Repairs and the Weather

We started on the repairs on the rental unit. Murphy's Law: a heat wave hits, with temperatures soaring into the triple digits. Of course, the electricity has been disconnected in the rental unit and there is no air-conditioning.

The first order of business is planning.

We decided to start with the kitchen and the utility room. We measured everything and the I drew a scale drawing of the utility room and of the kitchen cabinets. We wend down to Lowe's to look for ideas and prices.

For the kitchen, we found that they had a series of off-the-shelf cabinets which we priced. The estimated cost of replacing the kitchen cabinets using this series totals $1,310 for the wall units and $620 for the island units. We plan to salvage the counter tops. We also looked at flooring, planning to replace the linoleum with new linoleum, but there is some low-cost manufactured "hardwood" flooring that seems to be both thin enough and cost-competitive.

For the utility room, we started with the idea of using marine plywood. However, we discovered cement board. Our new plan is to replace the particle board with one half inch plywood as a subfloor, with 0.42 inch cement board on top of that and ceramic tile for the flooring. We now plan to add a lip around the edge of the floor and a floor drain in the center. This will extend into the half bathroom, as well.

We will do some more planning, then check the prices at Lowe's and at Home Depot.