My Wife keeps me busy. It never stops ! 10/3/13

i love your threads, so yes indeed continue

not sure what you do for a living Grizz but you should be employed by Discovery Channel or something similar, talented and can tell a good story

good luck on the build

Ruffgeezer, Trekkerglenn, Mike.....

Thanks for the votes of confidence or morbid fascination.

It is going to be a painful build, because, being a 1921 build, there has been so many changes and bodges over time that I will now have to try to correct it all and deliver a result that we can live with for another 20 years or more.

OR UNTIL LORD FOSTERS BLOODY AIRPORT MEANS WE GET FORCIBLY REMOVED FROM HERE....... no idea what we will do then.

People have asked why not just a spruce up paint the units, and add new work tops?

The original idea was to strech the life out of the kitchen for a few more years by painting the dark wood out and all the panels on the walls to lighten it all up, but having lived here the last two years,fixing hinges, seeing gaps inbetween units, freezer door wonky, changing the cooker last year and having to create a bodged effect with tiles, as the originals are long since out of production led us to realise that now would be a good time to sort it all out.

I will see if I can find some pics of some of the other stuff I did in the last few years, just to give a better overall perspective.

WRT recycling...... and you all know I am out in front when it comes to re-purposing stuff......

My garage and the shed are both filled to the brim, and maxed out with units I have brought here from elsewhere or inherited from the previous owner, so I won't be using anything except one small shelving unit thats above the dishwasher and a single 400mm unit that is in the corner.

Mickey my neighbout is having the 4 large door units with integrated fridge and freezer for his garage.
The rest of the doors and drawer fronts will go on Ebay for a week as a joblot as it is solid Oak and if not sold for £10-20, then Freecycle once, the chopped up for the winter woodpile.

Looking forward to reading this one grizz. It always amazes me as to the range of your skills. I will happily state that i'm useless when it comes to DIY beyond painting/decorating. Anything electrical or plumbing related usually ends up having to get a pro in and we pay through the nose for it!

I was kept busy throughout my last period of unemployment too, ended up doing most of an extension to the back (and a little one on the side) of the inlaws house. They had a builder do most of the trowel trades and groundwork, an electrician to wire it all up and i did everything else. Including a kitchen, downstairs toilet and a utility room. Once that was all done i fitted a kitchen for a family friend and then did a large decking back at the in laws.

Joe...... THANKS FOR THE INPUT !!

I have never been territorial about threads I started.

We learn from each other and I have benefitted massively from forums and all I have learned from people.

I have over the years given stuff to people who were prepared to take the time to start a thread on anything from Hot Rod building to baking cakes.....just because I had something they could use.
Likewise, I often help mates build stuff or fix stuff, likewise, I have invited mates to use my tools, rather than go out and buy a tool for a single job.

You will see at the thread unfolds and I get around to writing and updating it, what we have done.

Every kitchen I have ever built, and many bathrooms over the years (more than 10 ) have been an amalgam of parts bought from various sources.

I agree with getting different design companies in to give you tips in exchange for a chat and a cuppa tea and digestives.

I will just mention two examples which I will repeat when writing of ways we have scored already.... we are not being as patient as I have been on my own in the past, but still casting our net wide.....

The worktops B&Q were going to supply were quoted at £405 for 3 x 3000mm lengths.

Nicola, my Pitbull did a quick search as she wanted the specific type and found a guy from Hull in Yorkshire (??) selling them at £50 each on Evilbay with £40 delivery for the first unit, then £10 delivery for all additional ones..... so we have 3 units still in B&Q wrapping being delivered at £210

The Door handles (30 of them and some knobs (6 of them) were found on Ebay at about 2.74 each..... B&Q was £20/pair for the same..... I then wrote to the guy just to ask him how much the total order would be and he replied that he would give us FREE Postage..... only £9.00 but think about it differently, its almost 4 handles, the knobs are cheaper.


Another thing which I will mention in my full write up is the value of lending a mates "TRADE CARD" and getting that discount as well.....

I am writing too much now, but always look for discount vouchers online for items you buy, either on the specific item, or for the shop.

Recently when Goose and I went to ride in Europe on our Motorbikes, he found a 3 year old 20% discount voucher code from one of the bike magazines on P&O Ferries.... we tried it, and ended up getting a discount on our crossings.

Please do add your own wins and advice on here.

Comments are always welcome and the more comments guys like me who take the time to put together Ride Reports or Build Reports get.... the more we will write and entertain you all.

Right.....

Many of you will remember the next cut and paste... I have been hurried along on another site for some more pics or story telling.

I am still busy with removing units, disentangling wires and under unit lights etc......

The is a job I did at Nicola's old house before we got married and came here.

April 2009..... Easter.

Well, rolling credits first....
Hope no one here works for B&Q , because after this week I am convinced it stands for Brainsurgeons and QuantumPhysicists.

Had to go back 6 times, to get bits, buy more carcasses, and then also to buy stuff they had delivered incorrectly, which had me driving to Strood to fetch, as they did not have stock.... that was a 110 minute trip in its own. Every trip to the Gillingham branch took an average of 50 minutes.

The carcass I had to buy had no holes drilled for the feet to fit in, so I had to cut the feet with a jigsaw (Pretty stupid ehh ? ) The holes for dowels were not drilled etc.


I had taken 4 days leave the past week to do this job.... thinking that it would leave us a weekend free to do whatever the weather permitted.

Anyway,
Before it ends up as a fully fledged whinge.

Nicola bought the house 18 months ago, knowing it needed some work, but possibly not realising what bodges had been done in the past. I soon found out.

OK: Forgot to mention, the tiles had to stay, because she likes them, even though I had offered to retile for her, which is something I am pretty good at.

A few months ago her kitchen sink drain again blocked, and overflow was into the cupboard.... we also realised that this was not the first time , as wood was swollen etc.... so decided to gut half the kitchen and reskin etc the rest to keep costs down.

The moment I started to do what I thought was a quick screw one off, and screw a new door on, I realised the hinge holes were not the same as when the original units were done......

I had to close every small hole with a match stick whittled to size, then cut off ans wood glued into place, after which I could mark out the new positions and drill them.
Once the hinges were on the doors, the carcass mounting holes differed as well, at least here I could use the topmost and bottom holes, and needed to only drill two more holes, of a different size to the first 4. So a quick job this was not going to be.


Based on doing my own kitchen a few years ago:

www.maximumbikes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5818&highlight=kitchen+magic

Kitchen as it was.



Hole plugging.


Some of the doors came damged like this.... I actually fitted it as 50 minutes per return trip got to me in the end.


Building some of the new carcasses


5 days of chaos, lucky the kids were in Italy (Earthquake zone) and Amsterdam (Perfecty for a 17 year old girl and her ex-boyfriend)




More incorrectly holed units...


All this got ripped out and replaced too.


Measure twice, cut once....?

Not me ;D and of course I did cock it up, lucky in a way I could fix easily.
Had Sam, the neighbours son helping at this point as the worktops were too much for me to handle alone... bastards are heavy.


Almost there...






Done !!

Note the before and after, not much difference, but 5 days of my life gone and a few more grey hairs on my head.



To....

23.20 and it is time to start this write up.

When we bought this house in 2010 we paid £25k less than the asking price as it had been based on the owner replacing the kitchen.

We chose to live with the kitchen as it was for 5-6 years, maybe giving the dark oak a make over with some cream/beige paint.

My last contract job ended in September after which I went for a ride through Europe with good mate Goose (Peter) on our motorcycles.

The job market is a bit slow in my game at the moment so Nicola decided that stripping out the kitchen right back to tiles, lights and power sockets would be a good thing, keeping me busy and saving on installation costs.

We had known what style we wanted for some time as the house is a typical 1920's build, so the next job was to start getting things going.

We had designers from various kitchen companies over to draw up plans and make suggestions on Farmhouse kitchen designs.

Eventually we decided that the "Cook & Lewis" range from B&Q was what we wanted.

The initial quote we got was quite steep, so we came home and Nicola started Googling and Ebay hunting.

I also took the plans and inventory and started deleting about £600's worth of stuff that had been part of the quote, but what I knew from past experience to be unnecessary. Things like bolts, various glues, colour resins etc.... even an E-Cloth for almost £10.... what happened to using an old T-shirt to wipe surfaces ?

We had decided to go for B&Q's Cooke & Lewis Hedingham Solid Oak kitchen.



However, neither of us could find a work top we liked. I had tried about 7 different samples on the display kitchen in the shop, with nothing striking the right note.

One of the shops we had gone to, and got the designer to come out to us from was Homebase.
Nicola and I went to see their display Spammy spam spam spam, no thank you, man. and then she saw the worktops she wanted in their display.

"Bella Noche" it was and would be, come hell or high water.



So when the B&Q quote came in at £405.00 for 3 x 3000mm lengths, it was Ebay and Google to the rescue. Ultimately we ordered the same items from an Ebay shop for a total of £210.00 delivered.

Door handles and knobs were again an item that was stupidly priced but sourced online for a lot less and when approached, the seller agreed to give us FREE POSTAGE.

While we were in Homebase for our first consult, we saw a kitchen sink that we had wanted on offer...... someone had ordered it, and then either not collected or refused it. However, the item was correct and the price had been knocked from £99.00 down to £25.00 so of course we bought it.

With the taps we had a similar experience, we chose the taps we wanted and when we got to the checkout lady luck was smiling on our wallet..... 50% price reduction.

We found some really nice 100 mm x 100 mm tiles at Vegas Tiles on one of the local industrial estates.....as most places had silly prices on smaller tiles. Getting exactly what she wanted meant that I was allowed to come home via MacDonalds and have a coffee there.

Another bit of advice I am happy to give on this build thread is to say that if you know, or can find someone with a "Trade Card" to see if they will let you use it..... it costs them nothing, but will nett you a significant real world saving on all costs.




All of these savings add up and ultimately means you can get more for your money.


While we were redoing the kitchen, we decided to completely change the layout as well as the existing layout was not very sensibly done.... this would mean we were going to replace the integrated Fridge/Feezer units with an American style side by side free standing unit.

Again, Nicola dug around and after finding what we wanted (I refused to have an ice maker or cold water dispenser) online, she also got an extra 10% off voucher online..... I love this girl.

After making our final tweaks I went back to B&Q on the bike and managed to spend 2hr 45 minutes there.....



I had done my own measuring up and found that there was 200mm missing in the calculations that the designer/consultant had made so I challenged him, at first he did not get the fact that one part of his design only added up to 3500mm but I had found from the wall to the side of the cooker/stove there was 3700mm
We then redesigned the kitchen and also removed some of the stuff that was on the original plan.

Regular delivery was quoted at 5-6 weeks from payment and order.

HOWEVER....With the Trade card..... delivery was going to be 6 days.

Added to that, (Seeing will be believing) at a slight reduction in cost vs all flat pack delivery.... the Trade card would see some or all of the carcasses being delivered built up, so assembly, doors, fitting etc still has to be done, but that will save me at least a day on this build.

Now waiting for various deliveries, starting with the work tops coming from Hull tomorrow and the big Orange truck doing its delivery on Thursday.




Today's work and progress to uploaded in a bit.

Trust you are still reading.

This write up has taken me almost an hour to do, maybe it is bedtime first.

I know what you mean.... jobs are never done.

After the kitchen we "only" have Tom's and our bedroom carpets to redo..... they were done about 20 years ago as well, and were thankfully good quality, albeit very bland and too light.

The biggest problem will be that there is sooo much furniture and tut in both rooms, one cannot really empty them completely. Items like a 3 and 2 door wardrobe, 3 chests of drawers and the linnen chest that Seth gave me from his mums home.... King size bed, and bedside units in our room, and Tom also has a double bed as he is well over 6 foot at 17 (the 13th October) and various other tut in his room.
It will be done, but we need to scrape together the courage to dismantle the rooms and move furniture about.

I will have to get an electrician to do the plugs, lights etc for me as I have been banned from it as it is insurance voiding if I do it myself..... the plumbing should be worth giving a go.... surely just stopcocks etc ?

Everything else I am either capable of or confident to give a go.

Watch this space ;D ;D ;D ;D

Based on recent experience your time would probably be more productively spent in the kitchen!

Good luck with finding a job, or just go it alone.