Lino Removal!!!

Day one of lino removal

Here's the goodies I bought from Bunnings today to get started in removing the lino from the kitchen and laundry floor before demolition starts.  Oh I do love Bunnings!!!!

The heat gun I must say is a great handy tool to have for lino removal.  Though it would be even better if I had a helper!!! Any volunteers out there??  As one person could heat the lino and the other person can scrape underneath.  But so far I'm managing on my own!

This is the gorgeous lino being removed!  I think its the original from 1980 when the house was built.  Its certainly stuck down well.

It took me approximately one hour to do this corner of the laundry.... I have a fair way to go yet.... many more days and maybe weeks, me thinks!  Though once I get going I might be surprised.  Some parts are easier to remove than others too.

OMG!!!

I thought it was going to be back bending, but didn't think it would be this back bending!!! I'm going to end up with muscles in places I didn't think were possible!  Its certainly helping my core strength!

Lots of breaks for hot cups of tea was in order :-)  Also my girlfriend, Kelly, and her son, Breyton, rescued me for a hot chocolate later in the avo, which was very welcome.

Thank god for EPSOM salts in the bath at the end of the day too!!!!

I thought once I had removed all the lino as much as I can, I will then spray the floor with Cooper's paint stripper.  It doesn't actually say its good for glue but I'll give it a go! It can't hurt!

We originally bought the paint stripper to strip the window and door frames inside and out.  Its such a great product to strip paint.  You don't have to sand the woodwork afterwards either!!

This was a section we tested outside.  Its so smooth...

I will talk about the paint stripper later on in our blog.

Right that's it for the day.  Now I need to finish off the chicken, leek and parsnip pie for dinner....

Day two of lino removal

Friday, 20 June 2014.

Before I continue with lino chit chat... here's a photo of our pie we had last night.  It was totally delicious!

I spent the whole day on Friday, from 9.00am to 4.00pm, pulling up our lino.  I made great progress, as you can see below.  I got a really good rhythm going and a well worked system of removing the lino.

Firstly I used the heat gun to soften the lino.  Sometimes I could just pull the lino straight up, other times I needed to use the scraper underneath to lift it, even though it had been softened.

Then I placed very hot, wet tea towels, four in total, on the floor, on top of the underlay of the lino.  This is basically paper and glue.  I repeated this approximately 3-4 times to soften the glue so it would easily scrape up.  This worked really well, as you can see above.  While the tea towels were doing there job, I would continue on with the next section with the heat gun.  Then return to the tea towels, heat them up again and repeat the cycle.

Day three of lino removal

Sunday 22 June 2014

Today my hubby kindly helped me out, mainly in respect of moving the washing machine, dryer, dishwasher and fridge out of the way, so I could remove the lino from underneath them.  Dave then went off to install our new light fittings upstairs - will talk about them later on.

Below you can see the tea towels in action!!

I now only have a small section left in the kitchen to remove, so should have it all done and dusted early this week.   The next job will be to remove the carpet and disintegrated underlay from the dining room.   Talk to you again soon.  Take care for now.

Day four of lino removal

Monday 23 June 2014

I have finally finished removing all the lino from the kitchen, laundry and pantry floor.  I must admit it wasn't that hard in the end.  The heat gun really helped, along with the hot wet tea towels.  Believe it or not I really enjoyed doing it, very satisfying seeing the end result.  Even though this was over four days, they weren't all full days work, only one.

This afternoon I also removed the carpet and underlay from the dining room, ready for the demolition day.  The spade was used to remove the metal carpet strip between the carpet and the lino.

I had fun removing the carpet tack stripping from around the edge.... for this I used a flathead screw driver and hammer, most of it removed quiet easily.

Nice feeling getting these two rooms done ready for demolition day.  Now I can sit back and put my feet up for a few days, before I start my next task!!!

Kitchen Ideas & plans

Hello again!

We are very excited as our kitchen plans are all drawn up and have been submitted to three joinery companies for pricing, were now awaiting with abated breath for the costs!!!

To get to this stage I have been gathering ideas for our kitchen/walk in pantry, (scullery or butlers pantry as they are also known as) and laundry for quite some time now.  In reality it must be approximately six months or more!  I'm known to be a detailed person and to always have things close to perfect!!  If not perfect!  I'm also a bit of a control freak, but I am learning to let go and breath.  I do believe I am getting better as I get older!

Anyhow this isn't about me its about my ideas!

I sourced all the ideas via Pinterest and Houzz.  Both are absolutely amazing sites, but please be warned you can get totally engrossed in them!! I have lost days and evenings researching!

Here's my link to all the kitchen styles, ideas on Pinterest...

http://www.pinterest.com/suzielock/churton-kitchenlaundry/

Our kitchen will be a traditional/colonial style design.  White cabinets with a mix of stainless steel, Quantum Quartz and Formica bench tops.

The main island bench top, which will be the centre piece of the kitchen will be produced in a Quantum Quartz, Engineered Stone, we have chosen the Turino colour/style.

In our pantry we are going to use a Formica top in Silver Strata velour finish.  This top will be in a totally separate room to the Quantum Quartz and stainless steel, so it shouldn't clash with anything but will be a nice mix of surfaces throughout.  The colour should also blend in too.

I'm hoping we can afford the following type of tapware! Or something similar for the main sink as this style would really fit well with the colonial feel I am trying to achieve:

We bought all our lighting requirements for the kitchen, dining, pantry and laundry the other day too. We were really happy as we managed to capture an overall saving of $1,200!!  It took me a few days to finally make a decision on what would look really good over the island bench and the dining table, within our budget range too!. Thankfully Dave, our daughter and designer were all in agreement of the selection. I think these chemistry beka pendants will look quite stunning.  The picture doesn't do them justice!

In regards to the installation time frame, we are looking at the last two weeks of July to remove walls, existing cabinetry, plumbing, electrical, re-gib, plaster etc.  Marked in yellow are the walls to be removed.  Marked in green are the doorways to be filled in with gib.

Then either the first or second week of August for the joiner to install the cabinetry.  Its all getting very exciting now!!!

The following is our kitchen plans as they stand at present, depending upon the costs received from the joiner we may need to cut back on some of the detail.  

view of cooker, sink, drawers etc.

view of fridge, wine rack etc.

view of island drawers, and unit for microwave 

view of shelving within the pantry room

My job before the demotion starts is to remove the lino from the kitchen and laundry floor.  This will save us time, and labour costs, plus I can't wait to get my hands dirty and that great feeling of accomplishment!  So I have several ways of attempting this.  Hot water, spade and scraper first.  If that doesn't work a heat gun, with and electric scraping tool.  Wish me luck!!!

If you have any other tips on how to achieve the lino removal, I would love to hear them.

Our Return : Stage Two : Kitchen Revival

Well what do you know!  We have returned back to New Zealand with Dave's job, for 2-3 years.  We have been away for the past eight years, living in Sydney and the Hunter Valley, Australia.  Its nice to be back amongst family and our NZ friends again!  Our 24 year old daughter has also moved back in with us too.  I'm told it is the in thing to do apparently these days!!  Our son is also able to visit and stay with us too while were here.  I must say it is great having Kimberly & Cameron close by again, spending quality time with us.

As I discussed earlier we have had our family home rented out while we have been overseas.  The house has seen four lots of tenants through it.  All in all the house and property is in pretty good nick!  Though its in need of a lot of TLC!

The agreement/plan in returning to NZ is for me to co-ordinate the renovation of our home with the plan to sell in three years time!  When we will return to Australia again to our other home.

We are starting with the kitchen, which is very dated, dark and unloved... the bench top, OMG!, Whatever were the previous owners thinking, putting in a tiled bench top!! The crumbs and bits are so hard to get out of the grouting!! Back when we bought the house I just used baking soda and a toothbrush to clean the grouting, since our return I just grin and bear it as its about to get ripped out!

Between the kitchen and the dining room is a wall with a small hatch and glass through cabinets.  This lets in some light but we would like to remove the wall completely to open plan the kitchen, and dining room to create one large entertaining hub for our home.

I can't wait to show you the new kitchen plans when they are complete... shouldn't be long now!

The Beginning & Stage One

Our Family Home

My husband, Dave and I bought this gorgeous three bedroom, 1980 colonial designed home, back in November 2000, with the plan to bring it back to life and to give it the love that it deserves.  The internal structure of the house was sound, however a redesign was required as there was no staircase to the upstairs level and the upstairs was only a shell, albeit it was a two storey house with windows, and net curtains!

The original layout downstairs consisted of a large cathedral roofed entrance/hallway (which is what sold it to us, as well as the street appeal!), off this to the right leading through double french doors at the front of the house is the large living room with a gas fireplace, which leads through another set of double french doors into the dining room.  From the dining room is the kitchen and adjoining separate laundry.  Down the long, wide hallway on the front left was the large master bedroom with a Scotchman's en-suite to the main bathroom.  At the rear is the guest bedroom with an en-suite and back towards the entrance way is another small bedroom.

The long hallway, on one side of the wall had three lots of separate cupboard doors.  One was a double coat cupboard, the other a single linen cupboard and another double cupboard for storage.  Storage is great, yes, don't get me wrong, but I thought this was a bit of an eyesore to look at from a design point of view!

Before we started the first round of renovations we lived in the house for two years.  Everyone always says you should live in a place before you start decorating or remodelling it, they are right!  This helped us to get a feel of the place and how the layout worked.  The only thing we did do was paint the bathroom white, as it had this dark tree wallpaper with birds in the trees, probably a fashion statement back in the 80s!

After several discussions, and debates with the architect back then!!! The design was agreed upon for the development of the staircase, the upstairs layout and slightly re-designing the hallway cupboards.

Downstairs - staircase installation

Upstairs - Master bedroom, bathroom, study & reading nook

The before, during and after photos of our initial renovation.  The photos aren't that great as I have taken a photo of a photo from my iPhone!

top left photo shows the shell, along with net curtains,

to the right is the framing looking through in to the new master bedroom.

bottom left photo shows the entrance to the main bedroom,

to the right quarter of the bedroom is removed to make way for the staircase!

we needed to replace the glass in the roof line of the entrance,
hall way too as it was cracked & not safe

Voila we have a staircase!  The staircase is heart Rimu.

The hallway cupboards

the far left is removed to make way for a study nook in the bedroom.

the far right double cloak cupboard is removed to enlarge the pantry in the kitchen

and the single doorway becomes a double entry laundry cupboard.

Upstairs bathroom,

loving the underfloor heating in the mornings!

Upstairs master bedroom, I love the theatrical curtains!

We painted the upstairs in double pearl lusta.

We also replaced the original gas fire place with a new (back then) Rinnai Flame Fire.

The lounge then got painted in a mustard colour.

 In the hallway, we wallpapered a feature wall in red.

Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to finish off the lighting fixtures upstairs or furnishings as we re-located to Australia with Dave's job.

We wanted to keep the house, as one day we thought we may return to New Zealand to be with our family and friends again.  So we decided to rent out our home.  At first I found this really difficult, thinking that other families or whoever would be living in our home that we had bought and lovingly renovated.  I just had to let go!

We put our home in the hands of a property rental agency, whom looked after it really well on our behalf.  The company kept us up to date with six monthly property inspection reports.  We also visited from time to time to conduct an inspection ourselves.Until the next instalment.