Colourful kitchens, and 20 questions about rennovating mine!

olibrofiz

Been watching too many Homes Under the Hammer progs at the moment and seen a nice kitchen on ebay which has started me thinking

Really need to do something with the kitchen, had enough of 6 years looking at it and despairing, so would appreciate thoughts on my thoughts! Firstly I want colourful doors on the units - who sells 'colourful' kitchens? Everything seems white/cream/pine/oak with the odd black/red/grey kitchen. And I don't want those, or have to paint doors...

Currently have wood effect laminate floor in the kitchen, but would like tiles - can't have vinyl as the dog scratches the floor and would rip vinyl up 10 mins after it being put down - this is also the reason for not wanting to paint doors. And the dog piddles on the floor 2-3 times a week :mad:

So, would it be better to tile the whole floor, rather than the bits you see, ie after the room was empty - I guess it would? How easy is it to actually lay tiles? And how long would it take - kitchen is 20' x 10' ish. It would need levelling. It also has a doormat 'hollow' by the back door - keep that or fill in?

The end part of the internal wall appears to be suffering with damp - but next doors bathroom is on the other side - he swears blind it's nothing to do with his bathroom. Would stripping the plaster off and having a brick wall for effect be an idea? It's a Victorian terraced.

Not afraid of house DIY, would need to get a man in to plumb the sink & put in/connect a cooker. It's just knowing where to start and taking the plunge!

Help ! *sigh*

aggypanthus

Its usual to tile floor after a new kitchen has been fitted.( My DH does tileing ) it can be costly .
I would get more info on the damp wall, your neighbour wont of course say anything other than to deny any prob his side.
I dont know where you can get coloued doors, all the mags etc show painted ones, but done bespoke, again costly.

phoebe1989seb

We also do most of the work ourselves as DH is amazing at DIY and recently built a new kitchen extension giving us an overall space (including breakfast area) of 36' x 16' which we tiled in antique limestone before fitting the units as we wanted to have the option of changing things around at a later date without worrying that the areas under the units were not tiled It was quite a complex job (opus romano pattern) and blooming expensive - but looks great though!

We got our units from a family business making bespoke kitchens that can be supplied painted in any colour you desire. It's the second time we've used this company and each time have gone for the cheaper option of unfinished timber units which we've then primed and painted ourselves. Whilst the painted option obviously costs more, we were initially pleasantly surprised at the price for bare wood units - at our previous house we also had a quote from B&Q (just for comparison's sake) and theirs was higher :eek:

We have a dog too, but he hasn't (yet) attempted to scratch the painted surface of the cupboards, but that's probably down to luck, lol! BTW, we originally found the bespoke co on eBay......

olibrofiz

Regarding the damp on the wall, had someone out to look at it and he said it was more likely to be because the plaster was some old type that sucked moisture up from the floor. To remove and replaster a 3 x 6 foot bit of wall he quoted me £700 excl. tax - I thought this was a bit steep?

Thanks for the tip re bespoke kitchens, hadn't considered that I did replace the doors about 4 years ago but just want to sort it out as I think they got the carcasses from skips, lol. All different, fixing points for doors dodgy so doors 'move' on a regular basis and screws drop out!

And the tiling, ah, good point - I guess the best to do would be level the floor when the carcasses are out - put the kitchen in and then tile...

booter

olibrofiz wrote: »

And the tiling, ah, good point - I guess the best to do would be level the floor when the carcasses are out - put the kitchen in and then tile...

We tiled the floor after the units had gone in, but if we'd had the money at the time, it would have been better to have done tiling before the units went in. I say this because I bought a dishwasher a couple of years ago which meant I had to re-jiggle the layout of the kitchen to fit it in. I also wanted to tile under the dishwasher. And of course, I couldn't find the same tiles anywhere Add to that the difficulty of removing/re-fitting kitchen units in places where there are/aren't tiles. Complete pita! If your kitchen is empty, do it all I say!

Leif

I think I'd do it all for the reasons given. In any case, tile under the dishwasher, washing machine and fridge otherwise getting them out is hard.

As to how hard it is, I tiled my porch, 1.5m by 1.5m. The hardest part was cutting tiles with a diamond saw. Laying tiles is messy, and in my case slow, but with care you can do a good job. I laid 30cm by 30cm tiles. Large ones, 60cm by 60cm, are said to be much harder. And they require a flatter floor.

Oh, and buy decent adhesive and grout, and make sure the tiles are rectilinear, otherwise you'll never get a good result.