2011年11月29日星期二

A five-month kitchen renovation

So this, I thought,The Wholesale Navona Polished Tiles For Kitchen consists of eight smaller individual cubes is how the DIY'er spends their summer vacation. Sweat poured down my back as I put an anchor into the bottom of what would be a sink cabinet. It was the last week in July and I was in our muggy garage.

It was the fourth box I'd built for our kitchen cabinets, and I was feeling bold.Wholesale Pulati Polished Tiles For Wall From China Manufacturers tube cutting and forming I threw aside the IKEA instructions and went for it.

But by the third day, I was fed up building boxes and piling them neatly in our garage, waiting for the moment our kitchen was ready for installation. That moment would come much, much later. We lost our stove and sink in May and it would be September before we moved back into a working kitchen.

There were a few things we knew when we bought our house five years ago: we loved the 1960s architecture, but not the kitchen built for a lone housewife.

We also knew that we'd be tearing down a wall between the kitchen and the adjoining TV room to make a bigger space. And we knew that we'd be doing it ourselves to save money.

We had renovated the kitchen in our last house, so we had an idea what we were in for. What we didn't know was the difference two small boys, aged five and two,What are Wholesale Full Body Project Tiles For Kitchen ? and a structural wall could make.

We approached our kitchen reno the way we approached our wedding: there were something things we wanted to spend money on (a Viking range that still makes us giddy) and other things that, well, were fine if they were good quality, but not top of the line (IKEA cabinets versus custom-made and installed).

We also knew that a good designer would set this project off on the right foot. In tearing down the wall, /IKEA we were making a big space and it was a little daunting. (Cue marital discord over what goes where.)

Irene Langlois (irenelanglois. com) had completely renovated a neighbourhood bungalow and we loved the modern feel of that kitchen. It was sleek and airy, and it had no upper cabinets.Buy Wholesale Marble Tiles For Wall direct from us at low prices It was a gorgeous, big-budget renovation and I'm pretty sure that when Irene goes into a home she's given a blank cheque and told to have fun. Not here.

In my first email to her, I told her we'd probably be doing an IKEA kitchen with the goal of giving it a high-end look.

"What a great project! I'm up for the challenge," she wrote after I first explained it. She later mentioned that a few of her renovations have incorporated IKEA cabinets.

When Langlois first came to our home, she listened to what we were saying about the existing kitchen,you can use a Wholesale General Double Loading For Kitchen From China Manufacturers how we hated the footprint and that we'd planned to tear down a wall and add an island. Then she did that designer thing and turned everything on its head.

She looked at one big, square boxy bay of windows and said: "That's the focus of your kitchen - why not put the kitchen in here? People pay lots of money for natural light in their kitchens and you already have it." And with that, our new kitchen moved into the TV room.

We had just made our renovation a bigger challenge: tear down a structural wall, install a load-bearing beam and move all plumbing, electrical and ductwork into a room that didn't have overhead lighting and we later discovered had covered floor vents.

Langlois took our kitchen design to a local custom cabinet maker for a quote: $22,000. When we took our plans to IKEA, they quoted us $8,000. Done.

We were smart enough to know what we couldn't do, calling in experts to do the wiring, plumbing and gas line to the new range. But we were the contractors. We did the demolition of the old kitchen, arranging for trades to come in and work their magic and running around town for supplies.

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