On failure and shoddy craftsmanship

My kitchen cabinets have seen better days.  The drawers are especially beaten up, lacking any sort of track system to keep them from wearing grooves into the cabinet face.  The veneer is beginning to chip and the drawers make a horrible screeching noise if you don't lift them a little when you pull them out.

 

I decided to install center mount drawer slides to fix this problem. Follow along, I'll show you how!

First, pick a drawer that you don't use as much.  We want to get our technique down before we get to the problem drawers.

Empty it out.  Such pretty liner paper!

Leave these tacks lying face up on the floor. You're going to want to roll your leg or step on them as much as possible. If your home improvement project doesn't end with a trip to the ER for a tetanus shot, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

Separate the two parts of the hardware. They have names but I forget what they are. That's probably the lockjaw setting in.

Realize that the groove that's cut in the back of your drawer isn't wide enough to accommodate your hardware. Think about saying "Eff this," but then remember you have a dull hacksaw!  Inelegantly chop a wider clearance in the back of the drawer.

Install your hardware on the back of the drawer. Easy peasy.  This would be a good time to poke yourself with those tacks again.  Or you can just cut yourself on the screws that now poke through the inside bottom of the drawer, because the wood is too thin. 

Stop taking photos at this point because it's so fricking difficult to put screws in straight in such a tiny cramped space. When you're installing the base part of the hardware inside the cabinet, be sure to strip the screw. That way, if it's in the wrong spot, it will NEVER come out.

 

Marvel at the fact that the one drawer you had that worked well now makes a horrible clicking noise as you try to wrench it open.  Decide that it might just be easier to put those little plastic guards in the rut the drawers are forming in the cabinet face.

Plan to make friendly with a carpenter or a cabinet maker and hope that they can give you a good deal on cabinet refacing down the road.  Voila!

Painting the kitchen

My kitchen was really grimy when I bought it.  A reminder:

It was also pretty matchy-matchy.  Yellow paint to match the yellow tile.  I wasn't crazy about how it played off the new Marmoleum.  The wall color and tile were very cool and the flooring was warm.  I felt like it needed to be bridged better.

There were a lot of holes in the wood trim to be filled.  I used a wood filler that has the annoying habit of drying out almost immediately, making sanding it afterward more difficult.

I have to use the spackle that goes on pink and dries to white or I try to sand it too soon.  I'm not good at waiting.

Once I got the walls painted a warm off-white I felt like the counters looked too cool.

I grabbed the leftover paint from the failed first painting of the dining room and painted the soffit.  I think it balances the warmth and coolness, even if I'm not totally crazy about the color.  I still think it needs to be more saturated.

The final product:

The funny thing is that now the soffit paint is now pretty matchy-matchy with the tile.  I CAN'T WIN.

A proper range hood

There was no ventilation in my kitchen over the stove.  I did have this charming little shelf, however.

I love that shelf.

But trying to sear meat or do anything that created a lot of steam was a real pain.  I'd end up smoking out the whole house.  I hired a contractor to put in a hood because it involved cutting cabinets, electricity, duct work, and going into the attic where THE SPIDERS, OH MY GOD, THE SPIDERS are.

Did I mention I did this the Friday before Thanksgiving?  I'm stupid.

This was messy business.

It was totally worth the mess.  He even cut down my shelf so I still have a place to put my salt and pepper. I'm not sure how I would have pulled off Thanksgiving without it.  My only regret is that I bought a used hood on craigslist rather than buy a new one.  This hood is old so it will be difficult or impossible to get replacement parts, and it's LOUD.  Good thing I'm sort of deaf.  Bummer to be my perfect-hearing roommate!

Don't look under the trivet.

In my kitchen, adjacent to the old fan in the ceiling that needs to be removed, was a wooden trivet.

I've been ignoring it for almost six months. There's no reason to screw a trivet into your kitchen ceiling, therefore there *must* be something really terrible behind it.  The week before I was to host Thanksgiving I decided to deal with this.  I know.  I know!  I'm dumb; there's no reason to start projects like these when you're attempting to orchestrate a meal for ten people.

Hey there, big hole.  Holes are actually no big deal, but this hole had screws that extended from the attic, through the lathe and plaster, and past where the kitchen ceiling should end.  Hence the former owner screwing a trivet there instead.

Ha ha, just kidding, that makes no sense, no matter how you dice it.

In order to patch the ceiling I would need to get the screws reversed enough to not poke through.  I didn't want to climb into my attic and dig around it the insulation for the rogue screws for a lot of good reasons, but mostly because of SPIDERS, OH MY GOD, SPIDERS.  I decided to try and reverse the screws from below.  I tried a number of things that didn't work and then one thing that worked really well.  This was my recipe for success:

Take your drill.  I love my drill.  There would much wailing if anything happened to it.

Remove the drill bit.

Spin it until the grabbers are extended really far.

Tighten the grabbers around the end of the screw.  Then depress the trigger and reverse the screws back into the ceiling.  I'm sure an expert would tell you that this is back for your drill or bad for the screws or bad for the environment, but I don't care (and you shouldn't) because it worked.  Once that's taken care of you can patch the ceiling like normal.

 Apply your patch.

Apply spackle, using a large trowel.  Let it dry and apply more if you need to. 

Sand it.  Boy does this part ever suck.  Wear a mask and protective eyewear and know that it won't make a lick of difference because you will be *coated* in dust.  Think about how you should be making cranberries and sewing napkins for Thanksgiving dinner.  But also think, "Hey, now I have a trivet."

Slap a coat of paint on the ceiling and think, "I'll texture that spot on the ceiling later."  Ignore for 3-5 years.  Enjoy your free trivet!

A snapshot of my mind lately

I wandered into the kitchen to strain the chicken stock I'd made the night before.  Then I remembered that I needed to put laundry in the machine so I went and grabbed the basket.  But then I got hungry so I started to make a snack. Then as I was sitting there, eating my snack (laundry basket by my feet), I decided I should finally hang the light fixture I bought.  So I pulled out the ladder and did that.

Is this what dementia is like?  Will there are least be good drugs to look forward to?

The new kitchen floor

The Marmoleum I wanted usually takes about three weeks to arrive.  They send a big truck from the midwest and it travels around delivering linoleum happiness to people.  With the economy in the crapper nobody was ordering flooring, so the truck was just sitting there, waiting to be filled.  Three weeks after we ordered the tiles they said it would be at least another three weeks.

As I mentioned before, I was brushing my teeth in the kitchen sink because my bathroom vanity was on order, and the kitchen floor was just dusty subfloor.  I think it was a real testament to either 1. how much I love this house or 2. how tired I was, that this didn't make me crazy.

I had waffled over the kitchen floor, wondering if I could install it myself.  I had been warned that it's not as easy to install as ceramic tile, that to get the seams sealed required some skill.  The Marmoleum Click tiles, which snap together like laminate flooring, would add height to the floor that I didn't want.  I found out that Marmoleum comes with a 25 year warranty if you have a certified installer put it in.  So I decided to spend the money to have it installed professionally.  I got a ridiculous number of bids and selected A-1 Linoleum.  I can't say enough good things about A-1.  They were fantastic, they were honest, they were NICE.  The owner split the difference of rushing the tiles out, which was about $60.

Worth every penny. Having a real kitchen floor again made me feel like a princess.  I love the feel of the linoleum under my feet.  A lot of people complain about old linoleum in their apartment or house and I have to point out that they have vinyl tile, which is a totally different thing.  Linoleum is made of renewable materials and uses no toxic chemicals.  So if I ever sell the house and the new owner doesn't like the floor (and MANY people dislike my flooring choice) they can rip it out and I don't need to feel quite as guilty if it ends up in a landfill.

The only problem with putting new things in your house is that it highlights how much other things need sprucing.

How bad does that weird carpet in the dining room look, now? Someday down the road I'll fix that . . .

But for now I really really love my kitchen.

The kitchen floor debacle

I had to go back to work the next week, which was probably for the best.  My fingers and wrists were so swollen and sore from gripping tools, scrubbing things, and holding a paintbrush that I woke up in the morning with my hands frozen in a claw.  None of my rings fit and my back was a mess.  I stopped by the house after work to throw another coat of paint on the closets and built-ins and found that the cheap styrofoam cooler of beer I had in the kitchen had cracked and leaked all over the kitchen floor.

 The kitchen tile before

Since the tile was cracked and lifting in places (which you really can't see in the photo), all the water traveled into the subfloor.  Luckily, I was already planning on replacing the kitchen floor and had already gotten six bids and ordered the materials. 

I pulled up the tile right then and there until I hit dry floor.  The water had spread the 9 ft length of the kitchen, to about a six feet width.  I pointed a fan at the floor and hoped it would be okay.

The upshot to this whole situation was that the mortar and grout that had been used to put the tile down scraped off quite easily.  In retrospect I wish the water had spread MORE because that last 30 or 40 square feet that stayed dry was a pain to clear.  I rented a floor scraper from the North Portland tool library but I didn't have the requisite upper body strength or stamina to use it very effectively.

I had ordered black and white Marmoleum, to be laid in a checkerboard pattern.  The installers were planning to put down a 1/4" underlayment beneath the tiles, but the subfloor would need to be pretty smooth.  Ultimately I went to the hardware store and rented a belt sander.  Gary at the Home Depot really didn't think this would work.  He asked he if I had considered a power washer.  I reiterated that I was removing thinset INSIDE MY HOUSE.  In the kitchen.

He suggested Goo Gone.  I asked him if he knew what thinset was.  Was he familiar with ceramic tile and how it gets attached to things?

He really tried to talk me out of the sander.  I was really tired at this point.  He very begrudgingly rented it to me.  He and his coworker joked back and forth that it was going to take me all night, that it was good I had a sleeping bag in my trunk, that it was a good thing I could have the sander until morning.  He tried to sell me 15 sanding belts, because "I was gonna need them." 

And guess what happened?  The sander worked like a charm.  I had the sander back to them in less than two hours.  I had used two sanding belts, but could have gotten away with one.

Suck it, Gary.

Day 1 & 2: The kitchen

It has a nice personality!

The nicest thing I could call the kitchen is "comically grimy." The cabinets, while still in good shape, likely hadn't been scrubbed in 20 years. There's no range hood, so I imagine any smoke just sort of sat in the kitchen. The cabinet doors were filthy and the hardware was from the 70's. And it was very ugly. I decided to remove all the doors and drawers, remove their hardware, and to give them a good scrub in TSP.


I numbered the doors so I'd know where they'd go later. This was another Good Idea.

Some of the hardware didn't want to come off, it was so caked with grime. After scrubbing and rinsing and drying the doors, I did the same inside the cabinets, removing the old contact paper.

Man, do I have feelings about contact paper.

I removed 70 years of contact paper from the cabinets, layer upon layer of it. The bottom layer took me about two days to remove and I had to blast it with a hair dryer first to warm up the adhesive, then carefully peel it off in small strips. I swear that I am still finding bits of the old paper stuck to things in the house. I've decided that contact paper with adhesive is the devil, in fact. I decided it's not allowed in the house . . . well, except in those six drawers . . . but that's it!

I then painted the insides of all the cabinets and hit the doors and drawers with a coat of Howard Feed-N-Wax wood preserver. It made them shiny and pretty again. I had a lot of people ask me about paintning my cabinets, but I'm reluctant to do that. Once you paint it's hard to undo without a lot of time, effort, or expense. And I like the look of real wood. With the new hardware some of the cabinets look really nice:


With some of the doors the old hardware created a stained depression in the wood which still shows:


Someday, down the line, I'd like to have the doors refinished. I think the burl of the wood is gorgeous and these cabinets are STURDY. Someday I'll have a professional hang the doors too, because, man, is that ever hard to do by yourself. All of my doors are crooked or they overlap a bit, or they aren't level . . . I never knew that would be such a challenge.