21_Installing Kitchen Cabinets

My husband drove to PA to take the rest of his tools on the last 1.5 days of his 4-day weekend. When he went back on August 7^th, it was late at night already and he was tired; so he didn’t unload the tools. On July 8^th morning, he went to the house early to unload them because they were weighing down the van. If the van’s shockbreaker could scream, it probably would.

The look of van load from the back.

The look of van load from the front seat.

However, not all the cabinets could be unloaded; two big tool cabinets were too heavy to lift by one person. So during lunchtime, my husband picked me up to help him. It went well with one of them. But the other one was too big to fit in any of the doors. Apparently my husband and his family forced it to fit inside the van. I could see the scratches on the cabinet and side door. We tried to bring it out but had no success while the lunch break time was running out. So, my husband had to go back to work with one cabinet left.

After worked, we tried to unload again. This time my husband decided to open the van’s side door to provide bigger space for the cabinet to get through. When he unscrewed some parts of the door, the rain fell hard; so we had to take cover in the house. While waiting, we tried to keep productive. One of the things that my husband took from his storage in PA was a TV; so, we mounted the TV in the family room. Yaaay, we had TV! Of course we couldn’t watch anything yet, we had not applied for any TV services.

TV in the family room. 

After the rain stopped, we went back to open up the van’s side door. We then pushed the cabinet out. It was so heavy; I didn’t think I moved it even an inch. But in the end, we managed.

Installing The Kitchen Cabinets

We were anxious on August 9^th from the beginning because we were going to install the kitchen cabinets. So after working hours, we rushed to the house. We started by installing the upper cabinets first, because we needed space to move around when installing them. The first one installed was the corner cabinet. The challenge here was the wall wasn’t level; so we had to measure everything over and over again. But when finally we hung it, we realized that it was upside down! I honestly didn’t know which part was up or down; but my husband surely knew that the upper part should have bigger frame. We uninstalled it and turned it around.

In this task, my job was holding the cabinets while my husband screwed them to the wall. It was like the drywall job, but this time was a bit heavier. After the corner cabinet was installed, we continued with 3 others shortly after.

From top to bottom, left and right: Cabinets installation process.

All cabinets were installed.

We finished installing the upper cabinets pretty fast; so we were optimistic to finish the whole installation in one evening. The first to be installed, for the bottom cabinets, was the sink cabinet. Since this would host the sink pipes, we had to cut holes. Then the problem occurred. It was difficult to find the right tool to make the holes. The drill that we had was old and jammed; so my husband had to spend a lot of time to outmaneuver it. In the end of the day, we could only install one bottom cabinet i.e. the sink cabinet.

Above: Measuring the pipes for cutting the holes in the sink cabinet. Below:  The sink cabinet was installed

Building A Housing For The Refrigerator

We continued installing the other bottom cabinets on the next day and laid out the island to get a vision on how it would look like. We then put the new refrigerator to work, next to the kitchen cabinets. The next step would be building a housing for the refrigerator. As the fridge was tall, we had to buy long plywood that made our van’s back door couldn’t be closed. But since the fridge was just a long straight thing, building its housing didn’t take long. The housing was only consisted of 1 box and 1 shelf. The problem, though, occurred when we tried to carry it inside the house. We couldn’t erect it because the ceiling was low. The upper corner of the housing scratched the ceiling when it was tilted. My God, why we never thought it through… As the solution, my husband cut some part in the bottom of the housing. We then erected the housing and put it on top of the bottom part. We finished it by nailing them.

All kitchen cabinets were installed.

Left: The housing for refrigerator. Middle: We cut the bottom part and put the rest of the cabinet on top of it. Right: The housing cabinet finally stood up. 

Broken Oven. Was It A Blessing In Disguise?

For the other end of the kitchen cabinets, we also build a housing. This one was for housing an oven and a microwave. Learning from the previous mistake, we decided to build one part of the time rather than building the whole housing at once. My husband started early on August 12^th to build a housing for the bottom cabinet under the microwave. When I joined him, we installed the microwave on top of it. We had to keep cutting the back part of the microwave housing to make a way for the electric cable; which consumed some time.

From left to right: Steps on building the housing cabinet for microwave and oven. 

Once we finished installing the microwave, it was time to build a housing for the oven. Realizing how hard to channel the cables, we decided to make sure that the electricity for the oven works first; rather than keep putting it in and out to adjust. In addition, the oven used 220 Voltage, so we wanted to make sure that the 220V line still worked after all the renovation.

By the way, this was a new lesson for me. While in general, America used 110V but some appliances like oven and stove used 220V. In Indonesia and most countries in Europe, they used 220V for everything. So I was a bit puzzled to understand the electrical system in America.

Back to the oven story, we hooked up the oven and turned it on; it looked work. We were all smiling until my husband saw smoke appeared from the top of the oven. We quickly turned it off and tried to figure out what was wrong. We put our faces closer to the oven and looked. And just about that, the oven was exploded! OMG, we were so shocked…

Our broken oven.

Luckily, we weren’t hurt. My husband quickly turned off the 220V line and unhooked the oven. So here we go again, we had to spend money for things that we didn’t plan L

We continued working on building the housing for the upper cabinet; this supposed to be placed on top of the oven. And of course, we found another problem. Apparently, if we used the oven we had, the measurement of the whole housing wouldn’t match. It meant we need a smaller oven!

We planned to just repair the old one to minimize the cost. But now we had to buy a new one, otherwise it wouldn’t fit to the available space. So I guessed, it wasn’t bad that the oven was broken; but it was still bad knowing we had to spend a lot more money…

Island In The Stream Of Hardwood Flooring

My husband started early again on August 13^th. He started the day by building wall frames for the island. When I joined in, he had finished building them but hadn’t installed it. We then installed them, and yes, we found a problem during the installation process. The measurement was a bit off, so my husband had to cut and trim here and there to make them all fit.

Wall frames for the island.

After that, my husband set up some receptacles around the island and mapped the wiring for them. Meanwhile, as the island would be the cooking place, I cleaned the stove. This stove was the last two kitchen appliances from the previous owner. So it wasn’t a surprise that it filled with dry grease, maybe from 10 years ago. I cleaned with a special cooktop cleaner for some time, but it didn’t bring much success. In the end, I had to scrape it off.

Two lefts: My husband installed receptacles in the island. Two rights: I scrapped the stove. 

We spend the next 3 days for rewiring some cables in the kitchen. This wasn’t easy at all because my husband had to enter the crawlspace bellow our house and tried to figure out each cable line. In an old house like ours, there should be many changes along the way. For example, a cable line might run to support 3 receptacles in a row, but then there was another cable line supporting 1 receptacle in between. In short, it was confusing.

In between, we changed the door handles of the fridge, from right to left. Because it was easier to open it that way from the island. This task was also sounded easy but it was arduous. It involved removing three hinges from the top to bottom and install them in the opposite side. When it reached to the bottom part, we had to tilt the fridge; or, I had to hold the tilted fridge while my husband fixed the hinges.

The door handles of the fridge were moved from right to left opening.

We also had a pest control coming; it was from Terminix company. We took a package to eradicate bugs like cockroach, but I didn’t think it applied for mosquitos. It would cost more for eliminating mosquitos and enormous amount for termite control. I remembered in traditional houses in Indonesia, people ‘feed’ the termites. They provide softwood in their yards for the termites, so they wouldn’t invade the houses. So we would use this technique if necessary.

Pest control in action. 

After having 2 days off, we continued working on August 19^th. We aimed to finish everything related to the kitchen because on Monday, we would have a countertop guy coming. He would measure the needed countertop area. So we covered the island and put some accents to it. My husband really put so much effort in making it beautiful; I really loved it.

Steps on put wood paneling on the island.

The finished product of the island, from different point of views.

We also installed the downdraft vent that included drilling a hole and setting a pipe for the outlet; and sat the stove. Furthermore, we set the pipes for the dishwasher. When we did this, of course we had to turn off the water. However, when we tried to turn back on, the main valve was jammed; it couldn’t be moved at all. So we didn’t have any running water since. Well, another problem… 

The downdraft vent on the island.

The dishwaser and its pipes.

20_Finishing Hardwood Flooring

As the kitchen cabinets had arrived, it was a good incentive for us to finish the hardwood flooring. Not only to have a functional kitchen, we also needed to vacant some space in the garage. In principles, we had to sand the hardwood flooring to make it in the same color tone, and then applied polyurethane on it. In reality, we had to sand the floor multiple times with different sanders and sandpapers; and so did the polyurethane. These two tasks that looked simple ended up took the whole week to finish L

Sanding, sanding, sanding

To sand the hardwood flooring, we needed a sanding machine. This machine was very expensive but Home Depot rented it; so we rented one on July 28^th for two days. In addition, we bought sandpapers number 24, 36, and 60.  The higher the number, the softer it gets.

Left: The floor sander. Right: Various sandpapers. 

My husband operated the floor sander while I cleaned the sand dust afterwards. He started with sandpaper number 24 for the old floor, to take out its color. Once he finished sanding, I cleaned the sand dust so he could see whether the floor was sanded evenly; if not, he would sand more to make it looked even. This time I used a normal home vacuum cleaner because its brush was perfect for cleaning the sand dusts. The industrial vacuum cleaner didn’t have any brush.

Left: The vacuum cleaner. Right: The downdraft vent. 

My husband never used this kind of floor sander before, so he had to get his way around. However, after using it for 4 hours, he felt tired so we had to call it a day. At this day also, we received our downdraft vent for the kitchen stove.

On the next day, my husband continued sanding using sandpaper number 24. After that, he used the sandpaper number 36. This time, he sanded the whole floor. At this point, the whole floor looked like in the same color tone. Honestly I didn’t know why we had to continue sanding with an increasing number of sandpaper. But my husband planned to sand it farther, to make it looked beautiful. By the end of the day, he finished sanding most of the floor with the sandpaper number 60; only left the master bedroom behind.

Left: The floor after being sanded with number 24. Right: The floor sander couldn't reach the edges.

The floor after being sanded with sanpaper number 60.

Left: We returned the floor sander and the sandpapers. Right: The sandpapers.

On July 30^th we continued working and tried to finish before 2.30PM because we didn’t want to pay any rent extension. We managed to finish before time and returned it. We then rent an edger to sand the edges that couldn’t be reached by the normal floor sander. For this edger, we took sandpaper number 36, 60, 80, and 100. We didn’t really know how far we should sand, we just did try and error based from different references on the Internet.

The edger itself had a weird design, it had a low grip that made the users had to bend. This, could injure the lower back; so dangerous! Maybe such tool was designated for small rooms only, I didn’t know. For sure my husband had trouble in operating it. He could only move for a few distances before the lower back pain caught him up. Luckily, at this day we had two visits from old friends; so my husband could take a break between edgings.

Left: The edger. Right: Sandpapers for the edger.

Left: My husband operated the edger; it needed a lot of bendings. Right: The edges after being sanded with the edger.

My husband continued edging on the next day, during lunchtime break and after working hours. In the end, he didn’t use the sandpapers number 80 and 100. He returned the edger on the day after and bought a little sander for me to sand the corners that couldn’t be reached by the other sanders. So the next sanding job was assigned to me. I sanded the whole corner in one afternoon, used the sandpaper number 60 and 80. Meanwhile, my husband filled the gaps in the hardwood flooring with a filler mix. The arched woods caused these gaps.

Above Left: The new hand sander. Below Left: A corner before being sanded. Right: The corner after being sanded with the hand sander.

On August 2^nd, my husband, again, rented another sander. This time was an orbital sander. He started to sand after working hours with the sandpaper number 80. As always, I cleaned the sand dusts. This tool has a square edge and could reach the corner; I didn’t understand why we didn’t use it from the beginning. After we finished sanding the whole room with sandpaper number 80, we continued with number 120. However, we couldn’t finish all when the time showed 10PM. We decided to continue on the next day.

Left: The orbital sander. Right: The finished floor after sanding.

On the next day, my husband started very early because he had to do PT at 6AM. So he went to the house afterwards. He managed to finish the task by lunchtime and returned the sander; with this, we only got charged for 1-day rent. I cleaned the dusts after working hours included the fans and windows, because the next step would be painting the floor with polyurethane. We didn’t want any dusts or debris got trapped in the paint.

Furthermore, we took out the gigantic refrigerator; the only one thing left in the house. This wasn’t easy as it only fits to the front door, and what I meant with fit was after we had to take out the door handle. We used a little dolly to carry it horizontally; once we reached the garage, we stood it and put the door handle back. Since we had a new fridge, we thought to sell the old one.

The refrigerator door that we had to take out.

Poly, Poly, Poly

My husband had 4-day weekend on August 4^th – 7^th, so we could work the whole day. Before we started applying polyurethane, we made sure again that everything was clean. We applied the poly from the back bedroom to the other bedrooms; we then continued to the big open space, started from the new family room to the hallways and finished at the front door. It took us 2.5 hours to finish it.

The floor before painted with polyurethane (Left) and after (Right).

After applying the first coat of polyurethane, we should let it dry for 24 hours; so we left the house. But when we about to leave, we realized that we forgot to turn off the light in the hallway L. We went to the apartment to take a rest. In the afternoon, we returned to the house to work on the outside i.e. tidy up the garage and mowing the lawn.

On the next day, we returned after 24 hours to apply the second coat. Before we applied it, we sanded the floor. This time by using sandpapers number 220 that were stuck to a mop pole; so it was like mopping but harder. We applied the poly from the bedrooms again, but this time we ended it at the back door. And this time, we forgot to close the bathroom window.

My husband sanded the floor before applying the second coating.

In the afternoon, I put an advertisement about the refrigerator on Facebook. I advertised it for $100. In less than 5 minutes, I got a potential buyer and we set an appointment to meet on the next day. After that, there were 5 people contacted me, saying that they were interested. That’s crazy! I never sold anything so easy like this. Beside, I thought nobody would be interested with a used and dented appliance.

On August 6^th, we finally put the last coat of polyurethane. But before that, we sanded again. Working in a place with new applied polyurethane wasn’t easy, the chemical made my eyes feeling burned and I also had nausea even though I always wore a mask. So when it was finally finished, I was so glad. Even more, I didn’t have to hear any sanding machines and noisy vacuum cleaner.

I always wore a mask during the application of polyurethane.

At this point, we had reached another milestone. No more large-scale work that we had to do. From now on, it would be only small patchy works including the installation of the kitchen cabinets.

Since my husband still had 1.5 days of holiday, he decided to drive back to PA to get more of his tools. Meanwhile, I just rested in the apartment. He arrived back in Fayetteville very late on August 7^th and decided to unload the stuff on the next day.

The shiny floor after 3 coatings of polyurethane.

19_Painting

After finishing the house renovation stage, we took time before going to the house beautification stage. On Monday, July 17^th we came to the house in the morning because the refrigerator that we ordered online would come (Read also: 15_Plan Adjustment). While waiting, I cleaned some of the mess from the day before.

The new refrigerator.

Luckily, the refrigerator came before lunchtime, so I didn’t have to wait longer in an empty house. I could go back to the apartment before going back to work in the house. After working hours, we went back to the house to clean the rest of the mess from installing the hardwood flooring. We tidied up the new open space in the room and garage. My husband also mowed the lawn. With everything was cleaned up, we were ready to embark on the next stage.

Applying Primer

On the next day, during his lunch break, my husband went to Lowe’s to buy painting tools and primers. After he finished work, he picked me up and we started applying primer on the walls and ceilings. By applying primer, it would show the flawless on the drywall coating, if any. And if there were any, the drywall guy would come again to put more coating to perfect it.

Above left: Painting tools and primers. Above right: Plastic layer for protecting the floor. Below left: Painters tape for protecting the trims. Below right: I was ready to apply the primers.

This was my first time painting. It looked easy when I watched my husband did it. But when I tried it, it wasn’t easy for me to control the roller. It seemed that the roller had its own idea to move to any direction it wanted. I had to put pressure on the roller to keep it in a straight direction. Another issue was I couldn’t apply the primer evenly. It looked like I put smudges here and there. Honestly, I didn’t know why I was there; I felt like a kid making a mess. My husband had to put the final layer to make it look even.

It was a cloudy day so we didn’t get enough daylight to work on. We used a portable light and tried our best on applying the primer evenly. We shouldn’t apply the primer in two days; it would look uneven. So we kept working until we finished at 10PM. We took rest in the next day to let the primer dry.

The walls after we applied the primer.

Taking More Tools In PA

On July 20^th we went to PA again to take more tools, especially painting tools. We went there after my husband finished his work. This was the first time we used the van for road trip after it broke down. It should be in better condition because it had been repaired. And it was better engine wise, however, it was worse regarding the AC. The AC went hot whenever we drove fast; it seemed backward than how the normal AC works. So we had to open the window all the way down and kept drinking ice teas to cope with the hot weather. We drove for around 7 hours and arrived at midnight.

We woke up late in the next day and tried to fit as many tools as we could in the van. I couldn’t really help in moving the stuff because most of them were heavy i.e. a table saw and steel cabinet. The van even became shorter due to the heavy loads; and because of this, we had to drive slower. The trip back, of course, took longer than the trip out. We arrived at almost midnight and we were so exhausted. We decided to just go back to the apartment rather than unload the tools.

Left:Tools from PA, seen from the back door. Right: Tools from PA, seen from the side door.

Painting The Ceilings And Installing Ceiling Fans

On July 22^nd we bought ceiling paints and started to paint from early in the morning. This time, it didn’t feel as difficult as before. I guessed painting on drywall was harder than on coated drywall. But still I couldn’t master the roller; it seemed that I just put smudges everywhere. We put 2 layers of coating with 4 hours difference, as suggested.

Above left: The ceiling paints. Below left: Ceiling painting tools. Right: My husband painted the ceiling.

While waiting for the paints to dry, we shopped for ceiling lights. We bought 2 ceiling fans, 1 for the living room, and 1 for the previous dining room that were now becoming family room. We also bought 1 string light for above the kitchen sink and 1 oval light for the whole kitchen.

First, we installed the oval light, which was easy. Now we had an UFO on our ceiling. Next, we tried to install the ceiling fan in the family room. Previously, there was a ceiling fan in this room, so the ceiling fan mount was still there. This meant the installation would be easy, but of course I was wrong.

Left: An oval ceiling light in the kitchen. Above right: A string light above the kitchen sink. Below right: The ceiling fan in the family room.

I was familiar with IKEA, which has simple instruction. IKEA doesn’t even have written instruction, all the instructions are on pictures. And now, this ceiling fan had a lot of written instruction with a little bit of pictures. It was not easy for me to understand. And when we thought we got it, the fan couldn’t work even though the light could. At this time, it was 10PM already. So we decided to leave it and just went home.

On the next day, my husband went back to the house early, while I was resting because I felt feverish. He managed to figure out the ceiling fan. Apparently, the remote had to be synchronized first in order to make the fan works. He then continued to paint the wall around the edges e.g. around the electrical sockets.

Painting The Walls

During the lunchtime, my husband picked me up to start painting the walls. For the walls, we also put 2 coatings. This time I felt confident and started to enjoy painting. Now I knew why most of my friends always mentioned painting when I told them that I was renovating my house. I wasn’t saying that I have mastered it, but I could understand why people enjoy doing it. One could see the change instantly.

The pensieve sky color on our wall.

After seeing how I did, my husband assigned me to paint some parts of the hallway. And after we finished painting, we install the string light. Again, it didn’t want to light up; there must be something went on with the wiring. It was late already, so we decided to go home instead.

Left: The wall in the hallway needed some paint. Right: After I painted it.

On the next day, my husband came early to reroute the cables. He had to go to the attic for that, and morning time was the perfect timing to do it. If he went after the sun was warm, it would be hot and uncomfortable there.

After working hours, my husband worked on installing the other ceiling fan in the living room, where previously none existed. So first, he had to drill on the center of the ceiling to set up a base. Meanwhile, I painted the accent walls with darker blue color, or soul seeker blue as it called in Sherwin-Williams paint universe. I started to paint at 6PM, so the second coat had to be at 10PM! However, after waiting in hunger and tiredness, we didn’t have more energy, we decided to go home at 9.15PM.

Above left: The accent wall before painting. Below left: The painting tools. Right: The accent wall after painting.

On July 25^th, my husband came early again to figure out the cable route for the ceiling fan; and bought more cables during his lunch break. After working hours, I joined him to put the second coat for the accent walls. My husband continued working on rerouting the cables. After he finished, we went home. It was earlier than usual because my husband had an early day on the next day.

A lot of cables dangling when my husband installed a ceiling fan in the living room.

The ceiling fan installation continued on the next two days. It took faster time than the previous because we had learned to do it. But still, in the beginning, the fan wouldn’t work. My husband re-opened the installation and tightened the cables; and after this, it worked.

The ceiling fan in the living room.

Kitchen Cabinets

On July 27^th we got notification that the kitchen cabinets had arrived, and we had to pick them up at a UPS’s loading facility. We opted for a pick-up service in order to minimize the cost; if we asked for home delivery, the cost would be higher. So after working hours, we went to pick up the cabinets.

The cabinets were consisted of 13 parts. Although they were not heavy individually, they took up space. So we couldn’t take all of them at once in the van. We had to make 3 trips; each took around 30 minutes. Back in the house, we had to cramp them in the garage.

Wrapped kitchen cabinets at a UPS's unloading facility.

Kitchen cabinets in the van during multiple trips.