Kitchen Cabinets Part 6- Countertops!

They're finally here!!!

Well, ok, they've been in now for just over a week, but putting together the Year In Review post last week took all of my blog-writing brainpower, so that update had to wait a week. If you had a keen eye and watched closely you may have already spied the new countertops in last week's video, but here they are in all their glory!

I love everything about them: the cool feel of the marble, the movement in the veins of grey, the additional countertop space, the bar. They're perfect!

New counters also meant a new sink and faucet. The sink is HUGE. It's one basin, for easier cleaning of large items, super deep, and has straight sides so you can use the whole sink. The faucet pulls down and doubles as a sprayer, something we haven't had for a year. We also had the countertop installers drill a hole for a push button for our garbage disposal, so that's, literally, at our fingertips now.

Check out the cool dish drying rack we got from Amazon! It makes hand-washing a breeze, takes no countertop space, water drips right back in the sink, and it rolls up for easy storage. After 10 days with no sink at all anything felt like an improvement, but we really do love it!

Last week may have been all about the countertops, but this week was all about drawer boxes.

Armed with the measurements we used for the drawer boxes in the island we were able to knock out the boxes for the remaining cabinets pretty quickly.

Here's the largest drawer box, it will go under the microwave, Scott was kind enough to put on the theatrics in this pose:

We had seven drawer boxes to make for the "regular" cabinets and two skinny pull-outs for either side of the stove.

We drew up our plans: one cabinet to hold cooking oils and one to hold utensils and got to work.

Both pull-outs are basically very tall drawer boxes with a shelf, but one had three holes for "cups" that will hold our utensils.

Cutting the circles out was trial and error with the circle jig, so we did have to redo it once, but it turned out perfect!

It was pretty late by the time we got them together so I don't have any progress pics, but here they are installed and full of oils/utensils!

They make me so happy!

We also got all the other drawer boxes installed:

And started moving our stuff back into them:

Some of our kitchen items have been in storage since we moved, and I'm sure I'll rearrange a million times before I've settled on the organization, but I'm really happy with how everything fits!

I even purged a huge tote of kitchen stuff that I haven't used, and haven't missed, in the last year. That was a great feeling!

Next, we worked on the face frame for the sink cabinet. We didn't want to build this until the sink and countertops were in so we could be sure everything would fit. We took our measurements and quickly put together the face frame.

We gave each piece a good sanding with 120 then 220 grit sandpaper before assembling (so much easier!) and dry fit the frame on the cabinet before painting it with two coats of paint (sanding between!), and attaching it to the cabinet.

The sink will have three drawers and a pull-out for cleaning supplies (like our other two pull-outs) in addition to the cabinet directly under the sink. Plenty of storage!

We are still waiting on drawer slides for under the sink, so those boxes will have to wait until (at least) next week.

We took a couple trips to the hardware store for Poplar, which is not easy to find right now, and started taking measurements for our drawer fronts. Trusty black book to the rescue! We knew the formula for our drawer fronts thanks to the notes from constructing the island so Scott drew out all of our cabinets, and I wrote down measurements.

We color-coded them both on the picture and on the cut list, and each stack of wood got a colored stripe as well. We used this trick when we did the island and it helped the process go so much faster when it came time to assemble.

Here's us cutting the wood:

We kept the wood in two stacks, rails on the right, styles on the left:

We cut the rails and styles for every drawer/door except the corner cabinet, which will take a bit more measuring.

Once everything was cut we decided to call it a day so Scott could watch the Bears and I could relax in the AC.

We still have to build the pantry and uppers, so not everything has a home yet, but we have a usable kitchen again, which has been such a relief. The next step is to cut our mortice(s?) and tenons for the drawer fronts, we are so close to having the lower cabinets complete!