#poppyscastle

[poppyscastle]

Kitchen & Benchtop

10th Jan 2018

We had our kitchen bench top installed on the week just before Christmas, the stone mason was really busy so the install was quite rushed and there’s still a few places that needs fixing.

For the rear benches we went for a cheaper white engineered stone, its like Caesar stone but without the brand name.  This was super cheap, only about $600 per slab.  For the rear kitchen bench, butlers pantry and the laundry, we needed 3 slabs all up.  I think a similar grade of Caesar stone will cost about $1000 per slab.

For the Island Bench, we went with a piece of marble.  We originally weren’t going to go with marble, but we were hooked after seeing a piece in the showroom.   To top it off, real marble was actually cheaper than a marble look Caesar stone.  The marble costed around $1800 but premium Caesar Stone was over $2k.  We figured we’ll save on the back benches and splash out on the island, which will be a main feature of the room.

This piece was actually not the one we originally chose.   While on holiday a few days before the install, we were told the marble we ordered had a massive scratch on it.  We basically had to chose another piece of marble on the phone, we’re so glad the marble looked great in real life.

The installation of the engineered stone was quick and easy, they are quite light and quite strong.  The 3 benches were installed under 2 hours, we went with over mount sinks, so all the holes were cut on site.  

Under mount sinks looks great, but it’ll be a hassle later on when we decide to change sinks etc...

The kitchen rear bench is about 4 meters long, so we needed to join 2 slabs together.  They pre-cut a joint in the factory and its glued together onsite.  It’s then polished and you’ll be left we a fine line which is not too noticeable.   

Unfortunately, they forgot to polish this joint and will be coming back to finish it off.

Originally, we weren’t going to do a waterfall in the island, but the marble slab was actually big enough for the waterfall.  We’ll be wasting the marble if we didn’t do it, but the damage was extra $1000 in manufacturing costs.

The marble was actually really hard to handle and the 3 meter slab was super heavy.  It look 5 people to lift it and it could easily snap if we put the our weight at the wrong points.

The cost of manufacturing the waterfall was so high because of these mitered edges.  The stone mason cuts them at the factory and they are adjusted on site.

Unfortunately, because the marble is so brittle at edge, part of the miter got chipped.

The stone mason color matches some putty, sticks the chipped piece back on and polishes it.  You don’t really notice it, even if you you go looking for it.

We finally removed all the blue protective stickers and this is what our cabinets look like.  I thought removing the stickers would be really satisfying, but it was actually really hard work and got annoying pretty quickly.

The marble looks beautiful, but its so hard to handle and we didn’t really think about the maintenance side of things.  

The marble is already sealed in the factory, so hopefully it’ll cope with the daily grind.  However, I’ve got a feeling I’ll be doing most of the prep work in the rear bench and this Island is all for show.  

Hopefully we made the right choice, but I guess only time will tell.  

I also cut up the cover boards under the wall cabinets and embedded a LED strip.  My wife was super proud of me and she was also impressed with how the the range hood was perfectly level with the wall cabinets :)

I used the IKEA Algot shelf system to fit out my walk-in Pantry.  For a wall hanging shelf system, this is superior to the Bunning’s stuff in every way.  Both quality and price.  I only realized after I fitted out my walk in wardrobe with the Bunning’s stuff :(

Haha, its a lot of storage space for a few cans of tuna!

The manufacturing and install of the Bench tops was around $4k, so all up the benchtops costed ~$8K.   We spent just under $8K on the cabinetry, so our kitchen, pantry and Laundry was under $16,000.  Well within budget!

The only thing left to do in the kitchen is covering the back of the island in matching floorboards(I think we can do with some contrast) and the tile splash backs using leftover subway tiles from the bathroom.

The house is essentially done, we’re just waiting for Jemena to supply our gas and we’ll be able to get our Occupation Certificate.

[poppyscastle]

Plumbing

7th October 2017

Took about 3 days for the Plumber and his apprentice to do the roughing in.  All the gas/water pipes have been machine tested to ensure we have the correct pressure.

This is our first new house, so its interesting that PVC piping is the norm these days.  I guess its a lot cheaper than copper and easier to work with.  It’s also a requirement these days to have a separate set of pipes to re-route water from the rain-water tank to flush the toilets.

You can see 3 sets of pipes here, Green (Rain Water), Black (Hot/Cold Water) and Yellow (Gas):

Our upstairs bathrooms happened to be above our entryway, this meant we had a whole lot of sewage pipes in that area.  Luckily, we were planning to have bulkheads around the ceiling of the entryway, so the plumber was able to route the pipes inside the bulkheads. 

We’re also planning on insulating the pipes, so we don’t hear the sounds of the pipes while we’re watching TV in the media room next door.  Probably an overkill, but It doesn’t cost much, so why not?

Since we’re planning on installing a gas fireplace, we had the Gas pipe plumbed all the way to the living area.   Downstairs should be pretty cool during summer, so we’re redirecting part of our cooling budget for a fireplace.

I loved chilled water, so I even got water plumbed to the fridge area.  Since the plumber charges for the whole job, that extra tap is not going to make any difference to the price.  But whether I get the approval for a fridge with ice and water is a totally different story :(.

For our ensuite and main bathroom, we’ve decided to go for wide vanities, so we’ve made provisions for double sinks.

Schedule for next week

Monday(9th Oct), the builder will be putting timber beads around the eaves.

Tuesday, the painters will be painting the Eaves and the upper level Render.

Wednesday, Roofers will be putting in Whirlybirds and gutter guards.

That’s the plan anyway, we’ll see how much of it materializes at the end of the week :).

[poppyscastle]

Brick Cleaning

5th October 2017

Brick cleaners came on site and cleaned all the face bricks and the ground floor windows.

There were 2 guys on site, with water blasters and cleaning chemicals.  They were done in half a day and the difference is amazing.

Here’s a before shot of the garage:

Here’s an after shot of the garage:

The bricks are spotless and the render looks much lighter.  Considering how hard the mortar stain was, I’m surprised how well it turned out.

Now some bad news, our friends at Bunnings “forgot” to place the order for our cladding.  So we’ll have to wait an extra 5-10 days before they arrive.  We want to get the lower roof in ASAP, so it might mean we’ll have to take the scaffolding away first.  

Hopefully, the cladding will arrive soon.  The same guy also stuffed up our Door order, he placed a single order of each door, so we got 3 doors instead of 8!

The good news, the Plumbing is complete and the electrical work is only a day away.  Paint of the 2nd floor render and eaves starts on Tues/Wed, hopefully the weather holds up!

[poppyscastle]

Garage Roof frame

16th Sept 2017

Progress have been somewhat slow these last 2 weeks, a lot of waiting around for trades etc... 

Since my last update, we’ve got the Garage roof frame up.  Originally, we were thinking of putting in some roof storage, but looks like we don’t have enough space up there to do that.  Our Garage slab had to be thickened to allow for the slight incline in the ground level, since the finished height needs to be the same, this meant we lost some space in the roof.

You can see in this picture, how the slab is thicker on this side.

Its a simple hip roof design, the carpenters completed it in a day.

Here’s view of the internal roof structure, there’s really only enough room for storage at the center where the pitch is.  The sides are too sloped and there’s not enough clearance to be of any use.

Typical Garage construction, 1 x 5 meter lintel to support the bricks above the opening.  The overhang on the rafters are quite short here, as we can’t have them go below the lintel.

We’re going with a color bond roof, on top of the rafter you’ll need some timber battens.  Just a word of warning, the carpenter will say battens are the roofer’s job and the roofer’s will say battens are not included.  At the end, the builder just included the materials and had the carpenter put them in.  

I’m glad I’m not managing this project, I have no patience for dealing with this type of stuff :)

Here’s a photo of the battens, the same was done on the main roof as well.

All the roofing materials arrived on site yesterday, it actually got delayed by a day due to the strong winds in Sydney.  I didn’t know that affected roof deliveries, but I guess they might get blown away or damaged.

The roofers were supposed to start on the gutters today, but they need to spend some time adjusting the scaffolding today.  So they will start with the gutters, upper roof and the garage on Monday.  

We can’t really do the lower roof until the scaffolding is down and we still need them for rendering and painting.

It just so easy to get delayed by unforeseen circumstances, if you’re building a new house, EXPECT delays. 

We also got the roofers to quote for some gutter guards, which was $30 per/lm installed.  Seems reasonable and it’ll be easier to install while the scaffolding are still here.  Gutter guards are a must in leafy North Shore, I have no intention of risking my life on the 1st floor roof clearing leaves.

Once the gutters are in, the carpenters will also need to come in to do the eaves.  Next week will be a busy week!

[poppyscastle]

Framing complete!

Carpenters were here 3 days this week and got all of the top floor and roof joists completed.  The Structural engineer also did the inspection today, we're pretty much all good except for a few minor things. It's interesting how detailed they go into inspecting the frame work. We even got a report with highlighted pictures of joints that needs fixing.

Finally looking like a house now!

This is our massive 6 meter feature window in front of our stairs.  Apparently, took 6 guys to put this window up!

This is the flat roof portion of our house, we will be using boxed gutters for these sections.

Our Kitchen Area with the feature window now installed, we’re planning some cabinets under and above the window.

Side view of the kitchen/dinning area with a 6 meter opening.  We were thinking of bi-fold doors initially, but we just found opening them really clumsy and annoying.  So we ended up getting Sliding Stacking doors, which were nicer to open and a lot cheaper.

Normally the roof would be next, but we will bricking up the ground floor first so that the scaffolding won’t be in the way of the brickies.

Hopefully, we’ll be locked up by the end of the month!

[poppyscastle]

Design and Approval

For anyone actually planning on building, the design and approval process takes A LOT longer than you would expect!

Just to give you an idea how long it took, we started designing the new house at the end of September and only got our CDC at the end of February.

That’s 5 months from Design to Approval, when you’re paying rent at the same time, the costs really adds up.  A CDC usually takes just 2 weeks to approve, but if you are doing a full Development Application via your local council, expect it to take even longer.

My local council (Hornsby) had said they are so backlogged with work, that it’ll take 5 weeks before they even look at your application.  So CDC is the way to go if you can do it.

There were so many professional services involved before we can even submit the CDC for approval.  Obviously the design from the Architect is important, but there’s also Surveyors, Structural Engineer, Hydraulic Engineer and the Sydney Water Coordinator.

We finalized our Architectural Design at end of November, but then had to wait for the structural and hydraulic designs.  With a sewer line running underneath the building platform, we also had to find a Sydney Water Coordinator(SWC) to mark out/survey the sewer line.  

We were approaching the Christmas period by now and finding someone to do the work was quite difficult.  Once we found someone, by the time they organized access to the neighboring properties, we were already in January.

So waiting for all the final reports/drawings/certificates from the various professionals, brought us to February.

The Design

These are the designs we settled with, a very open plan ground floor with a Dinning, Lounge, Media Room, Kitchen, Study and Outdoor Alfresco area.

The second level consists of 4 good sized bedrooms and 2 bathrooms.  It’s definitely bigger than what we need right now, but building a larger house doesn’t cost that much more and it’ll give us better resale later on.

[poppyscastle]

Roof, Eaves and Porch

22nd September

Roofers didn’t make it in on the Friday, so they came in today instead.  However, the Carpenters were already scheduled to be onsite to do the Eaves.

This meant the roofers were only able to work on the Garage roof and will be returning later to do the Lower roof, gutter guards and whirlybirds.  Pretty used to tradies not turning up or changing the schedule on the last minute, but at least gutter guards are not going to delay other parts of the build.

Garage is complete now, just need a door and we’ll have our first watertight building:

The Carpenters were able to do all the Eaves in 1 day, we needed to get the Eaves in ASAP because we’re starting the Rendering next week.  

Once the Rendering and Cladding is done, then we can put in the beads around the eaves and get the painters in to paint the lot:

While I was up on the scaffold, I was able to get a good look at the structural work for the Porch.  We are using boxed gutters here, its interesting to see how the roof is so sloped inside, just something you’ll never notice looking from the front.

We also had to extend the brickwork for the columns, the plan is to pack out the timber work and board it.  This way the rendering on the brick column will be flushed with the steel/timber portion.  We’re still undecided whether to use rendered blueboard or just smooth villaboards.  Either way the finish won’t match exactly to the rendering on the columns, because rendering on blue boards uses a different type of render.

The scaffolding also needs to be adjusted for rendering, apparently its too high for them to work under the eaves.  So Scaffolding will be adjusted on Monday and Rendering will start a day later.

Electrician and the Plumber will also start work on Monday, next 2 weeks would be pretty busy.

[poppyscastle]

Windows

With all the rain that we’ve had during the last few months, we had to delay the window delivery for a few months.

But we couldn’t push back the delivery any longer, so our windows arrived on site last week.

Hopefully they’ll survive onsite until the frame is put up!

[poppyscastle]

OC + Lighting

24th Feb 2018

Occupational Certificate

It’s been a while since I made an update, but the good news is, we’ve moved in earlier this month.  We got our full occupational certificate on the same day of the move.  Talk about cutting it fine!

It was a mad rush to get everything done, but what held us up was the Gas infrastructure supplier.  We waited about 8 weeks before Jemena could get their contractors to install the gas line from the street to our gas meter.  

Apparently they were super busy at the end of the year.  Without the gas installed, the plumber can’t certify us and hence no occupational certificate.  I think if we had the gas installed, we could’ve moved in a month earlier.

I feel super relaxed now that we’ve moved in, you just don’t realized how stressed you are when you’re worried about the move and getting the OC on time.

The last few weeks have been all about getting furniture, styling the house and landscaping.  We’re slowly getting there!

Lighting

We went with mostly LED downlights throughout the house, they are energy efficient and super bright.  We had about 50 downlights, the electrician supplied them for about $15 each.

We still needed a few pendants and fans around the house and we got them mostly from Beacon Lighting.  They had a sale on at the time and there was a store just a block away.  

We were contemplating about getting our lights online on ebay, however, its really hard to know how the actual fitting will look like in the house.  

Beacon has a great returns policy, they were happy for us to buy a few different styles to try and return the ones we didn’t like.  We must have visited the store 10 times during that week, we definitely won’t be able to do that with an eBay seller.

This one is my wife’s favorite, its the Stockholm 1 Light Pendant.  I also used a Phillips Xiaomi Lightbulb and have it setup to turn on automatically at night.  Since its right by the stairs and the entrance, it works great as a night light.  

There were quite a few cheaper alternatives, but the other ones just didn’t look as nice.

This is our LED strip at the foyer in action, it looks really nice built into the bulkhead.  This was about creating an impact when you walk into the house, but realistically we hardly ever turn it on. :)

We installed a LED pendant above the Dinning Table, we don’t watch the Block, but apparently they used it there too.  This seemed quite expensive at first (over $600), but it’s actually reasonable because you don’t need to spend an extra 200 bucks on fancy light bulbs.

The Pendant is the 600 mm version and its just the right size for our 2.4 m dinning table.  In true Millennial style, our tables and chairs were all purchsed online.  The table is the Miles Dinning Table from Castlery and the chairs are Replica Kalmar Chairs purchased during the eBay sale.

Above our kitchen island, we went with 3 Marcel 250 mm Pendant in Smoke/Black.  Our kitchen was prominently white, so this creates a nice contrast.  

These were quite reasonable, just over $100 each.  I actually use these more than our kitchen downlights, it isn’t overly bright and creates a nice mood at night.

The LED light strip under the kitchen cabinets is great, it gives out plenty of light and we prefer this warm white than the cool white that the range hood gives. 

 Love our rangehood by the way, its really stylish and just blends in with our cabinetry.  We got this from IKEA on clearance with 5 year warranty.  Don’t remember the weird name, but it was discontinued, $1500 down to $250.  Score!

In the Alfresco, we installed 4 downlights and also a ceiling fan from Beacon.  The fan is AC, we won’t be using it that often, so didn’t spend the extra for a DC fan.  It has black PVC blades, so its suitable for outdoors.  It actually generates plenty of airflow and helps keeps flies and mozzies away.  

With the high ceilings, downstairs is actually really cool.  So we diverted our cooling budget for a Coonara Gas fireplace.  Gas fireplaces are not cheap!  We paid around $5000 plus about $800 for installation.  Apparently, this should be enough to warm the entire ground floor.  I guess we’ll have to see how it goes in a few months.  

We also got a nice timber DC fan in front of the heater, it’ll help cool the house in the summer and we’ll put it in reverse to re-distribute the hot air during winter. 

This was an Aldi special buy, I actually lined up early on a Saturday morning!  It’s quiet and comes with a RF remote.  It generates quite a bit of airflow and I can actually feel the air all the way near the kitchen island.

The electrician also provisioned network/power/TV cables above the fireplace, however I got a FIRM NO for a TV.  The cable box will be covered by a mirror or a picture :( 

Bulkhead with downlights in the Media room, I think we went a bit overboard here.  This room is super bright and we actually keep the lights off when the TV is on.

Initially, we were thinking of a pendant above the stair case as feature.  However, we got pretty sick of picking out lights and just put in down lights instead.  

We also ended up getting timber shutters for that large window, so there was not much point for a feature pendant there.

We added 2 hanging pendants in the Master Bedroom, just above the bedside tables.

These were Marked down Aldi specials :)  Think they were $15 each.  However, we had to ikeahack the Aldi lampshades with an IKEA cord set, the original cords just weren’t long enough for our 2.7m ceilings.

So we ended up with a mishmash of expensive and inexpensive lighting.  We’re pretty happy with the results and we didn’t blow our budget too much.  However, we do think we went a bit overboard with the downlights in some rooms, so we might have to end up un-plugging some.

[poppyscastle]

Garage + Footpaths

22nd December 2017

Since we have an easement on our property, to maximize the use of space, we’ve elected to have a detached double garage.

Rather than brick veneer, the garage was constructed with in single brick with engaged piers.   This means the roof trusses just sits directly on the brick and there’s no timber frame for the walls.

No frames on the walls means no Gyprock and we’ll need to go with traditional cornices rather than shadow lines.  It’s definitely not as pretty, but my car doesn’t care and my bank account is happier.

Since the garage is constructed on a slopping ground, there’s actually a ~250 mm differences in the height on the 2 ends of the garage.

This means we’ll need to construct a ramp for the car to get into the garage.  So we had the Concreters come in to do the ramp and while they were here, also construct the foot paths around the house.  All up, we paid about $5000 for everything laid. 

The form work for the foot paths were fairly quick, but the ramp took a while.  In order for the new concrete to stick, they had to use the jack hammer to break the surface of the old concrete.

Since everyone is rushing to complete their jobs before Christmas, most of the concrete trucks are booked out. We had to wait a few days before a free  booking became available.  But once the truck arrived, the concrete itself just took a few hours to lay and was done before lunch time.

Some photos of the finished footpaths:

The garage door we used were the panel lift series from B&D.  For a more modern look, we went for a larger panel called the “Nullabor”.  It was finished in a wood grain texture in “Ironstone” to match cladding on the main house.

We didn’t really do any research on the Garage Door Opener, so we just went with a Merlin 3850 with a battery backup.  It seems to do the job and its super quiet!  This costed ~$3000 fully installed, installation only look about 3 hours.

The painters also finished off the inside walls with a coat of paint and we’re done!

We’re pretty much in the home stretch now, kitchen bench tops and all the sinks are installed.  All the painting is done and the electrician will be finishing off all the electrical work tomorrow.

Apart from landscaping and the decking boards to do, we are actually finished before Christmas!   

[poppyscastle]

Plastering and Paint

16th December

Plastering

After the Plasterers laid the Gyprock, they have to do the “Setting”.  This consists of putting a base coat of plaster over all the joints/corners and sanding it down.  This is followed by a top coat of white plaster, which is again sanded down to give a smooth flat finish.  Once the “Setting” is done, the walls are handed over to the Painters to prep for painting.

Base coat of Plastering being applied around all the joints:

Plastering the base coat on the ceiling shadow lines.

Here are some pics after the “Top Coat” have been applied and sanded.  We’re very happy with the look of the shadow lines.

Painting

The interior Painting have almost been complete, we’ve pretty much had a team of 3 every day last week.  

Picking a color was a nightmare!  We were always going to have white walls, but there are so many different shades of white!

At the end, we decided on “Natural White” for the walls and Vivid white for the Ceiling and trims.

Prepping the walls are a pain in the butt, but luckily we have professional painters doing it.  They have to patch up any little holes, put a base coat of paint on the wall and then sand it down once it’s dried.

Here is the walls and ceiling with the base coat applied.

This is then followed by 2 coats of paint in both the walls and ceilings.  The shadow line looks awesome once its painted.  

The Cooler “Vivid white” on the Ceilings and then the Warmer “Natural White” on the walls. 

To break up the whiteness of the walls, we wanted to keep the natural timber look of the stair case.  

The natural pine color was a bit yellow, so we stained the timber in “Northern Tallowood”, which was similar to the Meranti of the front door.  We’ll be using this same color for the Porch/Alfresco Ceilings.

We bought a few tins of sample stains to test before we decided on the color.  Unlike paint colors, how the stain will turn out will depend a lot on the timber you use.  There’s even color variances with the same timber type, so the color samples in store will always look different.

The plaster also came back put Gyprock under the stairs.

We ended up being about 10K over budget for plastering, the extra steel works for the ceilings costed an extra $4000.  The Shadow line was an extra $2000 vs Traditional Cornices.  We also had extra insulation, bulkheads etc... 

The money on the shadow lines and the steel works were money well spent though.  Considering how much ceiling space we had, $6000 is not a lot of money.  It works very well with the high ceilings and really lifts the appearance of the house.

Next week is the final week of work before Christmas.   

The bathrooms are almost complete.

The Painting should be done by the end of the week.

We are finally getting mains power on Wednesday, so all the electrical works should be done by then.

[poppyscastle]

Staircase

10th December

The Staircase was installed last week, it was put together amazingly quick!  The guy started around 8 am and everything was done just after lunch time.

The staircase was measured a few weeks ago after the Gyprock was put on, it was then custom made and laser cut in the factory.  When it arrived onsite, it was basically a giant jig saw puzzle that needed minor adjustments.

They first mount the stringers on the wall and then put in the support beams.

Once the skeleton of the stair case is done, the pre-cut steps are put in one by one.  

Since we’re planning on covering the steps with Floorboards, we just chose the standard MDF steps.  Once the steps are on, the balustrades and handrails are put on.

We hated the traditional post tops, so we chose to have the handrails on top of the post instead.  It just gives it a modern clean look, without the cost of steel and glass.

This is what it looks like completed, the area under the stairs will be boxed in for storage later.  (the stairs are straight btw, its just my wide angle lens distorting things) 

We went with extra wide stair cases, standard size is about 900 mm wide, but these are around 1200 mm wide.  Looks much grander and way easier to move furniture up and down the stairs!

We had the carpenter frame up the storage area and install the door.

When the Gyprockers comes back to finish of some minor stuff, we will have them put in Gyprock for the area around the door and underneath the stairs.  

We also ended up lining our Alfresco and Porch Ceiling with Timber Lining.  Took about 2 days work to do the 2 areas.  We just went with cheap pine lining, since the painters quoted for the entire job, they can just stain it and seal it with vanish without costing us extra.

We were initially thinking of getting pre-finished “Glosswood” but for about 40m2 we were looking at $4000 vs $600 for pine.   Hardwood is far less “knotty” and Pine won’t last as long.   We don’t mind the knots too much, but we might look at upgrading to hardwood or a composite material further down the track.

Its super awesome to have stairs in the house!  We can now go up and down freely without climbing 3 meters up the ladder!

Painters have already started prepping, they’ve already done all the base coats.  They should be all done in about a week.

We have concrete coming in on Monday for the footpaths on the side of the house and also for the garage ramp.

Shower screens are also getting installed sometime next week.

Everything is coming together, we’re almost done now!

[poppyscastle]

Kitchen Build

1st December

Overall the building an IKEA kitchen was surprisingly easy, as long as you have the right tools at your disposal.

Putting together the basic frames were quite quick.  We tackled the main kitchen first, this was definitely the hardest, but everything else was a breeze afterwards.

To build and mount the cabinets, it took 2 days for the main kitchen, 1 for the island, 1 for the pantry and 1/2 day for the laundry.    Then it took another 3 or 4 days to put in the doors/drawers/cover boards etc..   So all up, it took about 1.5 weeks.  This was mostly done by myself, so if you have an extra person, this would’ve taken a lot less time.  For over $10K worth of savings, the 1.5 weeks was worth it.

Main Kitchen

The cabinetry itself is one of the easier IKEA builds, the most time consuming part is leveling all the cabinets and mounting the rear rails.

All the cabinetry mount on rails.  Once you get the rails attached to the wall and level, then its just a matter of hanging the cabinets onto the rails and locking them in.

Attaching the rails can be a bit tricky, you’ll need a stud finder to make sure you screw the rail to the stud and also the rails needs to be cut if its not the right size.  

An Angle Grinder was handy here, 2 mins vs 10 mins messing with a hack saw.  Luckily, I had previously added extra support before the dry wall went on, so I had plenty of timber to mount these rails.

Since the slab is never 100% level, you’ll need to use these adjustable legs on the front of the base cabinets to level things out.

Once everything is level, you clamp and screw each base cabinets together.  IKEA tells you to start from the side, but we wanted the center cabinet to sit directly in the middle of the window, so we started from the middle and worked out from there.

Having a laser level at your disposal definitely make things a lot easier, its really handy for keeping your rails level.  The hardest part by far was leveling the top of that high cabinet with the wall cabinets.  We wanted the top of the cabinets to all line up, so it took a few adjustment of the rail before we got it perfect.

Without a tall cabinet in the Pantry, it took me 30 mins to install and hang the top cabinets, as compared to the few hours in the main kitchen.

It took a few goes, but we pretty much have the wall cabinets lined up perfectly.  Almost perfect, maybe 0.5 mm off?

There was a bit of a gap next to the high cabinet.   Instead of putting in a massive cover board, we put in some 40 cm wide open wine racks instead.

We were told to just clamp and screw the wine shelves to the side of the high cabinet.  It seemed a little flimsy, so I elected to build some support with scrap timber I had laying around.  The cover board and kick board will cover this, so it doesn’t need to be perfect :).

So after 2 days, this is all the base cabinets put together.  Time consuming, but not really that difficult and super satisfying when its done.

Kitchen Island

We marked out the kitchen island and leveled it with out rear cabinets.  There’s about a 1.2 meters space between the island and rear cabinets.

The island uses these special metal legs that allow you to screw the island to the ground.  You’ll need a hammer drill to drill some holes in the concrete, put in some plastic insert, then screw the legs to the ground.

They are a pain in the butt to adjust and are not very good.  The plastic legs actually have higher range of adjustments, so I had to add my own packers to up the height.

Since only the back of the island is attached to the ground, I can actually lift the front of the island.  It’ll probably be okay with the weight of the stone bench top installed.  But I’m not taking any chances, so I screwed some timber to the ground with brackets and attached the front of the island to the timber.

Took me a day to install and level out 3 Island Cabinets!

Pantry

The Pantry was very easy to do,  I just used the level I measured for the main kitchen.  I marked it on the wall and used the laser level to set out the guide lines.  The top and bottom rails were mounted in no time and the cabinets were hung on the rail.  Although IKEA recommends 2 people, if you’re strong enough, this is can be easily done by 1 person.

My kitchen isn’t blue BTW, its just plastic film that protects the surface of the door.  I’ll keep this on until all the painting is done.

The doors are super easy to put on, I just had to screw in half the hinge to the frame and everything else just snaps into place.  

There’s very little gap on each side of the cabinets, you’ll need at least some gaps for the actual door to open.  So for the pantry, the cabinets worked out just as good as a custom kitchen.

Laundry

I had to wait for all the tiles to complete before I can put it cabinets in for the laundry.  There’s an exhaust duct that runs from the WC next door to the outside, so this will need to be covered by some bulkheads.

Again, laundry was simple to do and only took half a day.

The great thing about an IKEA kitchen is the customization and the range of accessories available.  We optioned the cleaning interior, not sure what we’ll put on it, but it looks super handy!

Bulkheads/Cover boards/Doors/Drawers

Timing worked out perfectly, our cabinets were hung while the Drywall guys were still on site.  

So we had them do 2 bulkheads one in the main kitchen and one in the laundry. 

Kitchen guys don’t normally do the bulkheads, so there’s probably thousands of kitchens waiting for the space above their wall cabinets to be covered up. 

We initially only planned on doing one in the main kitchen, but that exhaust duct kinda forced us to do the laundry as well.  This cost us about $1000, it was a 1 man job and the guy took about 4 hrs to do 2 bulkheads.  Super quick!

They built the frame of the bulkhead with metal rails instead of timber.   Its so much quicker this way, the guy measures the rail, cuts it with tin snips and TEK screws the rails together.

Here are the 2 bulk heads completed, looks sleek and finished.

We went with mostly drawers in the main kitchen.   The drawer are all BLUM hardware and and costs about $120 each. The sides of the draws all metal and have these built in adjusters to move the door front in all 3 axis.

They feel super premium and are soft close.  There’s a reason why drawers are more expensive, not only are the hardware more costly, they are also a complete pain in the butt to put together.   Each drawer takes about 20 minutes to install, so multiple that by about 20!

I also cut up the cover boards to fill any gaps.  Ideally, you’ll need a table saw to cut up the long cover board to size, luckily I had one handy.  A circular saw just doesn’t work very well for the long pieces, you’ll always end up with an uneven angled cut somewhere.

As you can see we had our floor boards laid.  It’s been laid all the way to the front legs of the base cabinets, so the kick boards will just sit on top and we won’t need to have any ugly trims around the kick boards. 

The plan is to lay the same floor boards on the back of the island, this will create some contrast to the matte white door fronts.  We went for a stone water fall on the 2 sides of the island, so the dishwasher will just sit in the empty space with no cabinets and the waterfall.

We had to go with doors instead of the draw fronts for the sink cabinet, as the drawers didn’t fit with all the pipe work.

We also put cover boards under the wall cabinets, which hides all the screws and cam locks.  

Building the kitchen was definitely a bit of work, I’ll only recommend it if you have time to spare like me.

You’ll also need the right tools as well, if you don’t have them, it’ll take you a lot longer.  

Here are some of the tools I ended up using:

Circular saw with 60 tooth finishing blade

Electric drill

Hammer Drill

Impact Driver (a must!)

Laser level

large and smaller leveler

Table saw with 40 tooth blade

Hole saw

Clamps

Angle grinder

Hacksaw

Screw drivers

We’ve already picked out our stone, ended going with a piece of marble for the island.  (We saved on the cabinetry, so we splurged a bit on the stone.)  Can you believe marble is actually cheaper than premium Caesarstone!  We just went with a cheaper engineered stone for the rear benches and the laundry.

Stone measure happens on Tuesday and the bench should be installed by Christmas.

[poppyscastle]

Kitchen Design

27th November

Our main kitchen is pretty simple affair, straight line of cabinets with a kitchen island.  We also have a small butler’s pantry, where we plan on washing up pots/pans and make our coffee.

We’ve had quotes from Nobby’s/Freedom/Good Guys kitchens, all of which were around the 15K mark just for the cabinetry in the main kitchen.  The designs were mostly with doors and minimum amount of drawers.  These were all flat pack kitchens in standard sizes, they are “custom” kitchens because their “designer” mix and matches their cabinet size to suit our needs. 

Being very experienced Ikea Furniture builders, we decided to look into their new Metod Kitchen line.  We used their online kitchen planning tool and came up with the basic design for our kitchen/pantry/laundry.  We then paid for a $99 design appointment, where the someone from the kitchen team checked and made changes/recommendations on our design.

At the end, we have plans for our 3 areas.

Main Kitchen

Pantry

Laundry

Since our areas consists mostly if straight line cabinetry, it was quite easy to mix and match the Ikea 400mm, 600 mm and 800 mm cabinets to suit our needs.  This is essentially what the other kitchen companies were doing anyway.

The Ikea drawers and hinges are all high quality stuff by Blum, I read somewhere that Ikea were actually the biggest importers for these hardware.  (I wonder if other kitchen companies secretly get their drawer and hinge hardware from Ikea?)

The main complaint about the Ikea Cabinets were their thin back panels.  Its not something we will notice anyway and Ikea’s Cam lock system makes the cabinets more solid than the imported flat-pack stuff the other companies uses.

We went with their most expensive drawers for the base cabinets in the main kitchen and stuck with soft close hinged doors for the rest.  We also went with their premium Matte white Italian made Voxtorp doors. 

At the end the price for the cabinetry and hardware came to around 10K.  This is for all 3 areas, with approximately 20 Blum metal drawers!

To seal the deal Ikea was offering 20% off and 2 years interest free finance.  So we have all the cabinetry taken care of for approximately $8000 and I didn’t have to pay a cent!  There’s no 6 week wait and everything was delivered the next day.  This is compared to 15K just for the main kitchen with 2 drawers!

The downside is the need to build everything yourself.  But since I have lots of leave accumulated from work, I have loads of time to build my kitchen.

[poppyscastle]

Bathroom Tiling

22nd November 2017

The tiler came in last Saturday to start on the ‘screed’ base for the bathroom/laundry.   This will dry over the weekend and he’ll start the tiling on Monday.

We have 2 bathrooms, 1 WC and 1 laundry that needed to be tiled.  The tiler is an absolute machine and he was done with the base by Lunch time. 

Considering the stairs are not in yet, that’s quite an achievement!   The ‘screed’  base is a mixture of some bricklayers sand and some cement.  

The tiler had a helper downstairs mixing the base and filling them into buckets.  He would then use a pulley and lift the mixture up onto the upper floor.

The screed base is then leveled out so that water will flow towards the floor wastes. 

Tiles

We picked our tiles 2 weeks ago from TFO in Smithfield.  It was quite a trek to get there, but prices are so much better than the likes Beaumont or Amber etc...

You’ll need to organize your own transport though, however they do have a list of preferred contractors.  Our 1.5 pallets of tiles was delivered for $150.

For our floors, we went with a Lappato Honed Porcelain tile.  We love the finish and has a honed concrete look.  These were only $29 per meter, but has a weird non standard 450 x 900 size.

We catered for 10% wastage, but since the tiles were so large there was actually a lot more wastage.  We got quite lucky, as we ended up using every single tile!

But because the tiles were large, it also meant it only took a day to lay the floors of all 4 areas.

For our wall tiles, we went with large subway tiles with a bevelled edge.  They were 100 x 300 mm in gloss white, which were only $18 per meter.  The sizing matched perfectly with the floor tile, the width of 3 subways equals 1 floor tile.

We’ve always loved subway tiles, they always looks so good on pinterest!  However, we spent the last week second guessing ourselves.  We were concerned full floor to ceiling subway tiles might be a bit too overwhelming.  

The tiler didn’t think it’ll look good either and it was an absolute pain in the butt to lay!  The cheap cost of the tile is probably offset by the labor involved to lay.  

It took 2 days to complete the 2 bathrooms and the tiler will be back next week to finish off the WC.

Once it was done, we(including the tiler) were all very happy with the result.  The bevelled edge looks amazing in the sunlight and works quite well with the floors.

Grout

We actually spent more time deciding on the colour of the grout than the tile itself.  We ended up choosing a grey grout(Palladium) for both the walls and floor tiles.  

We spent days thinking whether we should use grey or white grout for the wall tiles.  We were concerned the Grey might be a bit too contrasting, but I hate cleaning mold off white grout and there’s a lot of grout lines here!

Since the subway tiles are rectified the grout lines were actually pretty small and it actually didn’t look too much different from being un-grouted.

We’re going with Matte Black Tapware, so we also installed some nice black tiled floor wastes to match.  These were something like $25 each, but looks way better than the shiny $5 chrome look ones from Bunning’s.

Everything progressing well, plastering and kitchen should be done this week.  

Next week:

We have flooring being installed on Monday.  

Stone mason is measuring up the kitchen bench top

Stairs are booked in for installation on Friday.

Concrete might go in around the house and on the drive way.

Steel works for the decking might also be starting.

Going to be another super busy week!

[poppyscastle]

Plastering

17th November

Plasterer was started a few weeks ago even before the lower roof was complete.  The Plasterer were basically coming in for a day or 2 each week doing the prep work.  It was only when the house was watertight 2 weeks ago, did they go full throttle on the plastering  .

Ceilings Rails

Normally the Gyprock is nailed directly onto the timber frame/floor joists.  The timber on the ceilings is never 100% uniform, so the level between each sheet of Gyprock will be slightly different.

This is normally not a problem in a small area, as you’ll rarely have more than 3 or 4 sheets of Gyprock.

However, since we have such an open area.  The unevenness of the Gyprock will end up creating a “wavy” effect on our ceiling and will be very noticeable

The Plasterer recommended we put in these adjustable metal rails in the ceilings and the Gyprock sheets will be screwed into these metal rails. The bulk of the prep work was leveling/installing these rails and adds a few dollars to the cost per meter. 

Insulation

Once the property was watertight, they started putting the insulation into the walls.  The insulation(Pink Batts) were sourced from the Plasterers, they buy so much of the stuff, so it ended up being cheaper than Bunnings. 

The insulation was put in both the internal and external walls.  Hopefully, this will keep out the heat during the summer, as we don’t plan on installing A/C just yet.

Walls/Ceilings

The walls and ceilings went up pretty fast, I’ll say it took about 4 days to do the entire house.  

I’m quite amazed at how they managed to get all the sheets to the 2nd floor without stairs.  I guess they’ll have to do this a lot, as stairs can’t usually be measured until the Gyprock is up.

The house looks much brighter once the walls/ceilings are up, hopefully it gets even more so when its painted.

The Gyprock sheets are held on by glue and screws.  All the screw holes and joints will be patched up.  They have this machine that dispenses plaster and tape for the joints.  

One person does the taping and another guy trowels it afterwards.  They are super quick and makes it look so easy!

They use staple guns to attach these metal corners for all the external joints, which will be plastered and sanded, creating a nice straight corner.

Cornices/Bulkheads

We wanted a clean modern look, so we opted for shadow lines instead of traditional 90 mm curved cornices.

They put in the wall sheets first, followed by the ceiling sheets that’s slightly lower and a few mm away from the wall.

They screw in these metal trims in the gap, which will be plastered over creating a nice shadowline look.

Here’s the finished bulkhead near the entrance, this is covers the pipes nicely.

Plasterers are probably a week away from completion.

The next few weeks will be manic on site.   Plastering, Tiling, Painting and Kitchen Install are all going on at the same time.  Fun times!