I know it probably looks pretty incremental, but I got a fair amount of stuff accomplished today. Now that the concrete is patched (sorry I didn't snap a better pic), I was able to install three more cabs. The first two were easy, but that tall one was a pain. As you can see, I installed a mounting rail up top, because the super tall skinny ones aren't very stable otherwise. Luckily singer Kim is here so I had her to help mount the rail and lift the big cab into position. Those big ones are a pain because they're really heavy (around 95 lbs) and when you stand them up, you can't lean them on the plastic legs or they'll break (thanks Ikea...). You can get away with leaning a tiny bit, but it's a delicate process, and pretty much impossible with one person unless you're Hulk Hogan. There's also a fair amount of tweezing the leg heights and checking eveness with a four-foot level, then clampling and screwing adjacent cabs together. I'm guessing the average cabinet installer-type human doesn't obsess about it nearly as much as I do, so I probably have the world's most even cabinets. As previously mentioned, counter installation guy is gonna love me.

Next step is to call someone with a very large dolly to (cue music of triumph...) move my giant-ass refrigerator in from the garage and plop that sucka down next to the cab. Not sure how I'll accomplish this, but now that I've seen a seven-foot piano roll sideways through my front door, I'm pretty confident that the fridge is do-able. I have one more identical narrow 88"-high cab for the right side of the fridge that I haven't yet built. I can build it whenever, but I'll probably wait 'til the fridge is in its spot before I install it.

Since there was no longer a huge cabinet in the dining area, I searched my garage for all the pieces of my Ikea faux Eero Saarinen tulip table. This was harder than it sounds, but I finally found everything (one piece was hiding out in a bedroom, oops), cleaned it all up and assembled it. The chairs look ok in the pic, but they've taken a beating and sooner or later I'm gonna get some matching tulip-style chairs.

Moving right along, above is the Ikea cab that will be most of the island and contain the sink. Unforunately, one lone Ikea cabinet that isn't screwed to a bunch of others is a somewhat wobbly affair, and the plastic legs aren't particularly confidence inspiring, so I decided to fortify it. First, I ordered six metal legs from Ikea. That may be overkill for a 36"-wide cab, but I figure the counter and sink will be heavy, and there's a good chance that someone will sit on this beast sooner or later and I'd rather not have it collapse. Secondly, I bought a bunch of 2x2 from Lowe's and I'm screwing and gluing the corners. The whole mess will be attached to 2x4 framing in back and on the sides, so this may be overkill, but it's pretty easy, so I may as well play it safe.

And another project... told you I did a lot today. This morning I removed the extra light switch in the family mentioned in my post two days back. This was slightly more work than expected because there were extra wires in the existing box. Basically I cut a big hole in the wall, pulled the box and replaced it with a shallower sealed plastic one that's completely inside the wall. Since the switch controlled a nearby outlet, I simply jumped the wires together creating a "standard" always-live outlet. Then I screwed some pieces of 1x2 behind the drywall, cut out a piece of drywall to fill the hole, screwed it to the 1x2's and mesh-taped and drywall mudded the whole mess. This is actually the second layer of drywall mud, and though it looks like a hot mess, it's actually very smooth and probably ready to paint after a quick sanding. With this done, I'm ready to paint the family room and I can't say how I glad I am to see that hideous brown go (though it lives on in ALL the bedrooms!). I tried to talk Kim into doing it, but she said no f-'in way.

This is Pee Wee. He's cuttin' concrete. And filling it in later. My house is VERY dusty right now. It's also loud as f&*k, which is why I'm on the other side of the house with the door shut.

Moving along essentially the same wall, we have the family room, which as you can see, is still a lovely shade of shit brown, surely selected to make it difficult for the future homeowner to paint white. Hey, thanks! Anyhow, today I ripped out the grubby baseboards as well as the quarter round. My plan is to re-use the quarter round because it's stained to match the wood floor and not in bad shape, but I didn't account for all the little brads sticking out of it that are relatively impossible to remove. Not sure how that's gonna work out. Regardless, I'll buy new baseboards and probably paint them before I install them, which makes things look very tidy when installed. The big white glops on the wall are drywall mud where I patched various stupidity (i.e. random holes, phone jacks I'll never use). There's also a light switch that turns an outlet on and off that I'm gonna remove. Of course it's next to two other light switches, but not really aligned in any visually pleasing way. I'll never have a lamp on this side of the room anyway, so I'm gonna cut the wall, yank out the box and switch and wire the wires permanently in "on" position (resulting in a standard outlet) inside a small utility box that lives completely inside the wall. Then I'll patch the wall, do my magic and no one will ever know it was there. 

The walls in here will be the same white as the rest of the house, but I'm going to cover one wall in stained 1/4" Luan panels for authentic Eichler home awesomeness. If it works out ok, I'll probably do more wood walls in other parts of the house (hall and/or foyer). I also have to replace all the cheeseball beige two-prong outlets with black w/brushed silver plate loveliness. The super biggie project in here will be knocking out the entire bay window thing and replacing it with a sliding glass door, but that's a Keith the Handyman deal there. Not sure when I'm doing it, but the pool is currently rockin', and not having direct access to it is el sucko.

These are the trenches they dug for the island plumbing. It was really cute the way Lester sat his dirty little self in them, until... know what a little pit of sand is to a little cat? A new litterbox, of course! Nothing promotes a sanitary kitchen like cat poop (and pee too). I put some cardboard over them. Time to call the concrete guys again...

I bet y'all thought I'd never update again. I haven't given up, just been mega busy playing shows (and learning music for them). So...

I realized that I couldn't finish installing the cabinets until I had the plumbing for the island/kitchen sink madness finished, so I bit the bullet (and my checkbook) and had the mess above installed. My handyman wasn't up for taking on something of this magnitude, so I used the plumbers who ran the gas lines in my house back when I moved in. They're amiable guys, and pretty reasonable price-wise, but I learned the hard way that they're not very good with right angles and straight lines and such. This might not have been an issue normally, as my picky self would've been in their faces the whole time waving a T-square, but as bad luck would have it, I had a rehearsal that went until 4:AM the night before (it wasn't scheduled this way, and yes, I was pissed) AND I had an audition to sub for another band. Not only did I have to leave plumber dudes at my place for much of the time, I had a blazing headache from lack of sleep the night before, so I was kinda out of it.

As a result, they cut the channels in my concrete crooked (there's actually a larger one not visible in the pic), as well as hacking up my wall in a decidedly non-parallel fashion. The drain pipe itself as well as the fancy vent (the white thingee at the top) are also a little crooked, though it may not matter. If it does, they's redoin' it. They also ran a pipe from the above location back to the wall where my monster refrigerator will live so I can install a reverse-osmosis filter under the sink and have osmosinated water go to the icemaker/water dispenserator (I love how my blog doesn't even attempt to spell correct my made-up word awesomeness). Reverse-osmosis filtered water is a good thing because the water in this place tastes as if it sloshed around inside an old truck tire. But they managed to install the plastic wall box for that guy crooked too. At least they were consistent. Finally, they also ran romex inside conduit under the slab so the island will have power. This is mainly because the dishwasher is gonna live in it, but I'll probably be all slick and install some power outlets so I can use the juicer that I don't own, or more likely, plug in the laptop that I do own, which frequently has a dead battery. I already converted an orphaned outlet in the wall to a junction box, so the power is live (and safely electrical taped 'til I need it). You can see the former outlet in the pics below- it has a little gray cover in the first pic.

Tonight I set about patching most of the massive hole they had to make in the wall. In theory, I didn't really have to because the cabs will cover all this mess (and this isn't an outside wall), but my little brain just couldn't accept having a 37"x16" hole in the wall, even if it wasn't gonna be visible. This also afforded me the opportunity to realign the plastic water outlet box behind the refrigerator so it was like, parallel and stuff. I might be nuts, because unless I get a deal on the clear refrigerator previously used aboard Wonder Woman's clear jet, no one will ever see it,  but hey, crooked shit drives me batty. Here's your obligatory before 'n' after hotness. In the top pic you can see the drywall saw sticking out because I had to recut the entire thing so it would be straight- it's really hard to cut a piece of drywall when the area you're patching isn't relatively square (or rectangular, as it were).

I even got all super deluxe and mesh-taped and mudded the seams. It looks pretty good in the pic, but in reality I just slobbed on mud pretty quick and dirty, because when the seams are large and not super even, it's impossible to do it in one application because the mud shrinks as it dries. It's far easier to do it in stages- mud, sand, let it dry overnight, repeat a couple times.

Enough on that. Most importantly, I need to get the trenches filled with concrete and polished. I spent a week trying to call the concrete floor guy, but he was out of town on vacation. I finally spoke to him today and he referred me to someone who can not only fill them in, but re-cut them a little larger so they'll actually be parallel with the walls. Of course, referral dude didn't pick up his phone, nor did he call me back, so I'll need to pester him 'til he calls. I'm noticing this is kind of how they do business here- (editorial alert!) for such an economically depressed area, you'd think people would be more anxious to take your money. My good friend John is renovating his house as well and he's noticed the same thing.

Following that magical bunny-love fest, I can install the rest of the cabs and (hallelujah!) have the refrigerator moved in. Installing the rest of the cabs is not a big deal; by and large it amounts to plopping four cabs on the floor next to each other and screwing 'em to each other with a little added wall support for the tall ones. The harder part is that I still have to carefully cut all the laminated mahogany trim pieces and affix them. This will be trickier. After that, I have to figure out exactly how to build the island, which I'll cover in another entry because this one has probably already tested the limits of everyone's attention span except my mom. Hi Rose.

Handyman Keith came by yesterday and deciphered the wiring for my Sputnik Lamp. Far as I can tell, I think we were both at fault. Truthfully, I probably could've figured this out on my own, but hanging light troubleshooting is a royal pain when you only have one set of hands. And the metal electrical box above was kind of loose anyway, so he reinforced that. Though they look dim in the photo, the el cheapo five-watt bulbs seemed to work out ok (they total 125 watts)- they should be enough light. They don't even get very hot.

Also installed more plates and switches, including the Lutron dimmer below for six of the recessed lights. Not sure how easy it is to see in the picture, but there's a tiny slider to the right of the switch. Neato. (as you can see, I still have to do a little paint and patch job on the bottom. Ugh.)

As a general update, I've been pretty busy with life (i.e. work), so renovation is slowed. My plan was to finish all the kitchen cabs, but it's become apparent that I should get all the plumbing and electrical for the sink/dishwasher in the island happening before going any further with the cabs, so I'm gonna call the plumber this week and start that process. Scary!

I've been pretty busy in the real world but I'm still truckin' right along. They're not all in place yet (or visible here) but I only have one left to build. I would've installed more of the doors/drawers, but I have a couple of minor hardware snafus holding me up...

• I received the extra legs I ordered from Ikea. Though they're a little cheap and easy to break if you slide a heavy cab sideways too much, the easily adjustable height is a godsend, as predicted. You just throw a big level on the cab edges and twirl the legs 'til it's all even-steven. This must be a million times easier (and accurate) than shoving a bunch of wood shims under them. The counter installation man is gonna love me.

Can't remember if I mentioned this before, but having your cabs on four-inch plastic legs also is a huge advantage if the kitchen ever floods. The old cabs I pulled out were mostly junk (and thus un-donatable) because they had no legs and the particle board on the bottoms was weakened by water damage, causing them to break the instant I moved them. If the new ones ever get wet, the worst thing that'll happen is the plinths will get wet and need replacing.  (plinth is the wood or metal on the very bottom, also known as toe kicks. Mine have a way of mounting these to the fronts of the legs) This holds true as long as the kitchen doesn't flood with over four inches of water, but if it does, I'll probably have far bigger issues.

• It's hard to see in the pic, but at the top of the big cab on the left you can see the mounting rail for the wall-mount cabs. I still have one more wall cab that goes to the right of the big cab on the left but I need more special Ikea hardware to hang it on the rail. I'm actually attaching the high cabs (I have two more) to the rail in addition to the wall cabs for stability, and Ikea doesn't provide you with the hardware to do that, so I ordered it; it's on the way (I used the hardware for hanging the last wall cab to secure the big high cab). I also needed to order an extra mounting rail, but it was only $6. Hooray for el cheapo Ikea.

• Two of the metal brackets for mounting drawers arrived bent and mangled so Ikea is sending replacements. I can't mount the drawers in the cabs under the window until those arrive. They were very nice when I called, and they're even sending aforementioned extra hardware free.

As soon as the missing hardware gets here I'll mount the remaining cabs, then I'll figure out how to build the island and get cracking on that. In the meantime, I called handyman Keith, and he's coming out this week to fix the power in the non-working Sputnik lamp and to survey for the plumbing and electrical madness that will need to occur for the island.

I'm being such a good little blogger! As you can see, I'm now in Ikea-cabinet-buildin' overdrive mode. With the exception of the corner ones, they're pretty much all the same to build, just dimensionally different. The upside-down one in the foreground goes in between the one under the window and the huge one on the left (which will house my built-in oven and microwave). I'm sort of on the fence about whether to start attaching all the pretty doors; wondering if I should wait until after the counters get installed. Open to advice on this if anyone has any wisdom to share.

Other excitement (sort of) is that the one in the corner and the one next to it are aligned, leveled and fastened together (with included neato screw/threaded sleeve fasteners). This was a little tricky because the one under the window wouldn't scoot back far enough for the front to line up with the corner one- this is because the wall is kind of a mess down there and sticks out a little more. I remedied this by trimming a little off the back of the cab with Mr. Sawzall (you can see him back there). Mr. Sawzall taketh no prisoners.

The good news is that I have only four cabs left to build for the perimeter walls. The bad news is then I gotta build The Island... this is going to be extra tricky because there's really only one cabinet involved and it's considerably smaller than the size of the entire island. This is partially because the entire right back side will be dishwasher and it's not built into an Ikea cabinet per se; it's just sitting there inside the frame. Mostly it'll be a 2x4 frame built "from scratch" with mahogany panels just like the cab doors screwed to it. In theory, I already have all the panels, but I don't think they cut them to size, so I have to do that too. This is gonna be challenging! Oh yeah, and after all that, I gotta get a sink installed, plumb it and get 120v power there too for the dishwasher, but this part will be left to the experts. After all that, I might consider counter tops and maybe getting some appliances!