Kitchen Faucet

Our old kitchen faucet wasn't that terrible, but it had a few problems. Today I replaced it with a Moen Arbor with Motionsense. The whole thing is pretty easy to install, with control unit mounting under the sink. Franziska helped with the installation.

It looks really nice and feels solid (despite various plastic parts).

Of course, the real fun part are the motion sensors:

Household Chores

Refinishing the counter top and attempting to fix showers and kitchen faucets. Fun Saturday afternoon.

Maytag MDB6701AWS dishwasher standing water in the tub

A "fun" way to spend a Sunday afternoon is figuring out why our Maytag dish washer has standing water in the tub after a completed cycle and also doesn't quite clean as well as it used to. I cleaned the floater which felt gooey and didn't really float up and down as easily as you would expect. Didn't make a difference.

The troubleshooting instructions for "standing water in tub" suggest to check the drain for food remnants. I pulled out the dishwasher from under the counter and checked the drain hose. No apparent blockage, but I noticed that it took 10s of seconds after the pump came on until the water started to flow stronger than a trickle. I figured there must be something blocking water flow inside the dishwasher...

There was, and I learned a few things:

• When your lovely wife says, "The dish washer needs a thorough cleaning", do the cleaning. It'll save you pain like an overflowing dish washer tub later.
• It is not necessary to pull the dish washer out from under the counter top in order to clean the filter and sieve.
• Contrary to earlier dishwashers we had, this Maytag model (MDB6701AWS) supposedly doesn't need manual cleaning of the sieves and filters. Of course, that's not actually true, it just takes longer until it is necessary.
• The mechanism to shred, filter and sieve food inside this dish washer is quite involved, yet fascinating.

I didn't take photos when it was dirty, but I took a couple after I had everything back together. This is the inside of the dish washer. As you can see there are no obviously serviceable parts. The floater is the round thing on the right-hand side.

I first removed the 4 screws circled in red to take off the sprayer arm and loosen the filter cover. Then unscrewed the 6 screws under the arm on the inside ring. I circled 4 of those screws in green, there are two more under the sprayer arm. The middle part now comes off fairly easily revealing a black disc, which is actually part of the pump mechanism. There is a small screw on top of the disc. Unscrew that, and put the disc aside. Finally, there are two more screws holding the filter/sieve assembly in place. Take those out, too. With some gentle convincing the cover and the filter/sieve assembly can be taken out of the dish washer. Underneath you will find the blade that hacks food into tiny parts to be washed down the drain.

In our case, the inside of the filter/sieve assembly was completely gummed up with food remnants. This part can not be opened. However, a little bit patience and using a shower head provided sufficient pressure to loosen the gunk through the sieve and wash it out. While everything was out, I cleaned the other parts, as well as the drain inside the dish washer.

Finally, I put it all back together. Apparently I didn't break anything in the process. Our dish washer seems to be working fine again. We're running an empty cycle right now to wash out any remaining gunk. So far, so good.

Kitchen done ...

Well, at least as far as contractors and the city are concerned. The city inspector signed off on the work last Thursday, and today our contractor came by one last time to fix a minor plumbing issue and set the the sink in place with silicon, now that the countertop is installed.

I have a few work items left. Finish up installing cabinet covers in the dining area, cover up the gap between the cabinets and the ceiling, hang a shelf, do another coat of wall paint, and a few touch-ups.

Almost there ...

A better day

Using Teflon tape I managed to get the hose connections for the water line to the fridge tight. I painted above the glass cabinet and behind the fridge, plus some touch ups elsewhere in the kitchen.
I filled in the gaps between the glass cabinet, base cabinet and the wall.
Since I had the fridge out already, I slid a thin plywood piece under the laminate below the fridge so that the flooring doesn't sag into the underlayment as much due to the heavy fridge. Well, it still sags put the plywood piece raises the floor enough so that the it roughly levels out when the fridge is in place.

... and I picked up Tatjana from Girl Scouts camping today, so she can attend her black belt ceremony, which was a tad too long for my taste. Topping off the day was an excellent steak dinner fresh from the BBQ. Let's see what I can put together in the garage before I call it quits tonight.

fridge water hookup and a trip under the house

The previous owners used a 1/4 inch copper pipe between the sink and the fridge to get drinking water to the cold water dispenser and the icemaker. They hooked into the T-piece at the cold water pipe and ran the pipe in the crawl space under the kitchen floor to the fridge.

Aside from the fact that a break in that pipe caused a little water damage to the old laminate flooring, I also managed to break it more while setting the cabinets. So, out with that stupid whimpy pipe and install a PVC hose like we had in the old house.

I got a 3/8 inch hose (because apparently that's what you are supposed to use with ice makers), the only catch being that all the hookups are 1/4 inch. I got the appropriate adapters at OSH, crawled under the house and found that the heating duct to the dining area had been disconnected when they ran the wires for the sub panel, and not put back together. Fortunately, I had seen the open duct from the entrance to the crawl space, and took some duct tape with me, so I could put it all together again.

Removing the copper pipe and running the PVC hose between the existing holes was easy, if not for the dust under the house. Getting to the kitchen through the crawl space is quite far from the entrance and I had to crawl under heating ducts, and around pipes to eventually get there. I wore a cheapo dust mask, but it didn't help much...

Then it was off to Family Fun Fest at school, a fun afternoon where the students have fun and the parent volunteer to man the various school wide and class specific booths. I did enjoy the hour I was helping to run the rock wall, but got to work in the sun for the full hour. I should look for a tan tomorrow. Probably bright red as usual...

We got back home tired and exhausted from the heat, the people, the noise, the sun, ... brought the kids to bed, and I went back to hooking up the remaining pieces for the water line. Only to find that I couldn't get the fittings tight enough on the hose end, so that not water leaks out. Frustrated I gave up for the evening, went to the garage, ran a couple trains over the layout, and switched Talheim multiple times. 

Kitchen Steps

I estimated to need about 2 hours to cover the steps from the kitchen to the dining room with laminate flooring. I mean, how hard can this be, cut the laminate for the step, cut some more for the casing, install the step noses and you're done.

I think this was my least favorite bit of remodeling the kitchen yet. Any mistake you make is visible and can't be corrected without redoing the whole thing. It started with me cutting the flooring pieces 3 inches too short. Measure twice, remember right, cut once! The blade in the table saw was dull, too.

When I installed the laminate flooring originally, I didn't have the right stairnoses to measure the gap I needed to leave. I installed it anyways and figured I could cut back the floor as needed later. Bad idea. REALLY bad idea. Laminate flooring is surprisingly tough. Making matters worse is that part of the cuts I needed to make were near or under cabinet overhangs. I tried it with an  -- otherwise really neat -- circular saw attachment for my Dremel tool. It worked great when I tried it on a bit of scrap wood on the work bench. However, it failed miserably with the laminate floor. Not only did it bind in the cut a lot, but also just didn't have enough oomph to really cut through the laminated flooring boards at all. In the end I resorted to the portable saw for the accessible area, and the good old "drill-a-bunch-of-holes-tightly-together-along-a-line" method, followed by the "wood-chisel-and-a-hammer" method. This was a giant mess.

In parallel I needed to cut and fit the cover boards for the pensinula cabinets, so that I have the right lengths for the step noses. Creating a way to mount them without any screws or nails showing on the front was another challenge solved with 2x4 pieces, and angle brackets.

To top it all off, when I installed the second the last finish nail in the step nose, I ran it through the front of the board underneath and cracked the surface. That did not make me happy, and it was a good thing the kids weren't around when it happened, for they would have learned a sload of new bad words one should never use ...

After all I spent almost two days on those two steps and one and half cover boards. It looks ok, and I'm moderately happy with the result, which is about as much as I can hope for at this point.

Kitchen countertop - installed!

After much delay, yesterday (Wednesday) the countertop guys finally installed our new maple butcher block countertops in the kitchen.

Here's how things went down... Tuesday evening after work I started removing the plywood sheets we have used as temporary countertops for the last few weeks, taking out the sink and the cook top, as well as several drawers that were in the way.

There were a couple work-items I wanted to do while the tops were off.

• Build simple shelves between the cooktop cabinet and the corner cabinet for storing cutting boards.
• Properly align the false drawer fronts on the sink cabinet.
• Install filler pieces to the left and right of the dishwasher.

A couple hours work I estimated. Unfortunately, that didn't work out. First off I failed at building a jig to allow me to make perfectly straight cuts for the filler pieces with my jigsaw. The jigsaw didn't want to go straight along the ruler I set. I bent and almost broke off the blade along the way.

Next I tried with the portable circular saw, but quickly realized that the left over cover pieces I'm cutting the fillers from are too narrow in order to both guide the saw and provide sufficient support to put it on.

Which means I had to go back to the table saw. Since by that time it was way past 9pm, I left the table saw in the garage, cut one piece, and ... bad idea. Not only was this really loud (and the kids sleeping), but the air in the garage was filled with saw dust. Those boards are made from a fairly soft material (I think it's Masonite), which produces ridiculous amounts of dust.

At that point I gave up for the evening and vowed to get up early on Wednesday to get everything done before contractors show up around 8am.

... and I did get up early. By 7am I was outside with the table saw cutting pieces, and fitting them around the dishwasher. The corner piece turned out to be not perfect, but I'm out of left-over pieces with a finished corner, so I installed it with a cut corner facing the dish washer and figured that'll work.

Next I built the cutting board shelves. Sounds fancy, but in reality those are just rectangles cut to the right dimension and installed with screws through the side panel of the adjoining cabinets. Again, those didn't really satisfy me, since there are gaps between shelf and cabinet wall, and I had to cut them slightly crooked because the cabinets are not at an exact 90 degree angle. Lots of swearing, freehand sawing, and filing to make them fit. Another Thank You to the crooked walls in the kitchen...

Shortly before 9am I had the second shelf in, and was just about ready to install the backstop, when the countertop guys showed up. Thank you for arriving towards the end of the promised window.

While I got out of their way and devote time to my regular day job, they installed the countertop with some fuss (thank you to crooked walls...)
We did expect a bit more overhang around the sides, but it actually looks really good the way they built it. [Yes, there will be photos]

Once they were done, I started hooking up the dishwasher and water to the sink and ... ooops, the drain pipe between sink and the wall no longer fit, since the sink was installed about 1/2 inch closer to the counter top edge to allow space for the new window sill in the back.

After some flailing around, I loosened all the fittings, pushed and shoved the plastic pipe pieces around, and ... voila, was able to connect it back together, tighten the fittings, test for leaks, ... and found none. Phew.
Later I talked with our general contractor and he confirmed that this will work at least until they come out next week to attend the final inspection.

So I turned my attention back to the dishwasher and ... Patricia points out that the cut corner looks bad. At the very least it needs to be white. What the woman wants, the woman gets (she's right, it did look crappy). So I went back in the garage to find the laminate strips that were originally meant to be installed on the sides of the toe kicks, but I didn't need them there.
Hmmm, after trying for 5 minutes to remove the backing paper, I concluded they are no self-adhesive. Looking at the instructions confirmed this. They are supposed to be ironed onto the pieces with a warm iron and then trimmed to fit with a sharp knife. I'd have to remove the dishwasher completely from its nook under the countertop to gain enough space to get to that corner with a cloth iron and laminate the strip to the corner piece. Which also means releveling the dishwasher afterwards in a really tight space now. Urgh.

Heat glue ... hot glue ... hot glue gun! Hah! I can do this without pulling the dishwasher out! I used the hot glue gun we normally use for arts and crafts (and the model railroad) to laminate the cover piece on. It actually looks reasonably nice now, especially since it's mostly hidden by the dishwasher.

Fixing the dishwasher in position and installing the last filler piece was easy in comparison.

Strangely enough the false drawer fronts I set straight on the sink cabinet Tuesday evening are now slightly crooked again and I can't get to the screws without removing the sink. I have to keep that in mind and do another try on Thursday next week when the sink is out for the last time.

More kitchen progress

Slowly, but surely there is progress in the kitchen.

I installed the laminate flooring almost two weeks ago, and it's looking really nice now:

The steps to the right of that cabinet towards the dining area still need to be done. The flooring store ordered the wrong kind of step noses (flush instead of over-the-top).  They were also from the wrong manufacturer, so even if I had wanted flush step noses, I would not have been able to install them.

Before I could install the floor I tore out all the previous layers of flooring: Water-damaged laminate, pseudo-tile linoleum mat, grey linoleum tiles. All three (!) layers either stuck together real good, or came off easily, creating a mishmash of varying floor height. I had no choice than to scrape everything off all the way down to the sub-floor. A crowbar was quite handy for the parts that were glued to the subfloor really good.

Installing laminate flooring is quite easy, since the tongue and groove system snaps together with a little pushing. Even though this floor doesn't need to be glued, I sealed the joints with silicone caulk in the area near the dish washer and sink.

The fridge is very heavy and causes compression of the acoustic pad under the floor, and therefore some warping in the floor near the fridge. I'll probably replace that really thick padding with some lighter padding with vapor barrier I have left over from the dining room flooring project plus thin plywood to get back to the same height. For now I placed boards under fridge to distribute the weight a little bit better.

The other big recent project was the range hood. We bought an IKEA Nutid HDN P650 range hood (yes, another IKEA purchase). This unit is not nearly as ugly a the typical range hood, and also doesn't get in the way of my head standing at the cooktop... (hah, as if I ever cook a lot).

I've never done venting ducts before, so this was an adventure:

• The old hood at a 6 inch pipe attached, the  new one 8 inch
• The new hood has a damper, the old one didn't. A damper has one-way doors inside the pipe, so that the exhaust air can be vented outside, but no outside air can come in.
• The pipe connecting to the rooftop vent is 7 inches wide, and offset 3 inches to the right from the centerline of the cooktop

Several visits to OSH and Lowe's later I had all the parts I needed. Initially, I planned to mimmic what the old hood did: Get a 8 inch to 6 inch reducer, mount it on the damper and run the existing 6 inch pipe into the ceiling vent duct. Admittedly, that's a shady proposition. 

Next idea: use a flexible duct and connect that instead of the pipe. 

Still not great, since in order to make even that work, I still need to mount the hood 2 inches off-center. Also, when test-fitting parts I noticed that the damper doors don't open if the reducer is set right on top of the damper.

No, I want to do do this right. The range hood needs to be centered above the cook top. Everything else looks bad. Which means the vent has to move to the left.

First I enlarged the ceiling hole for the vent pipe(even the ceiling is just drywall after all), so that I can move the pipe close to the center line. I wondered how that pipe actually stays in place, since nothing seemed to be holding it up, until I discovered a small nail nailed into the wall framing from inside the pipe. I pulled it out and ... almost the whole pipe slid out of the ceiling. Oooops. While I had the pipe out of the way (and Patricia held it, since I couldn't get it out completely) I installed the bracket for the vent hood cover (that square tupe extending up to the ceiling). Next I pushed the pipe back in realizing that it's actually just held in place by the fitting of the roof top vent and one nail. Since that nail was out already I could easily move the pipe an inch to the left.

Oh, by the way, the installation instructions of the P650 are terrible. There are two places where they indicate that the hood should be 30-36 inches above the cooktop. Unfortunately, in the one paragraph they say "the canopy", and few pages later they say "the bottom of the unit". Not helpful. I mounted the top of the unit  (which I guess equals "canopy") at 32 inches.

It also comes with no less than 6 different kinds of screws. Some of them of fairly similar in size, so it's easy to confuse them. 

The instructions also say that all 6 installation screws are "to be mounted in wood". This is an american kitchen with drywall on wall studs, and I don't have the luxury to move the hood along the wall so that the screws all go into a stud (which they wouldn't anyways, since they are not spaced right). I decided heavy duty drywall anchors are sufficient, and on top of that I'll drill some additional holes into the back of the range hood housing so I can sink a couple screws straight into a wall stud.

The system for hanging the hood in theory is quite cool. There are 2 wall hangers that have adjustment screws for leveling the hood. Once the unit is level, 4 additional screws securely connect the hood with the wall.

Unfortunately, the drywall area were the right hanger would go was apparently damaged and badly patched up by a previous owner. This was the first time it happened to me that a plastic drywall anchor would just keep turning as you drive it into the wall.  In the end I cut a sheet of 1/2 inch plywood and mounted it on the wall with screws going into the one wall stud in that area, and mounted the hood on top of that. The screws are long enough to reach through the plywood into the good drywall anchors, so this should be quite solid. Now I just have to come up with a way to hide the plywood.

Because the range hood is 1/2 inch away from the wall, the cover for the venting pipe doesn't quite fit properly either. I'll have to think some more about how to work-around that, or maybe I'll just leave it.

Hooking up the electrical wiring was a piece of cake in comparison to mounting the range hood. 

After all I'm quite pleased with how this came out so far. Also, the P650 operates very quietly. Even the highest setting seems to be quieter than the old range hood.

Kitchen cabinets gone, part 2

All the remaining old kitchen cabinets are now on the patio. Removing everything went at a fairly steady pace. Now on to cutting everything into pieces, small enough to fit into the car later, and making a neat stack on the patio for now.

sjpermits.org only supports Internet Explorer? - bah

As much as I like it to be able to schedule a city inspector for our kitchen work online, I'm annoyed by sjpermits.org, the official city web site for all things around permits.

At first this all looks nice (if not somewhat outdated), and mostly works just fine. You can look up previous permits for an address, even apply for permits for simple projects, and schedule an inspector. At the top of the home page is this little note:

Welcome to San Jose Permits On-Line. This site provides a comprehensive menu of development permit services.
Permits On-Line has been tested for functionality on the IE browser platform. Other browsers may work but are not supported.

So the Capital of Silicon Valley doesn't care about any alternative browsers. This becomes perfectly clear when you actually try to set up an inspection. After working through a multi-step process the final submission of the form fails, because some JavaScript is unable to parse out whether there are any checkboxes selected for the type of inspection.

Mind you, this doesn't work on Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, nor Apple Safari. I don't have a Windows computer to run Internet Explorer on, and I don't want one.

I eventually got through that step by cheating and use the Windows Citrix service at work, accessing a virtual Windows instance with IE8.The alternative would have been to call up the building department and schedule over the phone.

I complained to the city about this, no response yet, but given the current budget troubles I'm sure they are already happy to keep this working as is.

Update:
They did respond after a couple days, basically saying to call them and schedule over the phone if the automated system doesn't work for me, or suit my needs.

Kitchen work scheduled

I'm not good at doing drywall work. Nor do I want to texture dry wall. Nor do I think I'll do a good job with building a box to hide the hole in the ceiling where the neon lights are currently located. Nor do I want to run a bunch of electrical conduit, and set it up in a way that'll pass city inspection.

That's what you pay contractors for. We're on the schedule and they'll start next week with a new sub panel. Over the next couple weeks they'll do the drywall and ceiling, install can lights, run a bunch more circuits into the kitchen to meet current code, and do some light re-piping.

I'll rip out the old cabinets, paint the walls, install flooring, install the new cabinets, and install temporary plywood counter tops as stand-in until the new butcher block counter top is delivered and installed.

If it all works out the worst is over before Easter.

Now I just need to find someone to trade oncall with me, since I'm supposed to carry the pager the same week most of the work happens.

Before and After

The old row of cabinets:



And the new row of cabinets:

I made it!

The rear row is almost done. The big pullout cabinet (also known as "Apothekerschrank") is in. All the knobs and handles are installed. I even managed to deal with a drain emergency. Our sewer pipe was clogged and required a rooter company to come out and clean. And I made it in time to SJC for my flight to Seattle.

Still missing is mostly window dressing: toe kicks, moulding, some caulking. Some areas of exposed drywall need to be textured. We'll hire that out as part of the lighting project. And there's definitely need for paint on the uncovered walls. But the cabinets are now usable. And I started with this project only one week ago!

I made myself a nifty drilling template for the holes in the doors from an old shelf. Any kind of plywood works for this really. Then put the template on the inside of the door, another on the outside to act as a block to prevent splintering when the drill exits the door and secured this contraption with bar clamps, while carefully aligning the edges of the template with the door. This ensures that the knob holes are in the same place and height for all doors. Worked great for the 10 doors I drilled holes in today. IKEA also sells a plastic drilling template called FIXA for less than $3. I'm likely going to use this for the many drawer and pullout fronts to be installed in the other half of the kitchen.

The 15" pullout cabinet requires the use of a template called "S1184/0404" to mount the cabinet front to the pullout drawers. Unfortunately, that templates was nowhere to be found in any of the boxes. I found a copy of it over at IKEA fans, and resized it in GIMP, so the dimensions in the template actually match reality when printed. I was quite nervous that this won't work, and I therefore would drill holes into a $120+ cabinet front in the wrong place, so I re-checked every hole location before drilling.

One the screw holes was right over one of the cutouts where the hinges normally go. However, I found that the plastic filler piece for those cutouts has a depression at just the right place to hold the screw securely in place. Once I mounted the hardware, I put the pullout drawers with the front attached on the support rails, and low-and-behold, it slid in just fine, clicked in place and was ready for action.

I also installed a 1/2 inch birch plywood board as temporary countertop near the fridge until we install the final countertop.

Oh, and yes, now that I got the hang of how putting together an IKEA kitchen works, I will do the other half of the kitchen in the coming weeks as well. But first we need to arrange a few things, and I need some rest.

Sorry, still no photos online. Maybe tomorrow.

Kitchen Progress

Another long day. I stopped by OSH this morning to pick up a few parts, and a sweet 12V driver tool made by Milwaukee. It's battery lasted me all day screwing in drawer rails, door hinges, and other odd jobs. While I have a 3.6V driver tool (thanks, Dad!) which is great for the railroad layout, the 12V tool has quite a bit more "ooompf".

Anyways, it took me a while to figure out how these IKEA drawers for the big pantry cabinet go together, but once I got the hang of it, it became really easy. The doors have some snazzy hinges that snap into place on the door, and are very easy to hang to the cabinet frame. I installed all doors with exception of the pull-out drawer cabinet, which will be done tomorrow morning. The fridge is also in it's final place now, and of course Charlie is exploring the new climber's garden.

The annoyance of the day was putting together the modified layout for the microwave/oven cabinet. For one, it took me forever to get the electrical for the microwave routed properly, the cord is just a tad too short to reach the outlet. Then I needed two attempts to build supports for the mounting frame. Once that was out of the way, I could finally measure how much space was left for the oven. Much less than I hoped for. Which left only room for one 9 inch high drawer. Unfortunately, the Stat drawer fronts come in 4 inches and 12 inches only. I mounted the rails into the cabinet but didn't put together the drawer while I wait for an ingenious idea how to fix this in a way that actually looks half-way decent. Hmmm, I could use two 4-inch drawer fronts and mount them on top of each other. Anyways, this will have to wait until Im back from Seattle.

Getting the oven mounted was another heavy lifting action which we worked through with no major damage.

Several people asked for photos. No worries, there will be photos posted here. Stay tuned.

Lessons learned:

Careful when snapping together the drawer pieces. It really hurts bad when some skin gets pinched in the process.

Go to bed at a decent time and have enough sleep.

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.

Cabinet frames built

Today I built all 5 remaining cabinet frames that go on the rear wall of the kitchen. We're going to move them in place to make sure the whole row is going to fit in the space available. I will also use this opportunity to cut openings in the rear for power connections at the right places. Then it's crunch time again to set up each cabinet frame on its legs and the rear wall board.

I just realized that I can install the drywall anchors through the hole in the cabinet, so we need to put them into place only once.

Lessons learned:

READ THE INSTRUCTIONS ... CAREFULLY, AND IN DETAIL. Then think about what you read and modify where it makes sense.

If something doesn't seem to make sense, think about it some more, and read the instructions again. It's likely you didn't understand it in the first place.

First cabinet frame is in

Well, I was at IKEA this afternoon to pick up a few missing pieces, and Tatjana's school concert was tonight, so I started working on the layout ... errrm, I mean the kitchen, only after after 8pm.

I started with the big high corner cabinet, not only because it's a fairly standard cabinet, but also because I need to establish the height for the hanging cabinets before hanging them, and it all should line up nicely, right? Anyways, I went slowly and carefully and had the frame assembled a while later. If you've ever done furniture assembly this is not really hard. The hard part came when I realized we need to lift this monster into place because the legs are too whimpy to be used to tip the cabinet on. Nor can you move this thing much on the legs.

After some grunting and swearing the cabinet was in the corner. Turn the page of the setup instructions and I almost fell over backwards. You need to mark the holes for the screws holding the cabinet at the wall. If there are no studs at the position, to install wall anchors, YOU NEED TO LIFT THE DAMN THING AWAY AGAIN. All FIFTY-SIX kilograms at once. Urgh....

So we did, and it wasn't fun. I installed wall anchors, and we put the monster back into place.

Lessons learned:

Glue/tape the legs to the floor of the cabinet, otherwise they fall out if you lift it up.

The rear support wall support board from IKEA is quite whimpy. I used a 3" wide wood plank instead and screwed it to the studs

It's a good idea to use 4 legs for the cabinet. This allows for more weight to be loaded into the cabinet. But don't forget to install these little plastic lids that come with the legs, so that the cabinet sides are directly supported by the legs.

The cabinets are on the patio

The backrow of kitchen cabinets is now on the patio. In pieces. Today I disconnected the microwave and oven, moved them aside and demo'ed the remaining two floor to ceiling cabinets.

When I took down the last cabinet, I finally learned why they didn't use the space all the way to the wall: There's a heating duct from the living room extending about an inch into the kitchen. There goes one inch of the 1.5 inch "wiggle room" I left when planning the layout of the new cabinets.

Lessons learned so far:

Demolishing kitchen cabinets youerself is feasible and not really hard.

BE CAREFUL with nails! They are all over the place. Hammer them down, so they don't stick out from the wood.

Wear ear and eye protection.

There will be surprises.

it's easy to crack drywall when you get too excited ripping out shelf supports.

It sucks if cracked drywall is in an area that will be visible later. I'm adding repairing drywall to my repertoire.

Make sure there is enough space for your shiny new cabinets. In the worst case I will have to ... errm ... modify ... the end cabinet to allow space for the heating duct.

2 cabinets down

Slaming a hammer into a kitchen cabinet is actually FUN.

I took down the pantry and the cabinet over the fridge today. I worked mostly with a crowbar and a hammer, and my trusty jigsaw with a big blade, for cabinet fronts, as well as cuts through shelves and sides. I don't really want to know what nasty stuff they mixed into plywood 40 years ago, but I tried to avoid breathing that dust anyway.

In the socket under the pantry we found the dried up skeleton of a mouse. That guy probably has been down there for quite a while. Looks like he tried to chew up some of the drywall with no success.

Took me just over an hour to take the two cabinets down. The kids were watching and had a blast. Tomorrow I'll do the other two cabinets, and cut away a bit of the laminate flooring, so it's not in the way. Depending on how long this takes, I'll also prep the walls and do some caulking along the floor. If this all works out, I might start setting up the new cabinets on Thursday.