The long overdue cabinet entry - Part 1

It has been almost 2 weeks since the last blog entry, but that's only been because I've been so busy with the kitchen.  I did make sure to at least take pictures and leave myself notes to remind me what happened on what day.

Thursday, August 30th - My friend Ross came over to give Sarah a break, and he helped me hang the "northeast" upper cabinets.  IKEA's rail system for hanging upper cabinets made this quite easy.  Take your time getting the rail level, and your cabinets will be level too.  My drywall job was sliiiightly uneven by the new window, and the cabinet over the fridge did require just a little bit of shimming.  Nothing too drastic.

My method for maintaining "level" cabinets as they go around the corner:  Install the rail all the way to the corner along the one wall, and then rest the end of the 4' level on the rail, to get the level on the second wall.  Seemed to work quite well.  Might be the recommended way, not sure, it just made sense to me.

Much to the chagrin of my wife, a die-hard Steeler fan, Ross, one of the Browns' 4 remaining fans, wrote "Go Browns!" under the cabinet in the corner, where there will be tile.  It will forever be known as the Corner of Shame.

Friday, August 31st - Sarah and I hung the "northwest" upper cabinets.  My drywalling job in that corner was worse than the other side by the window.  We went to put the corner cabinet it (always do that one first), and it wouldn't sit flush against the wall.  When I mudded the corners, I didn't feather it out enough and/or sand it enough, so it stuck out.  We put the cabinet in place, marked with a pencil where the cabinet hit the drywall, then took the cabinet back down and chiseled out the drywall so it would sit flush.  Sadly, no pictures of this, but the good part is that it is hard to see once the cabinet is in, and will be invisible once the tile is in.

Northwest cabinet mounting rails

Saturday, September 1st - Sarah's dad came over, and following the same method as the first set of base cabinets a few days prior, we mounted the ledger board for the u-shaped section of base cabinets.  I hadn't installed back legs on the first section of cabinets, but decided to for this main section.  I figured that the ledger board and rear legs would just be extra support.  It ended up that because nothing is ever completely level, the rear legs came in quite handy for leveling the cabinets.

This was also the day that I noticed that without the rear leg on the end of the cabinet run, I wouldn't have anywhere for the toe kick to clip onto.  Also, I couldn't put the foot on the cabinet without unbolting it from the wall, as well as its' neighboring cabinet.  DOH!  After getting very, very close to removing the end cabinet to put a foot on it, I had a revelation.  The cabinets were already resting on the ledger board, so the foot wasn't really for structural stability, it was just meant to attach the toe kick.  So I cut the wide base of the foot off, screwed the foot all the way up, and was then able to fit it under the cabinet.  Unscrew the remains of the leg until it's firm against the floor, and the foot is ready to accept the toe kick!  No massive dis-assembly required.

The sink cabinet was by far the most... fun.  The drain goes out the back, and the supply lines come up from the basement.  I cut a hole in the back for the drain with the Dremel tool, using the adapter I used to cut the electrical outlet holes in the drywall.  I could have done large round holes for the pipes to fit through, except for the hot water pipe, that sticks out with a 2nd valve for the dishwasher.  So I measured and cut 1" wide slots for the pipes to fit through.  I un-nailed the back panel and pulled it back, and then we lowered the cabinet over the pipes, which fit into the slots.  Carefully and awkwardly nail the back panel on, and we're good to go.

Because of the pipe cutouts, I screwed two 1x3 boards along the bottom of the cabinet, for extra strength.  Also, for the dishwasher/garbage disposal outlet hole, I used a piece of trim strip normally used for fiberglass reinforced panels (FRP) to trim out the hole I cut.

Sunday, September 2nd - Didn't do much that day, mostly just installed the upper door hinge hardware and doors.

Countertop set in place, but not cut yet!

That is it for week one.  Next up?  Countertops!  Cut!  And installed!

Vinyl floor installation

Note: Chronologically, this post and the first cabinets posts are out of order, as I forgot to publish this post, before I published the other one.  Oops!

Friday night, Sarah helped me wrestle the 12' long, 140lb roll of vinyl floor into kitchen.  Saturday morning, her dad came over, and the 3 of us managed to roll the floor out to its' final location.  Because it was not yet cut the size, it curled up the walls on 3 sides.  Carefully, methodically, and with a new sharp knife blade, I trimmed it section by section until, suddenly...  There was a floor.

Cat Not Included

For the seam, I tried the "double cut" method using my 4' level as a straightedge.  The idea was to lay the two pieces on top of each other, where the seam would be, and cut through both at the same time, so that the cuts would be perfectly lined up.  You make your cut through the grout line of the 2 pieces, and it should all come out perfectly.  Unfortunately, the level was thick enough that I couldn't hold the knife vertical, and, well, it didn't come out so well.  I did it again, this time using my drywall T-square, and it came out much, much better.

For some reason, I was more apprehensive about rolling on the adhesive than I was about cutting the floor.  Illogical, because the adhesive isn't permanent, and if I somehow messed up putting the floor down, you just pull it up and re-position it.

My father-in-law rolling on the adhesive

Thankfully, applying the floor adhesive to the underlayment was ridiculously easy.  I'm glad I got the roll-on adhesive, rather than the trowel-on kind.  We rolled 2/3 of the flooring back to expose the floor, and just started rolling on the adhesive like it was paint.  Within 15-20 minutes, the adhesive was on.  Let it sit for an hour until the glue is tacky, then carefully roll the floor onto the adhesive-laden underlayment.  Roll back the other 1/3 of the floor, roll on the adhesive, dry for an hour, and roll the floor back down onto the adhesive.

After the floor is done, you go rent your 100lb floor roller from Home Depot (about $20-$25), and roll from the middle out to the edges, both directions (north-south and east-west).

All in all, installing the floor was one of the faster and easier portions of the project.  We started around 9:30am, and were done by 2:30pm, and that included eating lunch, driving to get the floor roller, and waiting two hours for adhesive to dry.

What's next?  Believe it or not, it's time to start actually hanging cabinets!

Bonus Cat Picture - Actually shows the floor texture quite nicely

First cabinet installation!

Electrical, plumbing, and drywall done, ceiling painted, walls painted, floor installed...  The kitchen is now a blank canvas, ready for cabinets.  Hard to believe.

If you'll remember way back, early in the blog, we're adding a section of wall and base cabinets, and countertop to the north side of the kitchen.  36" wide, 15" wide, and 36" wide cabinets.  I decided to start here, since these cabinets are a straight run, and would be the simplest.  Start with the easy, learn how they install, then go on to the harder, main section.


I'm using one of our old cabinets, with a plywood top, as a temporary workbench of sorts in the middle of the kitchen.  It is working quite nicely, and beats working on the ground.

Sarah reminded the cabinet that it was temporary, and not to get used to it.

It is recommended to start with the upper cabinets, as the wider base cabinets aren't in the way at that point, and they're easier to install that way. I'm all for easier.  IKEA wall cabinets have a galvanized steel suspension rail, what appears to be somewhat like a french cleat system.  You screw the rail to the studs, and slide 2 special bolts per cabinet onto the rail.  Line them up, bolts go through the mounting holes in the upper left and right side of each cabinet.

I used Wall Dog cabinet mounting screws to mount the rail.  Each screw, when screwed into a stud, can support 250lbs.  The rail for these cabinets landed on 6 studs, so the rail should theoretically support 1500lbs worth of cabinets.



I ran into a slight snag in that my row of cabinets (4" filler, 36" cabinet, 15" cabinet, and 36" cabinet) was 91" long, and the rail was only 80".  Because of where the cabinets and studs lined up on the rail, it was simply a matter of cutting the rail in half, and mounting it with the rail gap between the mounting holes of the middle cabinet.  Each 40" section of rail screws into 3 studs, and supports 3 cabinet bolts (one and a half cabinets).  The hardest part was making sure both sections of rail were not only level, but level with each other.  I ended up sticking my 4' level tight against the first rail, and pinning it to the wall with a couple of nails.  Position the 2nd rail on the end where it needs to go, and screw it down.

Rail gap is hidden behind this middle cabinet.

Because the cabinets are flush against the wall on the right side, I wanted to bump them away from the wall to allow the doors to fully open.  Since the door panels are around 3 1/2" wide, I decided to use a strip of the toekick, which is around 4" tall, or in this case, wide.  I used a couple of L brackets, and mounted the filler strip to the side of the right-side wall cabinet.

Rear view of the filler mounted to the wall cabinet.

Front view of the filler strip.

Hanging the cabinets is as easy as picking it up, lining up the bolts with the mounting brackets, setting them on, and putting the nut on.  Once the cabinets are all hung, you line them up, clamp them, drill through one of the peg/hinge/drawer rail holes, and screw the cabinets together.  Tighten the nuts on the mounting brackets, and you're done!

The base cabinets were similar, minus the mounting rail.  In the toekick box is another unfinished long piece of MDF that you screw to the wall at 4 5/16" (A nice simple 11cm for you metric folks).  I took my time, because the more level it is, the more level your cabinets will be.  The back of the base cabinet rests on there, and the adjustable legs sit on the ground in the front.  In my case, our vinyl floor is Armstrong Cushionstep, and 1/8" thick.  The floor instructions say that the cabinet legs shouldn't be on the vinyl itself, so I marked and cut holes so the feet could sit directly on the underlayment.  The toekick will cover up the legs.

6th leg hole is not shown.

I used little 3/4" long wood screws to hold the IKEA feet on, since they're likely to fall off while moving the cabinet into place.  Then it's a matter of setting the back of the cabinets onto the rail, and adjusting the feet until it's level front to back, and side to side.

With the upper cabinets,  the rail had holes all along it, so mounting it to studs wasn't a problem.  However, with the base cabinets, none of the mounting holes lined up with my studs.  It's not a huge problem, as the weight of the base cabinets rests on the bottom ledger board, but you still want them secured to the wall as best as you can.  I used anchors similar to the following:

Screw those into the drywall through the mounting brackets, and then run your screw into that to hold it all in place.

Taadaa!

Monday night was the upper cabinets, and Tuesday night was the lower cabinets.  A couple more drawers and doors, a toekick, a countertop, side cover panels, a deco strip along the bottom of the upper cabinets, and cabinet lighting, and they'll be done!  Yeah, that's all.  Oh yes, and then the rest of the kitchen.  But we have cabinets!

Bonus cat picture of Charlie imagining she's a lot smaller than she really is.

Underlayment Installation

Now that the old vinyl floor and underlayment were removed, it was time to get the new underlayment installed.  I bought 4'x8' sheets of 5mm Tri-Ply underlayment at Home Depot for $11 a sheet.  It's really nice looking wood, even just by itself!  I entered the kitchen dimensions into Google Sketchup, and figured out an ideal layout for the underlayment.  You have to stagger the joints, so you don't get 4 corners of 4 sheets of underlayment all meeting at the same point.  Also, you need the grain to all go the same way, preferably perpendicular to the direction of the joists.  I'm not sure if that would matter for me, since I have 1 1/2" of subfloor and underlayment already down, but it doesn't hurt to follow directions.  My stapling pattern was as follows: every 2" around the perimeter of each sheet, and every 4" across the face.

After the first night

So Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights were spent measuring, cutting, and air stapling down underlayment.  Of the 9 sheets I bought, only 2 needed no cutting to make them fit.  I went the ultra-cheap route with the stapler, I picked one up from Harbor Freight.  It was on sale, and I had a coupon, so it was $16 out the door.  I did buy good quality Porter-Cable staples, per the recommendation of those on the Harbor Freight website.  How did the cheapo air stapler fare?

Underlayment?  More like DONEderlayment!

9 sheets of underlayment, 10 hours of cutting and fitting, and 2975 staples later, and only 1 misfire.  I hesitate to even call it a misfire, as I think I actually managed to hit a nail underneath whose head was broken off and then hammered below the surface.  I can't complain!

With the underlayment down and the walls painted, we wanted to see how the new floor would look with the baseboard and wall.  We rolled out the small roll of flooring and stuck a piece of baseboard against the wall.

Soon, it will all look like this...

 Also, wanted to see where the cabinets sat, so we knew where to cut the flooring.

Oops, I need to take care of that old phone jack hanging from the wall.

How about another panorama?  

And since Charlie is finally allowed back in the kitchen, how about a return of the Bonus Cat pictures?

Flooring Roll Inspector Cat

The roll of flooring was the only thing in the kitchen, so of course she had to lay on  it.

Next up?  Cutting and installing the new floor.  No, that wont be scary at all!

Ceiling and wall painting, final floor prep

Short blog entry this time around.  Is there much that can be said about painting?

Friday night, we painted the ceiling.  We used Zinsser ceiling primer and paint in one.  I figured since we already primed the ceiling, and it started white to begin with, a second coat of primer/paint in one would be equivalent to a second coat.  The paint goes on slightly pink, so you can see where you've already painted.  Slightly is probably an understatement, as the pink was so faint that it was very, very difficult to see where you'd already painted.  The glare from a light ended up being a better indication of what was painted and what wasn't.

Saturday morning, we started on the walls.  We went with an eggshell finish of Behr Seasoned Salt.  We didn't tape along the ceiling, we just painted it in by hand.  I think that ended up being far superior, as every time I've tried taping off areas, even with the good tape, paint ends up underneath it.  That, and tape is ridiculously expensive.

Immediately after the first coat, the paint looked terribly uneven.  However, as it dried it evened out.  We put on a second coat that afternoon.  It seems like no matter how careful you are with one coat, your roller still ends up missing in spots.  The large white areas will be covered by tile and cabinets, we're not that inept at painting.

Sunday, I removed the final 70 or so nails that were embedded all wonky in the floor, presumably from the chisel passing over them and knocking them flat.  I scraped the ridges off the nail holes, and put down floor patch to level out areas where the previous linoleum had been chipped up.  That stuff stunk bad while drying.

Next up, cutting and fitting the underlayment!

Final drywall prep and priming

With the recessed lights in, and the final layer of drywall mud applied, it was time to get the joints sanded and smoothed out. 

Knowing how much of a mess construction can be, particularly drywall dust, we've had temporary plastic sheet "doors" installed in the 2 doorways leading to the rest of the house.  In addition, I saw great reviews on Amazon for a product called Sand & Kleen.  Basically, it's a special sanding head (uses regular sanding screens), hooked to a hose that's hooked to a bucket of water, that's hooked to another hose going to your shopvac.  Drywall dust gets sucked into the the bucket of water where around 95% of the dust ends up as sludge in the bottom of the bucket. 

Supposedly, if you're good at drywall, you have to sand very little.  Unfortunately, I'm not.  I did the majority of the "heavy" sanding with the Sand & Kleen, and it captured the vast majority of the dust that came off the walls.  Even with my little 1 gallon Shop Vac, it was strong enough to keep the sanding handle stuck to the wall.  I emptied the 3 gallon bucket twice, each time it had about 3/4" of solid sludge on the bottom. 

Here's a cool panorama of our kitchen post sanding.  There's some weird artifacts from stitching the individual pictures together.

I did the final smoothing with dry sanding sponges, so there was some dust there, but not nearly as bad as it would have been.  Once it was done and cleaned up, and the existing painted walls scuffed (for better paint adhesion), it was time to prime.

Priming was scary to me.  Not being skilled in drywall, priming to me has the finality of, "all of your mistakes in the drywall will be forever displayed here."  In particular, the U-shaped area of the ceiling where I got "lazy" and just filled in the missing areas from the soffit, rather than pull the whole ceiling down and deal with the mess of insulation.   I suppose if it was really that bad, I could go back and do another layer of drywall.  Thankfully, I think it came out pretty good.

The mold resistant drywall behind the sink took 2 good coats of primer.  I used Zinsser 123, which according to the can, would stick to just about anything.  After getting paint on my hands and trying to get it off once it dried, I believe it.  All told, it took about 1 3/4 gallons to prime the kitchen walls and ceiling. 

Next up is painting.  Our color is Seasoned Salt from Behr, which oddly isn't on their website. 

Recycling and Recessed Lighting

As the project has continued, I have been saving any scrap metal that could be recycled.  This morning, I decided that I wasn't going to be removing any more recyclable metal, so I took it down to the local recycling facility. 

They don't pay for steel, but they do pay for aluminum (I had 12 pounds), brass (1 pound), copper (24 pounds) and stainless steel (15 pounds).  I was expecting maybe $20, so I was quite happy to leave with a check for $62.43!  On the way home, I swung by Harbor Freight for a cheapie air stapler that will hopefully last me at least long enough to put the new floor in.

With the old floor removed, and the drywall continuing, I needed to address another large part of the project looming over my head, quite literally:  lighting. 

In the old kitchen, we had one recessed light over the sink, one hanging pendant-style light over the table, and two old and ugly ceiling lights.  We replaced the sink recessed light with a new one, and were planning on removing the two ceiling lights and replacing them with four recessed lights, and replacing the existing pendant with a different pendant light. 

For the recessed lights, I knew I didn't want incandescent.  I wanted compact florescent or, preferably, LED.  Menards ended up having a sale on their LED recessed retrofit bulbs, which is an LED bulb and trim ring, in one. 

They look very nice, have a soft white light, and are surprisingly bright!  5 year warranty, and they're dimmable, even better still.

After finally figuring out how the bulb unit was supposed to mount in the recessed light (duh), we determined that they're bright enough, we thought we could get away with two recessed lights replacing the two ceiling lights.  And, rather than a pendant light over the dining room table, it might be nice to have a "clean" ceiling, and use a recessed light there instead.

I was quite happy about that, as it meant I was able to re-use the existing holes (after enlarging them), and not have to fish any new wire in the ceiling.  It also meant I was able to return two LED units and recessed lights, saving a couple dollars.

One of the old ceiling lights was mounted with a ceiling fan hanger, so I did  have to go up into the attic and rip that out, unfortunately.  Other than that, the recessed lights (remodel style) went in rather easy.  Pop the LED kits in, and other than the under-cabinet lighting, my lights, and more importantly, the electrical, is DONE.