Remodeling Our Kitchen - Counters

Remodeling Our Kitchen - Countertops and Sink - December 2008

Cabinets are installed...

(12 December 2008)
Now that the cabinets are installed, we need to schedule the Corian installers to come out and measure for the new countertops and sink. The catch is that blasted spice cabinet! We talk with Todd, our 'buddy' at Lowe's, and let him know we're just about ready except for the spice cabinet being 'tweaked'. We agreed to install the cabinet long enough to have the measurements taken, then exchange the cabinet, betting they could get us a new one before the Corian was ready.

Ann and Nick are busy Christmas shopping while I'm busy working on odds and ends in the kitchen, like getting the plumbing back together. They pick up a new faucet while they're out, complete with a built in soap dispenser, and a new filtered water faucet as well. They are a brushed pewter finish in that elegant, swan neck style and look like they'll do the trick. Ann says she looked at the drawer pull and handle hardware while they were there and found something she likes. Everything seems to be coming together nicely...

Unfortunately, I forget to call the installers before it's too late on Friday, but it turns out it's a good thing I didn't call them. I thought I could finish the rest of what needed done by Monday, but it didn't happen. So Ann and Nick are busy Christmas shopping again on Saturday while I put the old stainless steel sink back in the ugly old countertop sitting on the beautiful new cabinets. I need to get the new drain line squared away, but in such a manner so as to still be able to use it with the old sink, at least until the new one arrives with the new counters.

(15 December 2008)
It works out for the best anyway. We stop by Lowe's to get the drawer handles and cabinet pulls and talk to Todd about some of the loose ends. Todd says he spoke with the Diamond cabinet representative again, who says we can just keep the old spice cabinet and they will send out a new one, without having to exchange them. Since the old one would have been 'destroyed in the field' anyway, we can throw it out, destroy it or just keep it.

The installers come out and measure, making a plywood template of everything. We've been using the old countertops and other assorted pieces of plywood and leftovers until the Corian is finished and installed. While it seems a waste to re-install the old stainless steel sink, we cannot do without a kitchen for the week or so it takes them to make ours from the template. I managed to just add an extension to the drain line so all I needed was a 90° elbow, a 1-1/4" waste line compression adapter and a 'tee' style disposal kit with 'P'-trap. It works for now...

It's finally starting to come together...

(22 December 2008)
I take off work the week of Christmas hoping things are going to come together enough to get Ann a working kitchen by then. The new spice cabinet is delivered to the house today (Monday). The installers have a cancellation and are able to come out to install the countertops tomorrow (Tuesday). Now all I have to do is get the rest of the work that needs done under the sink finished and the new spice cabinet swapped out before they get here. Christmas is Thursday and there is no way I'll have the floor done by then so I have to have at least the rest of the kitchen in place by then.

I decide to swap the spice cabinet first. That's when I realize how badly 'tweaked' the original was. To be square with the wall the new one needs to be shimmed nearly 3/4" out from the wall. So without thinking any more about it, I shim and screw it to the wall. Unfortunately, the damned drawer slide on the new one doesn't feel any better than the old one! Neither slides anywhere near as easily as the display at the store so I take the drawer all the way out and lubricate the ball bearings in the slide and try it again. There is still a pronounced 'drag' in the slide action though...

Plenty to keep me busy...

Oh well, there's plenty more to keep me busy. Like cutting and installing the base cabinet kick panels, fixing the hole in the drywall where the incorrectly positioned electrical box for the light fixture had to be removed and now shows in front of the cabinet over the sink, cutting and mounting the beauty panel beneath the cabinet over the sink, installing an electrical box and new light fixture under the cabinet over the sink, filling between the blind corner cabinet and the sink base to keep things from falling down behind and beneath them into the open space that is covered by the beauty panel (spacer) in front, and the list goes on...

Even a list of more things we need from Lowe's. Ann isn't satisfied with the way the beauty panel under the cabinet over the sink is trimmed out and is having a hard time visualizing what looks good so she wants to go and have a look at what's there and how they did that and the appliance garage. For now it just sits on the counter. She doesn't believe me when I tell her it's just hangs below the cabinet it's secured to above it. We look for our 'buddy' Todd and he is not very helpful with the molding question, referring us to the book we have already looked at, but at least he shows Ann the appliance garage is indeed just mounted to the cabinet above it.

We pick up the cabinet pull hardware we need along with a new (smaller) light fixture for over the sink and more plumbing fixtures, including a color matching set of disposal and drain basket rings for the new sink. At first I think they aren't going to match that well but Ann wants them so we get them. I have to keep telling myself it's her kitchen. Plus the longer we spend here the less time I have to get things done at home. Needless to say I am up late into the wee hours of the morning, but I manage to get everything done that needs done except for the filler between the cabinets and the light fixture under the cabinet over the sink. I even took down that cabinet, patched a new piece of drywall into the misplaced hole in ceiling, cut in a new electrical box and placed the cabinet back on the wall.

(23 December 2008)
I'm back at it by 9:30, starting with the 'filler' between the base cabinets which absolutely has to be done before the countertop seals it off for good. The light fixture over the sink waits until that is complete. While I have time, I decide to install the kick panel beneath the base cabinets, mainly because I need something to hold up the front of the spacer for the cabinet floor while I join it to the cabinets on either side. Once I get into it, I realize I should have done something about it long before now, like when we were installing the sink base! Oh well, just not as perfect as I'd like it to be. Besides, no one is going to see it anytime soon anyway, and I need to get the over the sink stuff done before the new counters and sink are installed.

For the light fixture I went with the idea of using that 'snap' track to conceal the wiring from the electrical box at the top of the cabinet to low profile one on the bottom. Getting that box installed into the ceiling took some doing since I hit one of the nailers and had to move everything over about three fourths of an inch. What a pain. I use a piece of shim to close off the hole in the ceiling and hold a piece of the originally cut wooden top in place behind the electrical box. The box sticks out enough to hide the 'patch' job since it needs to allow the track to follow along the top to a right angle connector and, from there, down the back to the floor of the cabinet. It's concealed with the cabinet doors closed, works like a charm and looks like it was meant to be that way with the doors open. It also allows the entire cabinet to be used for storage instead of having to worry about wiring in the way.

Speaking of storage... Now here's the funny thing too, I was so worried we would be losing storage, but I was wrong. We ended up with more storage than we know what to do with! Ann and I were back and forth whether we wanted that cabinet over the sink or just a valence. I thought the valence would look misplaced and undersized compared to the tall cabinets on either side, especially the big corner cabinet on the right. When we had Todd draw it up on the computer it was obvious we needed the cabinet over the sink to balance that space. Well, most of that extra space in the cabinets where the ceiling used to be, Ann can't reach anyway so it pretty much goes unused (for now).

All done, so where's the counter?

Well, everything I need to have done before the counters get here is done, so where are they? I figure I'll go sit down, that's a sure fired way to get them here, but it doesn't work. So I move on to installing the cabinet handles, first creating a template from some wood scraps I have left, just so they will all be in the same place relative to the corner of the door. I measure twice, clamp it to the door, cross my fingers and drill the holes. Not too shabby. The next one I'm able to flip the template over and drill the opposite door. Still looking good. I manage to get most of the doors done when I realize we're one handle shy of having enough. I stood there with Ann at Lowe's while we counted them out, so one must have fallen out of the cart before we got to the checkout.

The drawers are next but they're a bit of a different story. None of them are really the same size horizontally. Vertically, the top drawers are all the same height, but the lower ones are not. I figure the drawer pulls need to be in the center for single width and centered over each door below for double width, so I make a template for the top drawers the basically fits inside the inset portion and slides along to the centerline to drill the holes. For the taller drawers I rotate the template 90° and drill another set of holes. I only just get the template laid out when the installers finally get here with the new Corian.

It only takes them a couple hours to get everything installed. Everything goes well and I'm happy until I overhear one of them saying under his breath to the other he thinks he screwed 'it' up, whatever 'it' is. The only left to do is the cap of the passthrough window over the sink. As they go back out to the truck to route the piece down some more, I'm looking around and not seeing anything wrong, so I figure he meant he measured wrong or something like that. They finish up with the backsplash and they're gone.

About the same time Ann gets home and she is just awestruck. That ear to ear smile is what it's all about. Then she asks me why the appliance garage isn't installed and I realize I didn't think to tell them about it, and now it's too late since the backsplash is already glued in place. Damn! Now I'll have to notch it and no matter how hard I try to match the cut to the backsplash, it will still look goofy. And that's not the worst part... The beauty panel that goes on the end of the wall cabinet and appliance garage will probably have to be notched as well! Now I'm pissed off at myself and bummed out by my oversight all at once.

I decide to try my hand at notching it anyway, but forget I also have to also extend the wall outlet into the back wall of the appliance garage too. While I'm at it I figure I might as well finish it so I clamp, drill and screw it and the cabinet above it together. Last thing to do is install the outlet with longer screws and the cover. There! It's finally done and doesn't look half bad. Ann gives it the eyeball and decides it looks good enough. I think she was more concerned with how it would look 'floating' above the counter, but once she sees we can just close the roller door and have it look normal, she's fine with it. I think that pretty much finishes the cabinets, with the exception of the handles.

After discussing the drawer pull location with Ann, mainly to verify I should be centering them over the doors below, I finish them up. That leaves the spice cabinet and the flats flats cabinet. We decide to treat them like doors and not drawers and that when I see what 'it' must have been. What 'it' was he screwed up. The old 'tweaked' spice cabinet they measured against must have been flush to the wall when he measured and made the template for that countertop because now the new spice cabinet that I made sure to square with the wall is looking 'cock-eyed', almost sticking out from beneath the countertop on that end. Had I not said anything Ann probably would not have noticed. Too late to put it back the way it was now. I wish they would have said something at the time, when I could have taken out the shims and made it right, but it really doesn't matter.

It's All Done!

So it's all done for now, and it looks spectacular! We can't stop staring at it. All done except for connecting up the plumbing to the new sink that is, but the installers recommend I wait until tomorrow to allow the silicone to setup before I start exerting force on it, which may cause it to separate and leak later. Ann is already busy re-arranging things and admiring her new kitchen. I'm not sure how she can overlook the bare concrete floor though. I've laid down some of the leftover cardboard from the boxes the cabinets came in, just to keep the dust down, but it detracts from an otherwise beautifully remodelled kitchen.

(24 December 2008)
Christmas Eve is here and I'm at it again, connecting up the plumbing for the sink. Ann wakes up and I'm already rattling around inside the sink cabinet, in my bathrobe no less! I had asked Nick the day before if he wanted to install the plumbing, thinking I'd pay him for it so he could earn some money, but his response was "No Way!" Oh well, his loss. I figure it's best I do it anyway so I have no one else but myself to blame if anything goes wrong. I start out by locating and mounting the drinking water filter system. Next is the main faucet itself and then the soap dispenser and drinking water faucet. Something about it just doesn't look right...

I end up swapping the soap dispenser from between the two faucets, moving it to the end, which yields a more eye pleasing effect of tallest to shortest from left to right. An added bonus is the routing of the connections beneath the sink is less 'crowded' and becomes much easier to work on. A quick pressure test reveals I should have used new flexible supply lines instead of reusing the old ones. After cinching down on the offending connections with the water pump pliers until they stop leaking, I am satisfied I can move on to installing the disposal and drain lines.

We're back and forth as to which side of the sink should have the disposal. The old sink was a 50-50 stainless steel and the standard disposal adapter kit fit perfect to where I only needed one 'P' trap, but this new asymmetric one is not cooperating, since it's a 30-70 style built in to the counter and the 30 side is smaller and more shallow than the 70 side. If I mount the disposal on the 70 side, then using the disposal kit puts the trap at the opposite end of the sink from the drain, but it will only need one 'P' trap. It also puts the disposal near the floor of the cabinet and wastes quite a bit of space. Mounting it to the 30 side elevates it quite a bit higher off the floor, but I'll have to use two 'P' traps, one off of the disposal into a 'T' with the other drain and then into a second one, but at least it would be closer to the waste line.

Ann thinks it should go in the 70 side and I think it should go in the 30 side. No sooner do I get the new sink drain adapters installed than she decides the disposal should go in the 30 side. I'm somewhat miffed, but quickly get over it, especially when I realize I need her help again with holding the adapters in place above the sink while I work below. After all, it's her kitchen. This time the disposal adapter is being somewhat more stubborn, but I manage to get the snap ring set correctly, on the second try instead of the first. From there it goes smoothly, although I do end end having to make a number of trips back and forth to the garage to find yet another piece or old fitting I know I'll need to make it work, mainly to keep from having to cut that new 90° elbow off of the new waste line to the wall.

I have all new fittings I'll need to configure two indepedent drains using two independent 'P' traps but decide to just go with the setup I have now. I can always rework it later if we end up having problems. Thanksgiving is usually the time for it, when everyone tries to stuff ten pounds of shit into a five pound disposal and it ends up clogging the drain pipe. My concern is the 'T' fitting has a restriction built into it and this will be the first to clog. Guess it's better to fill a short 1-1/4" drain line than a 3' long 2" waste line (don't ask how I know what a pain in the @$$ it is to clean out a 3' long 2" waste line). In any case, I run the leak test by filling both sides of the new sink nearly full of water, then release it all at once by removing the stoppers.

Big mistake! Now I have water working its way around and through pretty much all of the fittings. I quickly replace the stoppers, tighten the fittings, mop up the water and try again. Still a few stubborn connections... Eventually I get them all under control and the new kitchen is open for business. Ann rewards all of the hard work with a celebration breakfast. Yummmmmy... I take a break and enjoy the accomplishment, Merry Christmas Honey!