Update April 25

The past weekend was Easter, so we worked Saturday and took Sunday off. These things we worked on for Saturday seem minor, but do take up an enormous bit of time. The devil is in the details.

The cabinet next to the stove on the right, the one with the drawers and plastic tablecloth top, has been waiting for final install for a while. It was convenient to keep it freestanding, so we could remove it any time we needed to, to get to the stove connection, or the floors. Now that the floors are done, and I'm pretty sure we're not moving the oven/stove to any other part of the kitchen, it was time to finally tackle the drawer bank.

I've mentioned this before, but the drawer bank, for whatever reason, was actually manufactured a 1/4" too short. We have no idea why, and no idea why we didn't catch it, except that it was always free-standing, so we had nothing to compare it to, height-wise. So that was the first challenge.

Lucky for us, old wall paneling from the dance hall was still in the garage and magically, 1/4" thick. So we cut a piece to fit perfectly, turned the bank on its top, and installed it to the base, along with the toe kick. Once turned back properly, it was on to the installation against the stove wall. First, we still had to shim, to make sure it was level. Then, with a stud finder, we found the one stud behind it and screwed the back plate into the wall, making sure the cabinet was equidistant from the stove on either side. Then set about figuring out what to do with the countertop.

After hunting high and low for the laminate adhesive (in my "cleaning" phase, I put it away, but not near any gas fired heat source, so where the hell does that leave me to look?? . . .), we went outside, cut two pieces of 3/4" OSB to put on top of each other, and then glued the laminate to the side closest to the stove, and the top of the itty bitty countertop.

So far, this all seems basic and straight-forward, right?

Although our cabinets are gorgeous, and of decent quality, they are lacking a couple of very key features that both of us feel are pretty important. One was the lack of truly adjustable shelving in any of the cabinets. Luckily, a jig I made in 2005 to increase shelving choices on our Compton rehab had made it through all the moves from Foxhall and Ashebrook to Falls River and then Crestview, so I was able to create new adjustable shelving in almost all the cabinets. The other issue, however, isn't so easy and to this date, we have not found a solution for it, and there's nothing in the directions of assembly of the cabinets about it either, since the directions were basically "put the cabinet together and enjoy!". None of our drawers can be removed.

Now, normally, I would think this isn't that big a deal. I mean, how often do I need to remove drawers? I can think of one time that was more funny than necessary, back on Windyrush, when Mork got into the cabinet below and kept pushing out the drawer above, making it look like we had a poltergeist, so we pulled the drawer all the way out and looked at him through the slot, whereby he sat there like "yeah, this is what I do . . . what are YOU doing here?" but that was in the early 80s and I'd think 30 years is a pretty good indication it's not necessary all that often. But when installing countertops, it's a very big deal. How do you screw a countertop onto a cabinet, through mounting wedges specifically designed for countertop installation, if you can't remove drawers to get to the inside of the cabinet? I'll save you some trouble thinking about it. You can't.

After MUCH thinking, we decided to improvise the countertop installation by drilling dowel holes into the cabinet frame and into the countertop, and using dowels to stabilize the countertop. Drilling large dowel holes in 1/2" plywood sides isn't as easy as you would think. With a little luck and a couple of blow-outs on the "good" side (the non-showing side) we were able to rig up this little plan to keep it in place. Unfortunately, we have no idea where the glue is, so it's not totally permanent. The big challenge is this: we know these countertops aren't forever. So if we made the current countertops too permanent, then we might destroy the cabinets trying to remove them later when we install granite/recycled glass/concrete/wood? So this is a semi-permanent solution that will work for us for now. But just know that when you come over, there's a "trick" countertop in your midst!

We spent the rest of the day installing trim around the green wall and down the hall (YAY!!!!) and having Rich rip narrow strips of hardwoods to insert between the floor and the sink/dishwasher/pot cabinets that had been ignored up until then. With some finagling and luck, we got them all in, and all but one was salvage hardwood that already had poly on it. The brilliance of that plan didn't hit me until one unfinished piece was already permanently in there. Oh well.

So we still need to sand down and re-poly and install countertop edges (they did not come out nearly as well as we had hoped, so we're trying again), and Rich still needs to make me some pullouts for my pot cabinet, there's still a bit of touch up paint, and we still have to install the cabinet crown. But the kitchen is getting there!!