Put Tin on It

I think that "put tin on it" might just be our new catch phrase around here.

We've put tin below our downstairs kitchen bench.

We've put tin below our upstairs kitchen bench.

We've put tin above our upstairs kitchen bench.

We're planning on putting tin above our upstairs laundry bench.

So why not above our downstairs laundry tub, huh?

But first things first. Surprise! We now have a downstairs laundry! If we rewind a bit, see this old not-plastered-yet photo of the garage? The recessed area to the left is the laundry.

And here it was after plastering (and after the height of the floor was raised).

Then we painted the whole garage grey...

After which the carpenter framed out the little laundry nook opening properly with timber trim...

And then we were left with a bare opening. The flooring guys had left a little pile of bamboo floorboards behind when they finished the internal floors, so we decided to cut them to size and add them to the floor of the laundry nook ourselves. Unfortunately it didn't occur to us to do that before the laundry tub was installed, so we had to fit them around it much as we could without disturbing the plumbing fittings inside it.

The laundry tub itself we bought secondhand for $100 rather than buying a new one for over $200. It's in great condition, so why not save the little bit of extra cash?

And... we put tin on it. Actually, we put tin above it. We just managed to scrounge enough of an offcut after covering all of our other tin areas to wrap a little section around the corner.

And I sweet talked our tiler into silicon-ing the gap between the tub and the tin so that we wouldn't get any stray drips down the wall. Not bad, if you ask me! 

But we weren't quite finished with this little space yet. We had a few secondhand cupboards leftover from our downstairs kitchen and upstairs laundry fit-offs, so we figured we might as well pop a few in the little downstairs laundry for some storage.

Tom used his stud-finder to measure where we could screw the cabinets into the wall and actually have their weight supported...

And then set up an extremely sophisticated support system to temporarily hold the cabinet in place while he screwed it into the wall. If you ever want to replicate this support system yourself, Plasma TV and coffee machine boxes (which we borrowed from the new tenant) do the job remarkably well.

We had three little leftover cabinets in all, but unfortunately the laundry nook was just a little bit too narrow to sit them each side by side. We thought about every possible configuration to include all three, but just couldn't manage it. And we wanted to leave vertical space for a dryer above the washing machine, so we left it at two cupboards.

We're quite proud of our little laundry nook! And considering that the only things we actually had to purchase for it were the $100 laundry tub and a $25 mixer tap, we can't complain about the cost!

What do you think? Are you jealous of our tenant?

The Cherry on Top

Yesterday I talked about the icing on the cake (i.e. finishing our downstairs bathroom off).

Well today we've moved on to the cherry on top. Except it's not in the bathroom.

As we steamroll our way towards the finish line for this downstairs renovation, we're back to the downstairs kitchen! Last we left it, I'm pretty sure it was looking like this.

Does an appliance-less kitchen qualify as a kitchen?

We didn't think so. So... I set about filling it with appliances. We dithered for quite a while over whether or not we should bite the bullet and buy new appliances, or whether we could get some decent options second hand at a fraction of the price. After all, so far we haven't had any issues with any of the appliances we've bought secondhand.

After realising that we'd be looking at well over $2,000 for brand new ones (and that's for the cheap brands), we went secondhand hunting. I found this gas cooktop and electric oven combination for a grand total of $400...

And we shelled out about $100 for a rangehood to go above. We had a bit of trouble finding an appropriate rangehood, because we needed one that didn't need to be ducted outside in order to work effectively.

And I had already bought a $100 IKEA sink that you got a glimpse of when we put the tin on the back of the kitchen peninsula. See it there perched o top of the bench?

And I paired it with a $100 goose-neck IKEA tap as well that I forgot to take a close-up shot of when it was installed. But you can see it here in this wider shot.

Where you can also see our new integrated dishwasher! It's a Smeg, and we got it for $250! It's nowhere near brand new, but it's a good brand, and it works nicely. So, at a mere fraction of what a brand new dishwasher costs, we figure we can fairly easily replace it with another secondhand one if need be down the track.

The fact that it's integrated (meaning you're only supposed to see the top panel, and you can put a piece that matches your cabinets over the rest of it) caused us a few problems, since obviously we were working with our secondhand kitchen cabinets, and didn't have many spare cabinet doors leftover.

We did find that the front of what was supposed to be a drawer under a wall oven was the perfect width, but unfortunately it wasn't tall enough, so we had to add a plain panel beneath it. I think it does look a bit strange, but hopefully only if you're focusing on it.

So that's our new fully functional kitchen! Hooray!

But we're still not quite done!

What's next? Window coverings!

As you can see from this wider kitchen shot from above (where you can also decide whether or not you think the panels on the dishwasher look strange), the windows in the lounge bring in a lot of natural light, and are looking pretty bare.

So, we went curtain shopping. I think we must have chosen the messiest Spotlight store in Australia to visit, so it took us MUCH longer than it should have to find enough matching pairs of curtains for all of our windows. We eventually settled on these black faux silk pinch pleat panels, with a sheer panel between them.

We actually installed them before we installed the newly black-sprayed tin panel on the back of the kitchen bench (see here), so we had a chance to lay out the smaller piece of tin to demonstrate how nicely they match.

And you can just see a black curtain peeking out in the corner of this shot when Tom was installing the tin.

We also bought matching panels for the bedrooms too, but stupidly, I forgot to take photos of them. Sorry!

I didn't forget to take photos of the blind we bought for the kitchen window, though! Yay!

We found it at Bunnings, and it was lovely and cheap! I'm afraid I can't recall the exact price, but it was less than $50, I'm sure.

It has a nice woven straw kind of feel, and it fits the slightly odd-sized kitchen window beautifully!

It actually lines perfectly with the little IKEA sink! Yay for happy accidents, yet again!

And of course, the fact that the blind is black means that it ties in with the black tile splashback above the stove, and also the dark pendants above the bench!

And... creates a nice connection with the black curtains in the lounge, so everything matches!

What do you think? Can you believe that is almost exactly the same view as this, just a few months ago?

I can't!

The Icing on the Cake

Let's just get this bathroom finished already!!!

It feels like this downstairs renovation has been dragging on forever (probably because it has), but we're tantalisingly close to the finish line!

After we showed off our carpenter-ing prowess making a bookshelf that IKEA would be proud of for the end of our downstairs bath tub (see here)...

We were keen to call this bathroom a done deal.

First things first, finishing up our vanity cabinet. Our beautiful, spray-painted glossy black vanity cabinet.

With a drawer missing and no drawer handles.

The drawer was missing because the S-trap plumbing for the bowl sink was taking up its space, so it could only close about half way. My original plan had been to simply cut off the drawer and just glue its front to the cabinet, so it wouldn't be open-able.

But we quickly realised that the plumbing only took up half of the available space, so we could shorten the drawer and at least then still have it useable.

So that the drawer was still nice and stable though, we didn't want to cut off its bottom (or all of its back), so we just cut a little piece of scrap plywood to size and screwed it into the drawer. Then we cut out a little chunk of the back board so it fit around the pipe, and we had a fully functioning (although shallow) drawer in no time.

Meanwhile, handle time!

We chose some really simple little chrome pull handles for each of the drawers. Tom and I actually nearly came to blows over them in the middle of Bunnings. He hated them, I thought they'd be perfect. I think they were only just over $1.00 each, and they're actually designed as cheap pulls for doors or cupboards, not for fancy pieces of furniture. They didn't even get their own little display like all of the other drawer handles and knobs. But I thought they'd work perfectly.

I'll let you decide who you want to side with.

No I won't. I'm not that big a person. Clearly I was right. Tom very grumpily allowed me to buy them (still convinced that they were awful), and fitted them to the drawers. And now he agrees that they're perfect. Aah it's lovely being right all the time!

So that's the vanity done. Now for the blank wall above it!

As you may recall, the vanity cabinet (that we then got spray-painted) was a dresser with a mirror in a former life.

The timber frame of the mirror was a bit cracked in places, so we glued it up with some super glue and then I went nuts with the wood putty to try and smooth over the cracks.

After letting it dry overnight, I sanded it back, and although it might not look it, the end result was nice and smooth as you ran your finger over it.

So can you guess what I was going to do next? Do you think it might involve black paint?

Yeah, you know me too well.

But first was the fun part. Taping up the mirror so it didn't get paint on it.

 

I think this was the moment when I stopped admiring the mirror's unique curves.

Just as an aside, I went to this effort to tape up the mirror rather than simply removing it from the frame because we weren't entirely sure that the frame was structurally sound enough to be deprived of the mirror. As a whole package, it was sturdy. Without? We didn't want to go down that road.

So, tape and newspaper it was. Then, I perched the mirror on top of a crate surrounded by drop sheets...

And sprayed to my heart's content. First undercoat...

And then a few very thin coats of glossy black spray paint later...

I loved it already. I let it sit undisturbed for a few days, and then carefully peeled the tape away to expose the mirror again. I used a little razor blade to tidy any small patches where paint had seeped around any edges, and you'd never know it wasn't black to begin with!

So then my wonderfully strong husband held it up for me in the bathroom while I ummed and aahed over how high above the taps it should be...

And then we had to decide how to fix it to the wall. Normally bathroom mirrors are just glued to the wall, but we didn't want to trust the old backing board of the mirror too much. We had visions of it one day separating from the frame and the glass crashing down over our beautiful vanity.

So, we came up with a genius idea. We drilled two holes roughly in line with where the bottom of the mirror would go, and put two little screws in them.

 

Then we drilled two little corresponding as-shallow-as-possible holes in the back of the bottom section of the mirror frame...

And then we very carefully lined up the little mirror holes over our screws in the wall, and it rested on them, meaning that the screws were only visible if you were crouching on the floor looking up.

Of course that only took care of the bottom of the mirror and gravity. We still needed to prevent the top of the mirror from sliding forward and bringing it all crashing to the ground.

We eventually decided that our best option would be to drill one hole directly through the centre of the top of the mirror's frame, so we could put one screw into the wall there to hold it tightly.

Never say I can't multi-task!

So then we were left with one gaping hole in the wall where the top of the mirror would go (it's the black dot just to the left of the light reflection on the wall in this photo), and the two little screws above the taps.

Since we had to drill through the tile and we wanted to make sure our top screw would really grip the wall and stop the mirror from falling forwards (and unfortunately there wasn't a conveniently located wall stud right where we needed it), we used one of these clippy screws (that's the official name, for sure). Its two little metal wings fold inwards as you push the screw through the hole, and then spring out on the other side, holding it snugly to the wall.

Like so!

That mirror isn't going anywhere!

Thankfully we checked the levels and it's straight. Just as well at this point! There's no going back!

So there you have it. I think we can finally call this bathroom finished! Hooray!

What do you think?