William Chow's Personal Web Page

The year is 2007.

Here is some of the pictures of my renovations in progress. Now, I am not a trades person by any means. I have some experience in electronics but that is usually for low voltage battery circuits. I always like to do things one grade up and plan for expansion so I tend to make things thicker, stronger, and add excess. As a note, less than one roll of duct tape was used in this project, sorry Red...

Late August to November of 2007

Please click on the thumbnails to enlargen the larger pictures.

A before the renovations shot. Elick is standing at the entrance to the kitchen which is a 28" sliding pocket door.	Due to an ordering mistake at work, I was able to get an awesome deal on a double 36" pre-hung French doors. So rip out the pocket door.	My wife is delighted with the much more openness that that 72" door will bring.	Now mounted, looks kinda like this, looking from the living room.
Here I am painting the ceiling, on the reverse angle, showing the newly mounted French doors.	Ok, now we move inside of the kitchen. Before the reno, there was a stove, where the French doors are now.	This counter L's with a sink under a window with 2 top cabinets.	The counter L's again to make an island, fridge and counters to the right. Kitchen table at the back.
The kitchen table is right by the back window, under a pendant light, ...	... and right beside the back door.	First, remove the stove to make room for the 72" door. Insulate and soundproof the walls. Rewire it for more outlet plugs. GFCI all the plugs along the counter.	Rip out that counter, sink and cabinets. Move the stove plug so it will lie on this wall. Add another 5 mil sheet of vapour barrier on top of the sheet already there.
Installing a bank of cabinets and counter along this one wall only.	Make room for stove and dishwasher. Also dedicated 3 GFCI'ed circuits just for the counter plugs. Microwave, fridge and dishwasher are on 3 seperate circuits too.	New curtian for the back window.	But more importantly, 2 ceiling lights and 6 recessed lights, on 4 seperate circuits, to allow zone controlled lighting.
The gutted ceiling. Bank one of the recessed lights. These will be right over the counters. The ceiling was filled with Roxul Safe N Sound for sound proofing.	In goes the second set of recessed lighting. This will be over the eating area.	Put the dry wall back up on the ceiling. Now it has sound insulation and it is 5/8" thick rather the old 1/2". Walls are also done the same way.	And finally this is the new wall where the right counter and fridge and microwave WAS.
There are 3 power outlet and a phone jack are still functional. I added two cable, two Cat-5E, and another phone jacks to this wall.	Replaced the floor with vinyl sound insulation, an additional 5/8" ply on top of the plywood already there.	The stuff relocated in our living room. Sound insulation, the stuff that was in the kitchen cabinets, and note the 17 cases of tile for the floor.	On top of my new layers of insulation and 5/8" ply, I thinset a 1/2" layer of Hardibacker. The new sub-floor is now over 2" thick!
Then laid the ceramic tiles down, a big improvement over the rotting linoleum floor.
The rest of the living room was not so messy. Against the window is the lighting, dishwasher, and a George Forman grill.	Our cooking area in the living room. With no cabinets everything is all over the floor and in boxes.	With no stove, EVERYTHING is cooked in the rice cooker, toaster oven and/or the microwave.	One last shot of our food prep area before we start moving it back into the kitchen.
The very ugly part of renovations, the bills!
So looking in from the living room into the kitchen through the huge 72" French doors.	Cabinets only on the left, table in the centre of all the lighting.	Stove, dishwasher, sink and refrigerator all on the left hand side.