Kitchen 1

Ok, so just a quick preliminary review before we get into the big stuff.

We hung some of the wall cabinets a bit early in order to get them out of the way, and as soon as we got the kitchen and dining room floors sanded, we continued on with that. Fine. Then, as we're putting a second cabinet up on the west wall we discovered A PROBLEM.

There's a big hole in the wall for a range hood right were a wall cabinet is supposed to go. IN fact, it's about 8" off.

Now, how did THAT happen?

Well, near as I can tell, it all goes back to the original plan where the range would be centered in the kitchen on the west wall. We structured the kitchen so that we could use standard sized cabinets on either side of the range hood. No big deal. Then, as long time readers might recall, our HVAC contractor informed us that our perfectly placed wet wall was directly over a double joist in the basement and that we would have to move it 4" south. Which we did.

BUT, that meant that the cabinets that we'd originally planned on wouldn't work. Fine, we'll just re-arrange that layout on that wall. Meanwhile, the HVAC guys poked the hole in the old location, and we never adjusted the plans for the cabinets. It wasn't until they were almost up that DW looked at the hole that would soon be covered over by a hanging wall cabinet and said, "Um, hon... we have a problem."

We needed to cover the first hole and punch out a new one through the brick.

So, I gently pried the duct work out of the spray foam from the misplaced hole, climbed up on a 16' ladder outside of the house and chiseled out the mortar so I could pull the duct work out of the wall. Then I sized and cut bricks to fill in the hole and mortared them in.

Then, we nailed some a new 2x4 scrap into place and cut the dry wall out even more to make a square so DW could do a square drywall patch. Then we sprayed Great Stuff in the hole and DW went to town with the Duraban drywall patch. To be frank, it's invisible now. It only took an afternoon for us, but it was a brief panic at the time.

A bit later, when the HVAC guys (Peak Heating and Air-- PeakHVAC.com) came back to get the furnace rocking and the A/C unit in, they poked another hole and replaced the duct work were it was actually supposed to be. NEXT to (not under) the cabinet.

Once done, we got more wall cabinets up, and moved on to stage two...base cabinets, counters, and sinks and a nice sexy stainless range hood.



Next up, Kitchen II (if you can't take the heat)