cabinets and countertops, oh my!

Although conceptually easy {cabinets are just square boxes, right?}, installing new cabinets into an old house isn’t as simple as it may seem. 

But, after a couple trips back to Menards for extra shims, we were able to get all of the wall and base cabinets installed around the perimeter of the kitchen {the peninsula was a beast of a project…all on its own…so more on that to come}.

We started with the wall cabinets.

We figured we didn’t want to have to work around the base cabinets to install these bad boys.

A chalk line on the wall gave us the line we wanted the bottoms of the cabinets to be aligned with.  We couldn’t use the ceiling as a guide….remember, old house, with a lean? 

The floor-to-ceiling distance is about an inch different when measured on opposite sides of the kitchen {and, as you remember, we leveled our floor}.  So, we chalked a line on the wall and made sure that was level.  The difference between the ceiling and the top of the wall cabinets will be covered up by the crown molding that we will be installing!

However, by the chalk-line drawing point in this project, my mind was pretty exhausted when it came to level {or not-so-level, in our case}.  At one point, I actually turned to Graham and asked, “What does the level actually level to, the universe?” 

Yes, that question really did come out of my mouth….Graham politely responded with, “No, hunny, it is leveled with gravity.”  We had a few good laughs while “leveling the cabinets to the universe” for the rest of the day.

And yes, even after that display of brilliant thought process, installing the wall cabinets was done by only Graham and I…

…well, and this handy tool we concocted to help me hold up the wall cabinets while Graham screwed them into place.

There were only a couple times I had to say, “Okay, please hold it for just one second, my arms feel like jell-o.”

I think HGTV would have had a pretty good episode of “Renovation Realities” if they had been filming us the day we installed the cabinets….I provided a lot of necessary comic relief throughout the day, and just recently I came across a couple of the screws {supposedly holding the cabinet to the wall} just dangling waiting to be drilled in.  Luckily it was a base cabinet that wasn’t being used yet!

After the wall cabinets were up, we placed the base cabinets {this is where the impromptu shim-buying trip came in}.  C-clamps were our best friends in helping get everything “squished” together.

Once the cabinets were all in place, we decided to go back around and sand/smooth the seams.  We wanted the cabinets to look like one piece as much as possible….so even though it pained me to see some of the hours of painting {down in the dark, gloomy basement} sanded away in the matter of minutes, I knew it was going to be worth it {and it helped that Graham agreed to repaint them}.

After sanding, the countertops were put into place with the appropriate adhesive and the outside walls of the kitchen were functional once again.

Installing the countertops was pretty easy-going because we took SO MUCH extra time and care in making sure each and every aspect of those cabinets were as level as possible. 

If I ever have to install cabinets and countertops again, this is the one thing I will remember – in that making sure our cabinets were level to the universe, installing the countertops was much less stressful!

{But what about the peninsula?  To be continued….}