Streamlined kitchens

We're pretty fond of a fairly minimalist, modern, and streamlined look, especially for kitchens. This week's job has been building our kitset cabinets into the surrounding walls to hopefully achieve something close to that.

This is both an aesthetic preference and a practical one; two metre high cabinets in a 2.7m high room leave a nasty dust-and-grease gathering gap that I am not at all a fan of. One way to solve this problem (at great expense) is to get custom made cabinetry built in for you by a carpenter. That's expensive.

Another way is to buy kitset kitchen cabinets and build them in yourself!

This does take a bit of skill, which we're still gaining but luckily we had my dad here helping (read: taking charge) this week.

It's also time-consuming; it took Dad and I three days, though we did also get a couple of other small things done in that time. I won't pretend to be the world's best apprentice, but hopefully I still sped things up!

My first accomplishment of the week was breaking one of our windows... Well, really it broke itself, the frame split and came clean off its hinges when I opened it. But it still slowed us down a bit... It's not really warm enough at the moment to leave a giant hole in the wall overnight.

Gorilla glue and duct tape got us there in the end... Super pro solution but it worked! 

Anyway, our cabinet fancifying technique (which we've now applied to two kitchens) is basically to build little walls around the top of each tall bank of cabinets, and then gib them in.

It can be pretty fiddly, especially in an old house where nothing is square, but (to me) the end result is well worth it, and takes the bog-standard cabinetry up a few pegs, as well as eliminating a few surfaces off the cleaning schedule, which is always welcome around here!

(side note: I love the look of open kitchen shelves, which are pretty popular at the moment, but just can't come to grips with all the dusting)

The first step was to slightly move the pantry. Because (naturally) I had changed my mind. I had originally thought I wanted the gib flush with the cabinet carcass and the doors sitting forward... And then decided that for the pantry and oven that the gib should be flush with the doors. So all the screws came out of the pantry, and some of the food I'd enthusiastically packed into it had to come out so we could scoot it back 10mm to permit everything to line up. On the bright side, I do think it looks good, and we gained 10mm of extra floor space in our kitchen. Woop woop! 10mm!

Step two was attaching the over fridge cupboard to the pantry, and then we did the timber framing up top. This follows standard wall construction methods, with a bottom plate (on the cabinet), top plate and studs. Remember to leave a 10mm allowance for the gib if you're picky about where it sits... I am. ;-)

Then we had to patch the messy bit of ceiling above the pantry where we'd changed the ducting. Although this is completely closed in from the kitchen I'd rather not have any risk of roof-dwelling creatures invading the space behind the pantry. So our brand new jigsaw (because what would a week of DIY be without a new power tool?) got its first workout and the ducting is nice and snug now.

We also made a side panel to box the ducting in behind the pantry, and a sort of lid that sits above the fridge, because it's a bit more complete that way and it'll help us keep all our precious heat in the bits of the room we're using.

Because we didn't want to lose any more room than we had to to wall framing, and the fridge cabinet was firmly secured from above, we chose to make the wing wall out of MDF. The framing at the top is the same as for the other cabinets, and at the bottom it's secured with little brackets screwed into the floor. These will be hidden by the fridge (and are the same as are used with standard melamine kitchen panels - which wouldn't have been tall enough and wouldn't be paintable so got vetoed).

Please don't rob us - we don't really have any valuables, the safe is for chocolate and (sadly) is empty anyway... 

Then the gib went on - another fiddly job. To keep the edges neat we used metal external corners and capping so that we can neatly stop and paint up to the cabinet (masking tape will be involved in that job, methinks!).

I guess maybe you want to see some photos? I forgot to tuck our super flash duct tape drawer handles away for these ones so apologies... Real handles coming soon!

And so the next job for the kitchen is some plastering and more painting. But first we need to finish the ducting for our gas central heating before the gas gets hooked up on Thursday (oh how glorious it will be to have a warm house and hot water to the kitchen taps!).

What do you think of our weird kitchen building technique? Will it catch on? Or are you happy dusting the tops of cabinets to avoid the extra building work? ;-)

Kitchen - the cabinets go in, part 2

I left you kind of hanging yesterday - sorry about that. I thought I'd elaborate a bit with some tips on installing your own kitchen cabinets in case you want to give it a go.

First recommendation: check out the Mitre 10 guide - it's pretty helpful and gives a general overview, complete with snazzy videos. Our cabinets are not from Mitre 10 so a few details differ a bit (our soft-close drawers are a bit harder to assemble for example) but the principles stand, and wherever you get your cabinets from they should come with instructions anyway.

You do need a few tools and though it's possible to do on your own I would recommend working with someone on this - moving the cabinets around is much simpler with a teammate.

The general steps are:

1. Prepare the area

• Remove old cabinetry
• Repair, prep and paint walls
• Repair floor as required
• Have new plumbing and electrical work run as required

2. Assemble the cabinets

• Put everything together per the instructions 
• Work out your starting point. This will usually be a corner, since it's fixed - in our case it's the dining room end as our peninsula bit is floating and therefore that end was flexible, whereas there was a specific position we wanted for the other end. 
• Put the first cabinet in place and adjust the feet so it's roughly level, with about 150mm between the bottom of the cabinets and the floor.
• Put the next cabinet beside it and level it up. Repeat until all the cabinets are in position. 
• Check the level across the first two cabinets, and adjust feet until both are level with each other (and overall). Fix them together. Repeat until all cabinets are joined. 
• Double and triple check the levels. 
• Fix cabinets to the walls. 

All set up - photos taken from either end of the room. 

The view from the window isn't so flash but that plumbing is very temporary!

I disagree with a couple of Mitre 10's points - it depends what you're doing to the floor but this is often best done last (or at least finished last, as in our case with the refinished floorboards). Likewise usually you'd save doing your paint top coat until after the bench has gone in because it'll probably get scuffed (I guess you can touch up but it looks better if it's a proper coat).

Once these steps are done you (like us) will be ready for your bench to go in. We're still waiting for that so in the meantime we have some chipboard and the manky stainless steel bench from the old kitchen. It's plumbed in as a temporary measure - I'll share how to rig that up soon too, along the same lines of the dishwasher setup we had. 

Our design had the fridge sitting flush with the pantry, and a cabinet over the fridge... But we're now not so sure about this. The pantry sticks out into the room quite a bit due to ducting behind it, and the fridge could go back about 200mm, which will let more light into the room. But that would create a stepped effect on that side, which I'm not a fan of - I'd rather have everything in smooth lines. So we haven't installed that last lonely cabinet yet - we need to make a call on that.

Also in the not-quite-finished category: I somehow ordered frosted glass for our wall cabinets, which is not at all the look we were going for. Surely the point of glass is being able to see what's inside! So those need to be reglazed. The rangehood will go in between, and we plan to tile the backsplash behind the rangehood and across the wall underneath those two cabinets.

The sparky is coming tomorrow, which means we'll get our wall oven installed, hopefully the hob set up on our fake bench, and the other kitchen wiring (microwave, dishwasher, rangehood, wall powerpoints, pantry powerpoint) completed so we're not running the whole kitchen off a single multi-box. That'll also mean I can sell the freestanding oven (anyone in the market for one? It's barely been used!) which will make the room feel a bit bigger.

Slowly but surely it's coming together. What do you think we should do about the over-fridge cupboard?

Designing a kitchen

We're in the midst of overhauling our kitchen at the moment (there will be many more posts relating to this, I'm sure!), and to me designing a new kitchen is one of the most fun parts of a renovation. Partly this is because of how transformational it is – a dowdy kitchen somehow seems to pull a whole house down – but also because there are so many parts to fit together, and activities to sequence. It’s proper project management and I love it!

This is the second time we’ve designed a kitchen, and I thought I’d share how I go about the planning – though two kitchens obviously doesn’t make me a pro, I’ve done a ton of research so hopefully have something helpful to share.

1.       Think about the goals
Everyone has different priorities, and while it’s usually sensible to keep your house reasonably normal for resale value (even if you’re planning to be there for a long time circumstances can change!) it’s most important to make it work for your family. For us, the main goals were:

• The kitchen being central to family life. This means it’s moving to an entirely different location within the house – a consent-requiring change – but that expense will pay off massively for us in liveability.
• Having plenty of working space – enough room for at least 2-3 people to be chopping side by side.
• Keeping it social. This kind of fits in with the first part but has also given us a wee breakfast bar area so that friends can chill out in the kitchen if we’re hosting.

Your priorities will probably be different to ours, so have a think and write them down at the start to make sure your planning continues to line up with them. 

2.       Look at the space you have available

Depending on your house there might be major work required, like removing a wall or shifting location within your house – or you might be able to make improvements within the existing space. Note that moving your kitchen to a different location within your house requires a building consent in New Zealand, whereas upgrading an existing kitchen (assuming you're not moving any structural or bracing walls) does not. 

3.       Work out what components are required

List out the appliances and services (oven and cooktop, sink, dishwasher, fridge, microwave), and how much storage you think you need. If you have an existing kitchen which provides enough storage make a list of the storage units and sizes – you can then use this to compare with your new plan to ensure you’ll still have enough room for everything.

4.       Draw a plan

You can use software (I use Microsoft Visio which isn’t perfect but works – and there are lots of free programs online) or go old school with pencil and paper. If you go the paper route I recommend making scale cut outs of your cabinets and appliances (or getting one of the Bunnings / Mitre 10 planning brochures you can cut out) so you can move them around the page without having to draw new versions constantly. 

My very unprofessional but serves-the-purpose kitchen plan.
The weird gaps represent dead space under the benchtop but won't be visible. 

I like to spend a few weeks on this – I come up with some ideas, then mull them over for a few days, tweak (or completely reconfigure) and then rinse and repeat until I can’t think of any improvements. It's also worth spending a bit of time reading up on kitchen design tenets (plenty of info readily available online) as there might be important factors you've overlooked, like making sure there's enough room to open the dishwasher. 

A few tips and pointers: 

• Some cabinets need extra buffer panels - for example corner cabinets usually need this. If space is constrained (e.g. if your cabinets run wall to wall) you'll want to confirm this before you finalise the plan to ensure you don't run out of room. 
• End units will need end panels or some other type of finishing except where they butt up to walls. You don't have to buy the purpose-made panels (we like to build our cabinets in with gib and framing where required) but you'll want something and will need to allow space for these too. 
• It's often easiest to do this with a list of the available cabinets and dimensions on hand - if you know where you'll get your cabinetry from get their price list, which will usually provide this info, or seek it out online. 
• Cabinets can be custom-made into just about every size and shape but usually this comes at a premium. If you can, design for the standard sizes as much as possible - you may still end up needing one or two custom cabinets but that'll be much less costly than a whole custom kitchen. 
• Google for ideas and design help - there's lots of info out there to help you along. 

5.       Confirm design factors 

There are lots of decisions to make – cabinet door shape and colour, handle type, wall colour, backsplash/tile colour, flooring materials, window treatments, benchtop material, lighting...

Google image search comes into play a lot in this stage too, and to avoid decision fatigue I take the easy route for things I don't feel strongly about. This can also help save the dollars - e.g. I scored some (barely) secondhand custom made curtains for the big kitchen window on TradeMe, much cheaper than getting new ones and they will be one of the biggest visual features. Obviously I couldn't choose the exact fabric - I had to accept one of the available options in the size needed (which can be a waiting game too). But now we have this bold feature it helps default some of the other decisions, like paint colour.  

6.       Source cabinetry and components

Cabinets can take a month or more to arrive so don't leave ordering them until the last minute. Also try to get orders in place for the other key components (like any major appliances) as early as you can. 

7.       Schedule the work

Plan out what needs to happen when - but leave some buffer time in your schedule, as there will always be something that crops up when you're not expecting it. 

It's smart to line up your key tradies (electrician, plumber, builder, plasterer, flooring specialist, is there a name for a benchtop person?) as if they're good at what they do it often takes a while to get into their calendar. 

Usually the sequence is something like this but sometimes things go in different orders depending on your design and specifics of your build: 

• Any building work / electrical pre-wiring / plumbing pre-runs
• Plastering & prep for painting
• Painting
• Installing cabinetry
• Benchtop
• Completing electrical work / plumbing
• Flooring

8. Be prepared for disruption! 

This isn't critical for the success of the project, but is for your mental health. Get some strategies in place - maybe you can set up a semi-kitchen in another room to tide you over, maybe you can just eat instant noodles for a couple of months (no, don't do that!). 

As I write this we have a sink, very small bench and our hack dishwasher in one room, with our dishes, cutlery and food in boxes and trays on the floor, and oven, fridge and microwave in another room. The whole floor seems to have a permanent layer of dust and it's not very fun for cooking, nor is it child-friendly... But it's a means to a very worthy end! 

Have you lived through a kitchen renovation? Do you have any tips to help us along?