Kitchen Cabinets part 2. Plus, Bringing Down the Wall!

Whew! It's been a crazy, long weekend that turned into early-week work for us.

We started last week by tackling that pesky corner cabinet that we left off from the week before. This was trial and error, there aren't a ton of great tutorials online for how to build one of these (or if there are, we didn't find them!), so it was a bit of trial anderror.

The corner cabinet was too big to fit through any of the doors, so we had to assemble it in the living room (as one does).

When I say "trial and error" I really mean it. We had to take the middle shelf out and trim it down to get it to fit. Once the trimming was done we were able to assemble it.

We put the two cabinets that will be on either side next to it, just to see how it would look (last pic).

Saturday morning felt like Christmas morning. I hardly slept due to the anticipation. Saturday was the day we were going to pick countertops!!

Mom and I went a few weeks ago and looked, thinking I'd get confirmation that I wanted white quartz. I did not. I didn't LOVE it like I LOVED the marble. So, for the past few weeks I've read every opinion I could find on marble. Some people love it, some hate it. Some say it's easily damaged, others point to the wear and tear as a "patina" that is seen as "proof of life". I was truly torn.

We got to the stoneyeard early to avoid the heat (and because I couldn't wait any longer!) and started looking around. There were hundreds of slabs of primarily marble and granite, with some quartzite, soapstone, and others sprinkled throughout.

The particular company we went with had several locations and we drove to two to look around.

There isn't any quartz in these photos because quartz is man-made and fades in the sun (who knew?), so they kept samples inside. When mom and I looked, we had gone inside to look at the quartz and she was convinced Scott wouldn't like it. She and Scott have very similar taste in a lot of things (primarily food!), much to his chagrin.

Here's quartz next to marble.

You can zoom in to see the differences. They do make quartz that looks very much like marble (unlike the sample pictured), but when we saw it in person, it lacks the variation and depth that marble has. It does have a lot of positives, stains less easily, is a harder material so it won't chip as easily, but for us, the beauty of marble outweighed the durability of quartz.

Here are some photos I took (not great lighting but it's not like I could move the slabs for better light 😅).

We took a piece of wood painted with cabinet paint, a piece of butcher block, and a handle to compare how the colors would work together.

Notice anything similar? All are marble, and they're all basically white and grey. We picked out 5 slabs, priced them out, and chose from there. The slabs have "levels", which determines the price. We chose one level 7, one level 8, and three level 9s. The salesperson we worked with flipped back through all the photos for us to choose and offered to walk us around to them again. At that point (probably 1.5-2 hours into looking), everything started to look the same. I loved everything we picked, but all for different reasons. There wasn't one that I felt was truly "the one" that would make me feel like the price didn't matter. With that info, we chose the level 7, which happened to be the same one I had picked out weeks ago with my mom!

Ta-da!!

I've never redone a kitchen before, never purchased countertops (or any of the other things that go along with a kitchen remodel), and while it's really fun, the choices are very overwhelming, so I'm glad to have this step done!

With the countertops picked out, we now had a timeline we had to work with. They are coming this week to measure for the countertops, meaning we needed to get a move on getting the new cabinets in place!

We removed all of the bottom cabinets on this side side the kitchen and started on removing some of the uppers.

The corner cabinet gave us a fit, and took almost as long to remove as every other cabinet in total.

When my cousin Kristin came to stay she suggested we cut an opening in the kitchen wall to open it to the front room, which is an awkward, small space. I finally convinced Scott to do it, and when we ordered countertops we ordered a bar for this opening as well, so we needed to make sure the opening was there by the time they came to do measurements. We left the uppers that aren't impacted by this opening to allow us some storage for food until we get the cabinets all in and finished.

Here's the wall we'll be opening:

And here's the other side:

We pulled the cabinets into the kitchen to see how they'd line up.

Previously we only had one cabinet on the right wall:

Our pantry will come after the cabinets we've built and will be 40" wide and go to the ceiling. We aren't building that yet. As the ceiling needs to still come down, and it won't have a countertop, so there's no rush.

We started by measuring where we'd want the opening to be and used the multitool to cut the opening.

We only cut one side because we want to avoid too much drywall repair.

Scott did let me cut a little hole to peek through to the other side.

We had to move some electrical in order to cut open the wall, so it was a hefty project.

With the looming "template" (measuring) date, we worked all through the long weekend and again tight after work Tuesday, and into the late night.

We finished moving electrical, removing the studs in the opening, bracing the opening, and cutting the remaining drywall, but none of that could happen before we built a temporary wall:

With the temporary wall in place, we were able to safely remove the studs from the other side and add a new header:

If you can't tell, I'm trying out new ways to compile/edit our videos. It's incredibly time consuming and I'm using several apps to make it all work, but hopefully it'll get easier with time!

As for the house, we still need to level and secure the cabinets to the wall before the end of the week, but hopefully we can check that box quickly and have an evening of rest after all this work!