Cabinet Doors and the Start of a New Countertop

This weekend has seen several advancements in the kitchen area. I now have all of the upper cabinet doors (with the exception of the two over the wall oven) in place and I have most of the backerboard down on the countertop. I also went to an auction on West Pine Friday night and bought 2 wooden decorative posts, although at this point I've no idea what I plan to do with them lol. I figure I'll eventually find a use for them or, if not, I can put them up for resale in one of the antique stores.

As for the cabinets, I finally finished painting the 10 upper cabinet doors and finished installing them this evening. Some don't hang quite right, but they didn't when I removed them in the first place. I'll have to fiddle around with them to make them hang correctly, but for now I'm just glad they're in place.

In addition, we also worked on the sagging cabinets today. The fix we came up with was to screw a length of board along the back wall of the bottom shelf of the wall cabinets, then screw the shelf to the bottom of that board. It ended up working fairly well; we had bracers in place holding the cabinets up while doing it, and had to go and purchase some 3" screws for the job, but it works!

So now I'll just need to paint it so it'll blend into the wall lol.

In addition to that, we also put down some backerboard along the countertop and the backsplash. Still not sure what tile we're going to put down; I'm leaning towards black tile, but it's not set in stone just yet.

The most fun with that was cutting out the various areas for the sockets and the sink!

While the sockets were difficult enough, the sink posed a special problem. It needed to be removed so the backerboard could slide underneath it. So, much fun was had as my friend crawled under the sink to turn off the water, disconnect the hoses, and then begin to remove the clips holding the sink in place. We were both quite surprised (and fortunately no one was hurt!) when we found the hole the previous owners had cut for the sink was just a little bigger than the sink itself, and the sink fell through the opening! He grabbed it from below, I grabbed it from above, and we managed to avoid having to take him to the emergency room lol. So, once it was out of the hole and safely lying on the floor, we put down the backerboard, and then I crawled underneath to outline the hole on the underside of the board so we could cut it. Here I am posing for the camera while tracing the outline:

You'll notice the sink lying on the floor near my feet. Once we had the outline, we then brought that inwards by 3/4 of an inch so the lip around the sink would have something to rest on. Then, we proceeded to actually cut out the hole, which was by no means easy! Typically to cut backerboard, you score it several times with a razor, then carefully break it along that score line. When cutting out the smaller rectangles for the outlets, we scored it then used a hammer and a flat-head screwdriver to chisel out the hole. For the sink, however, this hole was much larger and not nearly as easy. We started out by scoring around the outline and then using the jigsaw, but figured we could find an easier way. So, we experimented with various things, like using a handsaw (great idea, but ultimately not workable), the chiseling method, and I don't even remember what else, but finally we just went back to the jigsaw. The main reason we didn't want to use that is it tends to burn the backerboard while cutting, which creates a smokey mess in the kitchen (and it was just too much trouble to take the board outback, get the extension cord, yadda yadda), but it turned out to be the quickest and easiest method.

And now the sink is back in place, just kinda floating on the backerboard for now. And we also decided I really do need to get a new sink, that this one has pretty much seen it's last days. But for now, it's in place and is usable, except for hot water. We ran into a problem with the hot water line, and it started leaking, so for the time being, since I wash my dishes in a dishpan anyway, I'll just draw hot water from the bathroom for dish washing.

Here's a pic of some of the sink clips after they fell out of place:

Most were so badly rusted that they just popped off before he could even unscrew them lol. As for the rest of the backerboard, we'll most likely finish that on Wednesday.

And that's been pretty much my weekend. Oh, except for the fact I painted the wooden outlet covers in the kitchen Dust Bunny (the same as the cabinets and what trim is currently up):

Needs a little touch up, I now see, but otherwise looks really good against the green wall. I'm definitely loving my kitchen so far and am glad to see it all coming together as it has been!