Cabinet frames installed

Phew, this was a long day. All cabinet frames are now installed in their final positions.

Hanging an 27kg over-the-fridge cabinet proved challenging. We managed with some ingenious arm raising mechanism. Think dining room chair, plus step stool, plus wife on top to get her high enough so that she can reach the screws in the back of a 2 feet deep cabinet pretty much just under ceiling.

Lessons learned:

When cutting the rail to hang the wall cabinets measure twice, cut once. It really sucks when you're cutting one inch too short because you forgot to take the cover panel between two cabinets into account.

Walls are never straight.

A sufficiently strong drill can twist off a screw you're trying to force into a wall stud.

Thankfully wall studs are wide enough to allow for a second screw.

Make sure your screws are not longer than the hole you drilled for them, unless they are the self-drilling kind.

Old laminate flooring on top of two layers of old vinyl is about 1/2 inch thick. No matter how much you wish it, a 95.5 inch side cover panel won't magically fit into 95inch air space in front of the cabinets (due to floor and ceiling lights), even if there is 96inches of vertical space around the cabinets. Cutting off 1/4 inch height is not sufficient.

Swearing doesn't make it shorter.

Previous owners are idiots for not ripping out the old flooring when remodeling. Come on folks, it's not THAT hard.

Overall, I think this will come out nicely.

Tomorrow (well, later today really), I'll start hanging doors, installing shelves and drawers, as well as getting the microwave and oven installed in their new cabinet. That will be interesting, as I'm planning to modify the layout of that cabinet to allow for both microwave and oven stacked on top of each other (29 + 18 inches vertical space), while the cabinet is intended to be used with a 28 inch high oven only (the rest is doors and drawers).

I need to cut a 24x36 inch piece of plywood to use as temporary flooring in the nook for the fridge so it's level with the existing flooring until I replace the old laminate floor in a few weeks.