Tag: renovation


Aug
2016

Opening a Doorway

categories: Renovation

We decided to get rid of a doorway to make the space more open between the kitchen and the dining room.  There used to be swinging cowboy doors here and we obviously removed those.  Then, we were left with an unnecessary door frame which we decided to remove and make the space more open.  You gain a couple of inches in each direction – I love it!!!!  See how the old frame was so yellow?  Yuck!  This saved me from having to paint it but now we actually have some work with drywalling but it’s so worth it!  Well, we’ll see after we drywall it if I’m still saying that!  :-p  We are planning to redo all the flooring here so it’s ok that there’s a gap there in the floor.

Broad_KitchenDoorwayBefore

This is the mud we bought – save yourself some pain and buy the 90 minute dry stuff (not 45 minute) – it takes some time and you don’t want to have to throw a bunch away because it thickens or hardens while you work.

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Step 1: Pry off the doorway trim. You’ll want to score the sides so that the paint doesn’t get pulled off with it.
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Step 2: Measure the distance of each section of the doorway to cut the dry wall out. You’ll want the drywall to reach the end on each side so that you can put the corners on properly. Screw these pieces of drywall in place.
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Step 3: Trim off the edges of the drywall with a box cutter where they are sticking out too far – this is so the corners will fit properly.
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This is what it should look like with the drywall properly secured.
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Step 4: Put on the corners. We chose metal straight edged corners with dry wall tape on them. We thought about rounded corners but I like the sharp lined look. You’ll want to thin out the mud more than we did here. We bought 45 minute dry mud but we should’ve bought the 90 minute dry mud so it wouldn’t get so thick so fast. You put a thin layer of mud on the wall first and then attach the corner to the mud, then put more mud over the corner. You can staple the corner into place at the top so that it doesn’t slide down.
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I didn’t take a picture of it, but at the top corners, you put a piece of drywall tape and fold it into the corner and mud it into place to cover the crack there. Then, after that you’ll have to do several layers of mud all over to make sure all the areas are flat and not concave and smooth (that’s the hard part). Then, comes the sanding to ensure it’s extra smooth because there’s really no way to get it extra smooth without sanding unless you are a professional which we are not. :-p I kept joking with Bryon that this was actually my sculpting project because I am not so good at mudding. I’m not a perfectionist.  Several times, I made a stegasaurus on the wall that had to be sanded off. This requires lots of patience.  Final product below:

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Jul
2016

Renovation Packing List

categories: Renovation

Every time we need to renovate a place or get it ready to be rented, we have to maintain two, sometimes three, households, so it’s important for us to keep a list of things we’ll need to bring and possibly leave at the rental property for a while.

Here’s our list of important items (this might help someone else out there):

Bryon’s toolbox (this is the black box that has everything – sorry can’t include it all here b/c I don’t really know what’s in there.. :-p)
Drill
Scissors
Spackle
Putty Knife
Screwdriver (all types)
Paper towels
Toilet paper
Pliers
Hammer
Small screw remover (it’s a tool, but I don’t know the technical name)
Trash Can
Trash Bags
Cleaning Gloves
Cleaning Rags
Sponges
Cleaning toothbrushes
Hand Soap
Dish Washing Liquid
Dish Washing Detergent
Paint Brush
Paint Rollers
Paint Tray
Paint Can Opener
Paint
Sand paper
Windex
Resolve Carpet Cleaner
Vinegar (for cleaning)
Bleach (for cleaning)
Ammonia (for cleaning)
Oxi Clean (for cleaning)
Baking Soda (for cleaning)
Spray bottle (for cleaning mixes)
Baby Wipes (for dirty hands and cleaning and everything under the sun)
Movie Player
Movie Player plug (adapter to adjust from car plug to wall plug)
Step Stool
Work Clothes
Butter knife
Forks
Spoons
Bowls
Plates (some glass some paper)
Cups
Chairs (lawn chairs or regular folding table chairs)
Folding table (optional)
Contact Paper (if need to recover shelves)
Vacuum
Broom
Dust Pan
Mop
Mop Bucket
Floor Cleaner
Hand Towels
Work Towels
Caulk
Caulk Gun
14 in 1 Paint Tool (see post on that: Painter’s Tools All In One: 14 in 1 paint tool)
Pumpkin Candle (secret ingredient for showing houses – everyone likes the smell of pumpkin, right?!?) and a nice red hand towel to hang on the oven handle – boom! rented! Everyone likes red. :-p
Snacks (lots of snacks for the kids AND motivation for the adults. For adults – it’s important to have those Mother’s brand cookies – they are like animal shapes with frosting and sprinkles. :-p)
Coffee – the pre-bottled kind that you can keep in the fridge – it’s quick, easy, it’s better than an IV (any kind – double espresso shot? anyone? Yes, please!)
Stuff for the kids to play with (sidewalk chalk, bubbles, water squirters, coloring books, crayons, markers, tablets, dvd’s, books (though they never choose this option – probably due to the 4 year old bugging them – and don’t bring over library books – it gets you into lots of financial trouble…))
Work Clothes for the kids (yes, I put them to work many times when they say they are bored – keeps them from saying they are bored. :-p)

I will continue to add to this list as stuff comes up.


May
2016

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Uno – Planning Design

categories: Renovation

We just got an IKEA in St Louis – yay!!!!  I’m from Texas and we had an IKEA in Houston so I know how wonderful it is and I’m over the moon excited about this.  There are so many cool organization items there and affordable furniture – I just love it.

We have a tenant moving out end of May and their apartment hasn’t been updated since 1969 so the whole thing needs to be overhauled.  Since we are on a budget, we are going to attempt to do the kitchen ourselves with IKEA cabinets.  I’ve heard they are easy to install with the rails that are leveled on the wall for both the top and bottom cabinets and the adjustable feet so you don’t have to deal with shimming.  I loathe anything that involves shimming.  We shall see.  I’m going to document it here.

First, we designed the kitchen in the IKEA kitchen planner online tool.  This online tool can be glitchy so be prepared for a little frustration but over all I LOVE having access to a design tool online – LOVE diy stuff in general so this is great.

We have already renovated a kitchen in a similar unit so we had a head start on that but the cabinet sizes are slightly different for IKEA so that made it a little tricky.  For example, they don’t have a 33 inch wide cabinet. The upper cabinets are also 3 inches deeper than standard cabinets which I like – more space..  So, here’s our design from the online IKEA 3D planning tool:

3D Line View in IKEA software:

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Floor View in IKEA software:

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On the left side of this kitchen is a window and a door leading out to the deck and on the right side is the entry from the dining room.  The details of the cabinets from Left to Right, Top to Bottom (spacing may not be perfect in the tool, but that’s ok):

36 inch wide cabinets (top & bottom),  Bottom cabinet has 2 drawers on top and doors on the bottom.  We did this because there is a window sill there and the drawers can’t pull out all the way so we figured if the drawers were smaller in height, they could at least pull out the top drawer all the way.

30 inch wide cabinets (top is 20 inch in height – slightly shorter so you can have breathing room while washing dishes and bottom has a 1 bowl sink),

24 inch wide cabinet on the top and dishwasher on the bottom.  The dishwasher is only going to be 24 inches wide but we need to put a panel between the dishwasher and oven in order to support the counter which would be about a half inch and we’ll add a cover panel on top as well so they are symmetrical. UPDATE: the dishwasher panel is actually more like 5/8 inches.

30 inch wide cabinets on top (15 inches in height so that we can put a built in microwave underneath – because their cabinets are slightly deeper than the regular cabinets they have special tools we can use for the built in microwave to make it level with the cabinets as far as depth goes) and oven on the bottom. The oven is about 30 1/8 inches so we left a space of 30 1/4 inches for the oven. UPDATE: this extra space was unexpected because ovens are normally 30 inches or less so we added a full cover panel to the side of the 12 inch wide wall cabinet mentioned below in order to make up for the extra space in the base cabinets.

12 inch wide cabinet on top and 12 inch wide cabinet with a door on the bottom (they didn’t have one that was 12 inches with drawers. UPDATE: we added a full cover panel to the side of this 12 inch wide cabinet to add 1/2 inch of space to match up with the base cabinets.

Next, is a pantry 24 inch x 80. But there will be a cover panel on the side of the pantry which will add an extra half-inch.

We have about 4 inches of extra space that we are going to put fillers on each end to fill. We’ll probably do 1 inch on one side and 3 inches on the other side because we realized we need to keep the existing venting duct work within the cabinet that is over the microwave (there was an oven range hood that vents outside and we want to reuse this for the over the range microwave) and that is cutting it REALLY close. :-0 UPDATE: we ended up putting 0 inches of filler on one side and 3.5 inches on the other side.

On the other wall from Left to Right is:

15 inch cabinets (top is the extra tall 40 inch height and bottom cabinet has 6 drawers- I love this idea of having several skinny drawers for utensils, hand towels, junk drawer, etc – feels very organized).

36 inch wide cabinets (top cabinet is the extra tall 40 inch height (because there is no soffit on this side of the wall – hopefully this doesn’t look funny to have taller cabinets on one side than the other – we shall see) and the bottom cabinet is 36 inch wide and has two drawers on top and then doors on bottom.

36x24x20 over the fridge cabinets with doors.  We also bought panels to cover the sides of the fridge (not pictured here).  These were the ones we weren’t originally going to get. UPDATE: We decided to return the over-the-fridge cabinets and get a dishwasher instead to stay above the $4,000 mark.

We left 1 inch of space between the cabinets and the walls at the ends and on the one side where the counter will be sticking out we left 3 inches for the overhang of the counter.  We knew to do this b/c this is what we did for the other kitchen we updated and it worked out just fine.  You want to leave some space in case the walls aren’t level, etc and you don’t want anyone bumping themselves on the edge of the counter if it’s sticking out.

The lady that worked at IKEA told us that we don’t need to put the fillers in the picture, fillers are just cover panels which you cut to size so you can order whatever you need in whatever size later.  These cabinets are shaker style in off-white (GRIMSLOV).  I figure you can’t go wrong in white for a rental and shaker style is my favorite.   Another great thing about IKEA is that it’s relatively easy to replace parts when they break because everything comes in pieces that you assemble yourself and you can buy several components individually if you need to.

We did have a hard time getting to the $4,000 mark for the IKEA sale because we got our appliances at Home Depot (for their July 4th sale) and we didn’t want to buy the counter tops at IKEA since they were a little pricier than Home Depot for stone.  You have to reach $4,000 before taxes in order to get the 15% off gift card.  Also, they were out of sinks or in transition on sinks so we couldn’t get a sink there.  We already had a faucet.  I’d heard about people buying kitchen cabinets for the bathroom but we just had our bathrooms renovated and didn’t need it there.  Well, we did need over the toilet cabinets, but 15 inches deep would probably be too deep and look funny.

So, we ended up buying over the fridge cabinets which we weren’t originally going to do – we were just going to have a stand alone fridge, but it’ll look nicer so we’ll see.  UPDATE: we returned these and got a dishwasher instead – we were going to keep the existing dishwasher but it was going to look like an eyesore with everything else being updated.

Definitely make sure you allow enough time for the ordering of the cabinets – it takes a LOOONG time – like several hours.  We decided to pick them up ourselves instead of choosing the delivery option.  The delivery option was only $60 – should’ve done that.  Everything fit in our mini-van with all the seats taken out (except passenger and driver seat, of course), so that worked out (even the pantry – which was VERY close – we got the 80 inch tall pantry), but we were there until 11pm waiting for them to bring down all the furniture pieces.  The building closed at 9pm so we were just sitting around with stir-crazy kids – not good.

One thing we didn’t have in the 3D planning tool b/c we didn’t know about was cover panels for the exposed areas of the cabinets.  You have to add those on so that the gap in the back of the cabinet is covered – adds a little bit more to the price.  Every little bit counts to get to the $4000 mark.  We also added some molding at the top and bottom. UPDATE: we are going to have to return the molding – it is too thick (1.5 inches on the thin side) and reduces the space too much between the upper and lower cabinets – we are already a little bit less than 18 inches – about 17.5.  We bought the wrong molding and didn’t realize it.  They had a thinner one we could’ve used.  Oh well – we just did without – it looks fine.

Read on for the rest of the install:

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Uno – Planning Design

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Dos – Cabinet Assembly

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Tres- Cabinet Install

IKEA Kitchen Install Parto Quatro – Finishing Touches