Friday, August 30, 2013

Wet Rest Day

While we wait for the cement to cure, the weather decided to give us a super moist environment. But at least I got to talk to people online, do a little grocery shopping, and manage to get BM's dailies done.


Wednesday, August 28, 2013

The Next Step In My Flooring Adventure

Yesterday, I thoroughly cleaned the cement floor as much as possible. The floor was swept, then vacuumed.


Then I got down on my hands and knees and wiped it up with a sponge. The next day, I vacuumed it one more time since the drywall in the air still hasn't settled. As eager as I was to get things going, I didn't want to glaze over any step without giving it a thorough look-over.

Today, my brother and I rolled on the floor primer. Since it was a concrete floor, the instructions said to use the primer without diluting it. It turns out we only needed one bottle, not two.



We had to wait 2 hours for the primer to be dry enough before pouring the cement. So I went and grabbed some lunch, talked with some friends online, got a couple more missions done in Eve Online, and next thing I knew, it was ready to go!

Now comes the magic I was looking forward to since I heard about it 3 weeks ago. Self-Leveling Cement!


These small bags are 50 pounds each. So naturally, my brother took care of carrying them in (hee hee).

My brother put a cement mixer at the end of his drill into the big bucket we bought from Home Depot. I poured in the exact amount of water needed using a two-litre plastic milk container, and then away we went. And let me tell you, this is a TWO person job!


The experience with self-leveling cement has been an interesting (and a little stressful) adventure. First off, we were kind of surprised that the cement was not as watery as we had expected. But we did follow the instructions as closely as possible so the consistency had to be right. We soon discovered that one bag wasn't enough, so before the first cement dried too quickly, we rushed off to get 3 more 50 lbs bags.


My brother managed to get it all on the floor and used a hand trowel to move the cement towards the edges. We expected, like the name suggests, that it would just level by itself. It turns out, it needed a little help. We decided to stick with just two more bags and will return the last one since they are over $30 each.


Here are some things I would do different next time:

INSTRUCTIONAL/EXAMPLE VIDEOS
Look at a few self-leveling application videos on you-tube to get a sense of what how to approach the work. One video we kinda wish we saw was this one with 5 tips for laying self-leveling underlayment. Well, at least, it intrigued my brother more than me.


DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE AMOUNT OF CEMENT NEEDED
This is what I call a "smallish" kitchen, so I really didn't expect we needed more than one bag. After all, you pick up one bag, and realizing how heavy it was, we thought surely it would be enough. Nuh uh. For our 150 ft, floor that was almost level except for one side that sank a little (less than a centimetre difference), we should have bought 4 bags. We only used three just because we didn't want to open another one knowing we wouldn't need the whole bag. But we certainly could have used it if we wanted to.

GET PROPER TOOLS
I had a moment of brilliance knowing I had two paint rollers that I could attach long handles to, and a disposable paint tray liner when it came to applying the floor primer. But not so brilliant when we went to spread the cement overlay. My brother was on his hands and knees with a hand-held trowel. The videos would have clued us to get something that would allow us to move faster, and not be so back-breaking.

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE YOUR BELONGINGS IN REACHABLE PLACE
My brother was looking for his tack tape to tape down the border so that the cement wouldnt hit our carpet. And it was on the window sill WAY OVER in the corner, after we had poured the first batch of cement. I still can't believe he managed to get it without falling into the cement. As well, I left my video recorder on the same window sill, though I was lucky it was relatively close that I could reach over and grab it.

WORK FAST!!!!!!!
The cement spreads and starts to set in the first 10 minutes after you stop mixing. My brother and I dawdled around for about 5 minutes cleaning the mixer and looking for my video camera. We found that the cement looked like it was solidifying pretty rapidly.

TWO PEOPLE IS NOT ENOUGH
We found that we needed both of us to mix the cement enough for it to be ready... which takes a good 15 minutes. That's a lot of time for the previous layer to have solidified making it a little harder (not impossible) to spread evenly.  It would have been better to have one or two people leveling out the cement while two other people were busy mixing the next batch.

"SELF-LEVELING" IS MISLEADING
This cement doesn't settle by itself on its own. It needs help spreading to the areas and connecting with the walls and corners. For this reason, the "working fast" tip is very important to ensure that the cement is still runny enough after spreading it around that it will still be able to settle into a leveled state.

Well it was definitely an adventure. And it looks like, considering we were rookies, that we may have to sand down some of the cement bumps we created. But we'll make it work!!!

It says to wait 12 hours, but we are going to probably wait a full 48 hours to allow it to cure. We are nervously anticipating a nice flat floor ready for tiling!

Saturday, August 24, 2013

The Floor Plan

So here's what we are attempting to do:

1. Remove scrape off as much of the previous laminate adhesive from the concrete floor.


2. Clean the floor completely by wiping down and vacuuming twice. (yay! im finally useful!)

3. Prep the floor for the self-leveling cement.


4. Lay self-leveling cement for a flat surface since the east portion of our wall has a slight decline.


5. After dried, lay a vapour barrier.


6. Lay the cork underlayment.


7. Lay the mortar and tile.


8. Then its grouting and sealing.


I would imagine that it would be a little odd to install cabinets on top of tiled flooring with cork underlay. I'm not sure. I'll have to ask Jason. It certainly would be nice if we could lay the floor down before the cabinets came in.

It all sounds good in my head, after hours and hours of discussion with my brother and a variety of other salespeople and scouring the internet for as much information as I can.  Wish me luck!!

Considering Cork

Yes, my flooring discussions with my brother are still alive and well... unfortunately. We finally got a chance to go to CanCork in Richmond and met Stephanie, the salesperson there.

Let me say something about my brother being so involved in the project. There are times when I think he hasn't heard or considered all of the possibilities, and there are times when I'm so grateful he knows when enough is enough. When we went to check out heated floors, the moment he heard "not a primary heat source", he was done. Here at the cork store, he heard "must get the concrete tested for moisture or warranty is void" and he was like "ok we are done with cork flooring."

Well, I'm not completely done with cork. But I have decided not to go with a full cork flooring. The variety of colours of cork flooring is not expansive enough. Even when I found a colour that kind of matched the kitchen decor, the pattern didn't take too well to my taste. That swirly or patched look on the floor doesn't really fit my taste.

I have decided to go with cork underlay, which is inexpensive and still gives us all the great qualities of cork like sound absorption, insulation, resistance to mold, mildew and allergens, and and an eco-friendly option.


The tile has already been bought, and so even with my less than average impression of tile in the kitchen, I will do it for the sake of (1) not wasting more resources, and (2) sellable upgrade to the house with tile being a popular option for modern kitchens.


Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Flooring, Flooring, Oh What Are We Gonna Do About the Flooring??

So my brother and I have been discussing over and over about options for flooring. I mean, we are wearing out our mental capacities. But this is important stuff. It's the difference between $500 and $1200. So we gotta make sure the investment is right.

My original plan was to keep the current laminate flooring for now until a later date when we had the funds to replace it with heated flooring. But when we decided to go with Vancouver Cabinets who supplied fixed-sized cabinets instead of a custom cabinet design, and ended up saving around $8000 (now its more like around $6000 which is still phenomenal), it means we could do the flooring now.

Flooring Issues We Are Trying To Solve:
  1. Porcelain Tile
  2. Vinyl
  3. Heated Floor
  4. Raised Sub-Floor
  5. Cork Flooring

After some intense research on the internet, this is a summary of what I have found. (I am not an expert in flooring, so consider this my personal gathering of information in relation to my kitchen project)


PORCELAIN TILE
Well the sexy and modern thing to do is tiles in the kitchen and bathroom (though it does seem like maybe it might be starting to go out of style). Porcelain from what I learned is the same as ceramic tile but very dense.

PROS:


CONS:

  • requires a perfectly level surface to install which means back breaking work to scrape off old laminate glue and use pricey self-leveling cement beforehand.
  • incredibly hard which means dropped items are likely to shatter or dent, not to mention the higher risk that a tile will break compromising its ability to prevent moisture from seeping underneath
  • cleaning the floor means that unseen germs or food particles can remain between the tiles even after mopping.
  • Spilled items that easily stain and fall into the grout will turn into a permanent discolouration. (I'm Korean, so soy sauce and kimchee are a staple in the kitchen)


VINYL FLOORING
Vinyl Flooring was an attractive option for me and my first choice even though it may appear to be the cheapy out-dated choice. The flooring we just pulled off the kitchen was vinyl laminate.

PROS:

  • Easy to clean because it is a continuous surface
  • Easy to install because it can lay on an imperfectly leveled floor.
  • Malleable which makes it easy to walk or stand on and can change with the expansion and contraction of the cement with age and moisture changes.
  • Options of style and design are almost endless, even imitating hardwood and tiled flooring.

CONS:

  • Does not last as long as tile or wood floors (which are expected to last a good 50 years) Thus replacement is required every now and then.
  • The glue is unforgivingly difficult to remove when you want to replace with new flooring

HEATED FLOORING
So an interesting piece of information I am discovering over time as I research this more. If you search for "radiant heating," you will get lots of information on in-floor heating. However, there is a difference between in-floor heating and true radiant heating. The best layout of all the information that I found is in this article by Robert Bean. The information is important for anyone considering in-floor heating.

Briefly, the difference between the two is how heat is emitted into the air. In-floor heating uses dry heat via electrical wires, while true radiant heating is wet heat from water flowing through pipes.

In-floor heating is a comfort thing, to prevent the "cold shock" walking on a tiled floor (kind of like the reason why some people use toilet seat warmers).

Radiant Floor Heating consists of water that travels through special tubes based on the presence of heat in the room and replaces the hot water tank with one that functions to provide both heat and hot water to the house, effectively eliminating the need of a furnace.

Up until now, the discussion for my kitchen has been around getting in-floor heating, not true radiant heating. And so the pros and cons are based on that.

PROS:

  • Provides a remedy to the problem of almost ice-cold floors (even in the summer) in the kitchen due to moisture through the cement and the elevation at which our property is situated.

CONS:

  • True Comfort, NuHeat and Warmly Yours, the 3 major companies that provide products for in-floor heating that meet Canadian standards, claim that in-floor heating cannot serve as a primary heat source. There is mention of lowering the temperature of your thermostat to save energy, or reducing the amount of heat through forced air systems, but none claim outright that it replaces your primary heat source. Thus a heated floor is essentially a luxury, not a necessity.
  • The reason why the kitchen is cold is, as we discovered, the exterior walls were poorly insulated, and the flooring was glued directly to the cement. In a scenario like that, heat emitting from the floor will essentially get lost through the cement floor and the un-insulated part of the walls. We need to remedy these problems to solve the heat loss issue in the kitchen.
  • It's expensive -- around $1200 just for the heating mats alone
  • It's time consuming to install.

Raised Sub-Floor
So one of the major reasons why it is so cold in the downstairs of the house is because the flooring was laid directly onto the concrete slab which is in direct content with the ground. So moisture is seeping through any porous openings and both cooling the cement and increasing the humidity (typical of most basements). My brother intends to install a raised subfloor using compact insulation (my brother used it against the concrete foundation portion in walls) with wood straps and 5/8" plywood secured on top. The flooring then can be applied to the plywood. We had to ensure that there was at least 2 inches or more of elevation in the room to allow for this.

PROS:

  • Greatly reduces the loss of heat through the floor at reasonable price which leads to energy savings.

CONS:

  • Time consuming and labour intensive.
  • With a raised floor, I am left with the necessity to either live with a raised lip in the floor when I enter the kitchen from the rec room, or eventually installing the sub floor throughout the entire downstairs (which includes removing all interior doorways to raise them at least 2 inches off the floor and then re-drywalling and painting).
  • Those materials are damn heavy. Yes, I'm still whining about that. hehe.

Cork Flooring
My doctor told me about this option that his son used when he renovated his condo. It's actually quite unique and has a lot of advantages that are widely unknown. It is considered an eco-friendly alternative to flooring because it is a renewable resource.

PROS:

  • Eco-friendly because cork is a renewable resource
  • provides insulation
  • fire-proof
  • sound-proof 
  • shock aborption
  • hypoallergenic because it is resistent to mold, mildew, dust and bugs
  • VOC-free
  • Easy to install since it is sold with its own adhesive on the back
  • Malleable to imperfectly flat floor and will return to its original shape from indents caused by furniture.

CONS:

  • more pricey than tile or vinyl
  • Limited in colours and will put an unique/odd patterning to the floor
The thought of cork flooring came to mind after we were told that NuHeat themselves claim that their electric radiant floors cannot be used as a primary source of heat. Then my brother said, well im paraphrasing, "Then why the hell are we gonna pay so much money to install it if it's just a luxury item?"

Tomorrow, or sometime soon, we are going to go to a cork flooring store, perhaps the one in Richmond, to investigate the possibility of installing cork flooring. Should be interesting.


References:
    Robert Bean, R.E.T., P.L.(Eng.),"Radiant Mythology: How myths about low temperature radiant heating and high temperature radiant cooling get spread." Copyright 2004-2013, 
    "What is True Radiant?" http://support.nest.com/article/What-is-True-Radiant
     Lee Wallender "Electric Radiant Floor Heating"  http://homerenovations.about.com/od/floors/a/ElectricRadiantFloorHeating.htm
Appropriate Designs "What is Hydronic Heating?" http://www.hydronicpros.com/hydronicheating/
Canada NuFloors Group, Inc. "Cork Flooring" http://www.nufloors.ca/north-vancouver/flooringchoices/cork
The Eco Floor Store, http://www.ecofloorstore.ca/eco-floors-surfaces/cork/
CorkFloorSales.com, http://www.corkfloorsales.com/Benefit_Cork_Floor.html

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Update on the Budget

So now that we have had a number of receipts and purchases, my brother urged me to get it down on a spreadsheet so we could see exactly how much we have left.

Well here it is.


I'm still desperate to try and keep the costs under $20K. However, $5K of wiggle room does allow us to still make decisions based on what is best, rather than what is cheapest.

What's left to buy?

  1. Heating wires for floor
  2. Garburator
  3. Pendant Lights
  4. Splashwall Tiles

Installing More Insulation

So the one thing about this house that we discovered, is that it seems to be a lot colder than it needs to be. The downstairs kitchen, the one we are renovating, is the worst of them all. Just standing on the floor, even with wool socks on, your feet still feel like they are freezing. We moved in this house in November 2012. Now that summer is almost over, I can tell you that the floor in the kitchen has not gotten any warmer from the weather. It is always stone cold.

At night, I shiver with cold and have to keep my winter blankets with me all summer long. After all, this is high in the mountain. But then again, that's no excuse to feel like you are freezing all the time when the weather outside is relatively warm.

Shortly after moving into the house, my brother discovered a number of interesting flaws in insulation.

  1. In the attic, he noticed large pockets where insulation was missing (this was first pointed out by our house inspector).
  2. There is \no insulation between the upstairs and downstairs. This means that the downstairs area has cold coming from the floor (carpet and linoleum was laid directly on the cement) and from the ceiling as well. NO WONDER it never warms up in here!
  3. When they opened up the walls in the kitchen, we noticed very obvious gaps of space where insulation was missing. I don't know if the insulation just deteriorated, or if the builders didn't think filling it all with insulation was required. 
Well today, was the first day that my brother is taking over the renovation now that our contractor, Solomon, is done for the time being. And the first order of business was to get the rest of the insulation done on the other outside wall.

The part he is working on is:




What we did find in that cavity was a bunch of old spider webs, which makes me wonder how in the world spiders got into our walls.

After my brother had to put up with my weakling help at moving heavy pieces of wood, and whining in the car about doubting whether or not I could handle it going up our steep driveway, my brother decided to get to work on the remaining outer walls. 


So the parts where you see dark insulation is where there were huge gaps of empty space. There was no insulation at all below or above the window. 

So my brother, going the extra step for added insulation, put plastic over the insulation to keep from any moisture seeping through in the future. And the 


As you can see, there is also special insulation he used to cover up the cold cement foundation since there was a gap there allow for this. Then he sealed it up with tuck tape to close up any openings where moisture or cold air could seep through.

After it was done, my brother stood in the kitchen and said he could already feel that it was distinctly warmer. Woohoo!

Doing Up Drywall

The kitchen is starting to look like a room again, now that all the guts aren't sticking out... well most of it...

Here's the walls that we were worked on a few days ago:






You'll notice that there is one piece of drywall installed in the middle and then the top and bottom covered with cut drywall. This is so that the backsplash wall between the counter and upper cabinets won't have a seam there. The other wall didn't get the same treatment for some reason. Maybe it was an after-thought to change the arrangement of the drywall panels. 

My brother put together a drywall cover over the pipe valves so that if one day a plumber has to go in there, they won't have to rip the drywall down to take a look. Brilliant!


He also labeled all the outlets so there is no mistake what each outlet is for!


And this is another little brilliant addition. Just because it drives my brother crazy forgetting which switch operates the kitchen lights and which operates the garburator, he suggested making them two different colours! Can you guess which will be the garburator? *wink*



Friday, August 16, 2013

Design Changes

So I finally got a chance to analyze carefully the design I received from Jason. Sounds strange, huh? That I'm check it out carefully so late in the process. Again, it's absolutely awesome that I can make changes and no one is inconvenienced.

The first change is the narrow cupboard to the left of the stove:


This is a two level pull-out spice rack.


Now I can totally understand the logic of placing a spice rack by the oven. But as I look over the plans more and more, I can see that my cabinet space is already limited. I've never been a fan of this type of cupboard. I find it mostly a waste of space. And for only two levels, putting spices in them means only using about half of the available space inside.

However, changing it allows me to have one feature that I desperately want: a narrow base cupboard for my cutting boards. So I have asked to have this changed to a simple one door cupboard with no shelving. Or maybe i can have shelving and have more than one size cutting board on the two levels... we'll see! 


The second change is a little more drastic.

I have decided that I not only want to change the refrigerator I bought, but that I need to. For me, the #1 reason to go to the fridge is to get a fresh cup of water. In fact, I can estimate that 50% of the trips I make to the refrigerator is for the purpose alone.

At the beginning when I was looking at refrigerators, I had four non-negotiable features that I wanted. Bottom freezer, energy efficient, delivered locally, and a water dispenser. Well you may recall that back in November 2012, I sacrificed the water dispenser because of the phenomenally great price on the package of samsung appliances.

But now, I'm feeling it's absence. Simply put, I want to have a continuous supply of drinking water. I don't want a cooler to waste more energy or encourage more commercially controlled water containers. I dont want to fumble 1-2 times a day with a brita container. A water dispensing fridge was to solve all of the water problems I have had before.

So I have decided I will change the refrigerator. I will stay with Samsung, but the fridge will end up being another 3 inches wider. So this means:


Yet again more narrow drawers and cupboard.  And since this is my only set of tiered doors, I have asked that Jason change the cupboard to the right of the stove to another set of tiered drawers.


I cannot WAIT until this kitchen is finished! Yes, it's not the ideal layout of the kitchen I always wanted, but it's certainly a really great first run at one!


Playing with Piping

We had a pipe fitter come and do work on redirecting the plumbing lines to the new location of the sink. I admit, I didn't really listen as attentively about the entire piping issues. But I can share what I did get out of the discussion about this part of the project.

What I can say is that the amount of trouble-shooting during construction is a lot more than I expected. But it also looks like a lot of fun to try and use your creativity and knowledge of construction to figure out solutions.

So here's the dilemma with the piping. The width of the pipe was too big to simply drill holes into the existing 2x4 wall studs without compromising its strength to hold up the house. However it was important that we would be able to hide the piping inside the wall. Somehow we would have to widen the studs to ensure the drywall could cover up the piping. The solution was to nail an extra 3-inches of wood on each stud to make way for the pipe.


So the original wood wall studs were kept intact, and the new extension was nailed on, and then a piece removed to allow the pipe to go through. Brill!  :)

So the path of the main pipe to the sink goes something like this: 


With the pipe going through the cabinets. It means that a certain portion of the back of those bottom cabinets can't really be used, and that I will have avoid putting any kind of food items in there that are sensitive a cold or warm environment. I've seen a similar situation before in a condo I rented.

As well, there is a second smaller waterline that will be inside the wall that will go directly to the refrigerator to feed water for the ice-maker.



The pipe fitter however didn't attach the rest of the piping towards the sink. That apparently can be done later when the cabinets are installed. And so we have these pipes hanging out for now.


I guess I'll get to see how the piping gets finished later since my brother is the one who received instructions on how to finish it off. 

Monday, August 12, 2013

Buying Appliances at Red Door Discount Warehouse

So this post is way, way, WAY overdue. But I didn't want to leave it out since it may be of help to others who may be looking for good appliances within a limited budget.

After researching which appliances I wanted to seek out, reading published reviews and buyer reviews, and even catching about a small clip on the Marilyn Denis Show on what to look for when shopping for a refrigerator,


I settled on getting a Samsung refrigerator with the freezer on the bottom and french doors on the top. I also wanted a water dispenser.

Searching around the Samsung webpage to considering what models they had, I copied the model number of one that I thought would be good and within budget. Searching on that for Vancouver locations that would sell it, I came across a place called Red Door Discount Warehouse. It was the lowest price I could find -- substantially lower.

Suggested retail price on the Samsung webpage: $3900
Red Door Discount Warehouse, bump and dent: $2200

Andrew answered the phone and explained that the appliances are bump and dent items, which is sort of like refurbished items. In this case, any situation where there may be little damage, or cosmetic damage to the item, they can no longer be sold at retail price. This company checks the items out, repairs whatever it needs, and sells them at a discount price.


DISCLAIMER: I'm still learning how to shoot and edit videos, as well as interviewing without talking so much. So excuse the amateur quality of this. Practice makes perfect, right?

Andrew told me of a sale going on, A package deal of a Samsung appliance kitchen set which included:

  1. Samsung Refrigerator, French Doors, Bottom Freezer
  2. Samsung Dishwasher, Ultra Quiet
  3. Samsung Induction Stove

All energy efficient. For a total of $2800!!! ($3134 with tax)

I needed to repeat back to make sure the exact items that were included, only because it was just too good to be true. But I have the receipt and I have all the items here at the house! The only sacrifice I made was the water dispenser. That was a big loss for me. But for a deal like this, I figured since this is not my dream kitchen, let's live without it. And if it really starts to bug me, sell this one and get the one I want!

My mom used the appliances while she lived with us for a few months, and now I am using them. Let me tell you, we are using brand new appliances. There's nothing that has gone wrong. The dishwasher and oven hood (which I also bought at Red Door), have not yet been installed.

I bought the items way back on November 11, 2012. We had the fridge and stove delivered right away. Delivery was $100 because we were located way up north of the city. The dishwasher and oven hood, because they  weren't quite available yet, were held by them until this past week. That's over nine months! Andrew did say, they would house the item for as long as we needed, and they didn't put up a fuss at all about it.

I am not sure what experiences others have had, but I'm extremely happy with the deal I made despite the compromise.

I can't wait to demonstrate the induction stove, but more on that in a future post.

Final Kitchen Designs

So Jason from Vancouver Cabinets dropped by on Friday to take some final measurements of the space. It was at that time that I had to make a final decision about whether or not to get a raised bar on the peninsula or keep the height the same as the rest of the counter space. The advantage of raising it is that it will hide the sink and other "clutter" like dirty dishes from the view from the rec room.

The extra cost, however, is quite a bit higher since it requires a third slab of quartz countertop to be installed, as well as additional cabinetry.

This is our new bill from them:


This includes not only the addition of the raised bar, but also all the adjustments from the first estimate after the final measurements were taken. 

Our previous invoice looked like this:


You can see that the biggest change in prices are in the cabinetry and the additional quartz countertop needed. Ultimately, it's still an amazingly good deal. As well. the first was an estimate done at their office with a rough measurement of the room, showing where the door and window openings were. Naturally a more exact measurement as well as more precise decisions on the cabinetry will change the overall price. Even the number of handles needed went up from 21 to 26 pieces.

We have also pushed the installation date to September 9th to ensure that the floors are done in time. This gives us 4 more weeks to complete the project. Our contractor isn't available full time for this project, so we are lenient with time since there is no looming deadline over us.

So here's the final design plans we received from Jason!



By Wednesday, the drywall should be up, and it will actually start to look like a real room. Can't wait to show you the pictures!

Figuring Out Flooring

So a discussion with my brother over the weekend made me wonder exactly how much more energy we would have to pay to run a heated floor in. The heat mats that Home Depot sells claim to use 28% less energy, but our question was... 28% of what?

And if it does raise our energy costs, would dishing out an extra $1000 to put in a heated floor be worth it if you have to be careful not to use it too much?

I've been thinking about it all weekend, and have come to this conclusion: I'll put it in the kitchen, and if the energy costs are reasonable, we will consider putting it into the rest of the downstairs when we redo the rest of the floors.  If it does raise our energy costs up too much, then we know for sure that we won't install radiant heating anywhere else. After all, the kitchen and bathroom are the two places that, if you had to choose rooms for radiant heating, would be the prime candidates.

But there's one catch. We were told at Home Depot that you cannot put these heat mats directly on cement because the efficiency will go way down due to loss of heat through the cement. You MUST insulate the floors first.

What this means for us is a layer of floor insulation, plywood on top of that, then the heat mat, the mortar and  finally the tile and grout. What it also means is ..... wait for it.........that we don't have to remove the old linoleum glue off the floor anymore!!!!!!!  ALL THAT WORK and it wasn't even necessary! Can you hear my brother's heart sink in agony?

So that meant.... redoing the doorway. We estimate that we will need an additional 2 inches of space on the floor to install the insulation. It also means that there will be a "lip" in the floor when you go from the rec room into the kitchen -- well, at least for the time being.


CONSTRUCTION UPDATE

But regardless, lots got done today. The insulation was installed and sealed in the wall. Some new drywall was installed as well.


The door was supposed to be secured in today, but because of the change in floor height, they had to remove it and heighten the top 2.5 inches to compensate. 

And over the weekend, we had an electrician do up all the wiring for the kitchen. The work involves moving the plug for the oven to its new location, installing new sockets to feed the new position of the fridge and the microwave, installing a brand new power source for the dishwasher, garburator and lights over the sink, and other things. I didn't realize so much work went into just wiring a kitchen! He worked for almost two full days to get it all together.


Tomorrow a pipe fitter friend of my brother will come and re-position the plumbing so that we can have the sink in the peninsula. And apparently, I am not supposed to call him a plumber. He's actually a very highly skilled piping specialist for places like big chemical plants and industrial structures. It's basically being an engineer/chemist and requires a higher level of education. So.... Peter, the pipe fitter, NOT the plumber!

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Looking for Lights

The chore of removing the linoleum glue from the floor continues. We are almost 50% done. But today is Sunday, aka "rest day" and so we will likely limit the amount of work we do today. Plus, my brother is out most of the day, and he does a lot of the work! HAHA!

I had a chance to look at pendant lamp choices to hang from the ceiling over the sink. The two lights will hang from the ceiling in these two spots:

I will buy two identical lamps. When looking at the kitchen from the rec room, these lamps will contribute in a huge way to the character and style of the kitchen, so the choice has to be consider function, design, and style.

This is probably the most creative decision I have had to make thus far in relation to this kitchen renovation. Color, yes, could be considered a creative decision but they are purposely a complimentary dark/light colour scheme in relatively neutral colors in order to serve as the background. What I place on the countertops and choose for other accessories (such as the lamp and the backsplash wall) will be the accents that will bring out my kitchen style.


The one that I want the most is this one with tiffany glass made by Quoizel:

Gotham Rod Hung Mini Pendant with 36 Pieces of Tiffany Glass, Vintage Bronze

Unfortunately, they are sold out, at least the ones listed in their Amazon store, and when I look for it elsewhere, they seem to all link back to amazon. If anyone has luck finding this, I would be sooo grateful!!!

But of course, there are others that are similar, and maybe even cheaper!

Espresso Brown cabinets and light champagne quartz counters. Makes me wonder if a more reddish brown would be better. And believe it or not, because these are cabinets that are at a set size and are housed in a warehouse, I have that freedom to change my choice of cabinets now! But must resist that urge. I shouldn't change the whole color scheme based on a lamp I can't even find!  Silly me!

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Loathing Linoleum

OK, so do you know what it's like to remove linoleum glue from a cement floor to prep it for tiling?  Let me see if I can describe it to you:


It's kind of like a combination of shoveling a week's worth of caked on hardened snow off your sidewalk. It's back breaking work. It's smelly and dirty work. And after you do it for about 15 minutes, you have to walk around and give your head and arms a break from the constant scraping back and forth because if you don't apply pressure while you scrape, it won't come off.

Oh and to add insult to injury, we get to scrap off TWO layers of linoleum glue..  because the last owners who put down the linoleum we are pulling out, didn't bother to scrape the glue from the first linoleum floor.

We looked all over the internet and YouTube to find the easiest way to remove it. Results were... it's just not easy... period. This is what I discovered from my findings:

  1. Scoring makes the job easier to manage bit by bit.
  2. Heat and water/steam helps loosen the glue.
  3. Using solvents that claim it can dissolve or loosen glue puts your concrete or wood floor at risk of being more resilient to future glue.
  4. No matter how you look at it, it's one of the worst jobs in renovations. So suck it up.


FIGURING OUT THE JOB
My brother and I are experimenting with different techniques. The moment we found out I was too much of a weakling to use the tall scraper, it meant by brother doing that hard work.

We are lucky that the top layer of the linoleum came off quit easy. It took a bit of muscle, but that was a job I was able to do.

Next, we wet down a surface and then scored it with a utility knife.



My brother then scrapes off as much as he can with the hand scraper...


And I take a steel sander (or whatever it's called) and sand off the rest


It's still a long road ahead. We started yesterday afternoon and spent a lot of the time trying out different techniques we found. Today, now that we've mostly nailed down what my brother's job is and what my job is, we will be working every day to get this done.


Yuppers, I'm definitely "earning" my kitchen.

Okay enough stalling by blogging... I'm back to work.