Kitchen Remodel: The Cabinets are Here! The Cabinets are Here! (Kinda')

After weeks of waiting, hoping, making sacrifices to patron saints, and living in chaos, our kitchen cabinets were delivered on Friday.

I was hoping to have a post up before this, but things got a bit crazy between then and now. So let's step into the Wayback Machine to get a quick tour of what went down.

On Friday morning, we were asked to stop by the cabinet shop to take a look at all the pieces and parts that had been painted, varnished, sanded, and whatever other stuff that needed to be done, prior to delivery.

This will give you some idea of how many elements went into our cabinets. Between bases, doors, drawers, and counters, there were lots of wood.

To be honest, I had myself prepared to hear that the delivery would be delayed until this week and resigned myself to doing dishes in the bathtub for at least another three or four days. So, I was thrilled to hear that the delivery would take place that very day as planned.

Around 11:30, two big pickups rolled down the lane loaded up with most of the pieces. Once they got unloaded, it was time to do the installation. The first, and most critical piece, to go in was the cabinet run for the sink. If you remember, this was the section that was made four inches too long. With a bit of finagling, the reworked section went in perfectly.

The side counter went in place without incident as well.

Then came the island. The lovely, lovely, amazing island. After months of having such a tiny space for prep and plating, this is the piece that I love the most. There's so much room to spread out!

Here's a close-up of the end section where we have all our cutting boards and baking sheets. Nifty, huh?

When I saw the finished counters earlier that day at the shop, I almost swooned. Pictures don't do them jusctice. They are gorgeous.

Our installation guru then went to work screwing in all the hinges for the pull-out shelves in the island and attaching the cupboard doors. While he would have kept working until he couldn't stand, we were beat, starving as we had no lunch, and called things a day around 6 p.m.

Work got underway again around 8:30 the next morning. The hole for the sink was cut, the remaining hinges on the bottom cabinets were installed, and measurements were taken for the shelf unit that will be over the range. All that was completed by around 2:30.

The upper cabinets needed to go back to the shop, because the crew forgot to make and install the shelves. When your cupboards are about three feet high, a shelf or two might come in handy.

The next day, I loaded up the cabinets while David tackled the sink installation. The clips that came with the sink (they get mounted underneath to secure it, along with caulk) were too short. After rummaging around in his shop, he found four long bolts that did the trick. I make it sound simple, but it took quite some time to get those bolts in, plus connect all the plumbing. But by early afternoon, we had a working sink. No more doing dishes in the bathtub!

So now we are looking forward to having the upper cabinets delivered and installed tomorrow. Once that's done, there still the shelf that needs to be made for over the stove that will hold the range hood and a separate counter piece that will cover the back of the stove.

We're thinking that next week, David will take a trip to Chetumal, Mexico, with the cabinet maker's wife to order the glass bar top that will complete the island. More on that later. In the meantime, we can finish painting the walls and figure out when we want to buy and install the tile for the backsplash.

But while there's still all that to do, the difference is amazing. Remember, this is what we started with:

 

 

Stay tuned for more updates as we bring this project into the home stretch!

Kitchen Remodel: Getting Ready for Cabinet Delivery

Tomorrow is the day our new kitchen cabinets, counters, and island are to be delivered. But before they can take their rightful place, there was a bunch of work that needed to get done so the installation can go smoothly.

We had removed the upper cabinets some time ago and found various nooks and crannies to store what they contained. That left the largest cabinet run that contained various cooking implements, vinegars, canned goods, and, most importantly our sink.

So yesterday we tackled that. We moved the kitchen table to the other side of the room, and it became one of various surface areas to be temporary storage for stuff.

The tops of  a dresser and window sill were also put to use.

While I was emptying out the cabinet, David was busy installing the new plumbing and shut-off valves for the sink water lines outside.

With the valves in place, it meant we could move ahead and cut the pipes inside and behind the sink cabinet, but still have hot/cold water to the bathrooms. A handy thing to have, even if it meant we would be doing dishes in the bathtub.

Next step was to pull the cabinet away from the wall and brace ourselves for whatever creepy crawlies might be living underneath of it.

Because I'm a considerate kind of girl, I'll spare you the gory details. Suffice it to say that we both wiedled cans of bug spray and my hands-on experience of working at a pest control company many moons ago made me less squemish about stepping on bugs to kill them.

Once the bugs were dead or in their last throes, I armed myself with the Shop-Vac and cleaned out the tile void and surrounding area.

Then the fun continued as we needed to remove the sink from the counter.

We thought we had all the clips removed from the underside, but after hacking through the caulk, the blasted thing still wouldn't come out. Finally David discovered there was one clip that had been installed incorrectly that was causing the problem. A couple of good yanks released the sink. Between the two of us, we moved the cabinet into our spare room.

At that point, we decided to call it a day. This is what the area looked like at that point:

Nothing says "kitchen" like a wheelbarrow and Shop-Vac.

This morning, David started the cement pour. First he mixed the cement with some sand and added water to get it to the right consistency.

Using a screed that he built, he shoveled the cement into the void and smoothed everything out. In a matter of just an hour or so, the job was complete.

It probably goes without saying that we kept the beasties out on the porch until the cement dried enough. With all the other chaos going on, the last thing we needed was having to clean up cement paw prints from throughout the house.

So now, we're ready and hopefully our new cabinets will show up sometime tomorrow. In the meantime, there's a dishrack in our bathtub and I can't remember where I stored anything.

P.S. David woke up with a cold this morning. Makes it interesting trying to smooth cement between bouts of sneezing and blowing one's nose.

P.P.S. While all this has been going on, Fernando and his brother, Raphino, are building a structure in the back to shade our vegetable garden. More on that later.

P.P.S. Sam, one of the dogs we adopted when we bought the house, is convinced there is something hiding out in the under carriage of our car and has been quite the maniac trying to get it. We popped the hood, took the hose and sprayed everything, but nothing has made an appearance. I'll be using the car later this morning and just hope to God Sam is just imagining things and there isn't something like a snake that decides to appear while I'm driving. A gecko, fine. Same if there's a lizard. But NO SNAKES!

P.P.P.S. Don't you wish you could be having all this fun?

Kitchen Remodel: Measure Twice, Cut Once...But Not Really

So last Tuesday, we were doing our Snoopy dance of joy because we received our range hood, sink, and a bunch of other stuff from Amazon, PLUS we had received an estimated delivery date from our cabinet contractor. Oh happy day!

Well, things started going south on Friday afternoon. We received a call from the contractor's partner to let us know there was little problem with the island. Let me throw some design specs at ya', so you can follow along with the fun.

See the far right side where the vertical and horizontal dividers are? That's the spot where we intend to store cutting boards and baking pans. Because these items are used a lot, we specifically said multitudinous times that we did not want a door on this section.

Well, it seems the crew built all the dividers, glued and nailed them into place and then realized the space was to be open. How would they paint the inside of this area? How would they finish the outside edges so it wouldn't be raw plywood? Hmmm, seems we have a problem. 

One might think that finishing the plywood edges would just take a strip of veneer or moulding. Unfortunately, we don't have veneer in these parts. And as for moulding, it's not like Home Depot where you can just walk in, pick out the type that you want, and be on your merry way. Here moulding has to be milled to spec. On the high side, the assistant let us know they had built a door for this section if we wanted it. Thaaawaaack! That was the sound of our heads hitting the nearest concrete wall.

But, the fun was just getting started! It was also during that phone call when David asked for confirmation of the center point of the counter run that will have our new sink. He was told the center was 70 inches. Well that seemed a bit out of whack. Here's what I mean:

The base of the sink counter is supposed to be 9'-4" and have a two-inch, bullnose overhang around the perimeter. 

On Saturday, David decided to take a ride over to the shop to see first-hand what the heck was going on. He also took our new sink so the crew could accurately measure the opening that needed to be cut.

It turns out, for some unknown reason, they added the two-inch overhang on either end to the length of the cabinet base. That means the base is now four inches longer than it's supposed to be. That also means that it won't fit in our kitchen.

As you can see from the above diagram, we have our back door on the left side and the range at the other end of the cabinet run that has the sink. Not a lot of room to work with. And oh by the way, the short counter on the other side of the range is also too long.

When David returned from the shop and shared the news, I was momentarily at a loss for words. How in the world could this have happened? More importantly, how in the world would we figure out a solution to make it work?

We then spent the next few hours coming up with possible alternatives to the original design. The only solution that came close to a possibility was to eliminate the two-inch bullnose, plus eliminate the bit of wiggle room in the original design, which provided a bit of space around the range to make it easier to slide it out, should the need arise. However, even removing all of that, the counter would still be 5/8" too long. Unless we didn't want to use the back door, we are SOL.

At that point, David emailed all the options we came up with, along with updated designs, to the contractor, and tossed the ball in his court to figure out if there are any other possibilities and/or ways to shave off 5/8".  

As far as the island goes, it was agreed that the crew would mill moulding to cover the plywood edges and hand paint the dividers the best they can. Due to the dividers close proximity to one another, it's highly doubtful they'll be able to get the paint all the way to the back of the cabinet area. 

And to truly put the "fun" in dysfunctional, we have no idea what, if any, impact all of this will have on our estimated delivery date of November 21. 

In the meantime, I think I'll offer up some good thoughts to San Lorenzo, the patron saint of cooks, to see if he can help get things back on track.