Kitchen Remodel

I’m excited to finally get ignore all the ‘how’s and why’s’ and reach the ‘what’s’ of the investments we’ve been participating in. It’s going to be a process, but I intend to cover all of the past projects and remodels sharing them for your entertainment. Maybe you’ll find something inspiring, or maybe you’ll figure out just how rough around the edges I really am. 

You see, from a young age, I learned to make use of what I had at my disposal. Through the next blog series, you’ll see evidence of this in action. I will do my best to give photographic evidence, but recreating certain things after the fact would be futile. I will try to be as authentic as possible however. 

Project Description

Ok let’s get started.. First up on the list is our very first investment here in Italy. Not necessarily considered an asset, but when you consider how much money we saved by not paying rent over these past 5 years, it is definitely a catalyst that launched our financial independence goals forward. 

I’m talking about our personal home for the past 5 years. Nestled on a private street somewhat resembling a cul-de-sac in Castiraga Vidardo, Italy, we have found it quite liberating from the hustle of Milan. I’ve written previous articles about purchasing the property, so I’d like to move on to the first remodel in a bit more detail.

Upon purchase of the property, we intended to move in as quickly as possible to start taking advantage of not paying rent as soon as possible. This plan was heavily influenced by my wife and for good reason. We were paying only €450 per month, but we had one bedroom just off a main highway outside of Milan. Ela having no project experience in the past didn’t have any concept of the size of the project and hoped that we could be done in just a few weeks. We had scheduled months in advance to move, but a difficulty with the key delivery put us behind schedule. Additionally, we intended to visit her family in Apulia for the first time in the beginning of August, which was right in the middle of the moving schedule. 

Define the Project

Fun Fact: The most recent tenants were not the owners of the property. The owners were a nice eqyptian family whereas the tenants were squatters. After the court had convinced the previous owners to leave, someone found that the property was vacant and began sleeping in it. In the process, they stripped anything of value they could find including the button plaque for the toilet tank. 

So instead of being available to move into it immediately, there were some things were a must. For example, we had to replace the electrical and plumbing fixtures. In addition, the floor of the kitchen was double layered with floor tile and the wall tile was horrendous. We decided that a kitchen overhaul was needed in addition to various wall improvements throughout the living room. Lastly, due to brick and mortar construction, the gas line was never secured inside the wall and at least to me was an eyesore spanning from the front of the house, through the living room and into the kitchen. Removing it would give a better aesthetic look as well as being safer for children in the home. 

That was it as far as necessities went, but since we were replacing the kitchen floor, and at the time I was searching for ways to make the property both valuable and efficient, I thought it would be a good time to install floor heating in the kitchen. It planned to work through the house in stages, starting with the kitchen. Coming from an Idahoan DIY lifestyle, I chose to tackle these projects on my own. The hitch was that not knowing how to explain what I wanted in Italian combined with my methods being slightly unorthodox made it difficult to manage on my own. 

To make things harder, at the time I was working for an architect until 5 so I wasn’t able to dedicate a lot of time. 

The Help

Enters my wife into the equation. Stressed that we had just discovered she was expecting a baby and with just weeks before we were expected to move into the property, a simple phone call or two convinced both her father to make a trip and work on the electrical as well as a friendly neighborhood volunteer to assist with the concrete work. At the project level it increased the difficulty of managing the remodel. I literally couldn’t communicate with them, so you can see how it could quickly escalate out of control. But we were grateful for the help despite the added stress.

We had many more supporters from our group of friends and within a few days the upstairs was prepped, repainted and habitable. By the end of July we were without a kitchen floor or gas line and decided we’d ‘camp’ upstairs using a propane gas burner and the bathroom sink as a temporary kitchen. We stored furniture downstairs in the center of the living as we worked as quickly as possible to complete the rest of the project. 

The Kitchen Floor

For most American homes, the kitchen is the showpiece that exemplifies the level of quality expected to be seen throughout the rest of the home. In Italy, it is slightly different whereas economic kitchen cabinets are expected to be used for a half decade and with it feel less like a fixture in the home and more similar to a foreign object. If anything, I’d say my technique for constructing the heated floor for the first time is the real showcase of our home. Knowing that we were in a hurry and I would be doing the remodel in stages, I opted to lay some 120 mm conduit typically for drains as a means of installing water pipes under the finished floor without having to replace it in the future. Previously, the hot water heater of the house that served both to heat potable water as well as radiant heating was placed on the center wall of the kitchen. The pipes ran both up and down stairs from that point and spanned across the kitchen floor towards the edge of the house where it would serve both the kitchen sink and the bathroom adjacent. I knew in the future I wanted to move the hot water heater to the external wall of the kitchen and that I would need access at a future date. The idea of cementing water pipes under the floor tiles seemed strange to me although it is common in Italy. 

Materials

I started by placing insulation and a plastic grid across the both the kitchen and bath using the grid to place the water pipes in a spiral pattern that would be serviced from the bathroom. Afterwards I placed a wire mesh as reinforcement for a special cement containing fragments of metal to serve as a better conductor for the heat transfer of the kitchen. Lastly, instead of our original intention to buy discount tile, we opted for a 30 x 60 somewhat opaque black flooring that would (by mistake) be also be installed as the backsplash of our kitchen cabinets. 

Regarding the cabinets themselves, we used the cabinets that were installed in our previous apartment and to this day are using them though it is about time for a refresher. They really aren’t designed to survive the years of wear and tear.

After the gas line was installed all that remained was the downstairs bathroom wall tile which could wait for a later date. It’s hard to remember all the details, but somewhere in the middle we took a road trip to visit the in-laws and enjoyed our first annual beach vacation as a couple which is currently in its 5th concurrent year. The beaches in Apulia are truly breathtaking. 

Costs

All totaled, we spent about €1,200 on paint, tile, and floor heating to make our house our home. I know it sounds cheap. It was only possible due to the friends and family that helped us out free of charge. Below you can see how much we’ve invested in the house up to this point. As I share the improvements I will try to keep a rundown of our costs here. 

Plans moving forward

The kitchen wouldn’t stay this way for long. You know how when you are living somewhere different parts of the house begin to draw your attention? Going forward I would make adjustments to the house, but always at the lowest cost possible. Next week, I will share the modifications to the kitchen and how the adjacent bathroom turned out!