Cabinets... finally seeing it come together

Last post left off with the drywall repaired walls painted. You can read it here. Now comes the exciting part; installation of the cabinets. One doesn't mind hours of labor after spending 8 hours at the office when you actually see progress. The thought of coming home from work only to spend hours sanding drywall mud and reapplying more mud to rinse and repeat the next day was... discouraging. But this part I didn't mind because I could stand back at the end of the night and say "I built that!". Enough talk, let's get on to why you're here.. to see pictures.

Our cabinets are from IKEA and are the AKURUM series with Adel Medium Brown doors.We simply followed the supplied instructions to assemble the cabinets. If you've purchased a bookshelf from IKEA, you're familiar with the illustrations and should have no issues with the assembly. But if you get stuck, simply call the store.

Hanging the suspension rail. I made sure to get each rail in to at least 2 studs. The supplied poster was helpful and instructed us to tape the poster to the wall.

To save time, don't bother painting where the cabinets will cover.

First cabinet in.

 

If you're wondering how long it took to assemble each cabinet, I timed myself putting together one of the four large cabinets that make up the island.

I needed to move the electrical for the outlets that were in the peninsula and the dishwasher. My experience running cat5 came in handy here. I was able to fish the line instead of pulling up the floor.

I decided to use 2x4s for the base cabinets in addition to the plastic feet rather than rely solely on 4 plastic feet. As always, anything attached to the wall should be attached to as many studs as possible

Large levels will come in handy

The island required a base since there isn't a wall for it to attach to. I built the base out of 2x4s and attached it to the floor. A good step here is to use tape to mark the outline of the island. I forgot to snap a pic of that so use your imagination.

Aforementioned electrical outlet 

Since the cabinet to the left of the dishwasher extended past the wall, it was treated as if it were a mini-island. You can also see the electrical wires that were relocated.

base for cabinet next to dishwasher

Always check for level. Floors and walls are unreliable.

Here you can see the outlet on the back side of the mini-island and dishwasher.

Back side of dishwasher and mini-island

My attempt to impersonate Grizzly Adams

Handles were a pita to install. Knobs would have been much easier

But I have to admit, the handles look nice.

At this point, you sit back and crack open a(nother) beer. I'm not going to make it seem like it only took 30 minutes to get to this stage like they do on TV. To get to this point took a few days. We simply didn't have the room to build all the cabinets at once. We did the uppers in one night, the bases another night, and the island a different night.

The next installment will include the lessons I learned and a recap of my trip to the emergency room. If you have any questions, leave a comment or shoot me an email.

Dry Wall, Staples, and Hardwood... Oh My!

Taking down the old pantry was fun and easy. Take care as to not damage more drywall than necessary or you'll spend more time sanding later on.

Pantry gone!

If you look at the pictures below, I patched the holes left by the pantry walls with scrapes of dry wall I managed to save from the demo. While this is the cost effective way of dry wall repair, it's not the most efficient use of time. It would have been better to put in a sheet of drywall from the corner all the way to the edge of the old wall vs trying to fit in a skinny piece of dry wall in the hole that was left by the wall.

Amateur dry wall repair 

 What the patch work does is create a whole lot of joints that need mud and sanding. Augh..

What not to do.

The ceiling should have been patched with one large piece of drywall instead of using 3 smaller pieces.

How not to patch a hole.

With all the sanding and mudding I had to do, there was a lot of down time in between coats of mud. I decided to tackle the old floors while waiting for it to dry. There must have been a sale on floor staples when these homes were built. There was a staple every 6".

Asian broom.. every house needs one.

District 9 was rezoned to help control dust during the floor demo. I also added a sub-division of District 9 to further help keep dust at bay during the sanding of the mud.

You might be wondering where we kept all the appliances and kitchen stuff during all this work. Behold:

Dining Room

 We lived like this for weeks!

Family Room

Finally painted and ready for cabinets to be installed!

Next time on the Honey Did List... installation of cabinets!

Planning and Demo

Hi there. It's been a long time since I've posted anything new. I've been lazy.. sorry. But let's get back on track. We decided to go with IKEA for our cabinets. If you haven't used their Kitchen Designer, you're in for a treat. You can enter your room dimensions, floors, paint colors, doors, windows, openings, etc. Once you build your virtual room, start designing. This phase took weeks to come to an agreement. You have so many options when it comes to cabinets. Do you want drawers? doors? pull outs? It's a lot to think about.

Below are two ideas we were considering. Option 1 is very similar to our old layout except the dishwasher is now moved next to the sink. Moving the dishwasher next to the sink wouldn't be too difficult since we're moving it closer than it was before. You'll want to check where the electrical/water is coming from if you're considering changing things drastically because if it's farther, you'll need to run new electrical/water lines. Option 2 is a dramatic change to the old layout. We added an island to allow more flow in the kitchen. No longer would we need to walk around to get to the sink. One thing that helps with visualizing your design is to tape it out on the floor with blue painters tape. We decided to go with option 2.

Option 1

Option 2

Option 2 - top view

Time to DEMO!! No sledge hammers like you see in all those HGTV shows. We found buyers for our old cabinets (Craigslist is awesome!) so we had to take care when removing them. The old cabinets came down rather quickly. Each one is held in with only a few screws in the back that go in to the wall studs. Some were also attached to the adjacent cabinet. We took all the cabinets out in one evening.

One thing that had to go was our tiny pantry. "Hunnie, now grab the sledge hammer!" A good idea is to tape off the area with plastic to help control the dust. The kitchen would look like this for a couple weeks.

District 9

plastic wrap the appliances too.

Check back to see the build process.

Kitchen Remodel

Let's take a stroll down memory lane and look at the kitchen as we saw it back in 2007 according to the for sale listing.

Here you see the eating area in the kitchen. 

Notice the oven still has the sticker on it!

Please follow me on my journey of transforming the kitchen from what you see above to this: 

The majority of the work took about 2 months. I will cover every step along the way and give tips and pointers in hopes that you will not make the same mistakes I did. I hope to save you time, money, and a trip the emergency room (yup I have pictures, can't wait for that post). 

The Beginning

Hello world. I will use this blog to track all the projects that I accomplish. When the time comes for me to get a new toy, I can look back at all that has been accomplished and should have no issues justifying that new bike frame, component, car part, beer sign, etc. Noticed I said "when" and not "if". Ladies, let's take a moment and all come to the conclusion that "the difference between men and boys is the price of their toys". When I'm not fixing things around the house I enjoy most things that involve speed. I'm a huge car enthusiast and cyclist. Hope you enjoy what you see and learn something along the journey that you're about to take with me. If you ever have questions, feel free to comment and I will try to get back to you in a timely manner.