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.