The Bulkhead Issue

I have had extensive discussions with the contractor and the designer about what to do about the bulkhead above the cupboards. Ideally I would like to get rid of them. But it was clear from the discussions that we need to see what's inside the bulkhead before we know if we can remove it.

Well my brother and I took down the upper cabinets in the kitchen a few days ago. It revealed the inside of the bulkhead and to my relief, the only thing running through there is the oven vent.

Currently, the oven vent makes a right turn in one corner and then extends the entire length of the remaining wall before existing outside the house towards the right.

So it's understandable why the bulkhead goes all the way around the kitchen and even extends further than it has to. Simply, the oven is so far away that the vent had to reach that far... and then they just finished it off to the end of the wall for aesthetic purposes even though that remaining part was completely empty.

Well lucky me! Because the stove will move to where the sink is, this removes about 2/3 of the vent length, and removes any corners. My designer suggested that because the resulting vent will end up being relatively short, just thread the oven vent through the upper cabinetry. It means we can't put anything in those particular top cabinets (except for maybe paper instruction manuals) but it will allow us to extend the cabinetry all the way to the ceiling now on all sides.

What a relief. NO MORE BULKHEAD!  WOOHOO!!! I hope my contractor and designer agrees that it's possible. I'll  find that out on Tuesday, August 6th.

Getting Ready to Disassemble the Cabinets

I need to say first and foremost, I'm so glad my brother knows a thing or two about house construction, and I probably don't give him enough credit for the information he provides.

He and I are getting ready to take down the cabinets in the kitchen this weekend. Which means I'm busy trying to remove pretty much everything in the kitchen. The refrigerator has already been moved into the rec room, and I laugh at how accessible the water is now to my desk! However, moving it was not easy to do. Even taking of the handles, my brother had to pretty much remove the entire doorframe to make it fit.

(yes that's the other original color of the wall.... mint green... yuck.)

Microwave and toaster oven are out.

The next big move will be the stove. Then the rest we can throw in boxes.

Still dragging my heels on looking at puck light options. Anyone have puck lights in their kitchen under the cupboards? What's your opinion? Essential or luxury?

THE KITCHEN LAYOUT I WANT

Actually it's my brother who came up with the layout that we ultimately decided to go with.
This is what we will attempt to create:

This layout requires more work, but with all the savings we've had so far, we decided to dive in and create a better workspace. Changes include:

1. Getting rid of the patio door and replacing it with an exterior windowed entry way.
2. Position the refridgerator on the other half of where the patio door was to create more counter space
3. Remove the wall between the rec room and kitchen and put a "sit at" counter there.
4. Add a tall pantry in the corner and additional counter space below the window near the opening to the rec room

As my brother put it, you can determine the functionality of a kitchen by imagining a triangle between the fridge, the stove and the sink. You can see that the custom-designed kitchen, which I understand was meant to save us money, has a very awkward triangular work area:

In this new design, the work area is more open and less congested:

After talking to a couple of contractors, it is apparent that the work required to create this layout is not as costly as it first seemed. So we're going to go for it!

So the checklist of what is left to buy goes something like this:

• sink faucet (bought at home depot, ok I splurged a little here!)
• tiles for flooring (bought)
• tiles for splash wall
• heat mat for flooring
• garburator
• exterior door (in process of ordering)
• drop lighting for above the sink area
• high dining chairs

I'm still torn about whether or not I want puck lights installed under a couple of the cabinets. It sounds to me like they are quite costly... like $50 per light. Many nights of sleep clearly hasn't helped me reach a decision.

My brother and I went to a door manufacturer today and got a great price on a windowed exterior door. I do need to do some measurements since the exterior wall in this kitchen is thicker than what you would find in a standard house. I need to let the company know by August 1st. That gives me two weeks to solve the problem of how the door will be installed before we place the order and pay. But more about how that encounter went in a future post.

Wow! I just noticed, I really made the entry door small in the layout. o.O

Day 5 and still no folder. I back tracked for that day, and today i revisited the optometrist office, save on foods, and browns social house to see if they might have it. No luck. My brother says he distinctly remembers me holding the folder when we met back up after our appointments. He feels the same way i do... that it really is in the house somewhere. My brain is getting tired of scenarios. It looks like I will have to attempt to recreate the information I had there, though I know its impossible to duplicate it exactly.

Finding and Choosing Tiles for Flooring

Well the contractor we hired called me today and we have establish the start of the work for Tuesday, second week of August. There's a number of things that I need to take care of before he comes.

One of the the tasks is to choose and purchase the new tile for the floor. The size of the room is about My brother and I visited two flooring distributors on Terminal Ave to get an idea of what the cost and selection is like.

First place we went to was a place my brother always noticed when he drove by. The store is called Fontile.We saw some on sale that would keep the purchase of the tiling to around just $1000 w/ tax which I felt was reasonable for our budget. However, when we spoke to the sales lady, apparently we were looking at natural stone which would require a yearly treatment to maintain its quality. She showed us and range of porcelain tiles in a different section of the store and I was feeling a little overwhelmed at the prices I would have to pay, wondering if the floor was worth doing after all. When we found a colour we liked on sale, we thought hey, this could work. $4.49 per sq ft means we would only be spending around $700 for the tiling.

Next place we visited I had found on the internet, called Tiles For Less. This place is not a showroom. It simply looks like a warehouse of tiles, with various piles of boxes with tiles in them spread on the floor in rows so you could walk among them and browse. To our delight, the prices were substantially lower. $2.99 per sq ft and even $1.99 per sq ft. Again, since we are simply updating a secondary kitchen, we decided this is the place to go! We chose two potential candidates and went home.

When my brother was browsing through the sale flyers in our newspaper that afternoon, he came across this:

I was positive it must be just cheap stuff. But at 79 cents we had to check it out. When we found the item at Home Depot, we noticed that we couldn't find a name-brand on the box, as if it were shipped directly from china or wherever they are made.

I had researched a little bit into different tiles for flooring in residential homes before I went, and I knew that porcelain was the better option over ceramic though there's some debate about it. There are a variety of features that these tiles come with that help determine which is the best for a residential kitchen floor:

I found Houzz.com was extremely helpful to us because it was simple and to the point and allowed me to make a checklist and compare them to the features of the tile I was considering. I won't go through what each stand for since you can read it in the link above (and it's an interesting read!). This is simply a summary to find out if this tile works for us.

GRADE

Grade one, two, or three to determine quality of the stone. One is the best, and three is suitable only for walls, not floors.

P.E.I. RATING

Porcelain and Enamel Institute's wear rating. Comes in grade I, II, III, IV, or V. PEI of I only good enough for walls. PEI III is recommended for residential areas, PEI IV for heavy traffic areas in residential or some light commercial uses. PEI V for heavy commercial use.

WATER ABSORPTION RATING

Five levels of grading:

• Nonvitreous: absorbs 7% of its weight in water.
• Semi-vitreous: 3% - 7% (dry indoor areas only)
• Vitreous: 0.5% - 3% (for outdoors or areas where moisture is present like a spa)
• Impervious: less than 0.5% (porcelain tile must be this grade to be called porcelain)

C.O.F. RATING

Coefficient Of Friction to determine its natural resistance to slipping. COF 0.5 considered sufficient for residential. COF 0.6 required by commercial flooring. Higher the number, less chance of slippage.

This is what the sale tile box reads:

So everything checks out for a residential kitchen. So we bought it!

Final price was $254 + tax. Another substantial savings! I am happy! And this includes 15% additional sq ft for wastage, and one extra box because we knew this being a sale, we probably couldn't run over to get more if we run out. After all these are fragile. 

Tomorrow, my brother takes me to a door manufacturing warehouse where we found a huge savings on a exterior door with glass.

P.S.  Day Four and still no folder to be found. I'm starting to get worried.

Saving on Cabinetry

NOTE: I've decided I'm switch to the first-person since my brother is more of a consultant, and I am the decision maker! HAHA. The success or downfall of the project depends on me!

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I have decided to go with Vancouver Cabinets. This is a downstairs kitchen, meant for tenants or a secondary kitchen for the rec room. And while it will serve as my main kitchen (the kitchen upstairs belongs to my brother), I know that investing into "dream layouts" is not the goal here. We want functional and affordable!

So I've decided to ditch the idea of a custom design, and go with standard-sized cabinetry, something like you would get from Ikea but with way way higher quality. Vancouver Cabinets provides cabinets at set-sizes which reduces the wait time for delivery, and brings the cost way way down. They also provides custom-cut granite and quartz countertops. They are a Chinese-based company which suggests that they are getting their items directly from China... removing the "middle man".

Going with set sizes doesn't mean I compromise on flexibility. They have designers who come and measure your kitchen and provide a layout for you with their specific cabinet sizes in mind. I am fortunate they have a location in North Vancouver. My designer's name is Jason and he's been extremely helpful in my decisions on which style to go with.

I am going with the espresso shaker cabinets. I didn't want to go too reddish brown. This more neutral brown and a neutral coloured countertop allows me to accent with kitchen accessories and countertop items. As well, this style that Vancouver Cabinets offers comes with soft close glides which is always nice for cutting down on bangs and crushed fingertips.

Quartz apparently has more durability than granite with less chances of chipping, and comes in a vastly higher number of colors and styles than granite (including granite like patterns). Repairing quartz can apparently come out "scar free" which saves from having to replace an entire counter because of one crack, like you would with granite.

I am going with the champagne beige quartz countertop. My screen makes it look way more yellow, but its a very soft beige in actuality.The shot to the left is upclose. But from afar, it looks almost like a solid colour.




Now comes the clincher! CHECK OUT MY SAVINGS!

     Custom designed cabinets and countertops:                    approx $15 grand
     Design using re-built cabinet, countertop and double sink: approx $6.5 grand

Yes, I gasped in amazement too when they gave me my final total. And ironically, with the new kitchen layout I'm going with (which I will show you later), I'm getting MORE cabinetry than what the designer attempted to provide!

With this savings of $8.5 grand, I get to entertain other feature options. And at the top of my list of "wants" is the heated tile flooring! I think it will be my new favorite room to hang out in. I mean, even when its blasting hot outside, it's ridiculously cold in this house, thanks to the amazing window treatments the previous owners installed, and the fact that we are located high on a mountain. Natural air-conditioning you say? Well yeah, except there's no way to turn it off when your shivering from the cold! LOL!

And when I find my folder of all my kitchen renovations (and my receipts), I'll be able to give you exact figures. WHERE THE HECK DID I PUT IT?!?!?!?!  (been looking for 3 days now)

The Updates - It's Been a While!

Well it turns out that the downstairs of our house turned into my mother's temporary living quarters for the beginning part of the year. So kitchen renovations came to a halt until she was able to secure her own place. Now that Mom has found her own apartment, the reno project needs to get back on track.

We had a talk with Owen the contractor and decided to make some changes to the design. He opened my eyes to see other design options that could help us in our budget.

I experimented with a few online room design programs, including Ikea's and Homestyler. But the one I liked the most is Floorplanner.com. Easiest to use and versatile.

This is how the floor layout of the kitchen is right now:

And this is what Cornerstone suggested:

(keep in mind, i didnt bother with top cupboards because im only concerned here about floor plan)

The biggest concern I originally had with the Cornerstone design is that the sink and stove would stay in their current location to save money from relocating the plumbing and electrical lines. But their current placement feels awkward. From the number of designs I have seen, it is most popular to have the sink situated in front of a window, not a wall. As well, having a stove in front of an open part of the wall means there is more odor the escapes the hood fan.

Owen suggested that we make a compromise: give up replacing the flooring. Flooring can be upgraded at anytime after the reno. But the decision to change the position of a sink and stove can only be made once and then you have to commit until the next huge renovation overhaul.

So it's decided, we will switch around the sink and the stove. This way, we aren't forced to deal with a passthrough (opening through the wall) and can rip the entire wall down instead! The sink will look out into the rec room, where there are two big windows at the far end. The stove will have a proper splash wall behind it without worry that some big oil spatter will stain a carpet on the other side.

Good idea Owen!

But wait... there's more changes! I will introduce them in a future post.