[drtongue96]

I started posting my blog just today, even though my kitchen is about 80% complete, but I'm going to repost here, as it was suggested to me by one of your lovely members to post it in this forum. Let's see how it goes:


Hello. I should have started this blog at the beginning of the process, not near the end, but perhaps I will use it to finish off the kitchen on it's final days of installation.

For a start, I'll post a picture of my proposed kitchen from my design.

The original kitchen was a single wall style kitchen, 7'5" long with a sink in the middle, 3 upper cabinets each with 2 doors, and the bottom cabinets were also a total of six doors. Nothing more than that.

It was an old built-in kitchen that had been built many years ago, I'm guessing 30 or more years ago. Someone had taken the doors and added cheap wallpaper on them and then 'finished' each door with high gloss painted trim (a very thin wood casing). It was the ugliest kitchen I've ever seen, and I've lived in my house 12 years, just finished paying off the mortgage, so decided now it's time.

[drtongue96]

Part 1 - Design
Posted May 27th, 09 at 10:15 am by drtongue96
Updated May 27th, 09 at 10:45 am by drtongue96
My 1st idea was to get it refaced. This means getting all new doors custom made and having a matching veneer put on the whole frame. This would also include new hardware that would be invisible. The existing kitchen had old cheap outer hinges.

I had two different kitchen refacers come. I knew that they would charge between $2 and $2.5k to do this job (Canadian), and I was a little suprised (but not totally) that they both said they couldn't do it. One of them told me he didn't want to end up on Holmes on Homes (Canadians will get this joke?), they both said a regut would be necessary. There were other problems I don't want to really get into, as it's not that interesting to type out, but the basics are: the kitchen had NO toekick, the cabinet doors were almost touching, and in some cases, rubbing the floor, and underneath the sink there was excessive water damage, from a leaky faucet years ago, that would require considerable repair.

Anyways, refacing the cabinets was out, but I think that this is a great option for a lot of people who have GOOD built-in kitchen. The sturdiness of a built-in kitchen has a lot going for it over these packaged cabinets in some cases.

hen I went to Home Depot and they did me a quote for a single wall kitchen, but I wasn't particularly impressed by any of it.

Then I went to a Home Renovation show, and in Winnipeg, there is a company called SVEA Kitchens, who do very high-end European Style cabinets which are beautiful. They were new in Winnipeg and really wanted to make a sale, and I went to see the guy at his little shop and they quoted me about $5k for the kitchen (which would take about 2 months to arrive) and only $500 to install it. They of course, had no idea of condition of my kitchen, and how much work I would have to do to make putting in a nice kitchen like theirs. (I needed new walls, floors etc).

Then i travelled to Phoenix to visit my father, and we went to IKEA and I saw some of the kitchens, some of which were as nice as the SVEA kitchens, and I liked the gadgets, hinges, etc.. I didn't need to be sold on it. But having no IKEA in Winnipeg (yet...knock on wood..they are going to build one within 2 years here), I wasn't sure if it was possible.

i downloaded the IKEA planner and started to make my single wall kitchen. Once I got used to it, it was a bit easier.

My girlfriend also made some designs for me, and after many tries, I decided to make an L-shape, spend the money that was necessary. Part of the reason I didn't want to do this in the 1st place, is because there was a window on the wall that went down to where the countertop would be and the counter would be partially obscuring the window, which is wrong.

So I made an executive decision to get rid of the window. I still had another window in the kitchen that is nice and large that will be fine. But it was another expense, I had to pay someone to remove it, frame it in, insulate, drywall, match up the siding on the outside, and all that.

I made my ikea order on the very last day of the kitchen sale. I also bought bedroom furniture for myself, and the dinette set you see in the picture, and bathroom stuff for my girlfriend. So I'm not sure how much my kitchen cost. I'm thinking about 4000, and that includes the NEW ikea fully integrated panel ready dishwasher, 8 cabinets, the electric slide-in range, and tons of shelves, rails, cutlery holders, hooks, spice rack thingys, drawer dividers, and many other things, even drawer mats. I also got the sink (Alsvik) and the countertop from IKEA (numerar double-sided black-brown, concrete effect) with stainless steel sides.

I guess it was $4350 or so because I got a gift card for $435 that I'm going to use when I visit IKEA in person in Calgary in early June.

Next I will talk about the contractors.

<strong>Address:</strong>8000 11 St., S.E., Calgary, Alberta T2H 3B2 (Deerfoot Meadows) <strong>Telephone:</strong> (403) 273-4338 <strong>Store hours:</strong> Monday to Friday: 10am - 9pm Saturday 9am - 9pm Sunday: 10am - 6pm IKEA Store Directory Entry for IKEA Calgary

[drtongue96]

Part 2 - Getting a contractor
Posted May 27th, 09 at 10:53 am by drtongue96
As I was buying an IKEA kitchen, obviously, I'm kinda doing it on the cheap, wanting to do as much as possible, so when I looked for contractors, I used the same philosophy.

Rather than calling fancy people, I scoured kijiji and looked for handy-men. I had probably about 6 dudes, (and one lady who never managed to make it to my place, as I had already hired somebody).

The quotes ranged from $850 up to $6000. The high-quote guys were Mike Holmes wannabe's who told me they were gonna gut the whole kitchen and find out why my floor was raised in the kitchen compared to the rest of the main floor blah blah. Guess what? I went with the cheapest guy who quoted me $850 and only because I checked his one reference and the guy who had hired him before really liked him etc. I had them re-do the quote because I found it was too low for what I wanted done. the original quote for $850 was to remove old kitchen (not dispose), and install 8 cabinets, and 3 appliances.

I told them I needed the window done as well, and possible fixes to the drywall once the old kitchen came out, and the water damage to the floor (rememeber from earlier?) , and to dispose of the materials. Quote went up to $1700 so we made a little contract, and then all I had to do was wait for my kitchen to arrive...

next entry will be Day 1 - demolition and delivery (it happened the same day - how exciting!!!)

[drtongue96]

Part 3 - Day 1 Demolition and Delivery
Posted May 27th, 09 at 12:57 pm by drtongue96
My Mr. FixIt guy showed up around 8:30am on a Saturday to start work. I basically gave him the tour, some basic explanations and off I went. I had a one day course in: Interior Design through the local city cheap classes. Very scared, I left, and attended the class.

Prior to this, I had weeks (well..many evening and weekend hours) packing up all the garbage that was in the kitchen, getting rid of my stove, putting my deep freeze in the back room (where it will stay), and pretty much emptying the room. I also removed all the wallpaper and trim that was in the room, finally revealing my awful walls.

The walls were half-drywall (not taped, or taped badly) and half 'board', and to to seperate the wall, a chair rail was installed with cheap vinyl casing. Two different styles of wallpaper were in the kitchen, one kind above the 'chair rail' and one below'. All of it was awful and the walls were awful too. Mr. FixIt thought he could smooth them out with a skim coat of mud. Anyways, we'll get to that later.

At lunch time, the course let out, and whilst driving back home to see the progress, I got the call from the trucking company that they had 86 boxes for me and they were on their way to my house (i knew they were coming sometime during that day).

Needless to say, I didn't go back to my course. I went home. Mr. Fix It had removed the window, and through this, had chucked out my existing kitchen through the window out on to the side of my house. He did all that in 2.5 hours?

Underneath the kitchen I could see the original maple floors that were installed with the house back in 1946, if I have the information correctly. Which got me thinking...

What if I removed the rest of the floor and saw what was underneath, maybe I could refinish the floors.

Mr. Fix It said he'd do it for $200. OK. Tommorow.

The truck came and the truckers, me and Mr. Fix It helped them deliver all the stuff. Not only was it the kitchen, but also my bedroom (malm bed, storage box, dresser, and headboard), but my girlfriends kitchen.

This really didn't take very long. I had my dining room cleared out the store all the stuff. It fit. No problem, but tight.

Then Mr. Fix It left for the day, and I did the inventory. I 'quit' my single day course, and decided to drink beer instead. Inventory took me about 2 hours, as I wrote on each box what I thought it was, and checked it off on the 6 page list. When I was done, I found that my suspension rails for the uppers, first part of the install were missing, and my girlfriends bathroom sink.

Everything else was there. Tons of door fronts, doors, cover panels, jeez.

I got on the phone and cried, eventually I got a ticket for my concern. It wasn't a good experience really, as I did this all over the phone over many weeks, and it took a lot of time for them to do a 'trace' and finally send out the rails and bathroom sink.

The rails I made them send my courier which I recieved early last week (today is may 28, delivery was May 2), and the bathroom sink I got today, which came by truck (too heavy for wussy couriers).

Day 2 will be about the floor.

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[drtongue96]

Part 4 - Floors
Posted May 27th, 09 at 2:49 pm by drtongue96
The next day, Mr. FixIt had his circular saw and started ripping apart my floors. My existing floor was raised up from the hallway about 4 inches so you had to step in the kitchen? How come? Well, we'll find out soon.

The existing floor was a very ugly old vinyl sheet. I've already forgotten what it looked like, except that it was dirty, and even when it was clean. It was stained too in some spots, and yukky. Out the window it went.

Underneath this was a subfloor and lots of shims. Uh oh. Underneat that was a layer of 1950's or 1960's green tile. This was removed with brute force and a shovel. Out the window.

Underneat the tile was another very thin subfloor, and underneat that was late 40's/early 50's yellow flowery vinyl (or Linoleum) sheet. I kept a square of it, maybe to put in a picture frame some day. It's the kind of stuff you remember as a kid in your grandparents house on the farm. It all got destroyed and underneat the window.

Underneath that? MAPLE. Unfortunately, nailed with 100's of nails, and the hole kitchen wasn't level. Not the flooring per se, it was quite straight. Mr. FixIt thought he could go into my crawl-space and fix it by putting in some teleposts and jacking it up from underneat.

A trip to McDiarmid lumber later, I had spent nearly a hundred on little teleposts. he put them in with his shovel and strength, attemped to jack it up, but it didn't do much, maybe 1/2-1 inch, but the whole room sloped about 3 inches.

New solution: build another floor. And I got him to help me with my hallway too. I have a hallway that leads from my dining room into my kitchen and then continue over to the bathroom. The hallway had beige stinky carpet from my cats and probably dozens of other cats that have lived in the house. Underneat the carpet. Brown tiles! He removed those down to the maple for another $75. Oh, the kitchen floor and all this telepost cost me $200 plus I had to buy parts for the new subfloor about $90 for plywood and shims.

So anyways, my original plan was now back into action, which I haven't mentioned yet, but I had 13 boxes of laminate flooring to install in the kitchen and my hallway, so I didn't return them. My job was to install them once the subfloor was built.

Over the next few days, Mr. FixIt removed nails and installed the subfloor. Or maybe he did the drywall first, I can't remember.

Next chapter: Walls
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[drtongue96]

Part 5 - Walls
Posted May 27th, 09 at 3:02 pm by drtongue96
As previously described, my walls were a mess, part of it drywall, part of it some kind of cheap boards. Not good for a nice new modern kitchen, so for $600 plus the cost of drywall, mud and screws, I paid to get the kitchen re-drywalled.

The empty window was re-opened and the old walls thrown out. I think it was 8 sheets but maybe it was 10 sheets of drywall (kitchen is 7'5"x12'10"). Mr. FixIt wasn't the greatest drywall installer or mudder, so if you're going to get this done, get as good a guy as you can afford. He used way too much mud in my opinion and didn't bother to screen off the room, so as of today, I still have dust on my floor in other parts of the house. My poor kitties, it will be resolved soon.

While the walls were off, I got to see the studs and construction of my house which was nice. Inside the walls beneat the old black insulation against the outside wall (which I removed it was so old and disgusting) I found several jigsaw puzzle pieces (I'm sure someone did that for fun), and I found a few small bits of newspaper. I even found a 1951 stamp with a Santa Claus on it. I think it was from Cancer Care, Manitoba, but not sure. It definately says 1951 on it, and it is that old for sure. Also found the top of a milk jug from a local creamery, just the cardboard bit. You old people will know what I'm talking about.

I bought new insulation and put it in between the studs and bought a huge roll of vapour barrier, and Mr. FixIt helped me staple it in.

At this time he ran the new electrical. Basically before, I had one grounded plug above my counter. Now I've got three. One at each end of the 'L'. At the time of writing this, this still hasn't been hooked up to the panel, so I have no idea if it will work or not. Also, because I am installing the NEW IKEA DISHWASHER, I needed electrical for that, and new electrical for my range hood, which also hasn't been installed yet.

I decided against the IKEA one, and got a similar one from RONA, because I had 10% off and it was 499, so I paid about $450 instead of the similar one from IKEA which would have cost $600. I wanted one cuz it looks cool. As of today, the box still hasn't really been opened, but here's hoping it will get installed smoothly.

Eventually, this took about a week, drywall was done and mudded and sanded, and I was left with a rather unimpressive but functional wall.

Next Part: Painting

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[drtongue96]

Part 6 - Paint
Posted May 27th, 09 at 3:36 pm by drtongue96
My kitchen design is Nexus Black brown lower cabinets (4), with Rubrik Blue-Gray upper horizontals (4). The counter will be 'concete effect' numerar (being installed today May 27 - I helped him (Mr. FixIt) carry them in at lunch time, and my they look cool. But I'll get to counters later.

Because of my 'design', I picked the colors based on this.

I tried many paint sample strips from the usual stores. I really liked the Ralph Lauren colors, and because of Rona's color matching system, they were able to bring up those colors and match them with their own paint. I used Rona's own VOC-free paint, whatever it is called, cheaper than the Ralph Lauren paint at Home Depot, and I didn't like Seco all that much from Home Depot when I painted my bedroom, so I thought I'd give Rona's paint a try.

I also used one of Rona's colors. But that's not important. In one weekend, I managed to prime everything, ceiling and walls, which didn't take too long. I used a whole gallon with one coat. It was primer/sealer for new drywall that I got for less than $10 from McDiarmid on a sale some weeks back. Then Mr. Fixit came over and attempted to fix little flaws that he said he could only see before priming.

Whatever, shortly after that I started painting. with ceiling 1st. I painted the ceiling a color called Loft which is a silver or grey color with a tiny bit of blue in it, it's quite light, and it looked very nice.

Then I painted 3 of the walls a very nice blue color with a hint of grey (see where I'm going?), can't remember what it's called. oh now i do. Lancaster Blue.

And then the 4th wall I painted a chocolate brown, which I don't know what it is called, but it's the colour of a light chocolate milk and is very nice. And I'm glad I picked it now because now that the countertop is out of the box, and placed onto where it is going to go (sink hole and oven not cut out yet), it looks great. The 'concrete effect' does look like concrete and has a nice look to it. I'm not all about this granite and marble countertop stuff you seen on HGTV. To me, a counter is nice if it's functional and looks good. And this isn't my dream house, just my 1st starter home.

So, anyways, 2 coats of paint, 4 walls and ceiling. I still have to fix it a bit. I hate painting tape, it sucks.

I'm going to backtrack a bit and talk about the IKEA ordering process, as I did this not at a store, but on the internet and the telephone, with IKEA home shopping or whatever it's called. Next post.

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[drtongue96]

Part 7 - The Order Process
Posted May 27th, 09 at 4:02 pm by drtongue96
I'm going to backtrack. I made the order on the final day to IKEA home direct or whatever. They way this works is this:

I finished my design, including pretty much everything I wanted, in my case, all the kitchen cabinets, doodads and also my dinette set. I planned this all in the IKEA planning software, which as you know has it's pluses and minuses. Plus being it's fairly easy to use, minus is not everything works as it should, and it doesn't measure everything quite right. And sometimes you have to fight with it to get what you want. But I got it done.

My design was different than what is it now. I originally had a cooktop and an oven cabinet with a 24' built-in wall oven. I thought it was pretty good.

Anyways, when I made my 1st or 2nd call, they told me an email address to send my plan to. And really that's all I had to do to start the process. I emailed them basically a short letter that said I wanted to order a kitchen and attached was my plan, and I attached the fpf file or whatever it is.

A few days later, I got assigned my kitchen plannner, Anna-Charlene. She emailed me back a completely different design that was slightly worse than my design, as it had no cutlery drawer whatsoever. So I called and after not too long of a wait, I talked to her in person. The kitchen planners know their stuff.

After about a week of back and forth mostly through email (about once a day) and sometimes via the phone, I had it pretty mcuh complete. I changed my design to put the sink basically where the sink used to be, and the put the dishwasher right beside it (a good move), and the changed from cooktop/wall-oven to slide-in range. I got more countertop space, better 'triangle' kitchen with this design anyways. I had design issues with getting the range hood to fit in the kitchen because of a bulkhead I have running along the celing, but with a tape measure, tears, and hope, it got down to what it is today. And on the last day (they gave me 10 days to finalize the design so that I could still get the 10% gift cards), so right near the end, I got her to send me the final draft, and I had to sign it a few times and then fax it back.

for Payment:

Just because I'm mortgage free doesn't mean I have money. I bought it all on credit, taking advantage of a new HELOC at prime, and various other products, such as the 6 month no interest no payment IKEA card.

I applied for an IKEA card and they gave me 6k in credit, so I paid for most of the kitchen (and other things) with that. I will transfer the balance over to the HELOC in 6 months and start really paying for it then. Why not. I'll just have to remember to pay on time, or i'll probably get screwed.

Anyways: the kitchen planner liked my design, she said it was modern and it would look very nice, and she made sure i had filler pieces and the correct cover panels to make it look decent. Some things you can't get through the home ordering service, so those things didn't get added to my order, but most kitchen stuff can.

A few days later, I think I got an email saying the order was processed. I did call about one or twice a week to check on all this. They gave me approximate shipping times. The bulk of kitchen came in about 2 weeks after it was shipped. the blue-gray cabinet doors and the built-in dishwasher were not available, and had to be backordered, I only got those about 2 weeks ago, after my kitchen renovation had already started. Not having everything can be stressful. The most stressfull was the absence of the $10 rails, which finally came about 2 days before last saturday which was when we finally started doing the cabinets.

Next chapter is: Building the cabinets

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[drtongue96]

Part 8 - Building the cabinets
Posted May 27th, 09 at 4:22 pm by drtongue96
Updated May 27th, 09 at 4:36 pm by drtongue96
Now I'm getting to the stuff you probably want to read about, not boring stuff about my paint colors, drywall, or floors. Oh wait, I haven't finished my description of the floors, that will be next. Ha ha.

I started with the horizontal cabinets as I thought this would be easy.

I think it took me an hour to build the 1st one. I think I all I used was a good screwdriver and a hammer.

The hardest part of building an IKEA cabinet is putting the back on. And that's not because it's hard, it just takes a while, in some cases you are hammering about 30 tiny nails and it's easy to smash the cabinet and bust off some of the fibre board they build their cabinets out of. The back is not solid at all, it's rather cheap, so be careful about this.

A rubber mallet might come in handy, but be careful with hammers and mallets and all this, these are strong I suppose when installed, but when they are by themselves, treat them delicately. Build them on the floor on a blanket or drop sheet.

They really only take about a 1/2- 1 hour to complete and can be done while watching television.

After the horizontals, I thought the 12 inch would be next easiest. It was just as easy. And of course the 24 inch cabinets are just the same as the 12 inch, there's only a bit more woodstuff in there to make it twice the size. Then I was done. I did this in the evenings after work when I had time and while Mr. FixIt was doing the drywall and subfloor.

I had them all done when Mr. FixIt was ready to install them, that was my job. It's easy, don't pay someone to do it, even if you have 20 to do, it's not all that bad. Just be careful when nailing in the back. Use a little hammer if you have one. Also: i'd recommend just a plain old screwdriver instead of a power-tool for the cabinet building. MAYBE use a drill with bits for the drawers and glides, but that's your call.

next is drawers

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[Susan]

Excellent! I love reading along with your story.

I took the liberty of uploading your plans image into the gallery and associating it with this thread so that it shows up in the tabset. As you work through, you can upload 'Photosets' in the gallery - images grouped into logical steps, such as 'Before,' 'Construction,' 'Modifications,' etc. and then by editing the initial post you can add those photosets to your tabset. You can also add new images to an existing Photoset in the gallery if you like!

It's really exciting to watch a project unfold, and since we heart pictures here at IKEAFANS, this is sort of like kitchen p0rn. Pardon the expression.

Susan