Kitchen Remodel Day....um, 18 (I think??)

Made some good progress on Saturday. I was still pretty sick on Friday, but I was better than Thursday. I spent the little time (and energy) I had bringing all the cabinets up from my basement. That in itself was a pretty tough task. They come slimmed down boxes with all the parts inside to build the cabinet. Here is a picture of what they look like.



Obviously the boxes vary in weight depending on what size the cabinet is. The heaviest one had to weigh a good 125 lbs. That one sucked carrying up the stairs! :-)

Later that night, Alene and I went to the movies with Russ and Randa to see V for Vendetta. I don't have time to go into details, but I enjoyed the movie and was split on the over-all political message: that conservative party leadership ultimately will lead to a nazi-like regime, somewhat pissed me off. I'm not a HUGE conservative, but I'm more right than I am left (just right of center you could say). Anyway, enough of that. I still enjoyed the movie and would see it again.

So on Saturday morning I got cracking on building the cabinets, then hanging them. I've only hung cabinets once before, so it was fun trying to remember how to do it. Shimming them is the most important part. Also, having a partner to help you hang them counts. Alene was pretty busy with homework, but she pitched in whenever I needed her to hold the side of a certain cabinet to screw the sucker into a stud. For the ones that I didn't need her help with, I got creative and used stacks of other cabinets as a means to line a cabinet up against the wall to screw it in.

I started with the corner cabinet. One thing I did differently. Since these are considered the "cheap" cabinets by any true contractors standards, I not only built them to the specifications of the manufacture, but I also used my finish nailer and re-inforced any area I could with finish nails. I noticed a difference it made in the over-all strength of the cabinets.

Here is the first cabinet I built:



I then proceeded to build the rest of the wall cabinets, then laid them out along the wall they were to be hung on:



Then I started to hang the cabinets:







Then I built the base cabinets and attached them to the wall (and to each other)







Finally, I cut the sub-layer of the counter-top and screwed it down to the base cabinets. We finally have the "feel" for what the kitchen will be like once the counter tops are done. If you look at the very last cabinet in this picture, you'll notice it was backed against that angle in the corner of the kitchen. THAT was pretty interesting. I had to cut about 1/3 of the back of this cabinet off at a diagonal angle. Then I put a 3/4" piece of plywood along the back to give it strength. I also re-inforced it with some other support pieces of wood and nailed the crap out of it with finish nails. It is going to hold up just fine now.



Next phase of this will be to put on the cabinet doors and hardware, instal the kitchen window (it's in, in the pictures, but not actually screwed down), move everything in, build the countertop for the dining/kitchen access, tile the countertops/backsplash and the dining/kitchen countertop, then finish off the island cabinet in the center of the room. Alene came up with a good idea. Instead of tiling the island, we're going to make a wood countertop for the island (kind of like a cutting-block). I need to consult with some wood experts and find out what is the toughest wood out there that I could use. I'm basically going to glue some wide 1x8" (or whatever the widest stuff we can get) together for a few days, then cut it to fit on top as a countertop and finish it off with some trim. We will then stain/varnish it and have a nice butcher-block looking countertop where the island is. If it doesn't work out in the end, we can always go back over it and tile it. I really like the ideas that Alene comes up with here and there.