The Kitchen Project -- Done. (Mostly)

    When we last left off, I had the cabinets in, the upper doors done and the countertop installed. I built and installed the drawers, all the handles, and then did the backsplash.  It came together very nicely.

     I'd never done a tiling project before.  Lisa picked out matte white subway tiles, and we picked them up from Bath Bright Kitchen & Tile in Hyde Park, along with the mastic, grout and sealer.  Then I headed down to Harbor Freight to pick up a wet-cut tile saw.  The Harbor Freight saw is about half the price of a similar Rigid saw from Home Depot, and it's more than adequate for the limited use I'll give it.  For my next tile job (the upstairs bathroom!), I'll pick up a simple tile cutter, which is much easier for all of the straight cuts.

Lisa's dad and I did the project in a long, back-aching afternoon.  It came out pretty well, but I never really got the hang of spreading the mastic with the notched trowel to leave the right amount of mastic on the wall.  I ended up just "buttering" the back of each tile and setting them in place.  We weren't really sure what we were supposed to do around the switches and receptacles, but whatever we did seemed to have worked pretty well.

All in all I'm pretty happy with the way the kitchen turned out.  My eyes are drawn immediately to the imperfections in the doors and drawer frames, but no one else seems to notice them until I point them out.

I still have a little work to do.  I'd like to fix some doors and fine-tune some of the drawer faces.  And I want to add some switched under-cabinet LED lights, but that will require some electrical work -- cutting into the backsplash and the wall to add the new switch and a receptacle to the existing circuit.  In theory, it's not a big deal, but I have no idea what I'll find when I cut into the walls.

And toe kicks.  I need to make the toe kicks.

The Kitchen Project Part II

The new sink and countertop arrived a few weeks back.  For the countertop, at first I had to cut it to size, cut out the hole for the sink, and glue on a piece for the "turn".

Then I sprayed it with Enduro-Var, which was recommended by Jeff Jewitt of Homestead Finishing.  I added 5 drops of Jewitt's Medium Brown Transtint dye to each pint of finish.  I think I put two coats on the bottom and 5 on the top.  I really like the color:

Here is it installed with the sink:

It took me three tries to make the smaller base cabinet to the right of the stove.  18" minus 1.5" is not 17.5"  But it all worked out ok.

And here is a little shelf I threw together for the spot next to the window.  I thought that this would open up the kitchen more than if I put a cabinet back up.

I really did a terrible job on the shelf.  But hopefully it will have enough stuff on it that no one will notice.

Now, I'm building drawers!  The fun never ends.

The Kitchen Project -- Part 1

Back in February or so, the girlfriend suggested that I replace the doors in the kitchen.  The wall cabinets were cheap (but surprisingly sturdy) frame cabinets with overlay doors and somewhat old-fashioned, visible hinges.  I thought to remove the face frames and put in nice frame and panel doors.  Of course, the frames were glued on to the cabinets, so I decided to build myself a new kitchen.

This was something I've been considering for a while.  The kitchen is small (not that I can change that) and the countertop is a hideous white speckled laminate.  However, I have a goal of relocating the kitchen to a different part of the house, so I didn't want to put much money into the current one.  And, I want a 36" range, so I don't want to replace the 30" I've got, no matter how rusty the stove top gets.  (Kenmore no longer sells a replacement top for this stove.

Our inspiration was from A Country Farmhouse blog.  (A blog well-worth perusing.  Lovely.)  White with a wood countertop.

I figured it would take me a few months to build and install the new cabinets.  Well, it's now mid-July.  Life, family, and weather have gotten in the way.

I've got the wall cabinets up -- although I still need to cut the shelves.  And we haven't bought the hardware yet.  More of the base cabinets are installed -- although I screwed up one of them and will have to re-build it.

Here is the original kitchen:

I chose the green paint.  I like it.

A few weeks back my friend Paul was in town and we ripped out old wall cabinets and hung the new ones:

I was shocked when everything fit. I will have to remake a door or two.  Oops.

The doors are poplar frames with 1/4 birch plywood panels.  I bought about 260 bf of rough poplar from a guy up here and milled and cut the boards myself.  The hardware is Blum soft-close.

Ripping out the base cabinets, especially the plumbing, was harder than expected.  It always is.  But most of the cabinets are in place.  I just need to shim the one on the left and screw it to the wall:

Again, a huge sigh of relief when that corner unit fit perfectly between the range and the dishwasher.  The floor slopes quite a bit down to the left, so there was a lot of shimming going on.  But it's all level and square.

We decided on an apron front sink purchased from Overstock.com.  It's about twice as expensive as I wanted, but I do like the look of it.

The sink is about 100 pounds, so I had to re-work the cabinet to put in that shelf and some supporting pieces underneath.  I hope it holds.  And, I decided to call a plumber for when we're ready -- I don't think I can handle learning how to plumb.  That will be for the future.

The counter top will be alder, from Perfect Plank.  The whole top cost about $450, delivered, which is about 1/4 the price of anything else I looked into.  I will have to finish it myself, but that shouldn't be too hard.

I had taken off work last Thursday and Friday (after July 4th) to finish the sink and the counter top.  Of course, the sink was damaged.  As was the counter top.  That will be work for next weekend.

And then, I need to build drawers.

So far, with all of the hardware, I'm about $2,500 into the project.  Most of the cost is hardware -- the hinges and drawer slides (Blum Tandem undermounts -- with the cool soft close feature).  Still, I should be able to get everything done for the price of a decent Corian  counter top.