Tales From the Box

The design of our kitchen was something that we mulled over for many a night and day – because we tend to be the sort of people who live around our kitchen. The arrangement of our kitchen was the first thing we designed in our reno process, but was one of the areas that was constantly being changed as it was being built. The island bench was important, and the position of the cooktop in the middle was a stroke of genius, but the alignment of the bench with the rest of the kitchen and room (roof beams in particular) was causing hurty brain issues. It wasn’t until we changed the design of the kitchen – moving the floor to ceiling cupboards so that two of them were at the oven end of the kitchen rather than the sink end. This smoothed things out quite nicely and thus our kitchen felt much more balanced.

We added to the same IKEA kitchen that we bought in 2004 and used it to build off for our new space. We had customize the kitchen a far bit to make it fit and look integrated with the design of the house. A few people have asked what appliances we used – our cooktop is a Fisher and Paykel CT560X, oven is a Fisher and Paykel BI603E .

We still have the little matter of a dining table – size and where to put it….

Let’s face it – we are all going green. And if you haven’t been swept up in the greenie goodness, you soon will be- either by complying to environmental factors when building any type of home , using cleaner electricity either from renewable/alternate sources of energy or simply using better light bulbs, or from buying a rain water tank and getting some hard earned cash back for your troubles.

We bought a tank. And I am proud of my tank (as said photo demonstrates). We live in a water-conscious world and a tank is small way that I can do my bit to recycle, to continue to keep my small patch of the world green. Seven years of drought and 10 out of 11 years of below average rainfall have changed our perceptions of how we value water.

For me, the water revolution has impacted me marginally. Like all, I take shorter showers, wash the car with a bucket, do bigger loads of washing, but in reality this is a small, insignificant sacrifice compared to the hardships that are endured by those living on the land where every drop is precious, and every drop literally translates into survival. The biggest impact on me personally is keeping the natural environment around me green and lush. Not being able to water my garden frustrates me – seeing trees die that you have planted and nurtured is deflating. Thus a big shiny tank was necessary.

Tank selection is now like buying a new car. A visit to my local tank retailer turned what I thought would be a simple decision into a complicated and highly provoking one. PVC, corrugated, tall, squat, round, square, oval, coated, colour, pump, first flush. These are the tank terms specific to these tank tales.

At the moment, buying a tank isn’t as easy as rocking up with your trailer and taking one home. There is about a 12-15 week wait on most tanks at the moment with some places not delivering until late July/early August.

I chose my tank based on 3 points. Price, availability and flexibility. I purchased a 10,000 litre Aqua Clear Tank, made from Bluescope Aquaplate corregated steel with a galvanized exterior. Aquaplate steel has a plastic lining which prevents corrosion and that yucky metal taste from infiltrating the water. Suprisingly the steel tank was much cheaper than a PVC tank and had a much shorter turnaround than the PVC (4 weeks compared to 15 weeks). The practicality of a steel tank is worth addressing. Most PVC tanks have special mounts for intake, outlet and tap fittings. If those areas don’t correspond to the orientation of your tank, you then end up with a mess of plumbing to solve this.

Tank site is also important. We relocated our shed to use the solid foundation of the shed slab, as well as making use of the location of the slab in relation to the house. Our tank is plumbed underground using a gravity level method, rather than a drainpipe method which runs directly into the top of the tank. Also the slab itself needs to be sturdy. Remember that 1 litre of water weighs 1kg and 10000 litres is 10 tons in weight. Our tank installer recalled some very messy situations where tanks had sunk into the ground because the base was dodgy.

Currently our tank is empty (or near empty). We had the wettest beginning to a year in 10 years while they were completing the building of our house, but since the tank has been completed we have had next to nothing. However our roof will catch 55,000 litres of rain every year of average rainfall. How do I get this figure? For every millimetre of rain that falls on a square metre, 1 litre of water is captured. We get 1,050mm on average a year, thus 55,000 litres.

Our tank stands proud and ready to capture the rain that should fall over the next 8 weeks. Hopefully we can get it full enough to get us through the dry of winter and spring.

I am guilty as charged. Yes – throw your hurls of abuse – as a designer renovator and manchild, I took the easy way out. Rather than go through the whole “tiles, basin, toilet, fittings..” thing.. we simply hit the repeat button and used the same of everything from our first bathroom reno to our second. Because of our low ceiling height were were quite particular to duct the ceiling cavity in order to stop any mould and dampness that would buildup there. Remember that simply exhausting your bathroom into your roof cavity isn’t the smartest idea if you then don’t vent the cavity itself. Many a perceived dampness problem can be directly attributable to this very setup.

We also utilised some spare areas underneath the stairs to create an interior laundry. Initially this was going to be part of Bathroom 2 – but to make better use of space and walls, we made it an external access cupboard type laundry and is working a treat at the moment.

Originally we decided that a rangehood was something that we didn’t need. We didn’t have one in our old kitchen…so why in our new one? I admit their was occasions I was lulled and seduced by those sexy showrooms which feature kitchens so sleek you would feel out of place cooking in it. In particular, the large expanses of stainless steel made me drool homer style. But I had resisted, simply because I couldn’t visualise this big (albeit beautiful) thing hanging down in a space I wanted to keep open and uncluttered because the of the low roof.

However one dry January afternoon, our builder Ben, while discussing the layout of the kitchen kept at me.
“So you’re not having a rangehood?”
“And the rangehood…oh you aren’t having one are you?”
“You are sure you don’t want to duct over your hotplate – perhaps a rangehood…?”

These subtle questions kept at me and shortly after this conversation, while flipping through an old copy of InsideOut I saw a picture of boxy looking kitchen, with a shallow, undermount rangehood set into a box which only hung slightly lower than the kitchen. This box was clad with a oak panelling like the featured kitchen, but I liked the idea, thinking that something like that set into gyprock (you know how I love my gyprock) and set about trying to find something that fit. We looked around at a few brands, and it was hard to find what we were after. Most were the usual pull out types or giant stainless steel ones I had sworn off. We finally found ‘the one’ in Harvey Norman – pretty much sitting above the same cooktop we purchased 6 months earlier. It was interesting because we were quizzed far more asutely by sales assisstant about how we ‘use’ the stove so he could gauge whether the rangehood would be powerful enought to suck out what we wanted. Luckily, this on the beefier side of suction, but other, more expensive brands promised to suck the paint off the wall if needed.

So we purchased the Smeg p52/2 model. A tidy unit that has some nice halogen lighting which will work a treat with the copious wok based dishes I will cook.

For those wondering how we are ducting the rangehood. We boxed in the beam with gyprock and a duct runs along the beam and outside. You can see the end of it in the top right of the first picture.