plugging away.

Yesterday I mentioned that I had to relocate an outlet so it would sit above the 84" high refrigerator. As usual, this was WAY harder than I expected, because there was a horizontal 2x4 crossbeam in the worst place possible. As you can see in the pics, there's a big mounting rail going across the top that I used to secure the tall cabs to. Because of its location, there wasn't enough room to install the outlet above 84" but below the metal rail without hitting the 2x4 behind  it. Same problem above the rail (due to horizontal 2x4's at the top). So I swallowed hard and cut the rail. This was no small task because it's pretty stout- there's no way you could use a hand saw. I ended up using a combination of John's Harbor Freight oscillating tool (this thing) and my little Craftsman rotary tool (like a Dremel). I think I broke five cutting discs in the process, but it worked. After that, you just make a bunch of little holes in the wall and guide the Romex 120v wire through the wall. Since there was a horizontal 2x4 in the way near the top, I had to make a big hole and notch it out so the wire could pass across the front of it (again using John's oscillating tool). That's where the wire is sticking out of the wall below, but I shoved it into the wall so it would pop out where the outlet would be.

Below is the installed outlet. I didn't cut enough of the rails, so I cut little notches in the corners of the plastic cover plate, but that was easy with a cutting disc on my rotary tool. I also drywall patched, mesh taped and mudded all the holes. I probably won't bother making them super perfect smooth because they'll never be seen. You can't see in the pic on the bottom, but I just removed the bottom outlet and covered its location with a blank white plate.

While we're talking about wiring, I discovered a helpful thing in Family Handyman magazine- push-in wire connectors. Instead of wire caps, you just strip the wires back 1/2", shove 'em in and they grab. MUCH easier than trying to twist wires into wire caps! Wish I would've known about these when I started rewiring stuff around here.

Finally, here we have the Lester who has decided that the pile of lumber that shall soon be my island framing is really comfy to nap on. I don't understand that cat sometimes.

adventures in (non) refrigeration, pt. 1

As prematurely blabbed about on my Facebook page, the fridge was supposed to get moved in last Friday, but I messed up. I scheduled the pro install guys, but when they came over they informed me that I'd need to take a few more steps before they could install it. I never really inspected the fridge that close, but cabinet-depth built-in refrigerators have a 1/2" protruding metal lip around their perimeter that butts up against adjacent cabinetry. Since my tricky "european-style" doors extend to the very edge of the cabs, that means the metal lip would've literally been on top of the doors thereby preventing them from opening. Oops. My original plan was to just put in the cab on the left, have the fridge moved in and build the top and right side around it. But the installers needed everything done because they also screw the top of the fridge to the cabs to prevent it from falling over when you open the doors (keep in mind it's 84" high and about 6" shallower than a "normal" refrigerator). Another thing they pointed out is that I'd have no way to install the top trim piece once the fridge was in, or at least it'd be really tricky.

Now I needed trim pieces for the left and right side that were at least a 1/2" thick and in reality should be a little thicker for fudge room. And since they would be partially visible, they should probably match. My first idea was to get some 3/4" mahogany and stain the edges to make them shiny and, god-willing, match the cabs, but I knew that would be tricky business. To cut a long story short, I realized that I had two sets of plinths (aka toekicks, aka the long trim pieces that go under the cabs to hide the legs)- one set of schmancy mahogany ones like the cab doors, and one set from Ikea. I wasn't even sure what color the Ikea ones were until I opened up some boxes (I didn't ever select a color option). Turns out they were Ikea "black-brown", which is a relatively bland (sorry John) very dark brown. I certainly wouldn't choose it for cabinet doors, but we put pieces of both under the cabs (John and I, that is) and we both preferred the black-brown to the matching mahogany. The mahogany was almost too much- kind of like wearing blue jeans with a blue denim shirt... photo below. I also figured super dark toekicks were a smart idea with regard to (not) getting dirty. Some people have white ones, which in my mind is utter insanity (unless you have one of those nutbag "no shoes rule" households. Please.)

This meant that I wasn't going to need the mahogany toekicks at all... now I could use them as trim pieces for the fridge. Not only were they 3/4" by around 4" wide, they had mahogany laminate on the edges (which, as toekicks, they wouldn't have even needed) so I really lucked out. AND the pieces were eight-feet long, so I didn't need to use multiple pieces to cover the entire 88" high cabs. Here they are below. As you can see, they're protruding 3/4" so they'll be flush with the cab doors when they're shut. I spent pretty much all day doing this, partly because you have to be really careful with cutting and measuring (and I'm real good at screwing that kind of thing up).

Fortunately, there was a mahogany trim piece that was intended for over the fridge. However, it was precut with the intention of going up to the ceiling, so I had to rip it down (very carefully!) with my table saw, then mount it using a pair of little L-brackets on each side. Since I was unwrapping lots of Fancy Mahogany Stuff today, I went ahead and installed most of the remaining hinged doors- no sense in sticking 'em back in the closet at this point (there's a gaggle of drawers and a pull-out garbage can dealie that I haven't dealt with yet).

Now the cabs are all ready, but the installers also informed me that the outlet behind the fridge you see in the photo wasn't gonna cut it, because there's so little clearance that the plug would prevent the fridge from sliding back all the way- I need to relocate the outlet really high up. Ugh! I got all the stuff I need to do it, and it should be a relatively easy project. Fortunately there aren't any studs between the current and future location.

Finally, I mentioned in the last post that I didn't take a pic of the now filled and polished trenches where the island plumbing lives. Kind of a lot of reflections going on, but here it is. It came out really nice... it's probably shinier than the rest of the floor.

P.S. Super seriously contemplating buying this magic sexiness of a cook top. This badassery is a Smeg, made in Italy, where, apparently no one informed them that "smegma" typcially refers to to a combination of shed epithelial cells, transudated skin oils and moisture typically found in the male and female genital regions, perhaps making "Smeg" a poor choice of a company name. I was also looking at a cook top from "Fagor", another foo-foo Euro appliance company with questionable naming practices... WTF?

makin' moves.

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.

paging Mr. Herman.

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.

you mean this place has other rooms?

Since the kitchen is in limbo 'til the concrete trenches-cum-litterbox get filled (the concrete guys failed to bring the appropriate stuff for cutting a big straight line today), I've been preparing the family room and part of the living room for painting. What you're looking at below is kind of the back of the living room where the "dry bar" I hacked out was. There was all kinds of wallpaper residue nightmare there, which is why I didn't paint it with the rest of the room. You can't tell in the pic, but the narrow bottom section of the wall was a total tragedy with odd layers of weaved wallpaper and some kind of uneven plaster or drywall compound. I removed as much as I could and then rebuilt the wall there with lots of layers of drywall mud. It's taken me days of "apply mud, come back tomorrow, sand, more mud, repeat", but it's finally smooth and ready for paint. Yikes.

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.