I love these projects!
Is it in the neighbourhood Stu/ should I bring my tool belt?
If you are in town from March 23rd to April 4th any help would be great!
That is the time frame I have to get it all done. Tear out and replace the floor of the kitchen, tear out and replace the kitchen cabinets, this will include rearranging the kitchen slightly. I'll be adding a tankless water heater that will do the kitchen and bathtub as well as the laundry.
The electrical will also be upgraded, there is one electrical outlet in the whole kitchen.
Basic layout and sizes.
The windows you see in the pictures below are on the wall that is at the top of the drawing, marked 170
Now a scan around the kitchen starting in the 11 o'clock position.....
The tenant put various shelves and such to make the kitchen more useable, this is all going in the dumpster, she will have a much nicer kitchen when this is done and more cupboard space and counter space too.
The 1 o'clock position the sink and the wall of the toilet.
The toilet door and you can just see into the living area. Nothing much will change here, the wall paper will be all new and I'll be replacing all the light switches and electrical outlets too, they are all almost 30 years old and need replacing.
I guess the 5 o'clock to 6 o'clock position, this is the door into the bathtub room, as usual the bathtub room and the toilet room are separate.
The bathtub is a very old type with the natural gas burner/heater right beside the tub (yes, vented outside) but it is very old and when is does die we cannot get it fixed, so while I have the floor up, I'll run new pipes up the wall that you see there to the left of the bathtub room door and put a new bath/shower faucet on the wall like I did in the aparto reno downstairs. Then we will just have the old burner/heater disconnected and down the road I'll get it removed and the old bath tub also removed and replaced with a slightly larger one, that will be another day, not this time around.
7 o'clock and 8 o'clock positions.
Behind the red curtain is the front door to the aparto, on the side you can see the washing machine and the fridge.
I'll be putting in a faucet for the washing machine that will have both hot and cold water, this is very rare in Japan, most people have cold water only. Now the washing machine is fed by an 8' long hose that hooks up to a faucet in the sink area, I have always disliked this type of set up, it is neither clean nor safe IMHO, if that hose bursts, boy is there a problem, and as it runs behind stuff and near the gas range, the potential for disaster is there, I'll get rid of that problem and provide hot and cold water for the washing machine, a nice bonus. I'll also be installing a pan under the washing machine so if it ever leaks the pan catches the water and it goes into the drain.
Here you can see the detail of the top left corner of the kitchen, the wasted space beside the gas range table and the white washing machine hose that runs too close to everything, IMHO. This is just so poorly done, I cannot believe it.
The electrical panel.
Yes a 20 amp service, it can be fine for a small aparto of this size, but right now they have only two circuits, one for the lights and one for all the outlets. The problem with this is if you have the AC running and the fridge kicks on, you pop your breaker. I'll be adding two more circuits for the outlets in the kitchen, this will then allow the AC to be on a circuit with only one more outlet in the living area, which is typically used for a computer only so it should be OK.
More in a future post.