Well, yesterday, after the termite inspector left :yikes:... I finally put on the last 2 doors, on the over-fridge cabinet.

W/our new fridge being +2" taller, we had to cut down the cabinet by 2" - making it 13"tall x 36" wide.

I also broke apart 2 -15"x18" doors, and cut them down to 13x18"

We decided to make the doors hinge upward - so I wound up ordering some funky hinges and a pair of lift arms (we love you Lee Valley and Outwater Plastics)

Doors are now installed, and work well. Still need to drill holes for the handles.

It would have taken probably half the time to do these if the giant-*** fridge had NOT been there. ;^) It was convenient to hold things, but really got in the way.

One last little thing is to trim down the end-cover piece of 1/8" ply to 13" and then re-glue it to the side of that cabinet.

I showing off the kitchen quite a lot Sunday during our pumpkin party! So many people had heard about it but not seen it yet.

So that's it! Those are the last 2 doors,and when the end panel is glued up, we're officially 'kitchened'.

I will have to admit that even tho' the floorplan and cabinet bodies are the same, having put in all drawers (or pullouts) has **greatly** increased the functionality of the kitchen, and it's much nicer to work in now. I can bring all my stuff to me, and see what I have/need easily.

Drawers rock. They just do.

First I have to tell you an absolutely true story. You will be amazed--or you would be if you knew me!

The Hubster and I drove down to IKEA on a Thursday evening to fetch our beech butcherblock island top--you know the 73"x39" one. I had very confidently told him that IKEA closed at 10:00. We arrived at 8:45. It was closing at 9:00. OOPS. He made some comment about "blowing a gasket if we cannot get that chunk-a-wood" and I tried to be cute and bat my eyelashes for the inevitability of not being able to get the top. If I were cute enough, I surmised, perhaps he wouldn't want to "blow a gasket" and would just be all, "It's OK, honey. You didn't know." It was already not going well. He muttered something about "I thought you actually knew what time it closed. Grrrr mumble-mumble" As we raced up the stairs to the showrooms, they were roping off the aisles. This is where my 3,364 trips to IKEA paid off. I knew exactly how to cut through the other room displays to get to the kitchen department, without crossing the velvet ropes.

We managed to get to the kitchen desk, and the IKEAns there threw me a bone and let us purchase the top with 10 minutes to spare.

The absolutely amazing part? Well, I went to IKEA and was in and out of there in 15 minutes-BAM!

When I told one of my BFFs about my whirlwind IKEA trip, she was quite impressed. She is often my IKEA buddy, and we spend the better part of a morning or afternoon there for "just a few things".

Back to the block. I have been not-quite-a-nervous-wreck-but-close about the actual cutting of this top. I have done lots of research and have appealed to persons that have taken this task head-on themselves, and it just seemed daunting to me. (And I'm not even the one doing the cutting!) Inevitably, I will come across a negative Nellie that will give me his/her opinion on why it is stupid to put in butcherblock and undermount a sink in it. At least we have established that I am stupid. LOL.

I handed DH all the paperwork, complete with drawings, pictures, schematics, outlines, step-by-step guides, dissertations, reports, reviews, etc. about cutting butcherblock--especially the sink hole part. I showed him video. I showed him the process in stills. I acted it out in a three-act play. We were both hesitant.

We have no idea what we're doing.

Two days later, he informs me that he found someone to cut our top for us. A friend of a friend. He's been a woodworker for 30 years and has his own shop and business. All we would have to do is make a template and Voila! we would soon have our peninsula top. Talk about stress-reliever. Sheeeesh.

So Monday, I drew a template on some backer board, and DH cut it with a jigsaw.


See Gracie giving her approval in the catbird seat. ;^)

Last night, we drove it out to this gentleman's home, where we showed him what we wanted, including edges and faucet, soap dispenser, air switch button, and drinking faucet hole locations. We had everything mapped on the template for him. He said it would be no problem.

In the meantime, Hubs has informed me that *we* (is that a frog in your pocket?) will be hosting Thanksgiving at our house, as everyone wants to see our kitchen.

B-b-b-b-b-but it's not finished. Not even close. We don't even have toe-kick! :P

Well, at least we'll have a butcherblock topper on our peninsula. Or at least I hope, I hope, I hope we will!

Lots of progress happening and I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel...

The double oven took some work, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. We reinforced the bottom shelf with 2x4s, cut the hole for wiring, and basically slid it right in! We actually ended up not using the oven panel after much deliberation, and it turned out to be the right decision and saved us about $190. We just cut filler panel strips for the top and bottom, and ended up making new screw holes on the inside of the door that were slightly further back than the intended mounting holes (since there weren't side panels to screw into). You can't tell at all, and IMO it was much easier.

We got the Ikea Nutid dishwasher to replace our Kitchenaid Superba that was just a few years old, but we liked the Nutid handles better, and so far I really like it!

I was really worried about the Apron sink modification, but it ended up being fairly simple. Since it's a 33" sink going in a 36" cabinet we didn't have to cut the sides down, just built cleats and support underneath it. The harder part was configuring the inside actually, and I went back and forth many times. I ending up with a hinged door underneath on the left side with the pullout dish towel rack and the Ikea pullout waste bin (only $17.99 I think) which I actually use to hold dishwasher detergent and soap. On the right side will be a pullout door/12" deep drawer to hold the recycling bin (a full depth drawer just barely didn't fit due to the garbage disposal). Directly under the apron sink are two 18" drawer fronts which I have secured together with one 33" wide rev-a-shelf tipout to hold sponges/ dish brushes. I'm having some trouble with the rev-a-shelf tip-out hinge, but hopefully nothing I can't tweak...

White Carrara honed marble countertops being installed Tuesday, so more pictures soon, along with lots more modification details to come!

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i posted most of these pics in my thread for the BILLY bookcase contest, but i guess i'll just post them here again. here is an updated pic (October 2009) of my IKEA-filled designer purse/accessory room. so the room is pretty much the same as before (as shown in previous pictures), though I've added some more BILLY bookcases. Also, I added a few more pieces (HEMNES nightstand) to the room.

i haven't had a chance to do a panoramic shot yet, but hopefully I will soon.

here is overall view, showing 2 sets of BILLY bookcases, with HEMNES dressing table in between. The chair and the frames of flowers are also IKEA, though I can't remember the style name, sorry!



here is a pic of one set of BILLY shelves. This is where I keep my Louis Vuitton purses, accessories, catalogs, etc.



here's a more close-up view, with the doors open, showing some of the bags inside


now here's the 2nd set of BILLY shelves, on the other wall. These have my other designer bags/accessories (including Coach, Prada, Michael Kors, Burberry and others)


and here's a more close0up view of this set, with the doors open, showing some of the bags inside


as you may see, in a few of the above pictures there is a HEMNES day bed frame peeking out..here is a better view of it, along with a HEMNES nightstand. The cherry blossom light under the nightstand and the square frame on the wall are also IKEA. :IKEA:


also, i should add that I customized the knobs on the BILLY bookshelves. i took the wooden knobs out and put in crystal ones. here's a pic


also, my DH managed to take a tie-holder from the PAX furniture set and "hack" it into a holder for my bandeaus and scarves. He basically just mounted it on a small piece of wood and affixed it to one of the shelves in one of the BILLY units. I thought the result was pretty cool! here is a pic

Sad news.. like many folks I am loosing this house to foreclosure. It really kills me to think of all the hard work I did to improve this home. Now it's going to be sold for probably next to nothing. Bad for me, great for someone else. I hope they enjoy my work and let some of it remain.
Now I'm in Pittsburgh, Pa and the next remodel will be underway soon.

While I was at home waiting for the appliance recyclers to come pick up our old fridge, I finally got the 2 over-fidge-cab. doors cut down.

We took 2" off our cabinet, making it 13" tall, to accommodate the much higher new fridge.

I wrassled with various door options - for the Adel Birch, it's somewhat trivial for me to cut the stiles (vertical members), but complicated to cut rails (crossways) because the rails have tenons.

If we'd cut the cabinet to 12", I'd probably have gotten a 12x39" door, cut it down to 36", and then used it sideways. As it was, I eventually went back to Plan A and cut the 2 15"x18" doors to 13"x18" (actually they're 12-3/4" tall)

We decided to hinge upward instead of sideways to increase usefulness.

I thought I'd done my planning ahead, and ordered all the hardware. Yesterday (Saturday) I found out that the surface-mount hinges I'd ordered along with the lift-flap support arms, were NOT the right type of hinges!!

I moped (as my SO correctly termed it) for a while. Then I walked down to the hardware store - and no, no luck. He wound up driving over to OSH to look. No luck. Today we drove to a lumberyard - no luck. I need 5/8-3/4" offset flap hinges for frameless cabinets. There's a "L" and a flap - the L screws to the inside of the cabinet, the flap to the door, and all you see is the barrel of the hinge along the top.

I'll be putting in an order to Lee Valley tomorrow - want to also buy some rubber "condoms" which are to cover the spouts of half-used tubes of caulk, instead of putting in a nail and then cap of alum.foil, and some roller bearings.

Last 2 doors finished, and now still waiting for hardware. again.

Meanwhile... The office cabinets are all done. I have yet to get a correct stop in for the tambour over the printer - I glued the end caps in, but I think the PVC glue we have is not the right one for this composition of vinyl - it didn't seem to really melt the pieces together as it should have.

Other than getting this one tambour section to *stop*... I'm pretty satisfied with the office cabinets now. 4 Drawers now to address the most-used items, still have upper doors/shelves, and now we have a new drop-file drawer too! WAA-AY better than 2 sets of doors + shelves. Feh!

Hoping we can spend time next weekend and get all the office stuff put back and reorganized.

Still need to tackle the painting of the windowsills. (These are not IKEA parts ;^)

Well, thanks to the incredible information available here on IKEAfans and some other websites, I have gotten the spousal green light to start a major kitchen remodel.

We live in a 1947 ranch in Rhode Island that was not built for modern family life! Our current kitchen is 92"x132" (yes, i measure my kitchen in inches! We have one 7ft, stretch of countertops, with a sink in the middle. 2 - 24inch wall cabs, 1 24inch base cab and a set of drawers. No Dishwasher!!

The kitchen is separated from the dining room by a wall that includes a fridge nook, built-in cabs for the dining room and a small pantry.

We have the luxury of living in a developed neighborhood where all of the houses were built by the same builder and they only used 3 house plans - a ranch, a cape and a colonial. As such, a number of our neighbors have exactly the same floorplan (accounting for additions over the years) and many have removed the wall creating a much larger kitchen/dining space.

So now is the time to start the remodel. My wife and 2 year old will be moving out for 8 days during which the plan is to demo the wall, the tile mud job on the wall of the current kitchen, the pine floor, and the current cabinets. Then I'll run 9 new electrical circuits and a new drain and vent line for my kitchen sink. Inspections and close the walls. Mud and sand.

In 8 days.

It's ambitious - but I've been meticulous about tracking current circuits, laying out paths and securing brawny friends.

After that, I'll be installing a Lidingo cabinet set in the following plan.



The line from the peninsula corner to the middle of the fridge is the path of the old wall.

The first hiccup in the plan started when I found out that the electrical inspector for the city will be out of town from 10/5-10/12. This was my original planned worktime. I could not start work because I would have been unable to close my walls without an electrical inspection. With a 2 year old needing to come back home, that was not a choice. So I put off work for a week. My job is super flexible so my boss has no problem changing my vacation. So tonight is Sunday and the first hammer hits the wall on Thursday. I'll try to post as much as possible as it goes!!

Since we have a total of 18 cabinets to put together and install, I've been putting a few of them together each day.

We have to do small portions of the kitchen during the evenings and weekends, rather than tear it all out and install everything at once, but it's so exciting to see things coming together!

The pantry cabinets are wonderful and I love the pullout drawers. You can see in the pics we still need to install the top middle door, since our first one broke after falling on top of our 3 year old! Thankfully he was okay other than some scrapes and bruises.

The wall cabinets went up although they still need the cover panels and filler pieces. One thing to note, is the holes on the back of the horizontal cabinet over the window are a half an inch off from the vertical cabinets so keep in mind when installing in the same line, that they need to be on three separate rails rather than one long one. We realized this AFTER installing the rail and 2 of the cabinets! The left cabinet sits higher because our microwave will be mounted under it.

I installed a Lee Valley blind corner unit in a 36" cabinet, but more on that later since I plan on having a post devoted solely to modifications since we have literally dozens of them!

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The wall in the middle has to come down. All the HVAC, electrical, and plumbing needs to be moved (apparently I picked the worst wall in the whole house to come down). Oh, and did I mention it was load-bearing too??

A temporary wall needs to be built, the beam installed, and then the old wall can come down.

Tons of electrical work to be done. Outlets installed and moved, new recessed cans, new switches, old switches moves, pendant wiring, new 220 line for double oven, new circuit run, add a sub panel....

Some new plumbing for the fridge, lots of patching, drywall, and painting. Hardwood floors need to be patched and finished. Soffits and old cabinets have to come down.

No wonder it has taken us so long to start! Since we're doing it all ourselves we can only work evening and weekends, and that's when we're not chasing our 2 and 3 yr old boys around:)

Here is our progress below....

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Below is the old kitchen layout, and then the new proposed layout. We will be doing Tidaholm Black brown perimeter cabinets, wall cabinets, and island with carrera marble countertops. The pantry cabinets and window seat will be Applad white.

Also, shown below are pictures of our appliances, lights, island stools, sink, faucet, etc...

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After planning our kitchen for about a year and collecting appliances and cabinets for about 6 months, it's finally time to start on the kitchen! The door style will be Tidaholm Black Brown, with Applad white pantry cabinets and window seats.

This is the beginning of our kitchen project...
We are doing it ourselves, on a budget, with full time jobs and 2 little boys. It's been a challenging process, but I know it will be worth it:D

Below are pictures of our kitchen before...

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After a delay of several weeks, we took delivery of the new 36"w black Samsung french-door fridge on Thursday.

I spent *many* hours cleaning out the garage the night before, and that morning, with the belief that the shortest, straightest route would be the best.
Nope... garage-kitchen door was too narrow, even with the doors taken off. Meaning: last-minute mad scramble to clear a path betw. the front door and the kitchen!!

Anyway... I have no real excuses anymore for not getting those over-fridge doors actually cut down and re-installed. They've been broken apart for a couple of weeks now; and my lift- up hardware has arrived... No excuses.

And my trim pieces for the tambour doors in the office also came, so no real excuses there, either

(It will be nice to get the bottom stops put in on the tambour over the printer. As it stands now, if the drawer below is open, the tambour will fall right out ;^)

and next? (after the over-fridge doors, and finish up the office) Get the windowsills sanded, primed, painted, and installed. These are vinyl windowsills which have been cut to size for *months* now... just stalled. As so often happens to me.

Life issues to work on.

I think I've found my air-gap fix. If I can figure out how to get the Studor installed, I should be able to get things up to code.

The other side of the kitchen wall is outdoors with a shrubbery area -- perfect for gray watter.

Yes, I know, we always underestimate budget by 30% (if we are lucky) and timelines by at least 50%. But I want to move things faster, that is my nature. So sitting still while waiting for inspector to inspect and electrician to fix, and inspector to re-inspect - I'm going bold.

On Monday we got live quote for asbestos removal (at 600), and were able to persuade the guy to come in Tuesday morning before their usual workday to remove it (as it is minor job for them). Other option was to wait untill the end of week.

On Monday, appliances came, which added to the overall feeling of chaos, together with ikea cabinets in living room and flooring in family room and kitchen tchotchkas all over the place. But at least, my appliances are looking really nice, even better then I remember. On Moday inspector came and found one fault :(. And for that one fault, we have to call our contractor to call his electrician to fix things and then call inspector to come in again. And no two of those steps can happen on same day...:(

On Tuesday asbestos removal was done and fix up of electrical, now we wait for inspector before closing all the walls.

We were running to order last remaining items: pendant lights and dining room cabinets. One week for remaining lights (we got one from store stock), and two weeks for last Nexus 3x8 panel. TWO weeks? I tried checking inventory in another store, going there, only to get "probably stock error" after paying for second panel and waiting half an hour (and wasting in traffic some 2,5 hours). I'm more then displeased with that stock availability thing, as every single store in 20km radius has at least 4 (nominally), but when I try to take it out of the store they have none. :mad: Grrr...

Wednesday morning, electrical inspector came to re-inspect, this time giving a go, but contractors could not make it before end of day, as they are starting up at the different place, pre-scheduled long time ago. It was too late to pull the guys from other site (Toronto traffic is a crawl most of the day), so nothing much done.


Today, they finished most of the work: take out sub floor and install new one (latest addition to the budget, we were toying with it from beginning), finish off partition wall, all taping and mudding, installing hood frame, moving heating register. We bought them $10 gift cards for popular coffee joint, as they are working honestly hard. And they even pay attention to cover our sofa with plastic if it has slipped, to take a broom out couple of times per day to cut down on dust, to add mud to the portion of the wall with pre-existing condition etc.

Now kitchen looks as decent empty room, not as a battle field.

They will be back tomorrow for final touch ups, and we complained about their electrical sub-contractor, as half of the house (not only kitchen outlets) is still disconnected. That would be only sloppy job done in the whole mess. Hopefully, we will prime the walls and start on the flooring tomorrow.

Even with best of effort, our island install is looking tight to be finished before Monday, and both me and dh have to go back to work starting Monday. We are hurrying for island (peninsula) as quartz guy needs about a week to cut our surface. The only surface. The surface with cooktop and sink. I need my sink back! I'm staring to panic about the length of time we are going to need to finish up the kitchen, now that we are back to work. We will see how the weekend is going to go.

On Thursday, contractors started, working pretty fast, no complaints. They work hard, from 9 am to 6-7pm, with one 45 minute brake for lunch. I'm impressed. Only problem: they barely know any English, so we need to wait for main guy for any changes to the plan.

And plan we have: my husband a PM, I in charge for requirements, we have detailed list of what exactly needs to be done. And I also have drawings, rendered 3D models, and annotated electrical schematics. No, no architect here, but I made them good enough and detailed enough to avoid having to control anybody. How naive!:P

So, on Thursday, they have done the plumbing, cut the partition wall down, taken out old hood and supporting structure. Started punching the walls for new outlets. Unfortunately, electrician did not come that morning, so he did electrical stuff on Friday. He is Sloppy Joe in all of this, requiring constant reminders that outlet needs to be above counter, that the switch needs to be taken out, that other outlet recessed and so on. Not impressed with him.

Friday, more of the wall punching and ceiling punching and decision to go ahead with hood installation: it was in the plan, but as optional, so it was not part of the budget :yikes: So the hood is somewhere in route to us, we don't have it on hand, so we estimate based on drawings how wide the support braces have to be. I draw my idea for solution for them, as it is sloped ceiling, nobody has any experience with it. To my dismay, the planed center of the hood is directly on the rafter, so it has to be inset by 6" from front of the cooktop. Since nobody has any idea how to mount otherwise, and since nooobody wants to cut into rafter, we let it be.


One more major thing on Friday: asbestos came back positive. I don't think 6sqft requires professional touch, mu dh disagrees. I don't think anybody in the whole neighbourhood ever called asbestos, yet nobody seems to suffer (most of them are well into 80s), but my dh cites our kids and health and all "no safe limit" conclusions of doctors. I'm showing signs of strain running across the city to pick out pendant lights (how tiring, why that can't be all in the same place, like Ikea?), and getting annoyed at my dh for not talking to asbestos removal guys in advance. It is Friday, none to be found in the afternoon, so we call it a day and plan to use weekend for pendant lights and various birthdays (2 in same afternoon - tiring enough).