The fun you can have by saving money

Having money is great. If you have lots of money, you can get people to do everything for you. You don't have to cook, you don't have to clean, you don't have to put together flat pack furniture. But there is a problem with that. And that is you miss out on life's little hidden treasures. 

When we did our kitchen a few years ago, we had quite a large budget. One of things we paid someone else to do was to make and fit our kitchen. So we had some sessions with a kitchen designer who did a design on the computer. Then we were invited to the workshop and gazed over the workshop floor as a computer took our designs and cut it all out. The kitchen was then delivered, put together on site and put in place. We then proceeded to use our lovely new kitchen. 

With the apartment, money is a bit of an issue. Got to get the best bang for the buck. This meant a flatpack kitchen from the DIY store. There are some flatpack kitchens where all the bits are actually on the shelves in the DIY store and you put them on your trolley and take them home. Because we could get a discount on a certain DIY store, their approach was actually they would deliver the bits to you. But in essence what we had was our kitchen in boxes for us to put together. 

I approached this with a bit of trepidation. I had made flat pack furniture before and could never quite get things like door hinges to play nicely. So I was waiting nervously for that moment to come when we couldn't get the door hinges to work and had doors handing at weird angles. And soft close drawers, how were they ever going to work. 

It was the kind of task that could be done multitasked, we thought. So we assembled all the boxes in the living room, and put on a DVD. The awful 50 First Dates with Adam Sandler. Honestly, the flat pack furniture was more entertaining as it turned out. 

I won't go into the minutiae but here were my observations:

• It was FUN. I found myself saying to anyone who would listen that I actually thought putting flat pack furniture together for a living would be great. And I do mean that, if anyone wants to offer me a job doing it, I would take it. It's fun because the instructions define the goal that you will reach if you follow said instructions. Unlike so much of life (eg work) where you have no idea of what the goal is or the steps to get there. and then when you do eventually work out the goal and the steps, its not the goal you wanted to be part of. The instructions for a set of drawers describe a set of drawers. I want a set of drawers. I follow the instructions. I get a set of drawers. I am happy. I am having fun. 
• Civilisation has come along a way with the flat pack product. I was actually quite surprised how well everything went together. That side and that side fitted together snugly. That corner is actually a right angle. We had to unscrew some bits but they did actually go together again when rescrewed. Things weighed a tonne when put together, got to be a good sign. And the finish of the doors wasn't too shabby. It was almost as if however bad a job you did, it would still look ok, in other words idiot proof. 

Flat pack furniture actually looks half decent

• It's hands-on problem solving for people who don't ever get to do it. Most jobs are management jobs now. That means you define the problem, or someone tells you the problem, and you have to organise the people who can fix the problem. You give them a hard time/encouragement until the problem is fixed or until everyone can clearly see the problem is not going to get fixed and so you all move onto the next one. With flat pack furniture, if you've got a problem, you have to fix it. With your own two hands. And you can't ignore it or you don't have anywhere to put your plates, cups, etc. Except on the ground which will look great to dinner party guests. For us, it wasn't too clear from the instructions how the soft close drawer runner worked, and we screwed them on and found out that was wrong, so we tried another way which seemed very difficult but was the right way, then when we got that right, the drawers slid in but not all the way, and we figured that out, and then it worked.

Problem solving the soft close drawer runner. Looks a bit like a shark doesn't it.  

So there you have it. Flatpack furniture is fun, you'll be surprised by the results, and your brain will thank you for the workout. And the door hinges worked perfectly. 

The kitchen sits snugly in the corner, proud in the knowledge that it was lovingly put together by Jo and Steve

Windows! Finally

I am not going to go overboard with photos this week.  Just a few to illustrate the process from gib (plasterboard) through to plastering which is basically what happened this week.


Here is one of my absolute favourite features of the flat, alcoves which I asked the builders to make by recessing into the conveniently double thickness external wall (there is a good reason for the double thickness but I can't remember what it is now!) Anyway, we took advantage of it.


We finally got our two renovated sash windows put in, complete with double glazing, and they look amazing.




Alcoves gibbed out, but no window



The window! (and my funky reflective jacket!)



Current state of play of alcoves and window, looking good in the natural light.

The other sash window.  We're pleasantly surprised at how bright the bedroom is, with a garden view

I remembered just as I was heading off to work on Thursday that there was a tidy up job needed in the upstairs bathroom, and that it would be sensible to get the plasterer onto it while he was here.  So the builders quickly gibbed up the corner and that's now well on the way to being tidied up.

Steve made friends with the builders on Friday by bringing them cups of coffee.  I've been buying them crunchies for weeks and they already like him better than me!




The current state of the back of the house.

 Notice the strip of metal running across the back of the house.  That's a correcting piece.  The weatherboards have obviously shifted over the course of the past 100 years and when the builders rebuilt the house from the bottom up they found that they couldn't line up the new weatherboards with the old ones at the top of the house, so they have put in a piece of metal to fill the gap.  The alternative, according to them was take off and replace 10 weatherboards.  I think we can live with this, when it's been repainted....


On Saturday we wanted to paint the outside of the house, but a Wellington southerly was blowing and the temperature was about 9 degrees.  As any painter knows, you can't paint below 10 degrees, or in direct sunlight, or in the rain.  So I did some filling and sanding while Steve started to rebuild the path which had been partially dismantled during the process of rebuilding the side wall of the house.  It's a slow process which is better suited to Steve than me as he spends time getting it right.


"Never thought I'd be doing this again"...

We also went shopping on Saturday and bought the following:
- Tiles for kitchen and bathroom
- plug in panel heater for bedroom
- Door handles
- window hardware
- Undercoat
- Topcoat for living area
- very exciting feature colour for fireplace (watch this space)
- some reclaimed timber for shelving
- etch primer for that strip of metal
- caulk
- paintbrush
- spotlight for feature fireplace
- and we also talked carpets with an installer.


The only major purchases we have left are: benchtop, oven, hob (we've picked these out), washing machine, curtains.  So not too much shopping to go.


Next week we are organising a painting party (inside the flat, so it will go ahead no matter the weather).  If you're in town and fancy helping, please get in touch! We will supply lunch...

I'm a laminate and proud!

 Quite a lot of progress this week. We've gone from bare framing through to insulation and gib this week, plus a very exciting improvement upstairs...

 In this blog we'd like you to get involved.... Spot the error, and help us pick a benchtop please... see below.

By the way, sorry the photos are not too good.  There is no lighting in the flat at the moment and as it's winter I don't see the flat in daylight during the week so most of these are flash photos.

I've tried to document the progress in photos.

Our reclaimed villa door looking out.  Lovely original reed glass window

The cavity slider door to the bedroom goes in.  It is starting to feel like a separate room

Two different types of insulation here - noiseline for the ceiling (to insulate against noise between the two dwellings) and pink batts in the walls for warmth.

 Ben - here's some insulation news for the sewage stack as you were interested...

Boxing out one of the sewage stacks ready for the insulation

And here's the insulation around the stack

Insulation goes in to the new bedroom (and some gib on the ceiling).

Here's the kitchen before insulation and gib...

Kitchen plus insulation

Kitchen plus gib (oh and a new window to the left)

Gibbing around the new meter box, and before some boxing of the pipework above

So one very exciting thing that happened this week is that the upstairs bathroom got switched over onto the boiler.  When we moved in the whole house was running off a new hot water cylinder in the bathroom.  When we installed the gas boiler we didn't bother switching the plumbing in the main bathroom over because firstly the hot water cylinder was nearly new and secondly it would have left a gap in the bathroom where the hot water cylinder was.  However, we came to realise that the bathroom was running on a low pressure cylinder and the pressure in the shower was clearly inferior to the ensuite shower.  So we decided to switch it over now.  I came back to see this mess in the corner of the bathroom....

What the upstairs bathroom looks like now

Sadly Steve's stirling work building shelving in the corner is now in the skip :-(

However, the pressure in the main shower is now excellent, which is great.  The builders are going to tidy up this corner for us.  

The garden is a builder's yard and is looking very sad.

Grass?  What grass?  

 We had our first real problem with the building work this week.  Let's see if you can tell what it is from the photo below of the bathroom window?

Anyone spot the problem with this bathroom window???

...
....
...

Answers in the comments section please!

And finally, we'd welcome some feedback on our kitchen design.

We've been designing the kitchen this week.  It's quite challenging as it's so small that once you've got essentials like fridge, oven, and sink in, there's very little space left for storage.  Also, our ceiling in the kitchen area is particularly low at only 2m so we can't fit standard height units in there.   Anyway, we've done the best we can to provide as much storage as possible. We've chosen an economy colour called streetlight, which is basically a neutral colour for the cabinetry.

Much to my regret we've decided we can't justify the cost of a stone or acrylic benchtop (around $4500 as compared to around $1200 for laminate).  So we need to pick a laminate benchtop.  The good news is there's lots of choice.  The bad news is that I have violent aversion to anything that looks like fake stone or fake wood, which is most of the laminates.  My preference is for a laminate which says "I'm a laminate and proud!", not "hey I look like I'm stone, but I'm really a fake"....

Anyway, we've shortlisted four colours which meet my requirements.  I'm leaning towards the green as there's no way you'd mistake that for stone, but would it be a bit too radical?

Let us know in the comments section...

Kitchen cabinet colour in the middle, potential benchtops surrounding.