Kitchen Renovation (change of plan!)

Today is a big day, we've got our stone benchtops going into the kitchen. And if you're wondering, but Lucy, you weren't actually doing stone, you were doing timber benchtops with those cute cup of tea in the afternoon tiles, you will be right, I was going to do that. However, Jono vetoed that idea. Basically, timber was going to be a lot of work and to be fair, Jono was going to have to do most of the work, so he vetoed it. He's like, no, we're going to do stone instead, so someone else can do all of that work, which is fair enough. So I thought, how about I just take myself off to CDK Stone and I will see if anything stands out. I think we found it, so good. Oh, I'm like puffed. I just got back in the car after going through the samples of slabs at CDK Stone and I was literally like umming and ahhing for so long. And then there was this one slab where I was like, oh, my God, I like I have to see it like it wasn't out. I couldn't see the full face of it and it was sort of tucked away. And I was like, oh, it's kind of cool. And they're like, do you want us to pull it out? You know, and I'm like, oh, no, no. Oh, and I'm like, yes. And then as soon as I pulled it out, I'm like, oh, my God, that is the stone. Like that has to be in my house like ASAP. It's called Mirage Lake. I mean, yes. So excited. Oh, my gosh, I'm so excited. Now I've just got to work everything else out. Stone Mason, let's go. I need to work out if I need one slab or two. We've kind of. Yeah, let's do this. I literally just checked back all my photos to be like, have I made the right decision? I need to check. And I have. And you know why? Because when you're making a decision like that, that's a big decision, right? You big ticket kind of item for your kitchen. If you don't look at it and go, ah, or have some kind of. Oh, I don't know what the male version of that. If you don't have that reaction, when you see it, it is not the right material. You need to scream if you like it. We're screaming all the way home. Yeah. Oh, crap. Whoa. All right. Pay attention, Lucy. Let's go. So I finished the painting last night. It looks really good. I actually changed my mind with the paint color as well. So this is actually Dualuxe Sandy Day Half. It's a much better tone because when we actually changed all of the flooring, it changed the color completely. So the color I'd chosen before was far too pink, very warm. And it just didn't work in the space. So we've now got Sandy Day Half. It's the perfect combination. I'm excited to see it against the stone and the tiles. Let's go. I've gone and made my own black butt trims. What did I do? I jumped on Facebook Marketplace and I found someone up the road, very lucky, who was selling their leftover floorboards. They've just done a new floor in their house. They're black, but timber floor. So they've kind of got this profile on the bottom. Solid black, but timber flooring, not like an engineered board. They were about 75, 80 mil, probably 80 mil boards. And they're about 20 mil thick. Cut to the footage. This is how I made them into window trims. First step is run them through the thicknesser. I've got to get them all to 15 mil. I think they started off about 20 mil. It was about four passes through the thicknesser, and then they came out perfect at 15 mil thick. Then it was off to the table saw. So a floorboard comes with like a tongue and a groove that slots in and fastens in when you install them as a floorboard. But we don't need that for this install. I need a straight edge. So I wanted to have a little bit of a profile, a little bit of an angle on the inside edge of the trim. And I tested a 45, which was way too aggressive. Then I went down to like a 30 degree. Then I tried a 15 degree cut. It was still kind of too aggressive. So I set the table saw at a 10 degree angle and then set my width of cut to exactly 60 mil. So my base of my reveal is 60 mil. The total width of the board is probably about 62 mil. As long as I cut them all exactly the same, not going to matter. Lucy wanted to go as slim as possible on the timber trims. We do have to cover the gap in the plaster and make sure it covers the frame and looks super neat. So I settled on a 60 mil trim with a 10 degree edge on it. Then it was just off to sand, sand them all down, get them all perfect. Double check that they're all the right thickness, they're all the right width. Then comes the slightly harder part. Once I had enough lengths of timber ripped, cut and sanded, time to measure very precisely the window reveal. Got a good tip from Scott Brown Carpentry, but I've lost my tape measure. You use a tape measure for good measurements, but you use something like this or a ruler for very precise measurements. So I actually use this folding ruler to measure all the window trims that I could for the really big one. I did have to use a tape measure, but if I just cut it a fraction oversized, I could bring it in, test fit it on the window and make sure that it was going to fit perfectly. Now it's time to get these trims on this window and finish it off. After that, a bit of tiling and then I think we're done. I'll bring Lucy back for the reveal. Just to install them, all I've got is some wood glue and then I'm just going to pin nail them. Because they are such nice timber trims. Well, I'm not going to paint them. We're actually going to just clear coat them. Clear coat them to match. Make sure I've got it exactly in the spot I want. And I'm just going to whack a really small pin nail in about the same spot, about 50mm off from the edge. I'm going to try and match my nail holes in the same sort of spot each time. And I am going to nail across because there is a bit of a bow in this one. It's looking pretty bloody good. I've got a bit of glue on my hand. Look at that. All right, so that's me left. Pretty good. Get some glue on it. You want to glue your little miter join as well. Pretty good. I'll just give that a little sand, just a little bit of a lip on it. Oh, that's a nice join. So, yeah, we'll have to give them a quick sand and a clear coat. But I don't know if I'm going to do that before I tile or not. So the last one, I was maybe going to have to trim a tiny bit because I did cut it a tiny bit oversized. But I wasn't very careful when I was cutting these because I don't have very many of them. It's got to glue this last one on and then hopefully we can tile tonight. Pretty good. A little bit of squeeze out that glue, that's what you want. Look at that. I reckon that looks bloody good. We are so painfully close, guys. Jono is smashing it out with that tile splashback. There was a lot of variation in these tiles, which made for a very textural finish, but also made the job of tiling very tricky to get them all as uniform as possible. Next up, we need to build some shelves, add timber toppers to finish off that internal wall. Then I will kick Jono out so that I can style and make this kitchen feel more like home. I honestly can't wait, guys. I need this kitchen finished ASAP. Next time you see us, we'll be for the big reveal. Wish us luck.