During the week, cabinets arrived and sat piled in the living room.
The reclaimed heart pine flooring that we had taken to a local lumber shop to get planed down also arrived.
So, needless to say, the living room was full of stuff to install!
Before showing pics of the installation of the cabinets, here are some perspective drawings of the kitchen that show the layout of the cabinets and a representation of the finishes and materials used.
North facing view:
I have to mention a small change that has been made since I drew these--the primitive looking shelves next to the pot rack will be an open glass front cabinet instead. It will save Gabe the time to have to make the shelves and the glass front will be nice, but so would the shelves have been! Oh well. Something about having a panel to cover the microwave and side of the cabinet above to give a cleaner look.
East facing view:
South facing view:
We are planning to have stainless steel appliances, a porcelain farmhouse sink, and oil-rubbed bronze hardware. The countertops will be poured-in-place concrete with a gray/green/blue colorant added. The backsplash will be in small natural slate pieces in a brick-type pattern, all different sizes. This is a picture from the manufacturer:
So excited!! It should look great together. The fireplace surround will have a dry-stack slate stone like this:
Here is a computer rendering of the fireplace wall:
It won't look exactly like this--it's only a general representation of the space.
This is as close as I could get to an actual shot of the space of the fireplace:
The stone going down in the entry foyer area and both bathrooms is this 12" X 12" natural stone floor tile:
I digress. More on other finishes later. Back to cabinets!
The first thing we did upon arrival on Saturday was investigate why the newly installed HVAC unit wasn't working. We also didn't have power. Gabe ended up finding one outlet upstairs that was still functioning. So we promptly plugged in our propane heater because it was cold!!! Mom & Dad arrived soon after we did and had called our electrician to come over and check out the situation. Well, come to find out later there was a circuit breaker that burned out due to a stink bug infiltration early on. It's too cold for stink bugs to be around now, but when it was first installed it was much warmer and the little stinkers had better access to it than they do now. A bunch of them were dead in the electrical box and shorted out the circuit...apparently they were popping like popcorn in there!!! Must have stunk....
Gotta love those little surprises along the way. We stuck it out with our little propane heater for one more weekend... again, back to cabinets. :)
The guys started by "sorting" the cabinets according to where they belonged in the house. Additional to the kitchen cabinets, we also bought cabinets for a built-in vanity and linen closet for the upstairs master bath, and one for the upstairs washer/dryer closet. So they carried the cabinets upstairs and re-arranged the cabinets downstairs so we could start hanging the upper cabinets in the kitchen. It is better to do the uppers first so that you don't have the lowers in the way while trying to install them.
While they were doing that, I was going around to different spaces and painting on paint color samples to get a feel for the different options I had for each space. That was fun for me, since I was starting to get to apply the vision for the interiors. I will share in a different blog post more detail on the inspiration of colors and style of the house.
Here we are getting organized in the kitchen space:
The paint samples are in the upper left hand corner of the picture. Fyi, neither of them is going to work. The one on the right is too dark for what I am going for, and the one on the left has too much orange in it and looks neon to me. They are as follows:
Gabe and Andrew started hanging the left upper corner cabinet first. It is important to start with the corners first so that you aren't working yourself into a corner with a potential for wrong measurements and ill-fitting cabinets. They attached the cabinet to the left to the corner piece so they could hang them together more easily.
There is a 2" X 4" temporarily attached to the wall under where the cabinets are being hung to use as a guide and support.
Notice the soffit on the ceiling to guide them.
Is it level? Plumb?
I also helped them determine the best way the hinge should go, because once it's hung, it can't be changed.
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| Meet Andrew. |
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| Yes Andrew, we know you're a stud. |
That tool Andrew is holding is a "stud finder". It helps locate studs behind the drywall since the cabinets need to be attached to the studs in order to be sturdy enough to support weight of storage.
Next one goes up:
And then the next one.
This is as far as we can go on this side since we need to wait for the exhaust venting duct for the stove to be installed first before we install the cabinets above the stove.
On this side, there is a 12" next to the window, with a 24" corner cabinet, then a 9" spice pull out cabinet, and lastly a 36" wide cabinet that will be next to the stove/range/microwave. The wires hanging down are for under-cabinet lighting.
They move to the cabinets on the right side. First they attach two together:
Then hang them.
One more 12" cabinet and that's all for today.
Next week is all about preparing the wood floors! Stay tuned....
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