DIY: Replacing your kitchen tap

So our new kitchen tap has been staring at me for a few weeks, while I've been happily procrastinating playing PS3 games - finally decided to get up and have a crack at replacing our crappy kitchen tap today.

 

  

I've said it before, I'll say it again - avoid upgrading anything through the builder that you can do yourself. We paid a couple hundred bucks to "upgrade" from the standard kitchen tap to this piece of cr@p Dorf Oasis spray mixer, and look at the just how much quality you get after a year of use, with all the braiding frayed, exposing the soft plastic hose inside.

To change it actually took a lot longer than I thought. Ideally you'll need a big wrench or two, a basin wrench, screwdrivers/hex drivers, spare towels, things to catch waste water in. Make sure you turn off the water from the internal taps located inside the kitchen cabinet first, disconnect all water lines to the tap and drain into containers.

Actually getting the old mixer out was a huge battle, since there was very limited space in the cabinet with our massive sinks getting in the way. I needed a sink wrench to reach way up under the sink to grab a tiny nut on a thread that was holding the tap in tplace, and with many hoses running into the tap in the same area it was hard going. If you have easy access to your tap from underneath the sink, things will be much easier for you!

  

After the old tap is removed, clean up the benchtop where it used to be,.

 

The final result... well, almost! This tap is retained in the benchtop a totally different way with a massive nut on a 35mm screw, and the plastic washer it came with was too big to fit under the sink, so at the moment it's held in only loosely. And of course, once I hooked up the new hot and cold water hoses, I found the hot hose had a crack/leak in it, so I need to get a replacement of that. Tomorrow,  a bit of fine tuning with a bench grinder on the washer, and a trip to a hardware store for a hose, and hopefully it'll all work out well!

Also ordered a new TV from JB Hifi online yesterday, and already having second thoughts about the whole process - should've walked into one of the stores and bought it that way, because their online store is truly craptactular. Logging into my account doesn't reveal my order, there's no contact phone number to call, and they don't return emails. No wonder we're all shopping online overseas, if this is the best an aussie company can do.

t&t

Just in stock: door dampers v2.0!

OK guys - it's taken a while, but we've got our new door dampers in stock!

Check out the video below for an introduction to the new redesigned door dampers. As before, they're suitable to install on kitchen cupboards, laundry, bathroom vanities etc. You can also use them on pot drawers, but after some experience with the previous model, the pot drawers can weigh 10-20kg when loaded with pots & pans, so you will need more dampers - 4 or more depending on how heavy the pot drawers are.



If you'd like to order a set, or find out more details, please check out our dedicated site tim-and-tina.com. We'll be shipping these from Monday next week, all over Australia!

t&t

Kitchen: floating floor installation, and ADSL investigation

So after reporting to iinet on Friday night that my broadband wasn't working, I was called yesterday morning to schedule an appointment sometime today on my day off - the technician came around 10:30, tested the line and determined that there's a fault somewhere up the line. He called Telstra, and apparently it'll all be fixed up tomorrow! Kind of surprised to see how fast things are getting fixed - so far, big thumbs up to iinet for their customer support. Hoping to be on proper ADSL2+ by tomorrow night!


Spent the rest of the day preparing and laying the flooring in the kitchen. After removing all the plaster lumps and filling in holes in the slab, laid down the underlay/moisture barrier.


Few hours later, kitchen flooring is done. The only parts I'm leaving for later are the small gaps where I have to cut boards lengthways to slot them in, hoping to have them all fixed up this weekend.


Nice to finally have the concrete slab covered up, the amount of dust coming up all the time was driving us insane - couldn't keep anything clean!

T&T

so.... here it is - tim-and-tina's soft door closers now available!

phew, what a weekend! We ordered flooring (yay!) and a lounge (finally!), sealed the grout in the bathroom, but more importantly, took another video with another example of how the door dampers (soft closers) work, and how you install them!

Next video - an example of a door damper freshly installed in mum's kitchen, while she was still cooking!



Want one (or two, or fifty?) Go to our new website tim-and-tina.com and check out the detail about our soft-closing door dampers there!


T&T

Tim and Tina's first video blog!

So, due to totally underwhelming demand (no-one asked for it!), here's our first video blog entry! Though of course, Tina (my long suffering silent partner in this whole blogging thing that has gone on way longer than intended) refuses to be in the video or say anything. What's that whole thing about hearing your own voice on a video, surely I don't sound like that...

... anyway, here's a short walkthrough of the kitchen area. My video smarts are pretty dull, so it was recorded on an ipod nano, not edited in any way. I tried it on my iPhone but because it records in HD, 2 minutes of video equals 200mb of data which is not feasible on our current wireless internet plan (another reason we need unlimited ADSL!)

Have a peek at our kitchen, and if you're after our special soft closing mechanisms - a little project I've been working on for the last few weeks - stay tuned on this blog for more details on how you can order them too!



T&T