Kitchen Cabinets - Finish Line is in Sight!

Being the dedicated remodeler that I am, I skipped going out with some friends tonight to work on the kitchen. I really want a stove for the weekend!

First job was to put a hole in the floor for the gas line. I had to go through the travertine tile, cement board, linoleum, and the sub-floor.




A hole saw designed to cut through tile worked great. I went through to the sub floor and then used a regular 1" bit to finish off the wood. The little donut of travertine is pretty cool - I might see how long it lasts on my keychain.




Fast forward 90 minutes and the gas line is run and stove is hooked up and running. This is my first time ever using a gas stove, and I think it'll work great for lighting my cigars.



By 10:00, I'm done for the day. There is a little trim work that needs to be done still, including adding the door handles. I can get that taken care of tomorrow, and then it'll be time to get rolling on the counter tops.




The work is done for the day, I've been without a stove for a couple weeks, and I'm hungry. I haven't installed the microwave with the exhaust vent yet, so I can't make anything too messy. Eggs it is for the stove's maiden run. Tomorrow morning, it's time for pancakes!

Ikea Cabinet Trim

There has been something bugging me about the Ikea cabinets, which is the trimwork around the bottom. The way my cabinets are laid out, there are no "same-size" cabinets next to each other. This means that the way I had them placed it would be difficult to do the bottom-trim the way I had planned.

I decided that the best way to accomplish my goal was to add an end-piece between each cabinet. That would allow me an easy task of putting in the face trim across the bottom front.

On the bad-side of doing this, I've got the extra cost of the material and the extra width in the overall run of cabinets.

In this picture you can see how the two side pieces help box in the sides of the taller cabinet. Once I add the front trim it'll be very difficult to see the lighting I will hide in there.




With two cabinets installed, I moved the new fridge in place to make sure I had enough room. Here is where a lot of pre-planning paid off, as it fit in with just enough space to make it look right. There is plenty of room on top of the fridge, although the trim I have yet to install there will make the cabinets look closer.

The fridge looks huge right now, but once the trim and counter tops are in place I expect it to look a little more to the right scale. The lower cabinet is sitting directly on the tile, and will end up sitting higher once I put it's legs on.

It doesn't really look like it, but the doors on the fridge are stainless. The sides are black. The stove, microwave, and dishwasher are the same.




Since these cabinets are in, I might as well get some use out of 'em! These new tall cabinets can hold a LOT more than the old ones.




The base cabinets will line up with the larger upper cabinets. I clamped a side-piece in place to see how it'll look. These pieces aren't cheap, so I plan to cut them in half so that the cabinets look fully trimmed, but if you pull the stove out you can see there the piece was cut. In this pic, only the left trim is in place. I'll add the trim to both sides which will match the upper cabinets.




These are the standard feet provided by Ikea. Injection molded plastic, which can be screwed in or out to adjust the cabinet height. This works well and can help make life easy on uneven floors. I'm not too concerned with the pieces breaking over time, as the cabinets will be screwed to the wall keeping them from moving. The foot design allows you to bridge two cabinets with one foot if desired, although I'm not sure why you would want to go with less support.

Another option for the base would be to build some custom base pieces from dimensional lumber.

The standard Ikea toe-kicks clip onto the legs. I don't know how sturdy that will be, and I might need to brace it up with some extra material. I don't remember ever kicking the toe-kicks a whole lot in the past, so maybe it'll work better than I expect.




Overall, I can't complain too much about anything regarding quality on the cabinets. It's no surprise as to how they're constructed or how they are installed. The only thing I'm not real happy with is the lack of information and options presented in the Ikea literature regarding trimming out the cabinets. The books and install directions don't really show any options, so it's up to the installer to figure things out.

I've said before that I obsess over details, and it's times like this where it pays off. I've only got one trim piece which I'm not sure how to handle yet, but given a few minutes I'll find a way to make it work.

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.