Dishwasher, doors, and more!

Thursday, September 6th - Plumbing is the part of this project that I was least comfortable with.  Specifically, "supply" plumbing, the part under pressure that brings water to you.  I don't think I mentioned it on the blog, but you may have noticed during the renovation, any shot of the sink area/pipes included an old red plastic coffee container.  That was because after removing the copper tube running to the dishwasher, the valve developed a very tiny drip.  Tiny in that I would have to empty that red bucket every week or so.  With the project coming to an "end", I finally needed to tackle that.  Had I known how easy it was, I would have done it long ago.  Really, it was a matter of turning off the hot water at the water heater, using a wrench to remove the compression valve, putting the new valve on, and tightening it down.  That's it.

So I figured, with the "supply" part of the sink done, the drain part should be easy.  Except I'm a super-novice plumber, and was rather overwhelmed by the vast array of plumbing parts at my local Lowes.  Father-in-law Kevin came over again to help out.  In fact, I'm such a novice, that I'm not even going to detail what I did to get the sink drain working.  The important part is, it works.  :)  I do still need to hook up the 2nd bowl, we didn't quite have the right fittings for that.  But the sink and garbage disposal works, it beats washing dishes in the basement.

Friday, September 7th - Dishwasher installation.  Because of the size and shape of the kitchen, the dishwasher is 24" wide, and the hole it fits in is roughly 31".  I used a couple of large L brackets, and cut a Perfekt cover panel down to size, and mounted it to the side of the cabinet to the right of the dishwasher.  Sturdy, and fits well, and doesn't look weird at all.  If I were super-awesome, I would have made it a little vertical "shelf" to hold cookie sheets.  At this point, I just want a working kitchen.

From what I can tell, there's 2 ways to hook up a dishwasher.  The easy way, with a vinyl or rubber or some type of hose that goes from the valve to the dishwasher, and the hard way, with a flexible copper tube that goes from the valve to the dishwasher.  The vinyl or rubber hoses wear out over time, and can leak, sometimes catastrophically.  Companies make special hoses that "detect" when there's a catastrophic leak, and automatically shut off the water.  Unfortunately, from the reviews I read online, they don't work well, and tend to fail rather often.  The copper tubing, on the other hand, will last far, far longer than the dishwasher ever will.  I decided that I'm not a fan of leaking, so I went the old fashioned and difficult way with the bendable copper tubing.

Difficult doesn't begin to explain it.

Again, perhaps it's just because I'm a super-beginning plumber, or I don't have the right tools, but the copper tubing was just really hard to work with.  It snakes through a hole in the side of the sink cabinet, and then has to work its' way to the front of the dishwasher.  Because of the nature of the copper tubing the fitting it goes into points towards the back of the dishwasher, making it very tough to get a wrench in to tighten it.  It took a couple rounds of "I think that's tight enough." (water on, drip, drip, drip) "Poop, no it isn't." before I finally got it tight enough to be leak free.

Saturday, September 8th - My father-in-law Kevin came over once again, and we installed the two new interior doors.  No major problems or snags there, just the usual fighting with the doors, trimming, leveling, shimming, and nailing in place.

I'm not sure I'm totally happy with the quality of the doors.  Maybe that will change once they're painted, right now they're just primed.  They're Menards' "Duracore" doors, meaning they're hollow-core, but filled with 3M foam.  They seem to block sound pretty good, and have a satisfyingly "solid" feel when you close it.  They just seem rather cheaply made.  It will be one of those "time will tell" things.

I made a mistake installing the first door knob.  In my defense, the directions should have been a little clearer up front.  But I should have paid more attention and read completely through the directions before I started.  The jamb was cutout for the strike plate, and the door had cutouts for the handle and the closer mechanism (whatever it's called), but it wasn't cutout for the metal plate that goes around the spring latch... thingy.  So I used a chisel to carefully chisel out the door where the plate goes.  Problem was, that part of the door is practically cardboard.  Ugh.  I then continue following the instructions...  At the end, as an, "Oh, by the way..." sort of thing, it says that if your door isn't cut out for the metal plate, you can remove it and use the little round metal pieces that come in the package.  Ugh.  So needless to say, the second door knob went on much, much faster.

After the doors, we continued drilling for and installing handles.  IKEA has a nifty little plastic guide for making sure your handle holes all get drilled in the same place.  I also put on some of the cover panels on the end cabinets, hiding the rest of the birch colored part of the Akurum cabinet frames.

There's a paper towel holder... toaster oven... coffee maker...  Kitchen table!!  Saturday was also move-back-in day to the kitchen, marking the end of just under 4 months of cooking in the living room.  The kitchen isn't officially done, but it's functional.

Sunday, September 9th - A quiet, restful Sunday.  Put on a few more cover panels, and, since the fridge is coming back in Monday and it would otherwise be hard to access, I also installed the deco strip under the cabinet over the fridge.

Monday, September 10th - Kevin and Phil came over, and between the three of us, along with extra plywood on the floor, managed to safely wrestle the refrigerator back to it's home.  Like the dishwasher, I went the copper tubing route to supply water to the ice maker.  The fridge is substantially easier to access though.

A happy wife in a functional kitchen!

Yet to do:  Tile backsplash, toe kicks, deco strip, undercabinet lights, and baseboards.  That list is getting mighty short.