New Cabinets …

First – don’t ever believe the time line you are given when someone is going to do major work on a part of your house that requires you to take apart a portion of your house.  Increase the time about 3-5 times and then you will be close!!

So, the night before our cabinet installers were due to arrive, we cleaned out all the kitchen cabinets we hadn’t already emptied.  My dining room looked like this:

From 2011 WordPress Pics

From 2011 WordPress Pics

Then the installers didn’t come.  We had also removed the microwave, stove, and fridge.  Only the fridge was plugged in and usable.  Thus began our “eating out” phase.  Not that we don’t do plenty of that even with working appliances.  But having to eat out for any warm food got old pretty quick.

Anyway – the next night they showed up and demo’ed most of the kitchen and the following day was Saturday where they did get quite a bit done.  Here are some pictures on Saturday.

From 2011 WordPress Pics

Amazing how open and big the kitchen seemed without anything in it …

From 2011 WordPress Pics

Installing the most important part – the sink area – so we could hook up the sink again quickly. This was an ordeal because our shut-off valves didn’t work (we’ve had to replace pretty much every single one in this house) so we turned off the water to the house and made a quick run to Home Depot – but it took a couple of trips, because once the drains were hooked up again, it was apparent that I should have replaced all the washers too. Oh well …

From 2011 WordPress Pics

One thing we were very grateful for was that the installers were able to remove and then re-install our original granite counter tops.  It’s always an iffy proposition to do this, so we were feeling pretty lucky that it worked.  Though they aren’t what we would have picked, if we were picking, they are granite and are nice and we didn’t want to have to replace them.

By Monday, most of the cabinets were installed, but Tuesday they had to move some of them, because they hadn’t left a wide enough space for the stove.  Finally, by Wednesday night we had our appliances back in place (except for the microwave, which wasn’t being delivered until Saturday, and the dishwasher, because we hadn’t bought a new one yet).  We could actually cook again!

As of today, we are still waiting on a couple of things to be finished, cabinet-wise.  The cabinet over the fridge needs to have a finish panel put on the side – it is bare plywood.  There are a couple of back panels that were damage during install that need to be repaired.  Two of the big drawers we ordered were the wrong size, so they are replacing them.  It’s been about three weeks? since the installation first began.  However, apart from this, we do have a working kitchen again.

Next up?  The back splash.