Kitchen Cabinets

Amy has wanted a bench seat in our kitchen since we moved into this house. I was worried it just wouldn't work with the layout of our kitchen when one day, I thought out loud, "maybe we could build some cabinets on both sides of this window and put a bench seat in between." Amy loved the idea and I was on the hook! Me and my big mouth!

Here is our before picture. The cabinets and bench seat were destined for the back wall.

Home Depot had a great sale on in-stock cabinets the weeks following the 4th of July so we bought a bunch of unfinished ones. I would have loved to have gotten finished, but they would not work out for a variety of reasons.

After purchasing the cabinets, I was really on the hook.

I turned the third stall of our garage into a painting room and borrowed the father in-laws air compressor and spray gun.

Here are the cabinet doors ready for paint. To get to this point, I needed to sand each with 100 grit paper, clean, sand again with 220 grit paper, clean with a tack cloth, and move into my paint room.

It was a ton of fun painting in my plastic enclosed room. It was over a hundred outside, the room was filled with a cloud of paint fumes, and I had a mask and goggles on. I'm lucky I didn't pass out!

After a quick primer, sand, clean, primer, sand, clean, paint, sand, clean, paint, sand, clean, paint sand, clean, polycrylic (clear plastic finish), sand, clean, polycrylic, sand, clean, polycrlic, sand, clean I was done. Yup eight coats! Oh, actually, I needed to perform all those steps on both sides. This was way more work than I expected. With required paint dry time, this took a long time and was the most work.

I had to repeat the sanding process for the cabinet bodies as well. Thankfully, the hand sander worked better on the flat cabinet bodies.

While I was painting the cabinet doors outside, I started the build inside. One of my first steps was to cut the edge pieces so they could fit tight up against some of the window trim.

After getting a level base on each side, the cabinets went up fairly quickly. I used my clamps to get the cabinets as flush as possible. The problem was these cabinets were not designed to stack but instead should fit side by side. There were some gaps and uneven areas that were not noticeable until they were put together. I filled all of gaps with wood filler to make it all look nice.

 With the cabinets starting to go up, I turned my attention to the bench seat base.

 The kids thought the base was really cool.

 Here is a picture of the finished build, minus trim.

 The crown molding is now up and I was getting ready to paint.

 Just like the cabinet doors, eight coats were needed for everything inside.

 Here is the trim and baseboards I installed.

And after a ton of work, here is the finished project. We actually had to cut and modify the curtains so they fit well enough without hindering the cabinet doors.

 A view of the other side.

This project took a lot longer than I expected, but it was well worth it. I made a few mistakes along the way but was able to fix or work through all of them. I think it turned out nicely. We will love all the extra space in the kitchen. Amy is already looking around the house to find the next place for me to build a cabinet wall!

Kitchen Backsplash

Ever since we moved in, Amy and I have been talking about putting a backsplash up in our kitchen and we finally decided to do it. After a lot of debating on what sort of tile we wanted, buying more than a dozen samples, asking for numerous opinions from friends and family, then ignoring those opinions, we decided on a neutral color natural stone in the subway shape.

On a weekend where Grandma was coming to town, I put up the tile with some help from the wife. Here is what it looked like just before I started.

 Here is the work in progress.

Almost all the tile was up at this time. I just needed to make some cuts for the tiles on the end and the tiles surrounding the power outlet.

 

Here is the finished backsplash.

 

 

We are very happy with how the backsplash turned out. I wish we had done it a long time ago. It wasn't very difficult, didn't take too long, and was fairly inexpensive.

Building a New Closet

A few months ago, Amy and I were talking about wanting a second fridge/freezer. Then, one day, I got to thinking about all the the wasted space beneath our stairs. I thought there would be enough space for a small fridge or freezer with an opening in our laundry room (which opens into our kitchen). I mentioned this to Amy who thought it was a great idea. She immediately re-prioritized my "honey, todo" list with this on the top. Thankfully, I didn't mind since this sounded like a fun project to me.

I started by creating a small hole so I could see if my idea was plausible. Here is the tiny hole I created that I would patch if the closet didn't work out.
Everything looked good so I removed more dry wall roughly the size of what I expected the opening to be.At this point, I figured out that the wall I was cutting into was a load bearing wall. I knew this was a possibility when I started but now I was sure. Also, there was another load bearing support for the stairs. I needed to be careful before going any further. I wanted to remove five 2x4s.

After some online research, I figured out how to safely remove the load bearing wall.

First, I added some temporary supports. Basically, I attached a few new 2x4s next to the ones I planned to remove. I then removed the load bearing 2x4s with the Ridgid Multi-Max tool I mentioned in a previous post. I was very thankful to have this tool since I had very, very little room to work with. My reciprocating saw was way to big to make the cuts on top but the Multi-Max made short work of the situation.

Here is a picture after the load bearing 2x4s were removed but my temporary supports are still in place.
I then had a tight squeeze to build my new truss. After some online research, I found I could build the truss out of two side by side 2x4s. That should be sufficiently strong to span a four foot gap and I only needed to span a little more than three feet.

Basically, I wanted to build something like the following. The three 2x4s at the top represent the load bearing wall. The two horizontal 2x4s will take the load of the wall and transfer it to the four vertical 2x4s which rest on the frame.
Here is a view of the truss I built from the inside of the closet with the temporary supports removed (other than the one that was helping with the stairs).
As you can see, the truss and the bottom of the stairs dictated how tall I could make the closet. I made it as tall as I possibly could where I still had room for a truss. (I considered finding a metal truss which would have given me another two to three inches in possible closet height.)

Here is a view from outside the closet. I now had more space to climb into and out of the closet. Also, I removed the 2x4 attached to the foundation and the baseboard which I reused later in the project.
Next, I framed out the rest of the closet and built another truss to support the load of the stairs.

I started by attaching some 2x4s to the foundation and then framed out the rest of the closet. Here is the framed closet and truss for the stairs. (After taking this picture, I attached a few more boards at the top of the closet to help anchor the ceiling drywall.)
Finally, a clean opening that I did not need to shimmy through!
Since the main purpose of this closet was to contain a second fridge, I needed to add an outlet. While I had the wall open, I decided to also add an outlet in the pantry and another in the laundry room, neither of which previously had an outlet. (I can't believe our laundry room did not have an outlet other than the ones for the washer/dryer.)

Here is my electrical work. I put the pantry plug on one of the kitchen lines and I put the fridge/laundry room outlets on the breaker for our study.
The outlet facing away is going into the pantry while the one facing forwards is the one that will be used by the fridge.
Here are the new outlets I added to the laundry room and the pantry.
With the electrical done, it was time to put up the dry wall. In the picture below, you can see two mistakes I made. The first is the one inch of wood you can see on the left. That happened because I thought the hole was going to be slightly larger before I finalized my truss design. The second is a near half inch gap to the left of the outlet. (I'm not sure how I did that one.) Thankfully, both could easily be fixed with some scrap wood, tape, and mud.
With the drywall up, it was time to tape and mud. The kids have been very interested in the closet I was building. They referred to it as "the hole." The loved checking my progress and would even help out with the tools I left in there. Here are the twins doing some extreme, pants- less, mudding.
Here is picture of the completed mudding. You can't really see it here but I put on some metal edges to provide tough, neat edges. Also, you should no longer be able to see my previously mentioned mistakes (other than the extra mud next to the outlet). You can see the metal edge better here.
After the mudding was done, it was time for texture. The texturing was the one part of the project where I was not confident in my ability. I had done most things in this project before but I had never textured. I told Amy my goal was to not have any trim around the closet entrance but if the texture did not look right, I would hide it with trim. So, if you saw trim, you'd know I wasn't happy with the texture.

I used two and a half cans of spray texture. The cans were a little pricey but they did a nice job and I was able to pretty much match the existing texture. You can tell I was happy it in the final picture because I did not hide the texture with trim.

After the texture dried, I was ready to paint. The previous home owner left three different shades of green that all looked similar to the laundry room. After some test spots, I found none of them matched. :) I decided to mix them together and put a green primer coat. I then took a piece of the drywall I removed to HomeDepot so they could match the paint. They did a nice job and the paint looked good.

The end of the project was within site. I removed one piece of existing tile so I could make the tile look more like it belonged. Thankfully, the previous home owner left us some extra tile. And once again, my Multi-Max and a tile removing bit was invaluable.
After installing my first tile, I put up some baseboards and quarter rail. I could not find any baseboards that matched exactly so I just bought something similar. I reused the portion of baseboard I originally removed from the wall to make the outer corners look good where the non-matching stuff is further back in the closet where you can't really see it.

Here is the final product. Both Amy and I are happy with how it turned out. Our kids liked dancing in the finished "hole" and asked to see it numerous times.
Here is the new deep freezer we bought. We were able to fit an 8.8 cubic foot freezer. Ideally, we would have found a fridge/freezer with a large freezer but we were limited on our height. We decided we'd rather have a large freezer only than a smaller fridge/freezer combo where the freezer is very small.
Amy spent the week trying to fill up the freezer. I bet she'll have it completely full in the next couple weeks. I think we are really going to enjoy our new freezer.

Someday, I plan to build some sort of pull out shelf system to take advantage of the ten inches of extra space we have next to the fridge.

Rocking Horse

For Christmas this year, I decided to make the kids their Christmas present. I wanted to make them a rocking horse based loosely on one at the kids doctor's office. I had a picture in my head and decided to go for it.

The first part of the plan was asking for a jigsaw for my birthday. (Thanks Dad, aka, Grandpa) But instead of buying a normal jigsaw, I got a really cool Ridged Multi-Max tool that came with a free jigsaw attachment. The jigsaw attachment is not quite as good as a normal jigsaw but the tool can do so much more. (I've already used it on another project I'll blog about later.)

The next step was to draw the horse head and body parts out onto paper. I then made paper cutouts, traced them onto 2x10s, and then used my new tool to cut the wood.
I ended up with about a dozen pieces on the lines of this.
I hollowed out the ones that could be hollowed out and then attached them together with glue and screws. None of the screws are visible except the last ones on the horse butt.

Here I am attaching the pieces together to create the basic horse.
I then sanded the horse and painted numerous coats on with spray paint. The paint ended up being by far the most expensive part of the project. After a basic brown coat on the horse and a white coat on the base, I pained the horse face, spots, and hoofs by hand. I then gave the entire horse a couple coats of spray gloss.
The finishing touches included a tail and mane I tied together out of dark brown yarn. I then attached some red reigns (which were originally purposed for curtains) with a couple screws and clips.
Here is a close up of the finished face.
Of course, I needed to test it out to make sure it was safe enough for the twins...
It passed.

When the time came, we put the finished product by the Christmas tree and let the kids find it.
They kids very excited when they first saw it. Caroline got the first ride of course.
At this moment, I realized I made it a little bit too tall. :) Oh, well. It still works and the kids can grow into it. Caroline holds on to the reigns or ears (which was planned) and wraps her legs around the body (which was not planned).

Caden got a turn to try it out. While he was riding, Caroline got a closer look at the rest of the horse.
Caroline and Caden often give the other "rides" by pulling on the reigns to make the horse rock while the other is on the horse. Here is the first time they did that.As you can see, Michael Jordan was having a lot of fun.
I hope the twins enjoy the the horse for many years. They ride it almost daily and tell almost everyone that comes over that I made it for them. That makes the whole building experience worthwhile. That and my new Ridgid Multi-Max.