Cabi-nuts!

 That's right ladies and gents!  Today the first of the cabinets were installed!  All four upper cabinets in the dining room are now in their correct locations, flush and leveled.  They look great, even though the doors have yet to be put back on them.

We began on the left side of the dining room - Dad acting as the installer while I handled the all-important duties of...assistant.  Here Dad is drilling one of the two top screws for the cabinets into a stud.  That will give us lots o'support for our lovely new storage spaces.

In order to install the subsequent cabinets, we used these SWEET clamps that Dad found at Home Depot.  We used one at the top and bottom of each cabinet to hold them together and ensure that they were all even.  Nothing would be worse (for two perfectionists) than installing a cabinet and finding them to be slightly off.  But fear not, we did JUST fine!

The first cabinet took a little while to install, the second and third went in easily, and the fourth probably took as long as the other three combined.  We'll chalk it up to the wall being uneven and the fact that we had to keep playing with different sized shims to FINALLY get it in the correct position.

By the end of it we had quite a great system: 

• Move cabinet out of the way
• Move chair in place
• Move stool in front of both
• Lift cabinet and rest on ledger
• Remove chair
• Clamp (as necessary)
• Amanda holds cabinet while Dad drills
• Interchange drills and drillbits as necessary to drill holes, install screws, and screw cabinets together

Phew!  As I post this Dad is working on the template for the handles to be mounted on the cabinet doors.  He is hoping to get the handles placed by the end of this evening so the doors can be returned to their rightful places tomorrow morning.  We have an extra worker bee tomorrow - Mom took the day off work to help.  We plan to have the bottom cabinets fully installed by the close of business on Friday.