Installing the Upper Cabinets

I had hoped to do this yesterday, but I spent the better part of the day at a friend's bachelor party.

There is still a little work I need to do on the electrical connections before I can do the final install on the upper cabinets, but since I hung the cabinets I decided to install the doors and side-trim to see how everything is going to look.




At this time there is still a bunch of adjusting that will need to be done on the hinges for the doors. The hinge design allows you to adjust each door individually. You can also see a small gap between the doors, which is really a gap between the two cabinet boxes. After I get all the electrical work done the cabinets will be screwed together to make sure they're properly lined up. At that time, this gap will disappear.

Grouting the Tile

I didn't take any "during" pictures of the grouting, because there is a limited time to work with the grout and I didn't want to mix up any more than necessary. I used a sanded grout with a flexible grout admixture instead of water.

It took only about 20 minutes to push the grout between the tiles, followed by a solid hour of cleaning them of grout haze. There is a very fine haze on them still, which I should be able to remove with a dry towel.

The two rows closest to the wall are mostly made up of the ugliest tiles I had, since they'll be covered by cabinets and appliances.




When doing tile work (or if you're in sales like I am...) a good set of knee-pads is in order. You don't want to crawl around on the floor scrubbing grout without some extra protection. Good sponges and plenty of clean water is in order. I use a two-bucket system. The first bucket is used to get most of the grout off the sponge and the second bucket is to help clean the sponge as much as possible before wiping the tiles.

Sunday night the grout should have dried long enough for me to seal it. After that is done I can put the appliances in place and start on the lower cabinets.




Speaking of the cabinets, I mentioned on an earlier post that I was going to trim the back edge of the upper cabinets to see if I could get the cabinets closer to the ceiling.

The plan worked, and I can put the cabinets within 1/8"-1/4" of the ceiling. I'm not sure if I'm going to do that yet though. I might go back to the original plan of using a trim spacer. I need to stand back and look at the options first before making the final choice.

Some Companies Really Don't Want my Business

So almost 4weeks ago I was blathering on about getting my water system upgraded. Read all the exhilarating details here:

http://muskegojeff.blogspot.com/2008/03/two-different-contractors-two-different.html

At the time, I was getting two estimates (and ended up going with the third guy). The second guy said he'd send me an estimate. I figured it'd be a couple days, maybe a week tops. Past that kind of time and they don't want my business.

Today the quote finally arrived! 25 days after coming out to look at the job. They looked at the job on March 28, the estimate worksheet is dated April 16, and the envelope is dated April 21. Yeah, these guys are a stickler for punctuality... Only the USPS did their job in a timely manner by getting me the mail in one day.

To top it off, they didn't even quote me the material I asked for. I asked for the Iron Curtain iron filter and separate water softener. They quoted me a combined unit and an overall price $1,000.00 higher than I ended up paying another guy two weeks ago!

Now the big question is do I just throw out the estimate and forget about it or send it back with a note explaining how their way of doing business is not going to help them earn customers in the future?

I'm leaning towards option C, sending it back with the various dates highlighted and a note saying that by the time they finally wrote up the estimate I had already been enjoying the system installed by another company for over a week.

Paint Up, Travertine Tile Down

The plan for today was to paint the kitchen walls and get the tile down that would be below the appliances and lower cabinets. The paint was as uneventful as painting can be, so I'll just post the obligatory picture and be done with it. I didn't paint everywhere, as the cabinets would hide a lot of the wall, so why bother?




To keep the grout lines straight and in-line with the lines already done in the kitchen I could have used a chalk-line, but I'm not a fan of tracking the chalk dust around the kitchen. My method was to use my Ryobi laser level. I lined one end up with the current grout lines and the other end of the laser line with a mark on the far end of the kitchen.




Mounted on a tripod it was easy to keep it in place throughout the tiling.



About 2/3 of the tile I'm putting down today will be hidden under the appliances and lower cabinets. For those tiles in the first two rows I picked the ugliest and plainest tiles I had. Better looking tiles are reserved for areas that will be visible.




Here is the finished work for the day. The third row was done with the good looking tiles.




How'd the laser line work? Everything lined up pretty damn well, so I'll keep repeating this method as I continue with the floor in the future. Putting a mark at the far end of the floor I'm able to make sure that the width of the lines are consistent across the full length. The tile-spacers make nice little targets for the laser.



In a few days I'll grout the floor and will then be able to install the appliances. As of now we're without a stove until I finish this up and run the gas line. Oh, and speaking of the gas line, I guess I should have drilled the hole for it before putting down the cement board and tile..... Oh well.

Prepping the Floor for Tile

The goal for the weekend is to get a substantial amount of "heavy" work done in the kitchen. Demo is done, and the third cost of plaster has been applied to the walls.

I'm thrilled with how the Dust Control joint compound has worked. All of the dust from the sanding fell within 2' of the wall. Nothing floating around the house, much less the rest of the kitchen.

While the final skim coat of mud is drying, I prepped the floor for the cement board. Normally I would prefer to remove the old layer(s) of linoleum, but considering they're both stuck very well to the floor and especially since there's a good chance that the bottom layer has asbestos, I'm leaving them in place.

I removed the lose edges and the base molding, and filled the low spots where there is no linoleum (the areas covered by the previous lower cabinets).




2-1/2 sheets of 4'x4' cement board and 150 screws later and the floor is ready for tile. I'm only applying tile to this small area of the floor for now, and when I do the other half of the kitchen I'll do the rest.

While I was screwing down the cement board, I took the opportunity to run some 3-1/2" deck screws through the cement board, linoleum, and sub-floor into the floor joists to get rid of a little squeeking where the old stove location was. It might have gone away on it's own after the tile is installed, but considering it reflects where the sub-floor is moving I figured it was best to get rid of the problem now so I don't have to worry about the grout cracking later on.




Once the floor was done, the drywall was ready for it's final sanding, followed by a coat of primer & sand texture.

Tomorrow morning I'll pick up some paint to give the walls a coat before doing the flooring and hanging the cabinets. Once the walls are painted I can start installing the floor tile. I figure I'll be installing about 35 square feet of tile.

Test Fitting the Ikea Cabinets

Today's goal was to get the drywall mostly done so that over the weekend I can hang the cabinets and start tiling the floor.

The first step was to get another layer of drywall mud on the joints so that it would have time to dry overnight. On it went, no big deal. I followed up with a sponge sanding. As it looks right now I'll have to give it a light sanding tomorrow morning before giving it the final skim coat.

After the mud had dried long enough to not be messy I put up the track for the upper cabinets. I started with the track about two inches higher than recommended by the Ikea instructions. Why? Because I knew I would have about 1/2" of floor build-up from the floor tiles and because I wanted a little more room above the counter tops. Everybody in my family is above average height, so it's not like we won't be able to reach the shelves. However, if midgets move in here after us, they're fvcked.




With the track up I could hang the cabinets. With the mounting track placed where it was, I had between 1-1/4" and 1-1/2" of gap between the ceiling and the top of the cabinet. Normally, when hanging the track at the recommended height you would only have the wall studs to screw into. By raising the track like I did I get to use the wall header giving me a lot more strength.




In the opening that will house the microwave I marked the stud locations. This will make it easier and quicker to screw the mounting plate to the wall. I had also marked the stud locations on the wall behind the cabinet before I knew where I was going to mount the cabinet rail.




The sides and bottom trim will provide a nice place to hide the under-cabinet lighting. The lights will throw a lot of light but not be visible to anybody but kids. Or midgets. The bottom trim will sit out farther forward, but I couldn't temporarily clamp it into place where it will finally sit.



Jumping back to the space above the cabinets, I had considered filling that gap with a small filler piece, but then changed my mind and decided to raise the cabinets to put them really close to the ceiling. I raised the track by 1". The cabinet mounting hardware allows me to move the cabinets up by 1/2", so in theory I should be able to put the cabinets right up against the ceiling.




"In theory" compared to "reality". The top and bottom of the cabinet extend back beyond the back wall of the cabinet so the cabinet sits flat against the wall, even though there is a mounting rail behind it. The drywall mud in the corner keeps me from pushing the cabinet up the full 1/2" I mentioned previously, so my plan is to cut off that top edge. Once it's cut off I should be able to get the gap down to about 1/8", a small enough gap to fill with caulking. The final result should be a nice clean install.




Tomorrow I'll pull the cabinets down and do the final mud work. By the end of the day or on Sunday I can paint & texture the wall and then hang them back up, possibly for the last time.

Slinging Mud

Time to start slinging mud. I need to have the kitchen ready for cabinet and flooring install this weekend, and time during the week will be short. In the past I have always used standard drywall joint compound.

This time around I'm using the compound with dust control. I wanted to buy one gallon, but the local Menards only sells it in the 3-1/2 gallon containers. I'm hoping it keeps until I get to the other side of the kitchen. Worst case scenario is that I'm out $12.00.

I've read from a couple of people that this dust control version is well worth the extra few bucks. I'll find out for myself.




It's been a couple of years since I've done any drywall work, so I got back into the swing of it by doing the easy sections first - the areas I cut out to run the cable through the studs.

It went on easily, and I gave it a going-over with a sponge after it set up a bit. If I'm lucky (and careful) I should have very little to sand.




Only about 1/3 of the joints will be visible once the cabinets are in place, which I'm really happy about. That means that I can do a semi-half-ass job on about 2/3 of the joints.

Even though most of them won't be visible I still hit 'em with the sponge, but I won't bother final sanding them. Only the visible parts will get the extra effort.

Now that the first layer of mud is on, I'll let it sit until Friday, which should be the next time I get time to work on it. There will be some shrinkage to deal with and I'll need to feather the edges a bit.

Overall I'm happy with how it's looking so far.