Today I got cover panels on, filler in, and the standard corner cabinet carousel. And I cleaned all my stuff out of the space so my contractor has space to actually work when he comes tomorrow. The big thing was the cover panels for my pantry – they sell you a panel that’s 24 5/8″ wide, and the pantry is 12 1/4″ deep. So you have to cut the panel precisely in half to cover each side of the pantry – this makes it so you can’t see the suspension rail, and also the cover panels match the doors, which the cabinet boxes don’t, quite. But anyway – this panel is 80 inches long. That’s a long cut that has to be very straight. Luckily, my dad has a table saw, and he’s willing to attack problems like this with me. So in the slight drizzle after work this evening, he pulled his table saw out to the doorway of the shop (that’s the only way we could have 80″ behind it), and I borrowed my mom’s car to transport the panel, and we cut it perfectly in half. We also cut a few other pieces of filler, but that was the most awesome. Then I came back home and installed the panels and filler.

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Today’s picture series is sort of amusing because it looks almost identical to yesterday’s, though messier. All those cabinets that were in place are now anchored to the wall, so they’re not going anywhere. My contractor told me to go ahead and put the sink cabinet in, they’ll re-plumb through it, so it’s anchored too, and I got the suspension rail up for the 12″ pantry so it’s got something holding it against the wall as well. I also built most of the pull-out for the blind corner cabinet, which you can see way at the left in the last photo. I haven’t put the little rails that hold stuff on the shelves yet, because it’s late and I can do that tomorrow. But all of my cabinets are in, properly mounted and leveled. My contractor returns bright and early Wednesday, so I’m hoping to do some filler and cover panels tomorrow, as well as the regular corner lazy susan, which is evidently a lot easier to install if the countertop’s not there yet.

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Today my parents came over and helped me during the afternoon, so I got to move all sorts of things I couldn’t do myself, and Mommy built cabinets, and Daddy went on an epic quest for a 5/16 drill bit, which eventually ended with success (and some minor grumpiness – a drill bit shouldn’t cost 7 bucks!). We built all the remaining cabinets, put them in place (well, mostly…) and anchored the blind corner cabinet to the wall. I was planning on using 4 legs for all my cabinets – as recommended on ikeafans, though the official instructions say to use a ledger board for the back edge of the cabinets. Evidently it can make leveling harder instead of easier. But it turned out I didn’t have enough legs if I did it that way, and I don’t want to have to go to IKEA tomorrow. So I ended up installing the ledger board for the run of cabinets on the side wall, which freed up enough legs to let all the other cabinets have the legs they need. The regular corner cabinet, particularly, seems to have a vast number of legs.

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Today I finalized the upper cabinets – ganged them together, tightened their bolts all the way, and put in filler so they meet the wall. There will be some molding between their tops and the ceiling, but it’s one of the last things that’ll happen, so for the moment, I’m done dealing with upper cabinets. I also built the 15″ drawer cabinet, which is tiny and cute, and the blind corner cabinet – this is a beast of an object, 49″ long, and heavy enough that although I’ve put the legs on, I’m waiting for a second person to help me pick it up. The legs have this adorable warning about how you need to actually lift the cabinet off the ground and set it down on the legs, not just roll it to upright. Evidently the legs aren’t meant to deal with sideways forces, so they’ll break if you do it wrong. The warning is adorable just because it’s illustrated – I’m becoming fond of the drawings they use as instructions for assembly. This may be a sign that insanity is approaching.

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Today I mowed my lawn. Oh wait, that’s not what you’re here for. But it’s relevant, you see, because to mow my lawn, I borrowed my dad’s lawnmower, which meant my dad was at my house. And with only a very little persuasion, he awesomely agreed to help me hang the rest of the upper cabinets. So all of my uppers are up! I still have to gang them together, cut filler for the ends against the front wall (since the doors will open towards the wall, having at least a little space for them to swing is a good thing), and tighten them all. But they are on the wall, and they are awesome!

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Yay, progress! Tonight when I got home from work, I covered the floor with paper – well, partially – I ran out midway through, so tomorrow I’ll go buy more, but for now I’ve got a dropcloth helping protect the floor. With that done, I brought my ladder in and checked how level my ceiling is. Surprisingly, it’s not bad – there’s a bit of wobbliness, and it was definitely possible to find a low spot for each cabinet run, but the variation is less than an eighth of an inch. Having marked the low spot, I then measured down 3.25 inches from the ceiling at that point, and drew a level line on each side. Then I got to hacksaw my suspension rails into the correct lengths, brought them upstairs, and then had to go back and cut one a second time because I can’t add. Oops.

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Well, I have been informed by a good friend with impeccable taste that the faint lines showing on my floor impart “character.” I’m embracing this theory, since my floor guys came back this morning and told me the news… that bottom layer of linoleum? The one with the stars? Was cut in place, on the floor. So the lines that are showing now are actually cuts in the wood, and they’re too deep to sand out. So unless I replace the floor, I’ve got stars. Character.

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Today the floor guys came, sanded, and stained the floor. I’m a little uncertain about it at the moment, because you can see lines where the edges of the bottom layer of linoleum met the cabinets/changed colors. This means I have faint star medallions in the not-quite center of each side of the room, and I really don’t want them. I’m hoping maybe they can sand more and get below the lines, but if not, I may have to live with it until I come up with a better floor solution. Or maybe a rug. Rugs are nice. It looks great from a distance, though.

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Today I got the second coat of paint on the walls, and though it’s not quite dry yet, it looks miles better than yesterday – nice solid color instead of that first-coat patchiness. I feel like everything’s suddenly moving very slowly, since I’m the only one doing work on the kitchen at the moment – last week it was a big surprise every day what the contractor had achieved, and now I’m like “painted more, see the tiny difference?” But it’ll get more impressive again soon, I hope, since the floor guys come tomorrow and then it’s time for the actual cabinet installation.

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Today was pretty productive, considering I didn’t actually start anything until 4:00. I’m always happy when I remember how much nicer paint is than primer – primer gets everywhere and spatters and glops and is always really annoying, so switching to paint is a relief – it goes on nice and smooth and is pretty. Admittedly, I only got to do one coat today, so though it’s hard to see in the photos, it’s not actually pretty yet, it’s more haphazard strips where it’s thinner so you can see the primer coming through, and brushstrokes at edges and general weirdness, but at least if you squint, the room’s starting to look like part of the house instead of some strange other place (my eldest sister once called it “the land of knotty pine”). So here are today’s progress photos, where the walls have been painted tan, but nothing else has changed…

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