1990's Kitchen re-model / re-face project

Hi all,

I am going to renovate my kitchen and lounge room and within this thread i hope to provide regular updates.

We intend to lay new wooden floors throughout, whilst using the existing kitchen carcasses with new doors and some new cupboard and drawer cabinets. We will install new stone benchtops, a new sink, a new pull out rangehood and a new cooktop. We will keep the current dishwasher and oven.

Firstly i will post some 'before shots' of the early 90’s kitchen and carpet I am replacing:



We will remove the part of the bench that sticks up high and segregates the two areas:







We will keep the dish drawers as they are still ok and will do for now







i have included the below shot of the loungeroom as we will lay new floors in here too



I will update this thread as often as i can with plenty of pics.
Fingers crossed it only takes the 6-8 weeks we are hoping!

Cheers,
Tim

PS - this is the sink we are currently looking at:

Hi again,

Today I spent several hours removing the carpet, the underlay and the carpet runners. I found some water damage near the door and will explore investing in a new door seal, as polished boards and water are not friends. Next job will be attacking the tiles in the kitchen area...














The door runner looks like it seals quite well, but for whatever reason there was still damage from water coming in.... Maybe a question for the floor man...



Hopefully more work to report soon!

Hi again,

(Several posts in succession due to the long weekend.)

Just a few pics to share of our trip to the Marble specialist. Unfortunately the pieces that were large enough to fit the entire size of our island bench were already sold to someone else, so we will have to have a join line. I hope it looks ok

The stack of Carrara pieces:



The polished face of the Carrara - we will hone down the face to a 'matt' finish and it will include a 6cm mitred apron. Costs to cut out the cooktop and undermoubt the sink were included in the quote.



One HUGE serious looking marble cutting machine:



Cant wait to see the stone in my kitchen....

wow, I cant WAIT to see it too..going to look awesome!

those stairs are pretty amazing..ay!!
good luck, keep the pics coming..

Good on you! I look forward to following your progress!

Cant wait to see what you do!
We're just putting the finishing touches to the reno of our 1990's kitchen... those floor tiles are exactly what we have and are they're outta here!!!

Thank you to kiwi, mmac7553, and Sleven for your words of encouragement!

kiwi - the stairs are original to the 90's renovation and need to be painted if I am being perfectly honest with you! We are considering building the stairs in and then having a chippy or cabinet maker put in some custom in-built cupboards and bookcases in the area under the stairs. It will most likely be done with the next tax return in July or August as the priority now is getting the kitchen to a point where we can move in. I also want to build in a liquor cabinet amongst the book shelves if we go down that path

Sleven - that is great that you are almost finished! I fear it will be at least 6 weeks at a minimum until we are done. Do you possibly have a thread with before, during and after shots for me to have a peek at?

Cheers,
Tim

My weekly update:

It was a slow weekend for pics I am afraid but lots of behind the scenes work was done.

We did a trip to the tip to dispose of carpet and other rubble... very exciting...

And we also went shopping for the shiny stuff!

We purchased our previously mentioned undermount square shaped sink. This sink was the best priced I was able to find which had the modern look and I was pretty happy with the other prices in shop too to be honest. For those in Melbourne they have outlets in East Brunswick and Moorabin. We ended up also buying the colander to fit the ¾ size part of the sink as it will be good for washing vegetables or even drying glasses etc. I would usually abstain from such purchases but my partner caught me at a weak moment whilst the credit card was out of the holster.

We also purchased an ASKO cooktop. I will post some shots below. We were tossing up between this model and the 5 burner 70cm Delonghi. When quizzing the salesperson at Clive Peeters, she immediately favoured the Swedish brand although the Delonghi model was more expensive. She explained to us that the flame shape that the ASKO delivered was far more effective and it was a better build etc.

On top of this we also purchased the pull out rangehood. We ended up choosing a Blanco model, as the Blanco units have much stronger suction than their competitors. It also has easily replaceable halogen lights which will match the existing downlights and will light up the marble splashback quite nicely as well.

We also had another quote done for the cabinetry which is the third so far. None of them have actually got back to us with the quote yet! I am cringing to think what it will come to. Fingers crossed it isn’t over what I think it will be. I have allowed 6k for replacement of all doors and to build in four new cabinets....

Ok here are the pics of the new cooktop:







Thanks to all readers and feel free to ask any questions or provide critique.

Cheers,

Tim

arghghg..no pics!

ignore me, they might be there..I am on a work computer.
(cookies/ pop up blocker etc)

Hi

we are looking a for a square undermount sink, any chance of a photo and how much it cost please

Thanks
Armitage 57

Looking forward to following this thread. Very interesting to see the cutting machine, thanks for posting that pic. I think for your door you need a storm seal rather than a simple weather seal, that is you need the two piece type that interlocks when the door is closed.

Hi armitage57 - this is the sink we purchased on Saturday:



We ended up paying $590 for this model which was less than half the price of some other similar looking models.

They had a square/square model as well as the square/threequarter version and that was only another 20 dollars from memory. They also had some great cheap taps.

The sinks are a full 25cms deep also which is great. Usually you have to pay more the deeper the sink is. I would take more pics, but i am interstate at the moment and also it is still in its protective box.

Hope this helps

Cheers,
Tim

Hi Macy,

No problems regarding the pic of the cutting machine, and thank you for reading. They had several cutting bays and machines so when i go back i will try to get a few more pics.

Thank you also for your tip regarding the storm seal - this sounds much more appropriate as a weather shield. I will have a look when i am next at the hardware store. Good tip and thanks.

Cheers,
Tim

Hey tcross as requested photos viewtopic.php?f=1&t=31137

Hi Sleven,

Thanks muchly for posting the pics - i will go and check it out now

Hello all,

My weekly update:

This weekend was spent generating even more quotes for cabinets and also getting our hands dirty taking off some tiles from the floor.

One of our prospective cabinet makers came back to make a revised quote, removing some of the drawers and more expensive items we had previously discussed. Fingers crossed it comes in closer to what we have budgeted for as we are very happy with his attitude and punctuality etc. We have one final cabinet maker quoting tomorrow and then we will need to bite the bullet and just pick one.

The tiling was hard work and I have a few pointers to share for those playing at home who may be considering removing tiling themselves:

- If you don’t have kneepads use thongs as a soft pad for your knees to sit on (your knees will really start to hurt without some form of protection on the hard floor)

- collect some small boxes to transport and dispose of the tiles (small boxes are easier to manage and carry as the tiles are heavy - try dan murphys maybe)

- wear long sleeves (the tiles often break and sharp shards fly up into your arms drawing blood – long sleeves will alleviate 95% of this)

- wear safety goggles or at least sun glasses (shards can go anywhere when the tiles break)

- wear leather gloves (obvious reasons)

- use a very sharp object such as a chisel to lever them off (I was intending on using a brikkies trowel, however it was simply too blunt and was pretty well useless. The sharper the edge the better, however also look for a chisel which has a metal handle so it can withstand the beating: a wide metal handle would be best so you don’t hit your hand so much!)

- wear a hat of some sort (I am still picking out little bits of tile and grout from my scalp after 2 showers)

These pics will not be very exciting for a lot of you, however I will post them up anyway to show some progress however small it may be. You can see the tools I used in one of them and also the pile of offending green tiles. Some of the pics will also show the glue that is still stuck to the floor. The tiles and glue was very easy to remove in some areas and just horrible to remove in other areas. We speculated that perhaps the tiler used too much glue to begin with and then tried to finish the job using not enough which meant they were easier to remove. It was very satisfying seeing them all smashed up in the corner! This week we have the plumber and electrician coming to make the gas, power and water safe and then next weekend I will begin removing the cabinets in earnest.

Half way through



Yellow thongs to the rescue!



You can just make out the tiling glue



Small boxes ready for the tip



Offending porcelain



We will finish the rest off when taking out the cabinets




Wish me luck this week in choosing a cabinet maker!

Cheers.

Tim

Hello friends,

It has been a while since the last update and pics but i have finally gotten around to uploading to photobucket.

During the last few weeks i have totally pulled out the existing kitchen and have prepared the site ready to take the floor prior to the new kitchen being installed. This involved several steps.

Firstly i had the plumber come out to disconnect taps, water and cap off the pipes:





Next the electrician made all of the power points and appliances safe. The oven is electric so he removed that for me along with the rangehood:










Once that was done we were ready to begin removing the kitchen. First came the skirting boards, then we removed doors off all cabinets and then the cabinets themselves. As you can see the site got very dirty during the demolition. The pipes come straight out of the slab as you can see from the pic and apparently the floor installer can go around this area which is good.












The plaster all came off where the splashback tiling had been. I will need to go and buy a new blue plaster board to go over this area. Another job to add to the list...




Here is a pic of the room all swept up ready for the concrete grinder to come in and level the slab so it is ready to take the floor boards:




Fingers crossed it is all worth it in the end. It is all costing me a lot more than i first expected. Now we are also adding painting and plastering and new skirts to the budget so am dipping into other savings. It better look Bl00dy good at the end!!

Thanks all,

Tim

I'm sure it will all be worth it in the end! We did that with the budget for our kitchen and our bathroom... there kind of ended up being no budget