Cabinet doors, drawers and first meal!

We have been plugging away at all the little tasks that add up to huge advancements in functionality. Appliances came in the late afternoon Tuesday.  Alex worked on the dishwasher first because dirty dishes were piled up and clean dishes no where to be found.  It installed pretty easily.

The fridge ice maker and stove were another matter.  The handy installation kits failed to include critical parts in both cases, so another trip to Lowes was required.

(Aside: I counted on our credit card bill how many times we've been to Lowes recently.  Drumroll please: a whopping 22 times since 12/22/08.)

By Wednesday afternoon, appliances were up and running.  We made our first meal in the new kitchen Wednesday night.  The menu wasn't exciting because we didn't have much prep time, but it was so much fun to cook again.

In every spare moment, I have been building cabinet drawers, drilling holes, and attaching handles.  Finally this afternoon I had the whole wall of lower cabinets completed under the pass through!

Alex worked on upper cabinets today and now those are completed too.   We had another delicious home cooked meal tonight of chicken, goat cheese twice baked potatos, wilted local kale (from our CSA), and brownies.

Delays and Fixes

Sorry for the delay in blogging. I've actually been doing most of the work and haven't had time! Saturday, my Dad came over and we started to hang the upper cabinets. We realized we needed some hardware, and Alex needed a faucet to complete the sink project. Off to Lowes for the millionth time.

We finally had a 10% off coupon, so we bought appliances, lights, faucet and everything else we thought we might need. Appliances will be delivered tomorrow! Exciting!

So we came home and resumed hanging the upper cabinets. It is a pretty quick job, even with my Dad's obsessive leveling. He and Alex installed two new lights (of four) next.

On Saturday evening, Alex finished the sink plumbing. Look - it works!

Yesterday we took the day off to go to IKEA and return cabinets. We even returned one wall cabinet that was spared by the last revision in plans. The return was painless and pickup of new cabinets was a piece of cake too. I was surprised to find out that other than used bedding, cut fabric, or mattresses, everything is returnable.

We managed to keep other purchases to a minimum: two pot racks to flank the range, dish drainer, and an ice cream cone.

Starting to look like a real kitchen

Today Leonard and Alex worked on plumbing and finishing up electrical work. Then they installed the range hood, a Broan 'Best' 36 inch. It is quiet yet really powerful. It will be so nice to get heat out of the house instead of hearing the fire alarm go off every time Alex cooks.

I worked on cleaning up after the boys and building cabinets. The first three boxes (including the sink cabinet below) were easy peasy.

Then I dug in to the skinny (12 7/8 inch deep vs. standard 24 inch) cabinets to go below the pass through on the kitchen side and opposite the range.

I was really confused because everything we had left looked like a wall cabinet. Digging into our order, I realized everything ordered was wall cabinets. I did some research on IkeaFans and found that indeed skinny cabinets are wall boxes. Fine.

I opened up one of our 5 18 inch skinny cabinets to start building. It wasn't quite lining up as I thought it should. Finally when I got to the back, I called Alex in to consult on the direction of the back. We realized that the whole thing was the wrong orientation. Instead 30 inches tall and 18 inches wide, it was 30 inches wide and 18 inches tall. With a lot of work we could modify this to work, but it didn't seem right.

I called our localish (Cincinnati) IKEA and talked to someone in the kitchen department. He confirmed that we should have received 18 x 30 cabinets and the ones we had were all wrong. He said to take the cabinet apart carefully and we could return for the right cabinets, which they have in stock. Great.

So now we'll spend Alex's last day off work driving to Cinci to exchange cabinets instead of building and installing cabinets. At least we can see our good friends Kevin and Maureen while we're there.

To end the day on an up note, Lil helped me build three doors for one cabinet so we could see the whole thing put together. Looks good, don't you think?

(I apologize for the spotty quality of the photos. I'm using my phone (T-Mobile G1) because it's easier than the camera to upload to the web.)

Flooring and Cabinets in the house

Well, sorta. The cork floor is stacked in the dining room and the flat packed cabinets are in the garage.

Unfortunately the old cabinets and floor are still firmly installed in the kitchen.  We have to host two dinners and get through Christmas day before demolition starts.  6 days and counting!

Cabinet choices

We are heading to Ikea West Chester this weekend to order cabinets.  We remeasured the kitchen to make sure everything is correct last night.  Here are our top three door choices.  What do you like best?