Kitchen Renovation – Part 2 – During

Welcome to Part 2 of my Kitchen Renovation series. As you’ll see in Part 1, I decided it was better to break up my kitchen renovation posts into parts for various reasons as outlined within the Part 1 post.

The kitchen renovation involves taking out the original 90’s kitchen (which you can see in Part 1) and replacing with a new kitchen.  The footprint of the new kitchen will basically be the same as the old, with a few little tweaks along the way.

Before it all started, the contents of the old kitchen cupboards had to be cleared out and packed up.  I decided what we would need access to and moved that to our makeshift kitchen in a corner of the family room.  The rest got packed into boxes and stored in a back room.  We also took the handles off the original kitchen cupboards as I quite like them and think I might re-purpose them. 

Buckle up and get that scrolling finger warmed up and ready. This post looks long but it’s mostly photo’s.  There’s a fair bit of scrolling ahead!  All photos are phone photos.  Please excuse some of the poorer quality ones – grainy and dark – generally taken in a hurry and often on dark, cloudy days in poor light.  If I had my good camera and tripod out the tradies would have thought me quite mad, not to mention the clutter and trip hazards that were everywhere.  Better quality photos in future posts – promise!

Here’s some snaps of our makeshift kitchen which was set up in the corner of our family room.  It actually worked quite well.  Washing up was done in the laundry tub.  In the third photo below you can see the large clear plastic container where we would put dirty dishes, mugs, glasses etc to be carried to the laundry for washing up twice/day.

Washing up in the laundry tub

So let’s look at how the schedule has been around here lately!

Day 1  (Friday)

• Delivery of cabinetry & appliances.
• Demolition + Disconnect by Electrician and Plumber

Bye bye old kitchen! It’s all happening. Cupboards removed. Plumbing and electrical being disconnected. Demo in full swing!

Loving the look of the raised island bench being gone already!

Bye bye old broken hanging rangehood and ghastly green laminate!  Goodbye old crusty oven! 

Original kitchen be gone! Notice that some of the wall had to be cut out (to be replaced) as the tiles were glued directly to it and couldn’t be removed.

Day 4 (Monday)

• Install of new cabinetry and bulkheads

New Cabinetry (new piece of Gyproc installed) and bulkheads.  Notice hole above windows where powerpoint has been removed.  The nearby hook hanging from the ceiling was later also removed.  Also note the wider fridge space and the tiling that will need patching.  As you can see we’ve chosen WHITE cabinetry in a traditional style to match our house. What you won’t see in this photograph is the slight wood grain to the cabinets.  The ugly venetian blinds you see will be going and will be replaced by something much nicer hopefully!

Day 6 (Wednesday)

• Plasterer does the new cornicing

Plasterer doing the new cornicing.  He very kindly patched up the holes from the removal of the powerpoint and hook above the window area for us also.

Day 7 (Thursday)

• Tiler tiles the new gap created by widening the fridge space as well as a gap created by slight change of footprint in dishwasher space.

Excellent job done on the tiling in the extended fridge space. Note the skirting board is now too short and will need to be replaced!

Excellent patch up job done on the tiling for the dishwasher space. A slightly different footprint meant a gap which needed patching. Unfortunately I can’t find a before photo to show where it was done.

Day 8 (Friday)

• Templating is done for Caesarstone Benchtops

Day 14 (Thursday)

• Caesarstone benchtops installed

Caesarstone benchtop installed under windows

Caesarstone benchtop being installed in cooktop area

Island bench being installed. It was very heavy!

These are not very good photo’s.  They were taken quickly with my phone on a dull and cloudy day.  In these photo’s the benchtops are covered in a plastic film and are dusty!  I will take some photos with my ‘proper camera’ for future posts and you will see them in their true glory!  In the meantime, I can reveal that the benchtops are Caesarstone Oyster.  You can see it at the link in the sentence before this one or pictured below (a sample from the Caesarstone website).  The colour actually looks different depending on the light.  I didn’t want an all white kitchen as I felt it would be too stark for our house which is not a brand new modern home.  I wanted to add some warmth.  I love the concrete look benchtops that Caesarstone has now but they are expensive and also their low reflective matte surface finish is more susceptible to showing everyday marks and spills meaning more regular cleaning maybe required, SO I felt that this lovely Oyster was a fabulous alternative!  I am picking up on the darker flecks in this stone and incorporating black accents in the kitchen which you will see as we progress through the reno posts.

Day 15 (Friday)

• Reconnect and Install of appliances by Electrician and Plumber. Kitchen becomes functional but not complete.

Electrician reconnecting electricity and new appliances go in – oven, cooktop and rangehood. He also installed new powerpoints, kindly removed two downlights and installed two new pendant lights over the island bench for me.

Plumbers reconnecting the plumbing and installing the new tap. Tada – see my new pendant lights! (and the holes from the removed downlights)

Plumbers reconnecting the plumbing and installing the new dishwasher.

Day 18 (Monday)

• Templating for Splashbacks

Day 28 (Thursday)

• Install of Splashbacks

Smoked Mirrored Glass Splashbacks being installed in the kitchen

From Day 16 we started to move back into the kitchen.  We were partially back in the kitchen and partially in the makeshift kitchen for quite some time.  On Day 30 (Saturday) we moved the fridge back.  We are now fully moved back into the kitchen, though still have some boxes to sort through and upack.  I am putting a lot of stuff aside for my daughter to go through and what she doesn’t want I will be giving to charity. 

Within the next 2 weeks we have:

• A painter coming to paint not only the new bulkheads and cornicing but all of the kitchen and dining room areas, including the ceiling.  We will have to move the fridge back out, not to mention all the other furniture that will have to be emptied and moved out of the dining room as well.  Chaos again, but hopefully only for 2-3 days this time.
• A tiler coming to fix a floor tile that got broken through the process.

For the next post I’ll run through all the new appliances and reveal what they are, including the gorgeous new kitchen sink, the tap that I adore, the oven, cooktop, rangehood, dishwasher and my new pendant lights!

Right now though, I’m going to enjoy my new kitchen until the painter comes and chaos will reign again!

Ciao for now,

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