I just moved everything back into my kitchen – 8 boxes worth of various pots and pans and glasses and plates and such. And yet, I have 3 entirely empty cabinets. And an empty 36″ drawer. There’s just… too much room! This is amazing and astounding and some other a-word that I’m not coming up with right this moment. My kitchen has too much room. There’s nothing to put in those cabinets. It’s the awesomest thing ever. Ah, there’s the third a-word, awesome. Nothing’s changed visually since yesterday, it’s just that the cabinets and drawers have stuff in them now. I love it!

Well, today I finished putting on doors for the cabinets, added knobs, and moved my fridge back – my kitchen is officially a kitchen again. The doors went smoothly, and I don’t have any extras, so they must all be right. The knobs, unfortunately, I need 2 more packs of – when I changed my sink and the cabinet to its left, I gained 4 drawers where there had been only one, and yet did not buy any more knobs. For now, my biggest drawer and my under-sink cabinet are knobless – they both have good edges to grab so you can still open them. Ah well – I have to go to IKEA for deco strip to hide the undercabinet lights anyhow, so I’ll just add knobs to the list.

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Today my parents came over and helped me work on drawers and door installation – we got most of the way done, but there’s still shelving to put in and a few more upper doors to go, which’ll happen tomorrow, I hope. I dropped something heavy on my toe yesterday, so I’m walking pretty gingerly, and ladders are not really my friends right now.

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Today my stove moved back into the room! This happened a bit early, actually, since my floor guys are busy for the next two weeks, so the final coat of poly on the floor won’t go on ’til two Wednesdays from now, and so I decided that the stove doesn’t really need that final coat underneath it – I’d rather have my kitchen back.

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Today the electricians came, and so instead of square holes with wires sticking out of them, I have switches and outlets! And they actually function! My microwave works – you can even go outside and watch the vent flap blow open as it vents to the outdoors, and the clock on it tells time like clocks should. I’ve got a temporary light fixture over the table area (currently a big open space) because the real fixture that goes there hangs low enough that we’d all be hitting our heads, so I’ll put it in only right before the table goes back in. And I have yet to find a fixture I like for over the sink, so that’s got a hole with wires instead of an actual light, too (anyone with ideas for cool fixtures, I’m taking suggestions. This is one thing I have no vision for, yet). But everything else is there and working!

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I HAVE A SINK! This is amazing and awesome, and it works, hot and cold water come out and then drain, and it’s really exciting. On top of having a sink, I have a microwave, a dishwasher, and countertops! Plus some baseboards and trim, and two doors so we can test how the crown molding will interact with the door edges… but really, I have a sink! As you can tell, the contractor came back today, and his crew was busy! They put in all of my countertop, doing beautiful mitered seams at the corners, and installed my sink, with its faucet (pull-out sprayer is awesome), and the microwave with the vent to the outdoors, and my garbage disposal, and my dishwasher. The dishwasher isn’t actually plumbed yet, but it’s sitting in place. Also, anything that needs electricity isn’t functioning at the moment because the outlets are getting installed tomorrow. But suddenly my kitchen looks rather a lot like a kitchen! And it’s gorgeous. I kind of want to hang out in it and pet my sink.

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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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