the post you've been waiting for...

There ya go... cabs up! The sides will actually look just like the front when I'm done- I have matching trim pieces, I just haven't installed them yet because they're currently too deep and need to be trimmed down. This should be easy with my new table saw. If all goes as planned, you won't see any white externally when it's all done. 

Anyway, John helped me a great deal- you absolutely need two people. There's some trickiness entailed with the mounting... you screw a rail to the wall then there's some fancypants Ikea hardware that holds it all up. Only problem was that on one of the walls there was only one stud to hang the rail (and that corner guy is heaaaavvvvy). Fortunately I happened to have some pretty honkin' expanding metal wall inserts, so I put a couple of those into the drywall and hopefully the combo will hold (I also braced the bottom with an extra piece of the rail bracket beneath because the very end was bending a bit. I didn't take a pic and it's kind of hard to explain it without, but just pretend I did it and we'll all be happy).

Once I deciphered the number/letter system for the custom mahogany doors, it got easier. The hinges (from Ikea) are super crazy feats of mechanical engineering. Not only do they attach to the doors with no screws (you flip down a metal piece and they attach by expanding into big routed holes in the doors), they have screws that let you easily adjust alignment in all directions. I thought getting the doors straight and swinging properly was going to be difficult, but the hinges make it super easy. We initially had some confusion because I installed the part inside the cabs backwards, but once I flipped them, all was well.

I didn't take pix, but I built three more of the floor cabs. Basically I'm going from the corner out- you build the corner floor cab, set the height even with the adjustable legs then build the one next to it, adjust the height, screw to the adjacent cab (they include slick hardware for attaching them), repeat, etc.

While building the corner cab, I put a piece in backwards after applying glue to the little wood dowel rods. That was no fun. I had to pry it apart with a chisel, cut one of the dowels, than slowly drill out the dowel using gradually larger drill bits. Fortunately, none of this did any major damage, and you won't be able to see where I pried it apart because it'll be covered by the counter top. That'll teach me to be careful! Truthfully, I had been working way too long Saturday and probably should've quit by then.

ceilings... something more than ceilings...

So I've actually been making pretty good progress lately, just haven't been posting because most of what I've been doing has been mundane monk work that's hard to photograph in any meaningful away. This includes:

• repainting the entire ceiling- this is actually a big improvement because the new Behr Ultra White paint (same as the walls) is considerably brighter than the old ceiling. It's one of those things that you'd never think about if you didn't see the difference side by side. As you can imagine, this is a pain-in-the-butt task, because the ceiling is large and above you. I had to do some caulking in some of the corners where the ceiling drywall wasn't really connected to the walls (and was letting in cold air because it was on an outside wall) and I still have a bunch of corners to paint, but it's easy since the walls and ceiling are the same color.

• painting the stupid "closet" thing where the not-wet bar used to be- This is a roughly 6x4 area, and the drywall in there was kind of a mess. It's taking me forever to prime and paint, but it's almost done. I'm gonna do the back wall in orange- I already have the paint. I'll post a picture once that's done.

• painting entry way and window mouldings- more total time-suck monk work. These are all the same "Ultra White" as the walls, but glossy so I can wipe off the fingerprints of all the children who will never set foot in my home.*

• removing all the masking tape from above entry and windows when done painting -This is way more of a pain than you might think. Lotsa time with X-acto knives and razor blades... also killing more time removing whatever other dots of crap (old paint, I think) from the window. Getting the big window by the entry totally clean is gonna take me forever, but the good news it that it's one of the few windows in the place that isn't original, i.e. it's in good shape. You can tell the original windows because the glass is sagging making them somewhat like funhouse mirrors, optically speaking.


In more visually exciting news, as you can see, I installed my nifty Sputnik lamp. This could've been a lot more joyous, but was in fact quite deflating, because it didn't work when I attempted to turn it on. ^%!&!!!!! I believe the issue is that my handyman wired the power wrong, so I don't think any juice is getting to it (I'm pretty sure I didn't mess up). It should be a relatively easy fix, but it was kind of a let down. A quick and amusing side story about the lamp:

They recommended using little round 25-watt half-mirrored bulbs (not included). There are 25 bulbs in total, so this means I'd have a very bright and energy-sucking 625-watt fixture. Yikes. I searched the internet and found some lower wattage bulbs that would fit for about 80 cents a pop. I hadn't gotten around to ordering them, but I happened to be at Target the other day and stumbled upon a set of a string lights with 25 incandescent round bulbs for $12. I opened up the package and sure enough, they were the correct mini screw-in base. They're five-watt bulbs, so I figure a total of 125 watts should be bright enough. Lucky me. Now I'm probably gonna go buy a couple more for backup!

In "best for last" (sort of) news, I actually built the first Ikea cabinet. And learned some fun stuff along the way. First thing I did was move most of the stuff into the house from the garage. When they delievered them a couple months ago, the nice shipping guys put them all in my garage for me. What I didn't realize was how amazingly heavy they are. The one you're looking at in the photo is 15" wide and 80" high. The box says 102 lbs right on it. Ever tried to move a seven-foot high 102 lb box? Yeah, me neither. Well, I managed to slip and drop it in my garage and though it didn't damage anything in my garage (it thankfully missed my motorcycle), it did whack in the box in such way that it messed up the very thin fiberboard back of the cabinet- thus breaking the very first cabinet. Nice going, dummy. They actually sell that white-coated fiberboard at Lowe's/Home Depot, but it'll be one more pain in my ass… I may actually just paint some wood-colored pieces of that stuff I have here as it won't be very visible anyway (it'll be the back that you see when looking into the open cab).

But that's just the beginning... while assembling it, I ran my finger across a small bit of the white coating stuff that was sticking out from a screw hole and not realizing how hard or sharp it was, put a razor-thin slice in my left index fingertip. Blood. Neosporin. Band-Aid. Yay. It's right where my finger frets a guitar string, and did I mention I play guitar for four sets a day every Sunday and Monday? Let's hope this heals quick, or it's gonna be Sunday Bloody Sunday all over my guitar (I don't think it's that deep, fortunately).

I'm pretty experienced with Ikea furniture assembly, so the rest of putting it together was pretty quick. Only other major glitch is the legs. Once I found them amidst the numerous bonus bags o' stuff, I noted that they're all-plastic and scream cheap. They have a little rectangular plastic base that simply presses into two holes in the bottom of the cab. Unfortunately, the "pins" don't fit very tightly, so they want to just fall out. This wouldn't present a problem (in theory) once upright because weight and gravity should hold them, but it doesn't work so well when the cab is on its side and you're trying to stand all 100 lbs of it upright. After wrestling with this bitch for a while and trying various stupid approaches to getting the legs in, I gave up for the night…. today I bought some construction adhesive (of the caulk gun variety) and glued the legs in. This should work much better, but I'm quickly learning that I'm probably going to need some secondary help getting the cabs into position, especially the awkwardly large and heavy ones.

Later today, I'm gonna attempt to build the upper corner cab, but I'll wait until I have some help to actually attach it to the wall.

*It was also pointed out to me that you can't really have polished concrete floors with small kids, because apparently they frequently fall on their heads, so you can imagine what kind of mess that would be. I suppose cracked kid heads is an extreme negative of concrete floors, but on the upside, cleanup would be a cinch.

textural healing

Well, I finally did it- shot texture on my ceilings. I suckered, I mean, procured the assistance of my friend John, and good thing I did because this was a big big job. Just to bring y'all up to speed, the buik of my ceilings have a "knockdown" texture.  Imagine a garden-variety popcorn ceiling but with all the edges smoothed down (though as I discovered, that's not exactly what it really is). Looks like this:

The idea is you spray it on, wait a bit, then take a wide straight-edged drywall knife, and "knock down" the edges to smooth the surface somewhat. Keep in mind that the kitchen area's ceiling was previously covered with drop-down lights and soffits, there wasn't any ceiling texture there (just my millions of patched holes!), so I had to match the existing texture. This makes things tricky, because there's a lot of variables in texture size, thickness, depth- you can alter the style by changing the nozzle on the end of the sprayer and adjusting the amount of air as well as your spraying technique.

First I had to mask all the upper parts of the walls, because the stuff tends to splatter when you spray it. This was done days before. The spraying machine was rented from Home Depot. It's essentially an air compressor+hopper (that's where the actual texture goo goes) along with a spray gun with two hoses; one for air and the other for texture goo. All the info I read strongly suggested that you experiment to get the consistency and texture right (especially if you're matching an existing surface). I cut apart a large wardrobe box and we tested on this outside. Which leads to giant screw-up #1:

Since I was at Home Depot the day before, I thought I'd save time and buy the texture mix while I was there. Typically I second guess any advice I get from Home Depot/Lowe's employees- you can usually tell if they know what they're talking about pretty quick. Well, somehow my BS detector was out of whack, and when I told the guy what I was doing, he reflexively pointed at The Wrong Bag. Though I clearly told him I was doing a smooth-ish knockdown ceiling, he recommended the stuff for doing a bumpy popcorn-style ceiling. Now cut to me and John mixing a five-gallon bucket of this stuff with water… no amount of mixing was smoothing out the lumpy oatmeal-like consistency of this stuff. We tried spraying it on the test cardboard outside, waiting, knocking down with knife. Still very bumpy. We even tried it on a portion of the ceiling, but same thing. Fortunately, it's easy to remove when it's still wet… so we did.

We concluded that we in fact had the wrong stuff (this is a good name for a movie)… and off we went to Lowe's (closer than Home Depot) where we specifcialy asked the employee…  who went and asked the guy who did know what he was talking about, who confirmed that I was mistakenly sold the "aggregate" kind. I'm guessing this is a word that means "has little unsmoothable chunks for to make an ugly popcorn ceiling". We then headed back with two 50 lb bags of smooth ceiling powder. (John's idea; I couldn't imagine we needed that much and I was right. We went through about half a bag, but he had a point that we'd be really pissed if we had to come back AGAIN. We returned the unused bag later.)

Back home, things were looking much better when we mixed it up. Along the way we discovered it's a good idea to start with a lot of water and slowly mix in the powder, then keep adding powder and water; when we emptied out the first batch (the wrong kind), there was still powder at the bottom of the bucket (!). BTW, I didn't mention what a massive pain in the ass it was to flush the machine of all the too-chunky stuff. I had to sit there forever spraying into the bucket and continue while John kept pouring water in the machine. I have a very large garbage can outside filled with probably a ton of water and popcorn ceiling stuff. Hopefully that doesn't dry into 500lbs of solid mess. Maybe I should consider popcorn-texturing the patio…

Once we had the correct goo, things went much better. Having assistance to move the tarps and handle the hoses was invaluable- it's a loud messy process. I also strongly recommend eye protection because the stuff tends to splatter and hit you in the face. Ick. The interesting part is that when I tried to "knock it down" with the 18"-wide knockdown knife tool, it messed it up because the ceilings in my place aren't totally flat. This meant that some parts would get totally squashed while others wouldn't really get hit at all (keep in mind that the stuff isn't that thick when it spritzes on- probably only about an 1/4" at most). As it turned out, it didn't matter anyway, because we realized that we didn't need to knock it down at all- the texture matched the existing ceilings without doing anything. I had a fair amount of spots that needed the texture- around lights I had removed and patched, the entire area where the wall we knocked out was, where the granny cabinet used to be, etc. Anyway, once I got the feel for the how the gun sprayed, it went pretty quick. There are a couple of spots where you can still identify drywall seams and minor snafus, but nothing too serious, and once I paint the whole ceiling, it'll further mask any discrepancies. Truthfully I doubt anyone will notice unless they're looking for it- by and large I was able to duplicate the existing texture style pretty closely.

I had gigs all day on Sunday and Monday, but yesterday and today I painted the ceiling and edges in the kitchen area, so I'm about halfway done. I used the same super insanely white Behr paint that we used for the walls, which is way brighter than the previous "white" of the ceiling, so it's brightening up the room quite a bit. The other plus of using the same paint as the walls is that you don't have to worry about masking the corners or accidentally dripping on the walls (you just flatten it with the roller). The only exception is my green-blue accent wall. The photo above was taken when it was still wet, which is why it looks shinier than the adjacent area.

And by the way, for reference, this is what the kitchen looked like when I moved in, shot from almost the same angle. (look at the light switches on the right for reference. The window is blocked by the no-longer-there wall in the middle)

Probably a couple more days of painting this week to finish the entire room and then (triumphant music here) I start hauling in the cabinets and building 'em. Yay!

make up your own "beam me up" joke.

Remember me talking about how I can't texture the ceiling until handyman Keith fixes the broken beam that's causing the ceiling to sink? (last paragraph of THIS entry) Well, he came by and fixed it. He drew a picture of what was going on up there for me... imagine a beam about 4x6 with a couple giant bolts going through horizontally. Now imagine the entire bottom half beneath bolts has cracked and is causing the ceiling to sink. Keith took a car jack and a 4x4, and essentially jacked the broken part back into position, then had a hefty steel plate fabricated which was screwed into the side of the beam in multiple places to shore that sucker back up. The ceiling is now about an inch higher. Yay. (btw, that's my version of the picture above, not his)

Now for the bad(-ish) news. As a result of above-described mess, there was a crack across most of the ceiling. In order to fix the crack, Keith strongly recommended that I mesh tape and drywall compound the whole mess. As anyone who's been reading this blog knows, I've logged more upside down time in there than most astronauts at the International Space Station, but it must be done, so I busted out my trusty taping knife again today and went to it. If I never mess with another ceiling again... anyway, here's what it looks like. I'm getting pretty good at applying drywall compound flat for minimal sanding (and way less dust kickup).

the doors arrive in Las Vegas (no Jim Morrison)

Remember the schmancy doors/drawer fronts/side panels I had made for my Ikea kitchen cabinets? They arrived today, and hot damn, they're perdy. I went with mahogany, and believe me, they don't look like the fakey photographic veneered crap you get at Ikea- these are real wood with some kind of oil finish on them that smells super nice. I can't wait for my entire kitchen to smell this way. They aren't solid mahogany- it's technically a wood veneer over MDF, but you can't tell because it looks the same on the front, back and sides. And this is how they do it with fancy Italian Scavolini kitchens, so it's all good.

Wanna know the fun part? Unlike the Ikea frames which shipped in a zillion boxes and bags, these came individually packed, all on a HUGE shipping palette (eight-feet, I'm guessing). I had the UPS guy leave it on my driveway, unpacked it and put them all in a closet (besides the one I took the pic of, I left them all in their packing material). That took a while.

The fun part was that once I had all the doors inside, I was left with a ton of cardboard and the giant palette. The cardboard I just cut down, tied up and dragged to the curb: garbage day is tomorrow... handy! But the palette... well, you can't just throw that in a garbage can. Contemplating my options, I realized the only thing I could do was dismantle it, then cut up all the wood into garbage can-sized chunks. That was easily over an hour of smashing away with a four-pound sledgehammer and sawing with a 7 1/4" circular saw. I am now very sore :( This is the part they don't tell you about your Awesome New Glamorous Kitchen™.