Day 361: When a kitchen looks like a kitchen ..

Now that the kitchen floor is down, we can really focus on getting the rest of the kitchen in place. I'm looking forward to getting my office back. It's pretty much been a box room for the last couple of months.

This weekend the target was getting a wall cabinet up and putting in the breakfast bar "island". Update: Joan has since correctly pointed out that it's really more of a peninsula as it's connected on one side.

First the cabinet. Not many pictures of this getting built as it was pretty easy to assemble on the ground. As you can tell from the snugness and the sloping ceiling - it was less easy to manipulate into place. Hence difficult to capture the moment. Believe me, lots of grunting and grown up words. But we got there eventually ..

Next came the island/breakfast bar/cabinet/peninsula thing. First thing to do was assemble the cabinets. We've got a 600mm 3 drawer unit tied to a 300mm simple cabinet. This gives the right length to get 2 stools on the other side and lots of storage space. I've done enough of these to be able to quickly bang them together. The most time consuming part was trying to balance all 8 legs.

 

After that, it was time for the countertop. I really don't enjoy countertops to be honest. You basically get one shot and if you measure/cut wrong .. that's it. Fist part was getting the supports onto the wall to hold the back side. This will provide strength and since it's the only part fixed to anything, it needed to be sturdy. No worries about this thing moving anywhere.

 

Then the cutting started. Basically a combination of circular saw with a fine blade to get the straight lines with a jigsaw to cover the fancy cuts. The garden ended up looking like a sawmill with all the random cuts I was making.

 

The challenge here was the irregular shape of the cut and the need to join the main section with the little sliver of cabinet going down the left of the range. I ended up doing a bit of an offset cut which should make the joint less obvious. Let's see. The other challenge was getting the right size of overhang. The internet is full of opinions, some I'm sure are right. Apparently the recommendation for breakfast bars goes from 6" min to 18" max. 6 is too small to get even little legs under. 18 wouldn't haver let us get by the bar, and would have looked a bit silly, and was wider than countertop allowed, and probably would have snapped anyway.

 

Needless to say, we went with a compromise .. 9". It felt about right and didn't take up too much real estate in the kitchen. And my apologies if you bang your knees or spill food on your trousers when you visit.

 

Anyway, I think we've hit the magical day when the kitchen is starts to look like ... a kitchen. I think I may just hang out in this room and forget about the rest of the house.

 

 

Day 250: A top counter

Now that the countertop finally arrived, it was time to get started mounting it. Luckily the counter was 665mm deep and not the standard 600mm - good thing as my dishwasher-pipe issues forced me to move all the cabinets out an extra 30mm. The other concern was the length - 3m. This causes 2 issues - it's both very long and yet not long enough. 3m is a right PITA to move around .. the fact that it's 45kg also doesn't help. But importantly, it's just long enough to use for other side of the corner unit .. and I mean just - we're talking mm's to spare.

 

So first, I needed to build a frame to support the countertop. As there is only a 500mm base unit - it doesn't provide much support. I built a frame into the wall on both sides of the space. The pipes were a bit tricky to work around and it took a few pieces of 25x50 softwood to get it right. The wood was drilled into the brick, so it's plenty secure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Afterwards, I enlisted the help of Carolyn "Pipes" Braendli to help me lift the countertop onto the saw horses. She did most of the lifting, I did most of the moaning. In order to get a reasonable cut (no second chances here), I used a new 60 tooth fine blade in my circular saw and used some extra 25x50 wood as a guide to get a straight cut. First cutting the end off and then paring the down the back of the counter to give a nice 40mm overhang from the front of the carcass.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And with a little more huffing and puffing, "Pipes" and I fit the counter into place. And it fit! and it was level! I would normally say "of course it did" but given the wall has more twists and turns than British politics, I was a bit happily surprised. I'll chalk it down to careful measurements and plenty of luck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the counter in place, I was able to mark out the sink location and the high points to ensure a snug fit. More huffing and puffing and the counter was back on the saw horses for a little skilled cutting - this time using a jigsaw and a special laminate downward cutting blade.

 

A helpful hint that I learned on YouTube was to not fully cut out the sink hole (just realised the double meaning) as the counter could snap on it's way back in. No thanks! I cut out the difficult bits and left the rest for cutting out in-situ. And back the countertop went for hopefully the last time. Frankly, "Pipes" was starting to show off by this point, doing the whole thing in sandals and carrying the countertop with one hand.

With the counter back in place, I needed to cut back the carcass to allow me to fasten the retaining clips and ensure enough clearance. Finally, it was time to mount the sink. A little silicon on the underside and clips fastened in place and it was ready to go.

























The last photo shows the finished product (well finished for today) with the new taps mounted. Plumbing, we'll that still needs to be hooked up. But Rome (or its kitchens) was not built in a day (or on a single blog post) so plumbing will need to wait.