Dad’s visit, day 1.

My dad is here for a week to help with the renovation. Today was our first day of work. The plan for the week is to install the bamboo floor in the kitchen and foyer, and to construct and install the base cabinets in the kitchen.

We spent the morning working on our plans for the cabinets. I’d drawn up the basic designs for these in Visio, but now we need shop drawings with details about the lengths and widths of various pieces. And we need a cut list, complete for each cabinet. I’d say we got through about 75% of major work here. Once we had our core design and measurements written out, we needed to take some measurements from the actual space to make sure everything jived. To do that, we had to dismantle our temporary kitchen.

Tonight is the first night in our entire year-long remodel that we haven’t had a kitchen sink hooked up. I think we’ll survive.

With the temporary counters out of the way we measured and snapped lines on the floor representing the positions of the counters. In the midst of this process we got a knock at the front door, and it was the delivery man from Dunn Lumber with the 10 sheets of pre-finished ¾” plywood we ordered for the cabinet carcasses. So we helped him carry these into the basement and got back to work.

Trissa and I made a Home Depot run to pick up a bunch of material, including: sheetrock, insulation, 2x4’s, etc. etc. etc. In fact we ended up going to McLendon’s hardware to get a couple of lally columns (HD doesn’t stock them), and to Woodcraft to get some router bits. Ouch – they were expensive. Then, back to HD because Dad called and needed more screws, and to Sears to get staples for my Craftsman stapler. Phew.

Dad was busy while we were out and had constructed the bases for the cabinet carcasses – basically 2x4 frames that will be screwed to the subfloor and will form the toekick under the cabinets. Of course they’ll be dressed up with a finish piece of wood. He he is, hard at work:

A couple more details we had to take care of: install a couple of electrical boxes, and run wire for them (runs behind the counters). And this was an opportunity to tap into the plumbing that feeds the kitchen sink and install an outdoor spigot. So I was outside soldering copper pipe in the dark – I sure hope it doesn’t leak. I think it’s all good though.

Dad insulated the wall behind the cabinets and we installed sheetrock over it all before calling it quits. Tomorrow we’ll finish installing the bases, construct a half wall behind the peninsula counter, and hopefully – hopefully, switch gears and have time to start installing the bamboo floor.