The Kitchen Renovation Begins! (AKA: sawdust everywhere)

At the beginning of January I shared some of our plans for our big kitchen renovation this year. If you missed it, be sure to check out all the gory details (you’ll also learn about my endless quest to find a new pair of pants — it’s riveting stuff).

While we’re making a lot of changes, the biggest piece is that we’re knocking down the wall between the kitchen and the sunroom to create one big space. That won’t be happening until April, so we’ll be waiting on a whole lot of the work until then — painting the cabinets, new counters, new backsplash, new dining area. But in the meantime, we found ourselves needing to get started on a few pieces because we did something big: we bought ourselves a new fridge!

That’s right, we pulled the trigger on a big part of the remodel. Right now, we have this beautiful fridge:

But our plan is to move the fridge when we knock down the wall and build it into a wall of storage where the buffet is now:

We don’t want to build in our less-than-impressive bisque fridge, though, because the opening wouldn’t be big enough for a higher end fridge down the road (a lot fridges are 36″ wide, but our current one is just 30″). Fortunately we didn’t feel too bad about parting with our current fridge — the ice maker is broken, the fridge is about as no-frills as it gets, and when we bought the house 18 months ago the seller kept warning us that the fridge was on its last legs.

Knowing that we would need to buy a new fridge as part of the renovation, I started scoping some out online. I was on the hunt for something counter-depth — standard fridges can be up to 35″ deep, meaning that built into a wall of 24″-deep cabinets it would protrude a ridiculous amount. Counter-depth fridges are more like 23″ plus a few inches for the depth of the doors, which is a lot more palatable. Unfortunately, they’re also harder to find.

Compounding that problem is that while I often turn to other bloggers to learn what products they love, it seemed like every kitchen renovation I cam across involved sponsored appliances. And even though people say that their opinions are their own, the reality is that it feels different when someone is compensated or receives a product for free. For something that I am spending more than $1,000 on and building into my home, I want to hear from someone who did their own research and then spent their hard-earned money on the what they liked best.

So I did what any normal person would do: I went to younghouselove.com. YHL is what first got me interested in home improvement and eventually blogging, and I still turn to them frequently for tutorials and ideas even though they aren’t posting as frequently anymore (but at least they’re back a little bit!). But one of my favorite things about Sherry and John is that they found a way to support their blog without ever doing sponsored content. Luckily, they used a counter-depth fridge in their last kitchen renovation, and after researching the one they chose I decided it was perfect for us too!

It’s a Frigidaire model that I found at both Home Depot and Lowes.

While the list price is $1,499 and the screenshot above (which I just took) shows it on sale right now, I found it during an earlier sale at Home Depot that let me snag it for even less: $1,195, which came out to $1,296 with tax, a $9.99 water line, and $15 to haul away our old fridge. Score! (Lowes was having the same sale and I tried to buy it from Lowes first, but shortly after I placed the order they contacted me to say it was out of stock).

So, we’ve officially made our first purchase of the kitchen renovation! There is just one problem: we have nowhere to put our fancy new fridge.

You see, the space where our current fridge sits isn’t big enough for the new fridge. And the space where the new fridge will live currently has a big obstacle in the way:

I was able to delay delivery on the new fridge until this coming Saturday, since this past Saturday we were having friends over to celebrate my 30th birthday and I didn’t want our kitchen to be in disaster mode quite yet. But come Sunday, it was time to get cracking on the buffet. (And not the “all you can eat Sunday brunch kind.” HAHAHAHAHA. Sorry.)

We didn’t know exactly what we would find, but the trick with deconstruction seems to be just diving in and tackling each new issue as it comes! We started by removing all the drawers and emptying the corner cabinets. The drawers were each attached to bottom glides with four screws, so it took a little time to get them all off. The bottom shelves required a little extra flexibility.

Next it was time to take the counter off. We were able to figure out that the only thing holding the counter on was 1) caulking along the seam of the counter and the wall, and 2) two tiny little screws from the cabinets into the countertop.

First I used a utility knife to cut the caulk:

Then it was time to take on the screws. Unfortunately they were strange fasteners with tiny square heads, and we had no screwdrivers that would work with them. So we did the next best thing: we dremeled the heads right off. Sam got to try out the dremel for the first time.

With the heads off, we lifted the counter right off and moved it into the hallway for the time being.

Next we needed to detach the whole unit from the wall. It was held in place with a number of screws across the top edge. Most were easy to remove by hand or with the drill:

One was totally stuck, though, and required some more ingenuity with the dremel and using a screwdriver as a chisel.

My suspicion was that the buffet was made up of individual stand-alone cabinets screwed together, and that we would be able to detach them from one another. I had my fingers crossed, as I really wanted to use two of them for our new island and one of them for our wall of storage. The corner cabinets I currently have no plan for.

Fortunately I was right, and we were able to pull the cabinets apart by just removing some screws:

Sweet! The one bummer that we discovered is that the floor was tiled after the buffet was put in — so the tiles don’t run the full length of the room.

This isn’t a problem for most of the space because the wall of storage will cover most of it up, but we do plan on having about 48″ of shallow cabinets (15″ deep) in the corner and they will leave a portion of the floor exposed. Womp womp.

Oh well, we knew we would need to find some matching floor tile anyway since the sunroom closet will leave some floor gaps when it’s torn down. Our contractor also warned us that there is the potential for tiles cracking when we put the temporary supports in to remove the kitchen/sunroom wall and reinforce the header. So it’s a complication, but the tiles are pretty generic and I’m hoping I can find an easy match at Home Depot or maybe even a specialty tile store.

ANYWAY. Back to project buffet-no-more.

With the cabinets separated, it was time to assemble our new island from the two 24″ cabinets. This proved pretty simple — we screwed them back together in the front using the holes that were already there, and then also secured them together with a screw in the back. This required putting some scrap wood in place to keep the cabinets wedged slightly apart at the back, the same distance that they’re held apart by the facades at the front.

Eventually we will have new counters in the kitchen (my current thinking is white corian counters on the “L” of the sink and stove areas, and butcher block on the island and the storage wall). But in the meantime, we want the new island to be usable, and that requires a top. So as quickly as we’d moved the buffet countertop into the hall, it was time to move it back in where we cut it down with our circular saw.

We cut a 48″ length for the island and an 18″ length for the cabinet along the storage wall, which required three cuts. In doing so, we managed to coat our entire kitchen with sawdust. I love our circular saw, but man is it messy.

After a massive vacuuming session, we were in the home stretch. To secure the countertops to the cabinets temporarily — without causing any damage or making our lives harder when it comes time to remove them in a few months — we just used little command strips that I had on hand. They’re strong enough to keep the counters from sliding around during regular use, which is all we need.

 

The last step in preparing for the fridge delivery was to work some magic with the water line. Our new fridge has an ice and water dispenser on the front, which was a major selling point (I’ve never had this before, but it seems luxurious). But for this to function, the fridge obviously needs to be hooked up to a water line. However, the fridge will now be on the opposite side of the room from all our plumbing, so I wasn’t quite sure what to do.

In poking around our basement (yay for unfinished basement ceilings!), I discovered that the current fridge’s water line doesn’t run through the cabinets to the sink like I would have thought, but rather it runs through a hole in the kitchen floor, into the basement, and then directly into a water line in the basement.

So I figured all I had to do was detach it from the current fridge, poke it back down through the hole into the basement, and run it across the basement and up through a new hole where the new fridge will go. I started by drilling the hole in the floor, using a half-inch drill bit. Murphy helped as usual.

I figured I should try to turn off the water to the fridge somehow, and there was a little green lever where the fridge line connected to the main line so I figured that might be the shut off valve.

I have no idea for sure if that actually did anything, but the project didn’t end in me flooding the house so either I was right or this water line doesn’t work to begin with. I hope it’s the former.

With that done, I removed the water line from the old fridge, which involved unscrewing a plate from the back, battling a terrifying amount of dust, and unscrewing the water line from the inside of the fridge.

The end of the water line had a little nut on it to connect it with the back of the fridge, which I knew wouldn’t fit through the hole.

Fortunately, I was able to just pull it off temporarily. I pushed the hose back through into the basement, threaded it across the ceiling, and maneuvered it back through the new hole I’d drilled.

Once it was through, I reattached the nut at the end.

And voila, a water hook-up! I’m imagining the fridge delivery guy breaking the news that I’ve done something horribly incorrect, but let me bask in my triumph for the rest of the week at least.

So there you have it, the kitchen is ready for the fridge! We have a “new” island, and everything looks totally normal and put together, right?