So let's go from the beginning.
Prep work.
It is very important. Calculation of the materials, some inspirational
visuals also and of course some
constructional calculations too. I was aware that we add very heavy kitchen
island in the middle of the kitchen and this bothered me a lot. Our not
finished basement did help to see and resolve the concerns. We added support
wall that in the future will became wall between kitchenette and bedroom.
Monetary calculations were almost right. They say when you to reno, double the budget,
it wasn't so bad, we were about 15%
over. Let's say added the tax :)
Demolition.
To take kitchen out, we used kijiji (online selling second
hand things), so somebody was ready to come and take off all kitchen with old appliances
. Definitely good recycling work :) saved on garbage bin too :)
Ground breaking of the tilled floor. It was scary from the beginning,
but actually it wasn't so hard to detach tile from sub-floor. Important thing
was to begin at the right place (in the middle of the room) where vibration
will do the job.
The worst fears did came to us when we needed to take a
small addition of the floor, that was added later by former owners. Construction
glue plus screws attached concrete board very strong to the sub-floor and no
instrument would do the job (even power sledgehammer). Good that the
surface was small, so we took off about 1 cm and the rest poured leveling
compound to even up with cement board. That were needed for porcelain tile.
Popcorn ceiling.
It IS easy job, just very dirty. So I did that before all the
construction and floor installation.
Structural stabilization.
As I told earlier, I needed peace of mind that porcelain tile plus
kitchen island with huge granite will keep the floor structure stable. We built
support wall and I added vertical studs connected
all joists. Our joists are "hollow", so it was easy to do.
Flooring.
With two big dogs decision about flooring material was
"easy", it should be no maintenance floor, so the wood like porcelain
tile was the best choice. I didn't go with traditional poured concrete and latch,
decided to do easy (a bit more expensive) way - cement boards. Good that I wasn't over
confident and choose for tile installation
to use T-lock system. It's fool proof to do level floors.
Self leveling compound to level with cement board. Worked perfect.
Kitchen
I'm IKEA fan. There weren't even another consideration. It was easy to
project with their software and my men are "profies" in assembling
and installing IKEA kitchen. I "played" with online design and
customized to our needs. New was island installation, but with that we dealt too.
I love marble backsplash, could do just because the wet part was in the
island. I would never put marble next to sink area. The stone is like sponge
even if the sealer is present.
Focal point walls (living room and fire place)
It's easy to install and looks beautiful. But the stone itself is very
very fragile. A bit of pressure and you have two pieces instead of one.
The fireplace was painted with heat paint, so the brass disappeared and
the fireplace got its modern look
Laundry room
Part it was done earlier, part added during this summer. Cabinets of
course are from IKEA. But countertops is different story. When I was looking
for custom made countertop for laundry room, the prices even for cheapest
laminate were too much. So I decided to DIY concrete countertop exactly the
size I needed. I didn't want to pour and have very heavy piece of concrete, so
if I need to reach back of dryer's vent or pipe I can just take out the
"countertop" without a problem. So this "concrete"
countertop is actually "lamination" of OSB with patching compound. This solution did help me to decided and install
small (narrow) utility sink too. You see, moment you out of standard sizes -
prices are jumping up like crazy.
Actually I tried to laminate old powder room countertop, but somehow it
didn't feel good. So at the end we got it done with our kitchen's countertop leftover.
