What started out as a kitchen renovation (installing new cabinets) became a "well, since we have the cabinets out, we might as well put new flooring down; and since we have the flooring out, we might as well paint the suite". The job got bigger and bigger.
I found some great Mills Pride cabinets on craigslist from Vancouver. Chris and his dad took a budget truck down from Kelowna and picked them up along with a few appliance deals I had brokered as well (the plan always was to put our appliances in the basement and get newer stuff for us upstairs).
We got the same cabinets off of Craigslist that we already have upstairs. We will (in a few weeks) rearrange our kitchen, take out a wall that divides the living room and kitchen and put in an island. With the left over cabinets, we planned to update the basement suite kitchen. I plotted out the upstairs kitchen to see which cabinets would be used, then I knew which ones were left over for the basement.
Chris' Dad and my Dad came out on Saturday. They started taking the old cabinets and the old lino out of the suite while we were at the wedding.
laying down new lino
Once we got back from the wedding, Chris went to help out as well. Twelve to fifteen hour days with so many wonderful helpers! Chris figures that about 200 hours went into this reno.
A few weeks earlier, our renter's fridge started going on the fritz so we quickly got our new fridge installed and gave him our old one. Now with the renovation being complete, we gave them our stove and dishwasher too. (We already had the newer dishwasher for us just sitting in the garage waiting to be installed, but the stove...we put ours down there and took their older one upstairs).
I bought the kitchen sink off of the same people I got the cabinets from for $50. They also gave us the countertops too and since the countertop was already cut for that sink we just used that newer, nicer sink in the basement suite. Let me stress -- NEWER, NICER. When our pastor saw it he said he used to work in that industry and that was one of the top of the line sinks available and was worth about $600!
The new sink only had one hole for a faucet. The old sink had two. This meant we could not use the old faucet on this new sink. Chris started taking apart our faucet to put in the basement when he asked if he could just put in our new faucet (that wasn't installed yet and which I had picked up off of Castanet [like craigslist but for Kelowna only] for a great deal).
So now the suite has a top of the line sink and a very pretty faucet, plus our stove, fridge, and dishwasher.
We needed one more cabinet to complete the lower cabinets. The only one that we thought would fit well and leave plenty of room in the suite for a kitchen table was one from our kitchen. So our kitchen is now missing a cabinet!
Our kitchenPink! The walls were pink before.
More pink paint exposed beneath where thebaseboards used to be in our upstairs
We will install the uppers in the suite after we have finished our kitchen renovation and can see for sure what is still available.
Special thanks to Chris' dad, my dad, my mom, and our pastor for all their help. Funny story: I had called Pastor Darren on Tuesday to see if one of his teenaged girls could help me out with the kids while I get some errands done. But I couldn't get a hold of him so I just left to do my errands. Well, he called back and when Chris answered the phone, Darren said "what can I help you with?". Chris goes on to ask him about how to install the sink. (Darren has some plumbing experience). Chris then realizes that Darren was likely returning a phone call and not necessarily seeking out how he could help Chris with the plumbing. But, nonetheless, Darren was available that afternoon. He had planned to do some visiting with people from the church and it seemed like God had picked us to be on his roster for the day! What a blessing.
Before and After Photos
Angle #1:
Angle #2:
Angle #3:
The Bathroom:
