Installing the Cabinets

If you recall, we donated our old cabinets to Habitat for Humanity, and they picked them up a couple of days before Christmas. So we had been without kitchen cabinets for over three months! With the kitchen walls plastered, we had to paint them so that we could finally take delivery of our cabinets.

Here's the color paint we decided on for the kitchen, dining room, and living room.

Paisley doesn't know what to think about the cabinet delivery.

That's a lot of boxes!

Did I mention that the appliances arrived shortly after the cabinets?

We originally had a deeper refrigerator, but Julie and Joe both recommended that we exchange it for a counter-depth refrigerator so that it wouldn't stick out too much past the counters.

That's not going to work! Guess we'll move the switches to the other side of the wall.

Going to have to cut the cabinet so that the microwave drawer will fit!

I had to install a couple of strips of the tongue & groove ceiling above the kitchen window so that I could hang the cabinets on that wall.

Yes, the television above the refrigerator is temporary.

The microwave fits in the cabinet after trimming a little off the left and right sides.

The new gas range plugged in temporarily since its dedicated outlet wasn't wired yet.

We saved a bunch of money again since I installed the cabinets myself. It's really not that difficult, as long as you can use a level, tape measure, drill, and screw gun. Empty cabinets are pretty light. It's not even that bad hanging the upper cabinets alone because of the temporary boards that you tack to the wall to rest the cabinet on while screwing them in. Hang the upper cabinets before installing the base cabinets. The wires sticking out under the cabinets will be for hard-wired under-cabinet lighting, which will all be controlled with a single switch.

These pictures take us through the very beginning of May. Note that we finally had to remove the old sink so that we could install the base cabinets in preparation for the template for the counters. Stay tuned for the next update!