Before and After

I thought it might be interesting to see some before and after images taken from similar vantage points, so here are a few photos of the kitchen, dining room and powder room.

Cabinet Trim

The trim is now installed above, beside and below the wall cabinets.  Since the cabinets are level and the ceiling is not, the top trim required a tapered cut with our jigsaw.  Similar tapered cuts were also required for the dining room cabinet side trim.

Trim added above and below kitchen wall cabinets

Trim installed on dining room wall cabinets

The face boards are now on the spice drawers to bring them flush with the adjacent cabinets and to cover the spaces on the sides of the drawers.

Spice drawer before installation of face board

Spice drawer with face board installed

Integrated appearance with beveled face board installed

Slam-free doors

One of the things I like about our new cabinets is the Blumotion hinge cushions, made by Blum.  The tension is adjusted by the screw shown at the bottom of the cushion.

I bought four more on-line from rockler.com (item number 25756) for our upstairs bathroom vanities and installed them tonight.  They are easily installed with a single screw into a drilled pilot hole.  No more slamming cabinet doors!

http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=17447

The island quarter round has been nailed in and I added a 3" spacer board above the valence to provide a better look. 

Quarter round to conceal the shimmed base of the island

Valence with 3" spacer board

Doors and More

One of Murphy's corollaries must state that you won't really discover where you should have applied spackling until you have painted that very spot.  So, this weekend I did some touch-up with spackling, sanding, painting the wall and, finally the trim in areas that needed some dressing up.  I also installed the granite "braces" under our 12" counter overhang.  I've been assured by the granite fabricator that this is not necessary, but we had already ordered the braces and they are now installed, more for decoration than for any structural support.

Counter "brace"

On Sunday, I installed the under-cabinet lights for the dining room area.  This work is all performed from a contorted, upside down position, and I was tempted to lay on the counter to get a better working angle!

Four under-cabinet lights

Today, Amanda and I took a trip to Home Depot to pick up a 36" x 80" mirrored closet door for the hallway closet.  This is one heavy beast!  I spent most of the afternoon installing it, and we are very pleased with the smooth sliding action of the door.

New bi-fold door for the hallway closet

Entryway

We also bought one more eleven foot piece of oak quarter round, to which I applied two coats of polyurethane and cut to size with our miter box to use as trim around the north end of the island, which had to be shimmed off the floor to keep it level.  I'll nail it in tomorrow with the brad gun.

Kitchen Cabinets on Steroids

Well, that was easy!

Hope you enjoy this short and imperfect video of our cabinet installation.

Lights!

Today, I installed the five under-cabinet lights above the countertop surrounding the kitchen sink.  I also replaced the dimmer switch that I fried yesterday.  Each light is a 20-Watt Halogen. 

Counter tops illuminated by under-cabinet lights

The all important coffee counter

Here's the scene in late afternoon.  The lights are on, but washed out by daylight.

Tomorrow, I'll install the under-cabinet lights in the dining room.  We are getting close to completing the detail work!

Fun with Brads

I finished all of the time-consuming cutting of quarter round on Sunday and today I got to play with our new 18-gauge brad nail gun, which runs on compressed air.  What took hours to cut and install took all of about 30 minutes to nail in with the gun.

Hitachi brad nailer positioned for firing

I had one nail jam near the end of the job, and it was easily cleared with a small screwdriver.  This was so much easier, efficient and effective than drilling pilot holes and hammering in nails.

Wall extension by the refrigerator

I mounted the first of eight under-cabinet lights today. While playing around with the loose supply wires to test the light, I managed to short circuit the dimmer switch, which expired with a POP! sound.  I got a replacement at Home Depot after dinner and will install it AFTER I install all of the rest of the lights in that line-up.  Photos tomorrow.

Recycled Computers and Champagne Lobster

We packed up the old computers, heavy CRT monitors and some old UPS units and headed off to the county recycling center.
 

This equipment from the last century has been replaced by this:

On the way home, we stopped off at Home Depot for 8 bags of cedar mulch, which will be used in the front garden bed when we pull out the weeds. 

OK, so that's the clean-up part of today's story.  The exciting part is the champagne lobster, which has the most heavenly sauce made with champagne, shallots, thyme, vanilla bean and butter.  The lobster tails are stuffed with butter, fresh chives and lemon juice.  We served it all with corn on the cob and steamed asparagus, and, of course, champagne to wash it all down.

Champagne butter sauce

Butter, chive and lemon juice "stuffing"

Asparagus ready for steaming

Stuffing the lobster tails with butter

Fresh off the grill

Cheers!

More Clean-up and Custom Cuts

I got a lot of quarter round cut and in place (but not secured with the brad gun yet), and only have part of the hallway and the closet to finish before I nail everything down.  About 15 years ago, we replaced the original carpet in the family room with hardwood floor.  The quarter round that we installed at that time stopped at the corner where the floor had linoleum tiles in the hallway at a lower level than the new wood floor.  Now that we have wood floor throughout the entire first floor, we needed to extend the quarter round.  As luck would have it, the old quarter round is 3/4" x 1/2", so the new 3/4" x 3/4" quarter round couldn't be used in this spot.  Take a look:

Old and new - not a good match!

So, Sharron and I popped over to Home Depot and got some of the odd-ball sized quarter round to finish the interface, which fortunately was just a short, isolated segment at the corner.  Here is the finished corner prior to securing to the baseboard:

I know, the interface to the old stuff should be done with a 45-degree angle cut, but I didn't want to have to rip out the long section to the left just to fix something that is hidden behind the wall unit, so this is how it will be!

Meanwhile, Sharron and Amanda moved the family room couch back to the way we had it originally.  Here, Sharron is pruning the carpet pad for a better fit.

Sharron also removed the hard drive from the old family room PC that we are disposing of.  We still have some clean-up to do in the family room, but we are getting there. 

Sharron into the guts of the PC

Oak Pieces Ready

I gave the oak quarter round and the deck doorway transition piece a couple of coats of Polyurethane and left it to dry overnight in the garage (sorry, Sharron, you can use the garage again tomorrow).

Doorway transition and quarter round

I finished applying the second coat of glossy white paint on the baseboard, and all is now ready for the quarter round installation.

Quarter Round Issues

Oak quarter round

The good news is that during the demolition phase, we recovered 36 feet of the old oak quarter round for re-use. 

Pine quarter round

The bad news is that the quarter round that we purchased about a month ago is made from pine and is NOT a good match for the oak that we have installed throughout the house.

Yuck!

And when you try to stain the pine, it looks even worse!













So, off to Home Depot I went tonight to purchase six sticks of 11'-long OAK quarter round.  I didn't want to cut it to fit it into my car, so I cleverly opened the right front window and pushed it through the ski hatch in the back of the car.  I'll give it all a coat or two of polyurethane tomorrow and start installing it.

66' of oak quarter round

The Valance

I trimmed the valance to size and installed it above the sink this afternoon.  The narrow cabinet on the left made it extremely difficult to get my drill at a shallow enough angle, but I finally got the board secured. 

We received our Wellness floor mat a couple of weeks ago, and in addition to protecting the floor from spills, etc, it really gives a bounce to your step!  It is intended to soften the stress on your feet/legs/back and it certainly does that.  For more info, see http://www.wellnessmats.com/

6' x 3' Wellness mat

Our skylight blinds arrived today.  Something else to install and distract me from finishing the kitchen!

Garage Clean-up

Sharron kindly volunteered the use of her side of the garage for staging the kitchen cabinets, etc, during the construction phase of the project.  But, now that we are down to the finishing touches, I decided to make one more trip to the dump today.  I grabbed those two trash cans full of debris that had remained on the deck and filled one more with floor scraps, moulding and drywall remnants and put it all in the back seat of my car.  I cut up the remaining long pieces of wood and added it to the trunk and hauled it all to the dump.  So, tonight Sharron's car is in the garage for the first time in many weeks (probably two months).

Once again, it's a two-car garage!

I stopped off at Home Depot on the way home and returned all of the un-opened stuff we had purchased for the kitchen project, but did not need.  They give you a store credit card in exchange, and I used this one to pay for a couple of items, including a new door stop for the powder room.  It's the least obtrusive way to protect the wall that I've seen.