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Itai's Reno - Kitchen

Hi All.

On everyone's advice, as I go, I'm going to break out my giant post into individual posts - starting with the Kitchen.

I've already received some great advice from everyone and some interesting designs from @redracer01 over here: https://www.workshop.com.au/t5/Whole-of-House/Ideas-tips-and-advice-for-home-reno/td-p/32525/page/2

So, thank you so far 🙂

I'm open to receiving all sorts of ideas, though if we decide to break down the wall between the lounge and kitchen, that area will probably be where our dining room table is. The spot to the left of the kitchen is currently a 1.8m window, which I'm thinking of converting to a sliding door. However, maybe I don't and instead extend the kitchen along that line to the other wall. That would give us a ton more space while not totally losing the windows? But that means access to the future deck area would only be via the laundry (which we will make look nice 🙂 )

Here are some reference photos of the current kitchen layout and the floor plans:

IMG-20191003-WA0004 copy.jpg

I'll put what I'm thinking in a separate reply to avoid confusion 🙂

Regards

Itai

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Itai

Some lessons learnt along the way:

1. If you sell your old kitchen, then you can actually charge someone to demolish it for you 😀

2. Levelling cabinets is much harder than I thought, especially when the walls are actually wavy (but you'd never know without a straight edge) and they are definitely not square (approx 2cm difference between top and bottom of tall cabinets at it's worst). Also, the difference changes depending where you are on the wall.

3. You should not paint freshly laid plaster that you intend to tile! I just thought I'd seal it with basecoat for extra protection ... then I googled tiling and saw I should not as it stops the tile adhering correctly to the substrate (the surface you are adhering to). So I spent hours sanding it back and I still find fine dust to this day!

4. Installing an island is much simpler than I thought

5. Make sure you measure the width of the top, bottom AND middle of tall cabinets before permanently fixing the backing on, wood tends to bow over that length

6. Installing an oven and stove is much easier than you'd think, just make sure you have trades for the important bits (electrical / gas)

7. You can cram much more than people say you can cram under the sink ... note the low profile drawer I am using above the bins. It fits a bunch of flat stuff, and tall bottles right on the front. I cut out a small dint on the back of the draw where the sink drain is.

8. If you're beginner, don't use the Dunlop Rubber based tile ready made tile adhesive. You WILL get it everywhere, and it is damn hard to remove once dried. Especially when you're trying to clean up the spaces in between the tiles before grouting. Instead, get yourself a mastic or cement based tile adhesive (make sure it's fit for your purpose). When it dries, it's like drywall compound sort of, and scratch off relatively easily with a scraper.

9. Get funky with your designs, the beauty of flatpacks is if you don't like the doors, or get bored of them, you can swap them out again. The carcass (cabinet without doors and end panels) are irrelevant to the decision. Kaboodle has an amazing range!

10. Cover panels get very expensive very quickly when you deviate from the base colours. Try make your own. MDF wood is great, except near a sink. But also remember, you need to think carefully about what screws you use for MDF so it doesn't just chew up the wood. Alternatively, think about using Marine plywood for a upmarket wood finish if your benchtop is stone / laminate.

11. Installing a kitchen overall is much easier than you think!

We did the entire thing (except for electrical and benchtops) in 3-4 days.

All comments

Itai

And here we go. My current thoughts on the kitchen.

Kitchen idea.jpg
What do you guys think in terms of effective use of space.

By closing that thoroughfare, am I severely limiting the functionality of the house, by making it that you can only get to the kitchen via the lounge? Is that a bad design idea?
(I'm hoping to shorten that wall between the lounge and corridor so you don't have to walk as far down. Depends if it is structural or not).
Is it worth removing the thoroughfare for that huge addition of space. Will it make the corridor feel smaller and darker? If I do close it, I could potentially inset the close a little to create some nice floating shelves to make the corridor feel bigger. If I do that, is it still worth creating that space in the first place.

Alternatively. I could potentially not create that sliding door (in green) and instead extend the kitchen right down that whole line (adding almost 2 meters of benchtop space). Then I can keep the thoroughfare as such, but i'd lose the ability to make that a door. I'd then probably make an island in a horizontal rather than vertical direction. But access to outside would then only be via the laundry.

Edit: In the design above, we could also make the island like the one in green below:

Thanks

Regards

Itai

Itai

Hey All. I've been playing around with the Bunnings Kaboodle designer to get an idea of what I might do with the space. What do you think of these two layouts (a G layout and a Island layout)
Please note there is a door on that smooth wall perpendicular to the pantry (or stove in G kitchen). There is also not going to be a wall directly opposite the cooktops even though there is one in the designs (with the tiles all over it). It will open into the dining / lounge area as per the floor plan in the first second post.

G Layout:
Offers around 0.2 cubic meters more space (around the size of a dishwasher space)
Gives around 10cm more space between left wall and counter top to get through to the back sliding door. (around 1 - 1.1m)

G Kitchen 2.PNG G Kitchen.PNG

Island Layout:
There will also be 30cm deep cupboards on the front of the island. Just the bunnings builder didn't give me this option. I will still have a 30cm overhang.
Gives around 0.9m between the left wall and counter top (around 0.9m - 1m) (If we manage to push back the wall by the pantry, then I can move the island further over and open this space a bit. That won't apply to the G shape kitchen).

Island Kitchen 2.PNG Island Kitchen.PNG

Would love to know your thoughts. Currently, our gas cooktop is where the fridge is in these photos. But we will be installing induction instead.

Also, any recommendations for good quality flat pack kitchen companies that can also do some customization? I've heard there's lots of good ones that are priced similarly to bunnings / Ikea, but are better quality.

And is 2-pac painting the way to go?

Thanks

Regards

Itai

Itai

Hey all

Any tips on kitchen provider? I've looked at Ikea, Kaboodle and then there's a few other flatpack makers:
Kitchenshack - they deliver fooly assembled units
Kinsman Kitchens
https://uplifekitchens.com.au/
https://goflatpacks.com.au/
https://www.thebluespace.com.au/pages/kitchen-cabinets-online

Those last 2 would be online ordering.
An advantage to goflatpacks.com.au is they are custom made, so I can choose custom sizes.

Of course price is another issue, if they are wildly different, I will look at that too.

I'm planning to get a 2pac satin finish for the doors.

Any other recommendations?

redracer01

My suggestion is of course Kaboodle! 18mm panels all around, traditional dowel and screw assembly. It will not shear, loosen or sag like cam-lock or push clip type systems. Does not need special angle brackets to hold it to the wall. You can directly screw the cabinet to the wall and is structurally sound. It can take the weight of both 20 and 40 mm edge stone tops. Good color choice in the range. I suggest gloss finish and vacuum laminated doors so that its easy to clean is tough and can withstand attacks from small humans, satin tends to hold dirt from dusty and greasy fingers ( don;t let me stop you if you really like satin! ). If your thinking of solid or engineered tops and timber bench tops, I strongly suggest THINK bench tops! Repairable, easy to maintain and is used in both domestic and commercial applications. Let me answer that last question on your last post. 2 pac is great if it can be maintained, difficult to repair and replace. Vacuum laminated doors gives you the look of 2 pack but is about 100 times tougher. Easy to replace and no paint matching required. Oh and my vote is for the stand alone island, it seems to me the G shape just takes so much space and everything becomes crowded in the corner where the blind corner pantry is.

redracer01

Hello @Itai I was looking at your drawing and wanted to confirm sizes. The usual distance allowed between base cabinets and island is 1 meter. It is not a fixed rule but is usually recommended by designers to allow easy passage between two people in the kitchen.

1. Is the distance where the pantry, fridge and oven tower 2200mm not including the cabinets near the window which is 600mm. Does that space in total equal 2800mm? or is there more space?

2. How big did you make your island on the kaboodle kitchen designer?

I just wanted to confirm the sizes perhaps I can make more suggestions to your current set up of the cabinets. Please correct me if the sizes are incorrect.

Cheers!

The island size is based on the benchtop size which is 1876 x 900 x 40 this includes overhangs.

Itai

Hey @redracer01 Thanks for the advice.

So you aren't a fan of the higher end Ikea stuff? Asking because their drawer / size options seem to be the easiest to work with + they have a billion accessories for them. But for example, I really like the pantries with drawers and for the island cooktop, the base cabinet with 8 slim line drawers to keep my spices, utensils and foil, etc really nicely organised. I couldn't seem to find these similar things in Kaboodle.

For the measurements, I've been working off not less than 1m between island and anything else, except for that passage door. However, I think we've decided to open that right up to give flexibility in layout (i.e. it's really painful to have a door / fridge door right up against that wall which poked out 1.26m. Below are the layouts with dimensions. Ceiling is 2.4m.

Kitchen Dimensions

Whole open plan area dimensions

For cooktop island, we're looking at an in-ceiling rangehood so that we don't close off the space.

I found the Miele DA2906 for $1400, but need to check if it will fit in between the joists. Great price for it, but only seems to have 750m3/h extraction. Might be able to get the Sirius in-ceiling extractor from Harvey Norman discount warehouse for around $2300, but then extraction is somewhere around 900-1000m3/h.

Edit: Another thing I was looking at doing was having the island be 1.2m deep, which includes 60cm deep cabinets on the front, 30cm deep cabinets on the back and then 30cm overhang. Cabinets on the back would be for less used items.

Thanks

Regards

Itai

Jason

Hi @Itai,

The wonderful @redracer01 is a Bunnings team member so isn't likely to recommend products from elsewhere.

I will pass on your feedback about Kaboodle to the Bunnings team. Hopefully @redracer01 and other community members will be able to make suggestions based on your needs.

Many thanks,

Jason

Itai

Ah, sorry, I didn't realise 🙂

Jason

All good @Itai. Workshop is brought to you by Bunnings but you are welcome to talk about products from other brands. You are just probably better served contacting them directly if you have questions about their offerings.

Thanks,

Jason

Itai

Yeah ok. I thought Bunnings just paid to advertise on here 😋

Good to know though, cause I have plenty of questions about non-kitchen bunnings stuff too which I will ask when I get to them!

redracer01

I totally agree ikea has a lot more sizes. Having had look at your floor plan you deffinitely have the room now that you have taken out that portruding wall near the fridge. The island should fit very well in that space. I saw some online ceiling rangehoods might be worth having a look just to compare prices. I still vote for the separate island as it gives you much better flow in the kitchen. Looking forward to the build and please post updates. We would love to see your kitchen and house renovations from start to finish.

Itai

Thanks @redracer01

While Ikea has many sizes, they don't have it all. And vise versa for bunnings. I like the 30cm deep cupboards from bunnings for the island, and also the shorter blind corner (Ikea's is 128). In an ideal world, I could just use both companies together to build the kitchen exactly how I want! Once I get started with the Kitchen, hopefully in Jan, I'll post some pics 🙂

Also, thanks for your advice on vacuum laminated being tougher. I had no idea. They do both look great, but everyone raves about 2pac. Though I don't have any special colour choices, so would be happy with vacuum laminated, especially if it's tougher. Interesting what you said about Satin being akin to marks, I would've thought gloss gets marks more easily?

Regards

Itai

Hey All.

We finished the whole house reno, including the kitchen. Thought I'd share all the photos for the kitchen (the rest later). I'm quite proud of myself, I did the whole kitchen myself. The only thing I didn't do was replace the plaster once we tore out the old kitchen (I would've, but we already had a plasterer in the house for the reno, so figured let's save some time). I ended up measuring and choosing cabinets myself, chose the colours with my wife. The bench top was custom made directly by a wood factory based on my dimensions ... and with no margin, it fit perfectly! They even dropped it off and I had them sand and seal it on the spot. What was really cool was I got to go to the wood yard and choose the bits of timber and the order they were laminated in, so I got a benchtop exactly to my spec.

The blue cover panel on the front of the island is custom, made from some 9mm MDF cut-to-size, a spray paint primer and spray paint enamel paint from bunnings. I used spray paint to get the mirror finish!

We were also very concerned about storage, so we went with a variety of internal draws and gadgets to greatly maximise storage space. Every cupboard (except the one on the front of the island) has hidden or smart storage of some sort.

We didn't end up putting the final touches as Vic went into lockdown and I didn't want to buy online, but it's only really some sort of storage for recipe books above the coffee machine. Might make some custom open shelving or something. The wine rack above the fridge I custom made from a cover panel matching the wooden doors.

The hardest part of all of this was getting it square. Even now, it's not perfectly square, but the bubble is within the lines, so should be good. I made sure the sink and oven were square though.

Happy to answer any questions.

Before:

Screen Shot 2020-11-17 at 16.20.46.png

Screen Shot 2020-11-17 at 16.20.58.png

Screen Shot 2020-11-17 at 16.21.36.png

After

During:

Screen Shot 2020-11-17 at 16.25.19.png Hanging the wall cabinets Lining up the island Fitting island drawers

Screen Shot 2020-11-17 at 16.26.49.png Fitting pantry draws

Screen Shot 2020-11-17 at 16.27.14.png Choosing the benchtop wood

Screen Shot 2020-11-17 at 16.27.52.png Figuring out where plumbing will go vs draws

Screen Shot 2020-11-17 at 16.28.06.png

Screen Shot 2020-11-17 at 16.28.17.png Geting benchtop ready for cut out Prepping for tiles (Not the basecoated plaster!! Don't do it) Installing tiles My wife putting together the cabinets Freshly plastered, basecoated and painted walls. I didn't do a second layer of paint where the cupboards were going to hide the walls

Screen Shot 2020-11-17 at 16.24.35.png

MitchellMc

@Itai,

That is an amazing transformation you have achieved there. Many kitchens you see these days are fairly generic. You've added some styling here that makes this very unique and you should feel extremely proud of your efforts. I especially like the handles for the cabinetry as I've never seen anything like that before.

I am now even more in favour of bi-fold alfresco doors than I was before.

Congratulations on bringing this all together. I trust our members will be truly inspired by what you have created.

Mitchell

Itai

Some lessons learnt along the way:

1. If you sell your old kitchen, then you can actually charge someone to demolish it for you 😀

4. Installing an island is much simpler than I thought

5. Make sure you measure the width of the top, bottom AND middle of tall cabinets before permanently fixing the backing on, wood tends to bow over that length

6. Installing an oven and stove is much easier than you'd think, just make sure you have trades for the important bits (electrical / gas)

11. Installing a kitchen overall is much easier than you think!

We did the entire thing (except for electrical and benchtops) in 3-4 days.

Itai

@MitchellMc Thanks mate, appreciate it.

Yeah, I'd love the bi-fold doors ... but my budget is $2.5k supply and installed. And from what I can tell, that's pretty much just the door if I'm lucky. I was quote $6k for supply and install of bi-fold previously 🙁

And I need to stick to budget as we have lots of plans for the outdoor space, including a deck, a DIY pergola of some sort, raised garden beds, new fence all round, water feature / pond, Rain forest style fairy garden, etc.

Jason

Congratulations on what you have achieved @Itai and thank you for sharing photos as well as lessons learned along the way. I'm sure the community will be inspired by what you have done.

Jason

diy_hausdesigns

Amazing job mate ! Inspo for days

Regards

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