# Watch This Space



## jd99 (Jun 17, 2009)

I've now done every room in this house except the Kitchen, so that's my next project.

I'm gutting everything out, and building new cabinets, i'm also changing the configuration a little bit. 

I plan on upper corner cabinets and I'm going to use blind corner shelving on the lower corners. 

I plan on moving the stove to the center of the room as it sits off center right now.

I don't have enough room to build all the cabinets and do it all at once.
So I plan on building all the new upper cabinets, then pulling out the old ones, paint the walls and ceiling, and installing the new uppers. 
Then repeat the process for the lower cabinets.

I hope to be done before winter.

Here's the way it looks now. The doors are all gone because I couldn't get them clean, so I sent them to the dump....


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## TwoSkies57 (Feb 23, 2009)

Should prove to be an interesting project. Looks to have great bones to start off with. Love the lighting....

best of luck to ya and enjoy


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## DesertRatTom (Jul 3, 2012)

We had a drop ceiling in our kitchen and during the remodel, had it removed. The increased height is really nice, feels roomy. During that process, we installed cans with LED lighting. Great project.


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## fire65 (Oct 29, 2008)

Look forward to following along. Looks like you have a pretty good plan on your layout also.


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## Shop guy (Nov 22, 2012)

I'll be watching for updates. Renos are a lot of work be can be really fun and very satisfying.


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## Stick486 (Jan 4, 2013)

done yet???


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## hawkeye10 (Jul 28, 2015)

I see there is room for improvement and I will be interested to see those improvements.


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## Nickp (Dec 4, 2012)

Good luck with your remodel...sounds like a good plan.


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## Bushwhacker (Jun 16, 2009)

*kitchen remodel*

We bought this old house and redid all of it. This is our work in the kitchen.
Pic # 1 A shot of the old kitchen. It was only as wide as the space between the cabinets and the refrigerator. There was a 4 foot space opening into it from the living room. 
Pic#2 This is me tearing out the old cabinets. I took the whole room down to the studs and ripped out most of the floor to level it and to replace the plumbing, and gas lines.
Pic#3 This is the room striped out and shows the studs of the existing wall between then kitchen and the living room.
Pic#4 This is a shot of the finished kitchen showing how I pushed the wall out to make a breakfast area, and to enlarge the whole room.
Pic#5 This one shows the kitchen from another angle, and the beam I but up to replace the load bearing wall. The corner cabinet lower has a turn style type of shelves to get at everything stored there.
The center bar and the cabinet tops are 12" marble. The center bar is double 3/4 ply cross grained to give support to the over hang.
Note: My wife Sandra and I lived in the house while doing our remodel and had a micro wave, a electric grill, and a electric fry pan and a coffee pot. We slept on cots for several months. After living through this, we knew we were going to make it together.


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## Stick486 (Jan 4, 2013)

what a dramatic change..
WOW!!!


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## ThomL (Oct 1, 2012)

That is a remarkable transformation. You have done a great job, I really like the back splash.


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## JFPNCM (Dec 13, 2009)

Amazing what transformations can out of a bit of blood, sweat and tears.


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## Bushwhacker (Jun 16, 2009)

Thanks Stick. Since Sandra and I worked different shifts at the hospital, I was frequently there working alone. That stud wall in picture # 3, was load bearing and I jacked the whole thing up with my floor jack to take the weight off of it and built a 16' 5" beam out of 2 2x8s reverse crowned with 3/4 ply sandwiched between with glue and scatter nailed. It took several clamps to pull it all 
together. I cut a packet at the top of each wall to catch the ends of it and attempted to hang it by my self. I would get one end up into the pocket and lift the other end onto a step ladder, climb the ladder and try to place the end into the pocket. As soon as I lifted my end, the other would slip out and crash to the floor.


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## Bushwhacker (Jun 16, 2009)

Thanks Tom. Those were 12 inch panels my wife found at Home Depot. She did all the decorative planning and I was the labor. She would find a color of paint and tell me that this is for the kitchen or the living room. 
I would be very skeptical until I put it on. Everything always matched.


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## Bushwhacker (Jun 16, 2009)

We did a lot of all of those things Jon. We had just gotten married and she had no idea if I knew what I was doing or not. I would say I was going to knock out a wall and move this over there, and she would just wring her hands until it began to come together. That breakfast alcove was just going to be some boxed out windows until I tore out an 8 foot section of the wall. We both worked at the Houston Trauma center and she only got to see the work maybe every other week until we decided to move in when we got married.


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## N'awlins77 (Feb 25, 2011)

Danny, it's a lot of work, and when you are in the middle of it, you are going to want to get your head examined. But when it's done, you will be one proud DIY'er!! My wife catches me staring at our cabinets, in awe, almost 4 years later!! 
We made some changes, as well. Took out a breakfast bar, to add an additional set of upper cabinets. And added a short set of cabinets above the sink, we never had before. But the biggest change was, we removed a spacing above all the upper cabinets and made taller cabinets that went to the ceiling. I think we came close to doubling storage. And we needed this in our small kitchen!! 

Good luck, and don't get discouraged! It's a long road, but well worth it.


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## Stick486 (Jan 4, 2013)

lee...
you have reason to be proud...
so be proud...


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## DaninVan (Jan 1, 2012)

David; I love the rich warm feeling...the room glows!
I'm guessing when you have company over, everyone hangs around in the kitchen?


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## jd99 (Jun 17, 2009)

N'awlins77 said:


> Danny, it's a lot of work, and when you are in the middle of it, you are going to want to get your head examined. But when it's done, you will be one proud DIY'er!! My wife catches me staring at our cabinets, in awe, almost 4 years later!!
> We made some changes, as well. Took out a breakfast bar, to add an additional set of upper cabinets. And added a short set of cabinets above the sink, we never had before. But the biggest change was, we removed a spacing above all the upper cabinets and made taller cabinets that went to the ceiling. I think we came close to doubling storage. And we needed this in our small kitchen!!
> 
> Good luck, and don't get discouraged! It's a long road, but well worth it.


I wont get discouraged, I started on this house a year and a half ago, and I'm still going. Yeah it is taking a long time sometimes, but its looking a lot better. also I can stand back and say I did all that myself....

This is my second rodeo on doing a kitchen, I did a complete kitchen in my condo down in calif, we had a flood and had to gut it to the studs, so this one will be a little easier.


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## Bushwhacker (Jun 16, 2009)

*kitchen remodel*



DaninVan said:


> David; I love the rich warm feeling...the room glows!
> I'm guessing when you have company over, everyone hangs around in the kitchen?


Yes Dan, they do until it is time to clean up, then that becomes my job.


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## Shop guy (Nov 22, 2012)

Looks great.


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## DaninVan (Jan 1, 2012)

Bushwhacker said:


> Yes Dan, they do until it is time to clean up, then that becomes my job.


That's strange...that happens at our house too!


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## Stick486 (Jan 4, 2013)

Bushwhacker said:


> Yes Dan, they do until it is time to clean up, then that becomes my job.


tighter screening on the company....


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## Dejure (Jul 27, 2009)

I'm redoing the our kitchen for my wife. It drove me nuts to see her empty a shelf out to get one item, put everything back, then repeat the process when she was done with the item. For that reason, I went to one hundred pound drawers for all the lower shelves.

The east blind corner has fully extending drawers that pull out into a thirty inch open area. The drawers are about twelve inches deep, except where you would reach into them. I dropped that down about six inches back from the corner on both the front and the side. 

This makes a great place to hide that stuff you only use occasionally.

When both drawers are in, a pull out goes into the open area. It packs a few drawers for silverware, pots and so on.

The opposite blind corner is the requisite lazy Susan, but with two open areas on each side of the Susan to store cookie pans and so forth.

Above the fridge, I built a cabinet the full dimensions of the new fridge. It's a monster, so In installed a thirty inch lazy Susan on it too (the depth of the cabinet). As fate would have it, that cabinet could also be accessed from the side. Since the cabinet was about six inches wider than deep, that gave me storage for items too.

I built a similar cabinet over the fridge for a friend and surprised him with the Susan. He wouldn't give it up and, now that we've had it, we wouldn't either. It beats putting a bunch of crap in the way of the over-fridge cabinets and having to move it to get to the secret things in the standard, generally worthless ones.


All my cabinets have LED bars under them. We rarely turn on the overhead lights, since they light the counters so well. Too, then dim, so we use them as kind of super night lights.

I like the LED's over the halogens not just because of the cooler running temps, but because there are no light and dark spots. You can cut them to lengths you need to have light all the way across the bottom of each cabinet. Of course, you can wire them together too, with planning.

If you go with LED bars, you can dim them at the 120 volt switch, but you will have to do it THROUGH a magnetic transformer (actually, a rectifier for about ninety bucks) at the cabinets. Otherwise, you would have to run a line to a standard transformer at the cabinets, then back to where the 120 volt switch would be and use a twelve volt one to dim on the twelve volt side.

To the left and right of our sink, I went with the wife's want and installed glass in both the doors and on the side of the cabinet facing the window. She has good taste. With inexpensive specialty glass, it looks nice.

I also dropped the cabinets at the sink a bit lower than the others. This was huge toward breaking up the cabinet lines, and there is still lots of room under them for whatever.

Had my kitchen been bigger, I would also have made the ones at the since deeper, by about one inch. As it is, the corner immediately adjacent to one side prohibited that. Unfortunate, since bringing a few cabinets up and out is akin to adding crown.

I built an island and put it on wheels. Loaded, it and the contents are over two hundred pounds, but it rolls easy so we can rotate it, move it and so forth. Unless you look down, you'd not know it was movable. I do wish I'd taken about five inches off the length. However, if I went out and ordered it built, it'd be about an eight hundred to twelve hundred dollar beast, so I'm not want to start over on it.

Our ceilings are absurdly low. Add to that, I had a French door near the pantry I built. Because of these things, the top shelf was compromised for usability. To solve the door (curtain) problem, I made the upper door shorter, to clear the curtain rod. That left the upper shelf severely compromised. I solved this problem by making a panel to fill the gap the door couldn't cover, but which can be removed by merely reaching up to it and pulling it down. It's attached with rare earth magnets. In the end, no one knows it's removable and you can still use valuable cabinet space.


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## Dejure (Jul 27, 2009)

I remind the wife it'd cost in the area of sixty k to have someone do what we are doing ourselves (that's a lot of really cool tools).

P.S. The long winded post, below, was just to share some ideas you might find helpful.

We both love just opening drawers to find what we need, rather than getting down and digging for things, for example.



jd99 said:


> I wont get discouraged, I started on this house a year and a half ago, and I'm still going. Yeah it is taking a long time sometimes, but its looking a lot better. also I can stand back and say I did all that myself....
> 
> This is my second rodeo on doing a kitchen, I did a complete kitchen in my condo down in calif, we had a flood and had to gut it to the studs, so this one will be a little easier.


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## Bushwhacker (Jun 16, 2009)

Kelly, It sounds like you put a lot of thought in the construction of your kitchen and it looks great.
I added all pull out shelves to the lower cabinets so we don't have to get down to see what is in the back of them.
Plus self closing drawer slides, the kids can't slam them. Wish I had thought of the lazy susan over the refrigerator.
That was a great idea.


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## jd99 (Jun 17, 2009)

Finally got time to pick up some supplies for the project.

Got a good deal on prefinished maple.

Now to get to cutting parts, and more parts.... :smile:


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## DesertRatTom (Jul 3, 2012)

What a terrific project. Beautiful work. Must be a pleasure to be in there these days.


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## jd99 (Jun 17, 2009)

Started cutting today, I got 3 sheets cut up, 4 more to go.


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## jd99 (Jun 17, 2009)

Got the rest of the Plywood sheets cut up today.

Now just finish the details, Dado's and etc. then pre assemble.

No one in my area had 1/4" prefinished maple so I had to use 1/2" for the backs, not a big deal, just makes them stronger.


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## Dejure (Jul 27, 2009)

Sore yet?

I just got done turning twenty-seven sheets of 3/4 into cabinets for the store my wife and her sister just sold. Dang.

It was kind of funny too. I was patting myself on the back for using plywood to make the cabinets, since that made them much lighter. After all, I'm far from being a kid and had to move them myself. The order was for: an eight footer three feet tall and a thirty-four inches deep; a ten footer the same height and width; and, a twelve footer, also that height and width.

I had myself believing the plywood only weighed about forty pounds a sheet. It doesn't. They weight nearly seventy, if claims are accurate. Anyway, taking the eight footer off a three foot tall rolling cart to finish it (drill shelf holes, add laminate, install styles and rails, add braces to the bottoms, etc) made me really glad I didn't use particle board. More so when I saw they were presumed to weigh in at about three hundred fifty to four hundred.

I made the others in five foot lengths. Doing so required less grunting.

P.S. Nice job. Keep plugging along.


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## jd99 (Jun 17, 2009)

Finally got time to do some assembly on all the plywood I cut up the other day.

I have to cut some maple strips to use as edging on the shelves, and glue it on the shelves. drill a bunch of shelf pin holes.

Then start on the face frames and after that the doors. then prep it all for painting the outsides. Insides are done (Prefinished Maple plywood)


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## Stick486 (Jan 4, 2013)

lookin' good..


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## jd99 (Jun 17, 2009)

decided to go ahead and shoot all the shelves, and finish them and get them put aside, before I start the face frames.


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## Stick486 (Jan 4, 2013)

looking good...


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