The Renovation Part 2

Now that we have our plan, its time to remove everything...

There was quite a bit of dust and dirt under all these parts so now was a good time to give them a clean out before we start boarding over them with new timber. Lucky Kate's dad has a lot of timber on hand so this wasn't so difficult to get a hold of. We had Kate's brother Matus make us some new shelves to go under the seating area to separate things as well as remake the top of the seating area to handle our weight and adjust the hinges to the back of the seating area - where as before the hinges were in the middle which made putting larger items in there difficult.

There was also a few cracks in the door panels and screw holes from everything we removed around the place which had to be filled with wood filler putty and sanded over to be smooth before painting. You don't need to be so worried about mess at this stage you can use what you need to fill in the gaps and sand it back as smooth as possible. We also carved a little around where each screw would be fitted so they would be filled with putty and painted over for a clean finish.

After all the panels had be either removed or fixed (the ones we were not removing were the main sliding door in the kitchen area), Kates dad Tonno, brothers Adam,Jakub and myself were able to put Styrofoam behind the seating and below the floor for insulation. We also put soft insulation material into the doors for a bit extra protection for hot and cold weather.

There was a lot of gaps between where each surface met and we wanted this to look a little bit cleaner so we bought some acrylic and silicone with a silicone gun. The acrylic seal was great for the timber areas around the living/dining area as you can paint over it after you finish. The silicone was used for the wet areas such as bathroom and kitchen however this must be applied after the paint, you have to be careful as it dries quicker than the acrylic paste and leaves more mess if left too long without cleanup. This happened to us a few times but you can fix this using a stanley knife and a bit of patience. You can see below the previous owner when he applied silicone to the bathroom door area and then me applying the acrylic to the living area. 

We have taped off all the areas we don't want paint to get onto as this is a real pain to remove if you leave it a few days before realizing (which happened more than we expected) so paint thinner was used to remove this as soon as possible. At first we painted around the rubber strips around each door/cabinet however I would advise doing the extra work and taking them all off as it makes a big difference to the speed you can work and quality of paint around the edges of your doors and cabinets once you finish, as well as taking less time to glue the rubber edging back on and screw the doors back in after than taping everything off carefully. Kate and her mother Martha were busy painting all the doors/cabinets and surfaces that were not being worked on such as the kitchen and interior cabinets. We painted the seating area first which in hindsight was probably not a very good idea as this quickly became our workbench and has scratches and marks all over it now. We stated with brushes however quickly moved to using using rollers which really made a big difference to the quality and quantity of paint used. We ended up giving most things 3 coats of paint to get the real nice white shine we wanted however can add quite a bit of weight if you are not careful as 750ml of paint is about 1kg. So far we have used 3kg of paint and we will probably need 1kg more to finish the job. We spray painted the interior parts of the cabinets which doesnt look as good but we didnt want to add more paint where we would have things stored and not see much anyway. 

Some areas had exposed wiring which needed to be boxed off, we cut these to shape with a pair of scissors and screwed them into the wall. Initially we were going to double side tape these but the paint made this too slippery and we didn't want to paint around the boxes leaving the underneath exposed to the previous material.

We had a family friend who makes kitchens for a living so we headed over there to take a look at what materials he had left over from his jobs however could not find the exact colour we wanted. I did see a brand new piece which looked exactly as we wanted so we made a deal with him to get this one cut to shape. The kitchen bench looks great and we are really happy with the result... but we didnt factor in the extra 2cm overhang that was required and now we cannot open the bathroom door all the way lol. Its ok though when we are going to renovate the bathroom later this year we will replace this with a sliding/folding door. 

I have not been involved with wood projects since high school however I figured Id give the shelves a go myself and this is what I came up with. The render had 3 shelves but in practice 2 shelves are going to work a bit better for the area after measuring some common items such as jars/bottles of oil, storage items etc. 

We are currently adding some details to the doors, and putting screw caps on the windows to make these look a bit nicer. A bit of glue seems to do the trick as they are not fit exactly for this window and finding them may be a little difficult.

We are also adjusting the storage/gas compartment for kitchen and building the table for the living area which will double as the bed. There was some technical challenges to this which I will go into explanation in a later post. 

For now, here a video below you can watch which shows some of the process. I hope you enjoy :)