I have just about finished the dishwasher cabinet!!!

What’s left are little finishing touches that require a trip to Home Depot. That is definitely going to be first thing tomorrow!

I put one of these bolts at the top and bottom of the dining room side; they seemed so perfect for securing the doors. They’re not. 🙁 I’ll need to add a mechanism inside one of the doors to keep it from swinging and then the bolts should work.

Kitchen side door.

I cut a piece of plywood to fill in the gap between the counter and the top of the door.

Getting those screws in was a NIGHTMARE! The world is not made for people with stubby fingers.

The top looks horrible. 🙂 I’m going to get some quarter round to make the edges along the countertop prettier. I think a bit more sanding and the eventual paint will make the rest of it look okay. I am however impressed with my jigsawing. 🙂

Because of the angled corner on the kitchen side, I won’t be able to use one of those sliding bolts to secure the door. I’ll have to re-examine the options at Home Depot.

The kitchen side definitely looks less polished than does the dining room side. The door jam isn’t quite as square, although I think I could remedy that by shifting the bottom hinge a tad which would shift the door to cover the slight gap. Considering how hard it was to get that hinge screwed in, I don’t have the strength to remove it and reposition it. 🙂

This morning, I have been working on the kitchen side of the dishwasher cabinet. I made a bit more progress on the dining room side last night since I wanted to test something I bought at Home Depot. There’s more to do, but it’ll have to wait until my next Home Depot trip. I decided to postpone it till tomorrow since I have a dinner engagement this evening and will have to stop early.

The kitchen side is a real puzzle. I have been trying to figure out what I would do to make it look pretty since I temporarily set up the counter. I’ve decided that there is no 100% to achieve here and my aim now is to make it look ‘as non ugly as possible.’

The stove added a surprising level of difficulty and I have had to make a tough choice about which side the hinges will be on. I knew I’d have to account for it in determining the door clearance, but there was another challenge beyond that. I’ll follow up on that with pictures once this side is done.

I’m just about done with the ‘dining room side’ of the dishwasher cabinet! The missing trim is cut, but I need some square brackets to assemble the remaining projects, so I’ll definitely need to get myself to Home Depot tomorrow.

Behold the doors that ate up almost three hours today!

click on the picture to get a better view of the whole thing

Recognize the trim on them? I think this project explains for itself why I love scrounging for parts. I wouldn’t have been able to justify buying expensive trim like that just to ‘gussy up’ my doors. I am incredibly proud of them. I’ll make a door in a similar style for the other side.

Still missing on this side is a false front for the drawer that will mimic the trim work on the doors and hide the rough edges on that side of the unit.

The bottom panel has to remain accessible so I will be getting some magnets to hold it in place. There will be trim around it, but it will only be glued to the panel and not nailed into the cabinet.

I also need to decide how I’m going to fasten the doors. I bought some options yesterday, but I don’t think any of them will work, so I’ll need to see if I have any other choices. I don’t think magnets will be enough.

The door over the drawer doesn’t ‘match’ but this doesn’t bother me. Once everything is painted the same colour, it will all blend in together and the variety of textures will be welcome. Yes, that door overlaps the drawer. I couldn’t figure out a way to secure the drawer and the door just happened to be the right width while being too long so I thought that a well-secured door would also hold the drawer in place.

Today was a good renovation day and buoyed by my success I look forward to tackling the more difficult kitchen side tomorrow!

I am so far behind schedule that I’ll be lucky to finish the dishwasher cabinet this weekend, much less anything else. When I reveal the cause of today’s delay, all will be explained. Let’s just say that it has been one of those really good renovation days and that trim is a wonderful thing. I’m such a tease. 😀

Merikay asked about ‘the workshop’ and what tools I carry with me.

One of Croft‘s offers for this winter was his workshop and all its contents. It’s a small shed with a big window for good light that has a workbench. It’s a good place to spread out a small project so that I can walk all the way around it. He has all sorts of power tools and I’ve made use of the ones I don’t own or that are were too large to carry with me and sold when I hit the road, such as an angle grinder, a miter saw, and a table saw. I’ve been helping myself to the scrap pile and to screws and nails when I don’t have the necessary size in my own tool kit.

Otherwise, I have been using my own tools, just because I am most familiar with them. I took my full workshop on the road with me, except for my miter saw. I have saw horses, a jigsaw, a couple of drills, a square, a level, clamps and vices, wrenches and pliers, screwdrivers, a hammer, all sorts of hardware (screws, nails, hooks, nuts, bolts, etc.), and just about anything else one could need for basic home renovation projects. Everything but the saw horses fit in a big Rubbermaid tote in the basement. I also have smaller totes with painting and plumbing supplies. This would be a good time to note that when I was calculating what I could bring with me vs. carrying capacity I got all this stuff on the scale. 🙂

Lunch break’s over, time to go finish one side of the dishwasher cabinet!

My fit of pique must have effected a cosmic change because the rain held off!!! It’s about to come down though.

I went to Home Depot this afternoon to get the angle brackets as well as door hinges and fasteners. I’m pretty sure I’ll return 90% of what I bought, but I didn’t want to have to go out tomorrow. Today’s visit took well over an hour because a Home Depot clerk and I started to talk about custom RV design and got into a hot debate about slides vs. no slides.

I got a pleasant surprise in regards to the angle brackets. I’ve always bought them in packs of 2 for about a dollar. I needed at least 40 to finish the dishwasher cabinet, duct tunnel, and bookcase installation, so I figured that I’d have to shell out at least $20 plus tax for all my brackets. But the Home Depot guy made some ‘contractor’ supplies materialise for me and I got a pack of 100 brackets for $6.95 plus tax!

It was three when I got back home and the hardest part of the job started. I find that no matter how many times I measure, I never get things 100% right. I had to go back and forth to the workshop to trim a panel or another. At least, my problems were too much height, which is much easier to remedy than not enough of it! I finally got everything level, although the dinette top isn’t as flush with the kitchen counter as it was when it was temporarily installed. It’s a matter of millimetres and probably not something the casual observer would notice so I decided to pick my battles.

The installation was a real puzzle as I had to figure out what to screw down first without blocking my access to something else I had to screw down. The sliders for the drawer were a nightmare to put in place and I wound up having to install the shelf above it with the angle brackets on the top side.

My breadmaker finally has a proper home! I’d been storing it in a cabinet in the study! Notice the tray and cutting board tucked into the ‘dead’ space behind the drawer.

My carpet cleaner and vacuum cleaner are going to be stored on this side. Linens will go in the drawer. I’m not sure yet what will be going on the shelf above it, probably garbage bags and dishwasher powder!

I was going to have the dishwasher face the door, but it’s going to have to go in sideways.

Once everything was assembled and secured, I added the counter and screwed that in nice and tight. The whole thing feels satisfactorily sturdy and secure for transport. It might not be very pretty, but it’s exactly what I wanted and once the doors and trim are on most of my lack of carpentry skills will be hidden behind stuff.

I discovered what a moot point looks like when I went to install the dishwasher as I had planned. It won’t fit that way; the hoses are too short! I’m going to have to orientate it the way that it was when it was under the counter. That somewhat changes my plans for the securing of it and may be the biggest cause of delays tomorrow. The other thing I still need to figure out is how to make the kitchen side of the cabinet look neat since it projects out beyond the width of the counter. You can see what I mean in the first picture. A solution will come when I start to work on the problem; it always works out that way.

I’ve decided to make my own doors after all since they will be quite small and I already have the materials for them. Tomorrow’s projects will be to finish the dishwasher cabinet then start on building the ductwork tunnel, and securing the bookcase. I believe this is a realistic target for tomorrow. Monday I will go back to Home Depot to return whatever I hardware I wound up not using and to pick up the lumber for the secret ladder project. There’s lots to do, but I am 100% on target so far and feeling pretty accomplished!

There’s a pizza with my name on it in the oven (not made by my hand, of course!) and I need to put in several hours at my contract tonight, so I’m calling it a day.