Let's Talk Kitchens

Hello! This weekend at Wallpaper Acres was a very busy and long weekend spent in the kitchen! A couple of thoughts that are front and center:

1. If you are thinking about buying 2-inch thick, 8-ft long slabs of butcher block and do not have at least 8 people to move them, don't do it!

2. Cutting a hole for the sink is nerve racking...

3. If you think installing countertops, a sink, and plumbing will take 8 hours, go ahead and budget 80 hours...

But in all seriousness, we have some major updates to share! John and I are very sore at the end of this weekend as moving our countertops and doing plumbing were not easy and required a lot of up and down and heavy lifting but we persevered!

Saturday, we got to Wallpaper Acres midmorning and were ready to tackle the kitchen. We are still touching up cabinet doors and need to install those (cabinet process post still to come but you will see some of the finished products in this post). We started the day with demo and removed the old sink, dishwasher, and countertop. Taking things apart should be easy, right? There are these little clips that clip a sink in and we were unaware...however, they were no match to the crowbar! Don't fret, we made sure the water was turned off first. The old Formica countertops came out pretty easily once we removed the anchor screws and we just snapped them in half as needed to get them outside. The dishwasher was hard-wired in so John took care of that and out the door went the dishwasher that still had the previous owner's dishes in it!

A couple of weekends ago, John and I had purchased our butcherblock countertops from Southeastern Salvage. There were a lot of different types of butcherblock to choose from there and we actually fell in love with the mahogany but did not fall in love with the price of them...we decided to go with 3 slabs of 2-inch thick x 8-feet long x 3-feet wide of rubberwood. Not the fanciest of wood but it is a hardwood nonetheless and it looked great so it will get the job done!

Once we got it down to just the cabinets, we needed to install brackets that would support the overhang on the peninsula. These are very heavy pieces of steel that will hold the weight of the overhang where we will have bar seating. John and I went back and forth if we wanted a overhang or not and ultimately decided to add the 6-8 extra inches for usability. Installing the brackets was not the easiest thing to do as the way our cabinets were, there were not obvious places for the supports to go (it is recommended to place one every 18-20 inches). We braced the cabinets with a 2x4 and then John had to route out the center of the 2x4 along with the cabinet to flush mount the bracket in order for it to be installed properly. This whole process took us 1.5-2 hours (a lot longer than the 8-minute YouTube video we watched...but hey, this was completely new to us). In theory, we could have done visible, decorative corbels but when we looked at the cost, these hidden brackets were the same price and I will not be hitting my knees on them when I sit down (a very important factor).

From here, we took measurements for the first piece of butcherblock and went to the garage to cut it. We did dry fit the countertops to make sure that they would fit and we wanted to make sure that they were level throughout. The first piece measured was the peninsula so it would remain 3-ft wide and length cut down to what we needed. Let me just tell you, we did not take much off and that piece of butcherblock easily weighed 175 lbs...and it was just John and I. So we had to problem solve :)

We loaded it up on the furniture dolly and rolled it up the driveway and to the front door. From there, we rotated it to it's side and carried it inside with 3-4 breaks as it was HEAVY! Once we got it in the kitchen, we were able to use the cabinet bases to slide it into place. With a few screws, it successfully was in place, never to move again! We did have to do some prep work on the walls the sink and stove were on and installed ledger boards. The ones that were there previously were not level so we used John's laser level to make sure that we were keeping everything straight and level. I thought it was a little funny that the previous counters were not level...but that was not very surprising.

Next we cut my favorite piece, the 15in by 25.5in to go between the stove and refrigerator, that would be the lightest cut of the day! We also cut the piece that would go to the left of the stove as that was a smaller piece too. Important to note, we decided to do butt-joints to join the runs of countertop as it was easier than a miter and we were not able to find a 10-ft section of butcherblock for a decent price. The last piece to cut was another long piece but we would be ripping it down to be the correct depth so it only weighed like 100lbs...and we were able to carry it up the deck and through the living room. This piece was the trickiest to set but it did fit right into place with only 1/16 of an inch between each butt-joint (we were very happy with that! Once that piece was in we were able to screw them in and confirm that all the counters were level and looked pretty darn good! John also used his router to roundoff the top edge and corners of the butcherblock to give them a finished look.

Remember that stove we bought from Habitat a couple months back? Well, now it is in it's actual home and not in the garage! I can now confidently say that it fits, it works, and it looks great! There was a small hiccup that John had to address - the outlet box for the stove was sticking too far out so the stove would not push all the way back. On Sunday morning, John was able to recess that outlet box into the wall and the stove slid all the way back! Whew - what a relief!

This was when my parents arrived with pizza for dinner (shout out to them for bringing us food and taking care of Willow!) John and I were working away and wanted to keep the momentum going so this was nice to not have to stop and go grab food and the pizza was great!

After a quick pizza break and showing my parents the updates, we started installing the sink. I had butcherblock in my house in Murfreesboro, but I paid someone to install them and install the apron sink as I had no idea what I was doing. I remember the plumber being nervous about cutting the sink hole and we felt the same way...this cut would make or break the momentum we had because if we messed up, that was it! We would have to buy a new piece of butcherblock and we really did not want to do that. I cut the sink template out and John traced it onto the counter. We looked at it for a bit and decided to go for it. John opted to use the track saw instead of the jigsaw...easier said than done as the counter depths would only let the saw go so far back. So we unscrewed that section and took it out so that we could get a clean cut. John was able to cut away the stencil and we placed it back...time for the moment of truth...the sink fit, hallelujah! And it looked pretty good!

Let's take a second to talk about this sink - we purchased this Kohler sink from Costco (one of our favorite places). We saw this bundle a while back and could not find a better deal anywhere else. For $300, you got the sink, faucet, sink liner, and cutting board. For our budget, we could not find a better deal for the look we were going for! When we went to purchase the sink at Costco, we could not find it and thought we had missed out on it. Turns out, they had been moved to an endcap because of a sale! The bundle was on sale for $220, now it was definitely a deal that we could not beat!

To wrap up the evening we mixed saw dust from when we cut the butcherblock and wood glue to fill the 1/16th of an inch gaps where the runs of countertop met (picture below). This is a neat trick to ensure that the shade of wood filler matches the wood you are using if you plan to use a clear finish which we will be doing.

Sunday rolled around and it was time for some plumbing...have John and I ever plumbed anything...nope, not at all...but we watched a YouTube video so that makes us experts, right? We had purchased a new garbage disposal that needed to be installed and were going from a two-bowl sink to a one-bowl sink. (We were able to find a video of someone installing the same sink and a new garbage disposal online so we did our homework watching that). John did a very good job following the directions and installing the disposal. From there, we had to hook up the PVC pipes from the disposal to the existing line. John stared at it for a bit, I stared at it for a bit, the man at ACE hardware stared at the picture of it for a bit...ultimately I sat on the floor and shoved some pipes together and was able to make it work with the pieces we had! I was pretty impressed and am now a certified plumber, right?!? (Also, it was a pretty simple hookup and we were severely overthinking it!)

Once we had all the pipes fitted, we tested it out and it worked! We had one small drip that was fixed with some plumbing tape, so I will call that a win!

We were also able to get our new vent hood installed and it was 1/16th of an inch too big...once you factored in to spraying the cabinets with paint, it added a thin layer that we had to squeeze the vent hood past...nothing a little touchup paint won't fix! I really love how it looks and think it matches the stove pretty well. The below picture should be sponsored by Habitat!

Take a look at how the weekend started and how it finished!

Saturday AM

Sunday PM

This weekend was long but it is amazing what 18 hours of hard work can do! John and I are very happy with how the kitchen is turning out! What's left? We need to put the drawers and cabinet doors back on, finish and seal the butcherblock, wheel the fridge back in and apply the backsplash. Soon, this space will be complete.

Thanks for reading another update of Wallpaper Acres, each weekend is one weekend closer to moving in!