Diver's Home Renovation Project Report - Pic Heavy - Kitchen and Bath
 

Well, normally this time of year I'd be posting a trip report about being outdoors and exploring somewhere. Instead, I've spent the last month and a half indoors working like a dog. We leave for Jan Lake in Northern saskatchewan and I can't wait!!

So the stars aligned and a friend of mine had a lead on some good quality cabinets at a more than reasonable cost. My other friend who lives in Victoria said he’d fly out and do some tile work for me and help me renovate my main bath.

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So a budget was formed, cabinets ordered, and we got busy. Our existing kitchen was ok I suppose, but certainly dated. Our main bath was in the same shape. Ripping out the cabinets was the easy part. It took just about 4 days for me and a friend to rip up my existing floor. We had 3 layers of different kinds of lino, and then particle board fastened by several thousand staples and framing nails. That floor was pure evil.

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We got it stripped down to the T&G planking and then put down new subfloor and tiled. As we did this, It was apparent that electrical work was needed big-time.



So I put a call out to AO members, and kmacisaac was over at our place the next day. What started off as a simply moving some plugs turned into finding out that my dishwasher was hot wired to the 220v plug of my stove. And then we figured out that the OTR microwave was ALSO hot wired into my 220V stove outlet. Carney work for sure.

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So a new sub-panel, new wiring, proper gfci outlets, and some new LED lights over our bay window and Kmacisaac has us set up wonderfully. Great guy!

Meanwhile, I was in a panic to get the proper plumbing fixtures for our bath, and I had cabertosser running all over the city for me looking for stuff, only to turn out that the lead times for the products were too long (this was a spur of the moment project) and we ended up finding some decent delta and moen fixtures at Home Depot. I still owe caber for his help on this.

Cabinets arrived and went in pretty smoothly even though my walls weren’t necessarily plumb and square. Appliances were purchased at Trail for very reasonable pricing. And backsplash tile went on and grouted.

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As I type this, I’ve put in over 130hrs of labour into this project, not to mention my tiling buddy, my cabinet buddy, Kmacisaac, and a painter friend who helped with some drywall patching. It has been a LOT of work, and we’re not done, but we’re in the home stretch for sure.

Have some painting left to do, caulking around all the cabinets, countertops, kickplates etc. We have three cabinet doors to hang (2 with glass in them) and install the pantry bi-fold doors.

Overall, I’m just under budget (thankfully) but could have easily gone WAY over. Lots of little details that take time and energy, but we’re pretty happy and my marriage is still in tact! My waistline and liver suffered though. Very sick of pizza, take-out, and pub grub now.

I work in the construction industry on the consultant side, and it was good to get my hands dirty and physically do a lot of the work myself, and help my expert friends who really knew what they were doing.

I know Rona and Home Depot isles better than store clerks now too.

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Looks awesome Diver! Nice work buddy !

When is the house warming party...:sHa_shakeshout:

looks like some good quality work there!!!

Sweet results there, 'Diver! That'll be worth some serious brownie points with your Mrs ;). Either that or it got you out of some crap that you were already in:lol:

Bravo

Very fine looking work diver, very impressive..

Great looking job. Glad you found and fixed that electrical, looked scary.

Looks great to me!

Quite the transformation! Looks great!

Ahh, good ole' "bamboo series" tile. That stuff is so popular right now. Where did you get that from? The glass strips look sharp.

x2 !!!

When the wife is out of town!

Combination of both currently.....

Rona

You and your buddies got skills Diver' :happy0180:

looks really great!

Nice work diver! I know the feeling. We bought our acreage in August last year and tossed a coin for renos in the house or a shop for me. The bride won so after hunting season me and the bride started ripping the place apart. It' 1800 square feet and I had the whole main floor ripped out just in time to get busy in the oil patch so she/we lived in a gutted out house right until we shut down our drilling project in March. From that point up until now I've been busting my hump getting it back to live able conditions. We repainted the whole level, ceilings and walls, I laid engineered hardwood flooring( in floor heating in the house) as well as floor tile in the bathrooms, installed new cupboards and appliances, added a ensuite bathroom with a oversized bath tub( complete with all the tile work)and walk in closet for the bride, new shower, toilet, and vanity in the main bathroom and all new light fixtures and receptacles through out the house. All the labor has been supplied by my father in law and myself. I used to do this stuff when I was younger and now realize why I made the jump to the oil patch ...:sHa_shakeshout:

Very awesome looking reno's indeed!! The kitchen looks amazing :) Great Job!

Awesome work Diver... remember a happy wife is a happy life... this will get you many, many years of a happy wife. :)

I feel your pain! It is amazing how much life sucks when the whole house is buried in dust, and you have no cooking ability other than a BBQ.

We have a half bath with a shower smaller than a phone booth. When I drop the soap I'm hooped! Getting the bathroom back first was great. Having the kitchen back is fantastic. We worked every weekend and at night. Even cancelled camping trips.

I cannot wait to be catching walleye at Jan lake in two weeks!

Looks good there, Diver! I'll make sure to NOT show my wife this thread, as I really don't want another project right now....
:scared:

I sent photo's direct to TreeGuy's wife! :evilgrin:

Just ask him about the tie-dyed, mustachioed weirdo who worked on his bathrooms last night..... Good times had by all:bad_boys_20:

Did he get the garden gnomes from crappy tire yet?

No gnomes yet, but on a related note, I almost convinced him to grow out the big, red bushman beard. Mrs. Tree may need a bit more convincing...

Oh Lord you two. :lol:

'Diver, that work looks so good that I'm going to let you get away with this one........ :)

Looks great!

Looks great....this thread would be better with more pictures of duke in it!:)

awesome job buddy :)

Holy hell!!!! What an amazing job! Somehting you would see on TV thats for sure!! Great job!

Nice work , now all you gotta do is tell the wife to keep all those ugly fridge magnets and other crap off the face of that new fridge.