Renovate Australia

After a few years of putting up with a smelly house every time I cook we finally decided to install an exhausted range hood. As I wrote in our last post, the challenge is that the range hood is installed on in internal half wall.

I managed to get some help last weekend to get the range hood installed and it turned out really well, with a few surprises and unexpected twists like always.

My original plan was to simply take the doors off the cupboards and then use a 7″ hole saw to drill through the sides of the cupboards. Some of the challenges that we had are that we could not get a 7″ hole saw as no where that I could find actually rented them and I didn’t want to spend $70+ to buy one. Trying to use a jigsaw and a smaller hole saw didn’t work out too well.

Removing the Kitchen Cabinets

After the failed attempt to cut the holes with the cupboards on the wall we decided the best thing to do was to remove the cupboards from the wall. This proved to be a bit harder than expected as instead of the expected silicone between the tiles and the bottom of the cupboard it was grouted, which caused a bit more time and effort to remove cleanly.

With the cupboards removed we were able to start the cuts in the sides and bottom of the cupboard with a smaller hole saw and then continue them with a jigsaw.

One thing that I was worried about when I started this project was putting a 7″ hole through the side of the house. I figured that with that size of a hole, and with my luck, I was sure to hit a stud in the wall. Fortunately though we were able to squeeze the pipe right beside a stud, without effecting the structure of the wall at all, which was great news.

Reinstalling the Cabinets and Running the Pipe

Once we got the hole cut in the exterior wall we re-installed the cupboards back into their original position. We then installed the new range hood and measured and cut the long length of pipe, installed the outside vent and then ran it through from the outside of the house. We used lots of silicone on the outside of the vent hood to create a tight seal and screwed the vent to the outside wall. The rest of the pipe and fittings all fit together nicely and we screwed and taped all the joins.

Insulating the Duct Work

Once that was done we spray foamed the exterior wall around the pipe and wrapped the pipe with duct insulation up to the 90 degree bend just above the range hood.

While insulating the duct work would have seemed quite absurd for our house in Australia, here in Canada it is quite a necessity. When the outside temperature drops to well below freezing you really need to everything possible to keep that cold air outside. The outside vent that we choose has a heavy baffle and there is a second baffle as part of the actual range hood.

At this point we flipped the switch on the breaker and tested out the new range hood, and boy does it suck! And by suck I mean pull a lot of air into the hood. The model of rangehood we got, NuTone Deluxe Allure® III, is rated at about 300 CFM on the “3″ setting, and 430 CFM in boost mode, which is a lot…

At this point the range hood works, but it’s not too pretty yet, so the next step is to box in the duct work in the cabinets, which I will get to next time…

Our existing range hood is really quite useless. It is a recirculating range hood, with two-low power settings and a charcoal filter that doesn’t seem to actually filter anything, even when the filter is new. A minor complaint is that it is the old “almond” colour that our appliances used to be in the kitchen, before we started having to replace them.

It’s easy to understand why the builder put in a recirculating range hood. The oven is on an interior wall, which is actually only a half wall since our main living area has a cathedral ceiling. Venting the range hood out an exterior wall is going to be a challenge.

Despite the challenges we have decided to go ahead and vent a new kitchen range hood out the exterior wall. From our experience a recirculating range hood seems hardly worthwhile.

You can see some of the challenges that we need to overcome in the photo above:

• Interior wall – no direct access to an outside wall
• Half Wall / Cathedral Ceiling – no direct access to roof or attic
• Cupboards only 2″ below top of wall – no room for overhead bulkheads

With all those challenges the only option is to go through the cupboards to the exterior wall. To do this we would loose the top 7″ or so of our cupboard storage space, which is pretty substantial. That said, I think that running the vent through the cupboards is probably the most viable option at this time…

Low Energy Supplies and Services is still offering free home energy consultations to people around Ballarat, Victoria or in Adelaide, South Australia. With your free booking they will send a consultant to your house to work out what you need to do to increase your energy efficiency.

They will look at how you can save money in three different areas:

• Power
• Gas
• Water

In addition to telling you how you can save money in those three areas they will also supply you with free energy-saving light bulbs and water-saving shower heads. They will also install them all for free.

The free consultations can be found here:

• Ballarat Save and Raise
• Live Green – Adelaide

Why: Because he has a medical condition that requires one and a half hours of sitting on a toilet each time he has his treatment session.

Budget: Nil… due to the cost of his medical supplies, which of course take priority.

Meet Caleb… our 8 year old, red headed, sports loving, energy filled, tender hearted, witty humoured and reading enthusiast son. Caleb has had a long term health condition since infancy that this past March saw him admitted to our local children’s hospital for an insertion of a Cecostomy tube.

Caleb’s bowels do not function as they should. The Cecostomy tube (a tube placed directly into his cecum – large intestine (via his abdomen), allows us to administer medicine to flush his bowels empty… something he cannot do by himself. It takes an hour and a half each time to do Caleb’s treatment, during which time he must remain seated on the toilet. I don’t think I could do that, so my hat goes off to my boy.

We have dedicated our downstairs bathroom for Caleb’s treatments so we can keep our upstairs one available to the other members of our family and also have a dedicated place for all of Caleb’s medical supplies. Our downstairs bathroom is cold (it’s in our basement), aged and plain old boring for an 8 year old to spend so much time in. Thus enter… ”Bathroom Makeover” (a dream for us) for Caleb!!

I have lost count of the number of times I have stood in the doorway of this bathroom, trying to conjure up ideas of how we could possibly make it a nicer place for Caleb. I don’t know where to begin. I don’t know how much to dream for this or to even believe that we could make this a “fun” place for Caleb to hang out. It’s a bathroom after all. Is it even possible to make a bathroom a “fun” place?

Here are some wish list items that come to mind for this bathroom makeover to become a reality…

• A source of heating – we have no furnace vent in there
• New flooring – we cannot afford to run “heated” flooring, but something nicer than the cold, stained and scratched vinyl would be nice
• A new shower stall – the current fibreglass one is old and scratched up, the glass door is permanently etched from the previous owners not cleaning the hard water from it often enough, the surrounding tiling has flowers on it and the grout and silicone are stained
• The vanity – The vanity has also aged – It smells of cat pee (I am not kidding) and I have tried EVERYTHING to rid the smell from there. The same “flower” tiles surround it. The sink is scratched and stained… also from the previous owners not taking care of it.

A fun place to be? To me, “fun” conjures up images of a new paint job, a kid like theme and activities for him to do while he sits on the toilet for an hour and a half each time. Yikes! A room that is warm for him is also high on the list since Caleb also suffers from circulation problems which make cooler temperatures hard for him to cope with.

I would love some ideas from readers on how to do the above. We don’t mind DIY’ing, but must admit that we have never done a bathroom ourselves. Being the “decorator” in the family, I would also love some ideas on how to transfer this into a more fun place for Caleb to spend so much of his time.

Can’t wait to get some feedback!

Oh, one more thing… we don’t have a budget for this. EEK! Not all of Caleb’s medical expenses are being covered by our government or insurance, so our money is being fed into that right now. Like I said earlier though… right now this just seems like one big dream, that of course I would love to make a reality for our son. Too bad those home improvement / surprise makeover shows never make it to where we live.

Guest post written by my wife, Tamara Hutchison.