we'll be eating a lot of BBQ and salad ... thank goodness we are doing this in summer!

Both of us are thankful that we've waited a year and a half to do this. Why? Because we've gone through a number of ideas for the layout and finishes over this time and finally come up with what we believe will work for function, look fantastic, cause as little disruption as possible when doing it ourselves, and keep the costs down as much as possible when doing a full kitchen renovation.

Let the chaos begin!

Christmas is coming!

Whether I like it or not, there's no denying that it's December 1st. As with many other house holds, that means the tree is going up. I should probably think about some Christmas shopping too right?