Temp Top

It will be a while before out counter top is installed, as a matter of fact we are going to check out a very good company tomorrow and hopefully we'll have a better idea how long this temp will be in. It's ¾" birch plywood, with three coats of poly and after these pictures were taken I rounded the corners by the sink and the end, then I added the edge banding to finish it off, now for more poly. It may be a temp top but doesn't need to look shabby, it will look great.

The stone will be better.

Nice look.

177 inches of counter, with sink and cook top.

A Kitchen In The Rough

Well there in and they may be in the rough, but they look good. It took a few days, I had to make sure the base was strait and level, and then I added the base cabinets to get things lined up on the right side. Once that was done, up went the uppers and I added the receptacle for the cook top, I won't go into detail about where I had to go to get the proper fittings. Once that was done I could finish installing the base cabinets. I have a temporary counter to in the shop to be fitted, as it will take a while for the one we want. The sink will fit in as it did before and I have drain and water lines already run to the basement. It's all coming together.

A clean slate.

The base is in and base cabinets set in place.

The upper cabinets installed.

The uppers by the sink.

The far right upper.

Everything is secured.

All went well, even put in a couple of drawers.

You can see the cook top in place.

Patch Job Done

Well the patch job is done and I'll be starting the cabinet install tomorrow. Lots to do, making sure the base is level, getting the upper cabinet height right, then installing them and then the base cabinets. They'll need a little work, two will need cut outs for plug access, the cook top one will need an opening to pug it in and the sink, well that speaks for it's self. I'll see about progress pictures, no promises.

Left side, not perfect. They won't be seen
behind the cabinets.

Right side, same here and the back splash
will hide any other imperfections.

Under Cabinet Lighting

It's never as simple as just putting up the under cabinet lights and plugging them in, you see you're not suppose to see the wires or plug, and they need to be good LEDs. So I opened up the walls to add a plug down behind the lower cabinets, so I can plug in a little transformer for the LEDs, and run a low voltage wire for the lights. With the new LED's you can't just hard wire them in. When I install the lower cabinets I'll have access behind the drawers to the pug and all is good if I have to replace the transformer, easy access and no requirement to re-open a wall later.

The right side of the kitchen.

Add a little mud.

The left side, sorry no mud pictures this time.

The Drawers Are In

The last two drawers are in and they fit perfectly, this time. As well I added a small strip of wood as a spacer above the top drawer for the cook top cabinet. It needs a clearance of 4 inches and with the counter top we'll have 5, to help define the depth of this drawer, this spacer helps maintain the clearance. I'll be starting shortly the installation, it will take a bit of time, many things to fit, like the outlet for the cook top needs to be cut out of the cabinet, that is if I don't have to move it first, as well holes for the drain and water lines for the sink, as well wires run for the under counter lights. Its the little things and the details that takes up my time. But we only want to do this once.

All three drawer cabinets will have the same size fronts. This
top drawer is shorter because of the cook top. The two
drawer cabinet will have a panel door on it.

Good News - Bad News

A funny thing happened after I assembled all 11 drawers, two were the wrong size, here is how it played out. When it was time to install the slides, I started with the two drawer cabinet first, I made a few cuts in the drawers for the slides, added the locking mechanism to the bottom, drill a couple of holes for the end of the slides and get ready to install the slides in the cabinets. I always check to see how everything fits before screwing things in, and this cabinet is different from the others because it has two drawers not three. And I had to make the drawers a little narrower then the open space to accommodate the hinge hardware for the door. Well here's the bad news, when I checked it I noticed it was a little over an inch narrower than it should have been, so I had to make new drawers, as I already had the material prepped it didn't take long. A little frustrating on how it happened but these things do happen. After cutting the material needed for the new drawers I noticed that the old ones would fit if I turned them sideways, not an option because the dove tails go in the sides and not the front and back. Now here is the good news, as it turns out I did measure correctly, it's just that I labeled the pieces incorrectly. A minor set back and now I'm moving forward with the last two drawers. By the way the other 9 went in with out a hitch.

Old on the left, new on the right.