Its the Monday morning after Christmas and we started in on the kitchen cabinets. Since these are a $20k plus part of the house, there is no room for screw ups. Brian (the trim guy) showed up on schedule at 8:30 am, but I'd been at the house for an hour setting up for the big event. We moved a half dozen boxed cabinets into the kitchen area, and got them ready. Since its an L-shaped cabinet layout, we started with the corner cabinet, which is fondly known as a Super Susan (think big Lazy Susan). We set this cabinet first, getting it squared up in 3 directions so everything that gets built off of it is level and plumb. We had to plane off the bottom and back edges since the Hardiboard flooring sweeps up a bit along the walls.Right off the bat there were a few problems I hadn't foreseen. Firstly, I'd installed a wall outlet for an instant hot water faucet (optional) in the right side of the sink cabinet, but not quite in the right spot. It turned out to be behind the seam between two cabinets (not a good thing), so we cut a hole in the drywall. I pulled the wires over and will put an electrical box in the rear of the sink cabinet tomorrow. Second problem was the gas turnoff valve for the Wolf range top. Turns out that you have to be able to turn off the gas to the range top for maintenance (or leaks), so we need to cut out the back of the cabinet and put in an access port (I bought one tonight). So by 10 am we had a plan for solving the problems and started setting cabinets.
We worked to the left from the corner cabinet
along the south (sunny) wall of the kitchen. Two cabinets, then a 24" opening for the dishwasher. Then a drawer cabinet and the big kahuna—the refrigerator case (left side of first photo). Swore I wouldn't have another of these after our Denver experience, but here we go again. The problem in Denver is that the original case was only 30" wide, and the refrigerators got wider with time. When we went to replace ours after 10 years, the narrowest refrig made was 32" wide, so I ended up cutting the case in half and widening it by 2". Now a days, 36" is the standard width, and some builders plan for 48" or more. Anyway, the refrigerator case is built out of two side panels (32" x 96") and an intervening upper cabinet (see second photo).
To the left of the refrigerator case is a narrow pantry cabinet. 12" wide and 24" deep, with a slide out case in the bottom and two shelves in the top. We've pulled a little trick on all of these cabinets. Nancy wanted deeper than normal counters since she's a half pint (5'3"), so I built a stub wall 3.5" deep behind the lower cabinets. This way we got 28" deep counters and only paid for standard 24" deep cabinets. A side bonus is that the refrigerator case is 32" deep, but only sticks out 4" beyond the other cabinets. This gives the impression of a counter-depth refrigerator rather than the standard depth French door model we ordered. Counter-depth refrigerators are the biggest scam perpetrated on home owners in the past decade. They are shallow and nearly twice the cost of standard depth ones. Price a few and see what I mean (yikes). Anyway, by the end of the day Brian and I place all the cabinets along the south wall (sink and refrigerator), and positioned the ones along the west wall (oven and stove top). A good days work for amateurs, I'd say.
