The Kitchen: Reno Day 5

After all the cabinets that were installed the day before, the only one left was the island. To start I screwed the right end frame to the wall and floor, then installed the base frame and the left side. It took multiple adjustments to level them in all direction and I ended up having to cut a hole in the plywood to access the base for screwing it in place.

Next we put the cabinet in place and secured it to the base and end frames.

Progress on the pantry also continued, I attached the right side and screwed both sides to a top frame. Horizontal supports were glued and screwed to the wall for the shelves. As you can see the pantry is HUGE, I didn’t realize until the second side was in quite how big it really is…

Next we moved on to installing the island counter top. The blocking under the gable end proved a problem again and we ended up cutting a chunk off the panel with a circular saw to get it in the right place. 

The corner counter went in easily in comparison. The only difficult part was attaching the mitred corner with the bolts provided. Working in a tight space plus not being able to find a small enough wrench made it a frustrating task getting them in place. I also got the sink opening cut out in preparation for the plumber’s visit on October 10^th. 

The final piece of counter top to be installed, to the right of the stove, proved the most difficult. That stupid gable blocking again, for a number of reasons it ended up being easier and fit better to just cut a piece out of the side of the cabinet for the blocking. It’s hard to explain…but it looks good now and the end of the counter is flush to the end of the cabinet like I wanted. I also trimmed a little off the end against the wall, which went surprisingly well. No chips or anything.

The final thing we did was install the pantry shelves. They are ¾” melamine and are drilled into the supports from below. Eventually they will get trimmed out with some fancy routered edged wood…once I buy the wood and router it and install it…it’s a low priority obviously.

And now we know: gable ends have more blocking underneath that expected. Take that into account when measuring for your counters.