I Did That

Chronicling The Renovations Of My Life

Archive for November, 2008

The Kitchen

November 12th, 2008 | Category: Kitchen, Renovations

As of today we have accomplished the following things in the kitchen:

  1. Repainted the cabinets and walls
  2. Removed the countertops
That doesn’t seem like a whole lot, but it has been a load of work.  There are many nooks and crannies that needed paint and getting to them is not easy.  Every inch needed to be primed, so in actuality, the kitchen has been completely painted twice.
The countertops came off quickly and easily and there were no real surprises there.  They had been nailed down (as opposed to being screwed down) so I didn’t really have to do much besides pry them up and tote them off.
My goals for 11/12 are
  1. shim and level the cabinets
  2. pour floor leveler in kitchen (and den)
  3. nail down the new plywood
If I can get all that done, I will be thrilled.  The leveling of the cabinets is going to be tricky since they are handmade (in 1966) and not just screwed together and into the wall like most modern cabinetry is. Since they aren’t modular, getting one area to move up without everything going up is tough.  I may have to do a combination of shimming the top in the middle areas and the bottom at the ends.  They aren’t off a bunch, so I don’t think I need to worry too much about the countertops not being even relative to the cabinets.
I’m not installing the countertops myself.  We are getting Corian countertops and thought it would be smart to let the pros handle the installation.  That way if they make a mistake, it’s on them and not me.  I do have to have the cabinets conforming to Dupont’s instructions, or they won’t install them.  I was told by the guy who came out to measure for the countertops that Corian will, despite it’s thickness, mold to the shape of the cabinets over time.  If there are high spots then eventually there will be a hump in your counters.  Areas that are not properly supported can actually break.
I’ve tried and failed to scrape the old vinyl off the floor.  It’s stuck on there really well.  When someone pointed out to me that the old vinyl might contain asbestos I decided that it would be best just to level the floor out and put down new plywood, thereby encasing the old linoleum.  It’s going to raise the floor height some, but I don’t think it should interfere with anything.
After those things are done, I will start tiling.
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What We Are Up Against

November 10th, 2008 | Category: Kitchen, Renovations

As I mentioned in the first post, we now have a 1960’s era ranch house that is sorely in need of updating.  My wife and I bought the house fully aware of it’s various needs (and our various wants).  We have tackled the updating of an older ranch house before, so this was a eyes wide open sort of purchase.

We estimated the cost of the renovations at roughly $10,000.  This includes (but is not limited to):

  1. Updating the kitchen
  2. Painting every room
  3. Updating every bathroom

The kitchen renovations can be broken down further:

  • Paint paneled walls and cabinetry
  • New countertops
  • New appliances
  • New fixtures (lighting and plumbing)
  • New hardware for cabinets
  • Install ceramic tile on the floor
  • New backsplash

 That seems like an awful amount of work, but it’s not really that bad.  We’ve already tackled several of them and I will tell you more about that later.

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Renewal

November 07th, 2008 | Category: Uncategorized

Everything needs to be revamped now and again, and this is it for this website.

My original plan for this was to talk about the projects I was doing at the old house and revisit some of the completed projects.  That didn’t work out the way I wanted, mostly because I didn’t get everything coordinated before we moved out.

The new house, however, will entail many of the same  projects and I will catalog them here. 

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