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???

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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.

Walls and Floor. Nothing important then.

After having a few weeks away, we got back to discover the builders had made good progress.  You'll recall that the state of play when we left on May 27 was no walls, no floor, basically, not much apart from a few expensive but unattractive concrete edges.

I got back after two weeks away to find a helpfully large message in the hall (on our shower box!) instructing me not to use one of the toilets and to brush my teeth in the kitchen sink.  A sure fire clue the plumber had been in.

Here are some of the other developments:

I should probably have already highlighted this rather expensive feature of the new flat; a new structural beam, which handily replaces about four or five piles, some of which were a bit borer infested anyway so it's no great loss.

$3000 worth of beam

Bedroom view.  We have walls and floor! (Exposed sewer stack in foreground).

A rather nifty alcove which will one day be where the TV is kept, but for now is a builder's niche

The mess of bathroom pipework is buried under some concrete, shame I couldn't show the process but insulation was laid under the concrete first.

 Here's the current view from the garden; we have a door, weatherboards and we have window frames, but no windows yet. Starting to look like somewhere you might want to live.

The door has now gone in.  This was an internet special - door was sourced from another villa about 2km away.  

 

Kitchen all lined up and the old fireplace has gone, ready to be fitted with shelves.

One of the big expenses of this piece of work was realigning the plumbing.  Our plumbing was previously very easy to access (precisely for the same reasons we're building a flat, because we had a massive atrium under the house!), but it could not be left as it was as it was all over the place and in places it would have left headroom of under 2m.  So the plumber has concentrated the plumbing in two separate stacks.
Below is one of the stacks, which comes from the ensuite upstairs.  All of the pipes (shower, toilet, basin) concentrate into this one sewer stack which will be hidden in the bedroom wall long term.

here's some of the new plumbing.  They had to move the pipework around so that it's mostly in the ceiling cavity.

Ugly canopies

Here is one of my least favourite aspects of the project; canopies.  These are a fire safety requirement to prevent fire from downstairs windows affecting the upstairs but to say they are an ugly addition to the house is an understatement.  Apparently they will need to be installed on all the downstairs windows.  Boo.













Apart from the progress inside the flat we have had to work on a few other things.One of our party fences was pretty ropey and as part of our contract we got the builders to rebuild it.  Not a small job as it also contained a bit of retaining work.  Interestingly, we've probably gained around 3 square metres of (unusable) land from this job as the fence was on around a 45 degree lean to our side! On the plus side we can now walk down the side of our house with ease.

New fence.  Cost shared with the neighbour. 

Other things we've been working on:

- Bathroom fittings - I've now got all the bathroom fittings from our friendly bathroom guy.  He gets everything from China.  He tells me that chrome finishes are only made in China now, because less developed countries don't have the technology and more developed countries won't do it because it is so polluting.  Apparently, China won't open any more factories but has evidently decided the town which our stuff comes from is a sacrificial lamb.  It has to have all its drinking water piped in as it is so polluted.  Not sure what to think about this.  I guess I'll do more research into chrome plating before I buy my next bathroom.

- Kitchen.  Just working our way through options with budget retailers.

- Lighting.  Everything is LEDs now.  Quite a change since we did the kitchen about 4 years ago.  Then we asked about LEDs and were told that the technology wasn't developed.  We have bought a few fittings already.  We will have downlights for main lighting and just a few spotlights in places where required.

- Flooring.  I have a great aversion to vinyl flooring (I'm a snob) and so we are investigating other options, although we may well end up with tiles.

- Weatherboards. I've filled the nail holes for these and once I've sanded them back I can paint the external weatherboards which have been replaced (we took the painting out of the contract to save money).  But you can see from the pictures there are still a few weatherboards to be replaced so I won't paint until they're all in place.

The Big Dig

After several frustrating months reviewing the prices of building work and then waiting for the builder to finally be available, they have finally started!

The first job for the builders is to dig out the area of the new flat.  Most of the basement area we're building in is already above head height so actual excavation is limited, but they still needed to dig out footings for the new walls.

Here is the progress so far, in photos.  Sorry about the formatting.  Still learning.

Roger and Steve clearing the area for the builders to start.  While they bashed stuff up with a sledgehammer I had the fun job of putting the stuff from the basement into the loft.

The footings are dug out to about half a metre on the northern and eastern sides of the flat for the first concrete pour.             

The new kitchen area being dug out. Don't worry, those piles will be replaced...

Bird's eye view of the moisture barrier and steel strengthening rods for footings before boxing and concrete pour

Moisture barrier and steel, just before boxing goes on

Boxing, just before concrete pour

Looking at the new flat from the garden.  The windows on the south side have been removed.  The big gap in the middle is where the new door will go.

Shot of the supporting scaffold and boxing on the northern and eastern walls of the flat after the first concrete pour (you can see the new concrete at the bottom of the shot)

Trenches for new bathroom drainage (hot water cylinder, shower, toilet, basin, washing machine)

Worryingly, some water in one of the new trenches.  Watch this space.

May 27.  Pipe in foreground is drainage from the new kitchen.

Big hole for existing upstairs ensuite toilet drainage, not quite sure what the hole is for, I guess they're moving the sewer drain.

New pipework

After boxing is removed, new wall framing and concrete footing on the east side of the house, and total destruction on the south side.

What will be the kitchen, one day...

Looking out into the garden on May 27

This is about 4 weeks' work so far.  Safe to say the house is going through "it'll have to get worse before it gets better" phase....

The Wellington flat project

We have a house in Mount Cook, Wellington, the capital of New Zealand.  Wellington is a small city of around 150,000 residents located at the extreme south of the North Island.  Wellington is fairly unique by New Zealand standards for being relatively densely developed.  This is largely due to topography: Wellington's location (a virtual peninsula) means that it is constrained by coastline on three sides, and it is also extremely hilly.  A local landmark is the Brooklyn Wind Turbine at 299m above sea level, and it's less than 5km from our house.  The constraints of topography and coastline combine to result in the iconic urban landscape of pastel coloured villas tumbling down hillsides.




Because of the hilly nature of Wellington, it's common for houses to be built on sloping sites.  Some of the steeper sites have staircase access, or in the case of  the cliff-hanging house, the house itself forms the stairs.  There are around 300 privately owned cable cars in Wellington to mitigate the step problem.  In any case, our house is no exception.  From the front the house appears to be a bungalow on a flat section but the ground slopes away rapidly to the back, to the extent that it is a two story property at the back, and you have to go down the deck stairs to reach the garden.  The basement of the property is well above head height at the back sloping down to around 1 metre at the front.  The development potential of the underutilised basement is one of the reasons we bought the place.

Our house is approximately 1km from the city centre in an area zoned "inner residential".  When we bought the house we were focussing on an area close to the city because we value the proximity to facilities, including shops, cinemas, bars and work.  We are close enough to walk to the city and with good public transport access too you can easily live without a car. It is areas like this that are ideal for intensification.  Intensification means getting more dwellings out of the land area.  Think Hong Kong and other constrained land areas where flats result in more people living close to facilities.  Dense cities are often great places to live since minimal time is wasted commuting.  Examples are Vancouver, often cited as the world's best place to live, New York, San Francisco, and Singapore.  Living in a dense environment is not for everyone, but it works really well where there are existing facilities nearby.  With a supermarket on our doorstep, regular bus services and the ability to walk to work, we have the ability to create a new home without gobbling up more greenfield land.  There is a good chance that whoever moves into our new flat will live a low-carbon existence and hopefully enjoy all the nearby amenities which are, of course, the reason we bought the house in the first place.  We can't provide a car park, even if we wanted to, but hopefully they won't need one.

Anyway, that's the theory.  The practice is we've got building consent to build a 45m² one bedroom flat in our basement.  It will be accessed via the garden path with a separate mains connection meaning we can rent it as a separate dwelling.

Next blog - the big dig.