Kitchen Renovations, Part 6 (Last Big Push)

Our living room decor for the first month and a half consisted of piles and piles of IKEA boxes, containing various parts of our kitchen. After the cabinet boxes went in, we still had piles and piles of boxes, containing drawers, doors, toekicks and coverpanels. Everything was labeled with various codes, just so we could keep things straight while the kitchen renovation was going on. In the picture below, you can make out the code "bd30 by pantry" which translates to the 30" base cabinet, which sits next to the pantry cabinet (see? I still have all these codes memorized!).



Luckily, all the drawers had the same assembly instructions. So, I became a one-woman factory, assembling and stacking drawers. I put together a total of 11 drawers.



Evan's dad brought over a bunch of his tools, and measured and drilled holes for the drawer pulls. Of course, the instructions from IKEA were wrong (as in, upside down... grumble, grumble), so we had to do a quick fix to make everything look right. It worked out fine in the end, though the handles were a little bit lower than we originally intended them to be. In all, he drilled holes for 28 knobs... whew...



A close-up of our knobs. Just a simple round, black knob. There's a small ridge around the circumference, which doesn't show very well in this picture.



All those drawers and doors resulted in another huge pile of cardboard and plastic wrapping -- seen here about halfway through the day.



After drilling holes for the door knobs, Evan's dad fashioned a support for our sink cabinet. It was previously determined that, without this support, granite countertop + cast iron sink = disaster. I guess IKEA assumes that anyone installing their kitchen pieces will go for the cheap (and thus light) countertops and sinks, and therefore didn't include this type of support with the sink cabinet box... That's two frowny faces for IKEA so far, and in one day.



And... the first couple of drawers go in. Puuuurdy!



And just like that, one whole section of the kitchen is finished!



One of our new cabinets is a super-deep drawer, originally intended to contain our garbage/recycling bins.



Here's a shot of the whole kitchen, with almost all the drawers installed.



Then we started in on all the doors... Evan was in charge of screwing in all the hinges.



The very last door gets adjusted...



Tah-dah! Spokesmodel Evan shows off his handywork.



And finally, here's a picture from the next morning, showing the true color of the cabinets. White, with black knobs. And a microwave.



Well, now that the doors and drawers are installed, our kitchen is practically done! We've already unpacked all of our kitchen items, so the room is entirely functional. We just have a few small things left to do, such as install the toekicks and cover panels, put facing underneath the countertop (where the plywood still shows), put in new switches, and put up some curtains! We'll get to all of that eventually, I'm sure!