DIY Decor
Goodbye Microwave, Hello Microwave Cabinet
So, remember that microwave that we got a great deal on a couple of months ago? Yeah. Well. We returned it.
A few of you questioned why we needed “such a big microwave” when we originally posted about it, which did get us thinking that we don’t do all that much microwaving. A bowl of soup here. A bit of reheating/defrosting there. And when we took down the kitchen’s original black over-the-range microwave (which was just as wide as our oven – 30 whole inches)…
… we realized just how hulking the new 30″ one would look in its new home next to our pantry. See, we had originally planned to build it in there like the one in our first kitchen, but that meant that it would butt up right against the side of the window:
So two weeks ago (after seeing how nice and open the kitchen felt without a lot of those heavy, overbearing upper cabinets)…
… we returned it and bought this much smaller countertop one instead for $84 (it’s 18″ wide). He’s nice and “modestly sized” as Sherry likes to say. I even tossed a tea mug in there for scale:
But much like the big original microwave that we got, we never planned for it to live on the countertop. Oh no, we got planz yo. This guy is getting built in…
This is one of our old upper cabinets (it hung to the left of our old microwave when it lived above the cooktop) and it just happens to fit the microwave almost perfectly. It’s actually a bit snug around the frame, but the frame is built in around the front edge of the cabinet if that makes sense. So on the inside of the cabinet there’s about two inches of extra space on either side.
The only problem was that:
- the cabinet itself was too tall for its new home next to our pantry (it would hang oddly low as-is)
- it wasn’t deep enough for the microwave to sink back into it and look flush (with extra ventilation room for safety reasons)
So we had some work to do. We had to adjust the height and depth of the cabinet, then hang it next to the pantry with a new door. That way the infrequently used microwave can be hidden away most of the time and when it’s needed we can open the door and zap our food while allowing the appliance to vent (more on that in a moment). Oh and we already had an electrician add an outlet where the cabinet will hang, so the microwave will have power.
Many custom kitchens actually have built-in microwaves, like this one from here…
… and this one, from here:
So we knew it could look great and actually be really functional (warning: read the paperwork on your microwave to see what type of ventilation it needs – some don’t need any except for the ready-made space under the little legs while some have a vent on the side or back that needs room for aeration, which is something we took into consideration as we went)
But back to the whole cabinet being too tall issue. First up was chopping that baby down to size. I started by prying out the metal shelf rails. Luckily they came out with almost no effort.
Then I measured, marked, measured again, leveled, measured again, double-checked my marks and leveled one last time…
…before taking my jigsaw carefully along the lines I had drawn on each of the three sides.
What I was left with looked like a bad magic act. All that was missing was a lovely assistant chopped into two lovely pieces.
Are you nervous yet? I was. Although I felt a bit better because this was my second time doing this (I tested this method on another spare cabinet that we weren’t reusing first).
So that big cut started getting me to a better height, but I also had to cut a hole in the back to help with the depth/ventilation plan. Oh, and I had to put a slight notch in the bottom right side of the frame so that the microwave door could swing open more easily (this way we can shimmy the microwave over to the right in the cabinet, which gives the hinges on the left more room to swing so the door can open freely). Not to worry – it will later be concealed by a door.
Here’s a shot to show how the microwave stick outs the back – which also helps it vent since there will be a column of “free space” behind the cabinet for aeration all the way up and out the top of the cabinet (more on that a bit later).
Enough looking at its backside. Let’s look at the front. Is this starting to make more sense? Remember once we add a door that small notched out area for the microwave will be concealed.
Oh, and I added that shelf above the microwave by nailing in some fixed ledges for the shelf (which we already had) to sit on.
Obviously the cabinet was far from being ready to hang. It needed a top, for one. And it needed some extra support on the back if it was gonna sit away from the wall enough to let the microwave vent out the back.
So we devised a plan, I made a sketch (which I don’t expect anyone other than me to understand) and hit up the hardware store to grab some wood.
The new top was basically three pieces. A thin piece of plywood as a new top, a thin piece of pine on the front and a scrap piece of 2×4 to hold it all in place. It’s looking a bit rough at the moment, but bear with me…
Along the back I screwed in a few blocks of 1 x 4″s doubled-up. This way the cabinet will sit away from the wall a couple of inches and I still have solid wood to screw into when we go to hang the cabinet. Oh, and we cut a wide channel in a couple of the blocks to (broken record alert) help the microwave vent up the back.
Last but not least was the side. For this I used another thin piece of plywood that I clamped on tight, cut to size, and then nailed in place.
After all that “fun” stuff, it was looking more like this:
Significantly more cabinet-like if I do say so myself. Especially once it all gets painted the same color with a door in the front and some shiny new hardware.
Then with the help of my lovely assistant (nope, not the one I pretended to cut in half earlier in this post) we hung this Frankstein’d cabinet in place.
Here’s a view of the top so you get a sense of the venting on both the back and side. I drilled some holes in the left side of the cabinet to take advantage of the gap between it and the pantry (the gap exists because the cabinet frame was wider on that side).
So with cabinet hung, we put the microwave in place and plugged it into the outlet that our electrician put in when he was here about a month ago (more on that here).
Of course it’ll look better once it has a door on it (and when it’s all painted) but even with the addition of some cookbooks and plates it’s starting to look more presentable. Even if just a little bit.
Update: as for that little routed out area that will only be visible with the door open, many of our cabinets are less than gorgeous when they’re open (picture them stacked high with cookware, blenders, tupperware, and all sorts of other stuff!) so we’re of the “what happens in the cabinets, stays in the cabinets” mindset. If the doors are closed and the kitchen looks good, we’re happy!
This makes us all the more excited to take care of the door situation – which we’ll hopefully be posting about later this week. Until then, allow this terrible photoshopped rendering to demonstrate how the added door will hide the little routed our area for the microwave when it’s closed (it’ll be open whenever the microwave is in use, of course).
Oh and with this cabinet now hung next to the pantry it leaves us 14″ to the right of it (between the side of the cabinet and the window over the sink). And once the new 12″ deep floating shelves get hung on the oven wall of the kitchen there will also be exactly 14″ between the front of those floating shelves and the right of that window over the sink). So it won’t look crowded, and will actually be nice and balanced. Whew.
Getting the whole cut-down microwave cabinet thing done also makes us excited about our shrinking budget. Not only did we get $255 back for returning the jumbo microwave, we also sold our old over-the-range one on craigslist for $90 (which adds up to $345 back in the ol’ kitchen piggy bank). Plus, we craigslisted our old kitchen table & chairs for $120 and actually sold our old granite counters for $350! If my math is right, that’s $815 back in our pockets… well, it’s actually $731 after we take out $84 for the cost of the new microwave. Still, over seven hundred beans is definitely a welcome “kitchen refund” as we get to that hard “middle part” of the makeover that has us eager to reach some of the bigger changes that we’re slowly but surely inching towards.
No one wants those cabinets painted and the new backsplash hung more than we do, but we’re trying to be realistic about the timeline in here (we originally estimated that we’d be done sometime in January, which we still hope to accomplish). We don’t know how much we’ll have done for the holidays, but at the very least we’ll have our microwave concealed by the time company arrives (oh man, I first typed that as “by the time cabinets arrive” – clearly I’ve been spending too much time in the kitchen). And just to lay it out for anyone wondering what our next steps are, they’re a little unglamorous for a bit longer – and then they should get a lot more exciting:
- cut down all the doors for the cabinets that we added
- add window trim and build a window sill (we had to strip the window over the sink down here)
- add toe kick around all the cabinet bases to make things like the peninsula unified with the rest of the kitchen (we’ll hold off on adding shoe molding until after we do the cork floors later)
- remove all the cabinet doors (after making sure they hang straight and are fitted correctly) and wood putty and sand any gaps/cracks/old hardware holes, etc
- prime everything
- and then we get to paint – yeee haw! (we’re still torn between white and a soft tone like gray-beige, but we’ll share as soon as we’re sure!)
Continuing the list after that step gets us all clammy and overwhelmed, but a new lighting plan, cork floors, and backsplash tile with floating shelves and a built-in range hood are all on the agenda. One cabinet day at a time. What have you guys been doing in the kitchen? Demo? Holiday cooking? Painting? Microwaving?
Thar She Blows! Finally.
Or maybe I should I say “thar she glows!” Either way, we got ‘er up!
And this year the theme was:
- free stuff we already had (no getting in the car to go fetch anything, since we feared that would cost us another week to get things up)
- nothing pointy/hard/breakable (for bean safety reasons)
- color, color, color (just like our tabletop tree in the living room)
So yes, we gave our full-sized tree a whole new look (see what it looked like in 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007 here) using stuff that we already had in the house, like a bunch of leftover paint chips from my bin.
Yes, I save old paint chips to reuse them for things like this art project…
… and this temporary postcard ledge arrangement (from our first house’s office)…
… and this year’s tree project:
First I cut them into strips (so I got 2-3 ornaments out of each leftover Benjamin Moore paint chip) and then used a hole puncher to make a hole…
… which I then used to loop twine and string from my craft bin to hang them. I love that they’re like modern little colorful icicles that cover the tree. And of course the fact that they were all f-r-e-e didn’t hurt either.
The other main element of decoration on the tree is a few spools of ribbon from the gift wrapping closet (snagged on clearance from Michael’s last Christmas). We just unrolled them, found the center point and folded it over the top of the tree, so the same amount of ribbon dangled down each side of the tree in an upside-down V shape. Oh and the “tree skirt” is just three faux sheep skins from Ikea (they’re sort of a holiday tradition at this point).
I even had some leftover ribbon to make a little bow at the top. Aw, shucks. Our tree is definitely a gal this year.
Oh and you’ll probably notice two things from this picture…
- We had yet to “catch up” with our advent calendar when we took these pics (the second we got the tree up we excitedly snapped these photos) – but Clara and I have since hung 12 advent ornaments on the tree – so we’re back to one a day from here on out.
- We did some quick mantel decorating in the kitchen, let’s take a closer look:
I added some old feather trees on the floor (from Target, a few years back) along with two ceramic birds up on the mantel (like two white Christmas doves) from an estate sale a few years ago. I also added in the little thrift store rocking horse that I painted for Clara (more on that here). And of course I hung our stockings from Target a few years ago (backwards this year – just to spice it up)…
It might look like those three stockings mean that Burger didn’t get one… but of course he did! John and I actually share one (labeled “Mom and Dad”) and then there’s Clara’s stocking and Burger’s stocking:
I also stuck a basket full of gifts in the fireplace (actually they’re fakers, see how I made those here).
One of the most fun things about the new doorway between the kitchen and the dining room is that we can enjoy the tree from the kitchen too. See it peeking around the corner of the opening?
Never would have gotten to enjoy that view if the wall didn’t come down a little while ago. Yay, demo!
It’s so nice to see something festive in the dining room (the big tree), the kitchen (the holiday mantel), and the living room (our tabletop tree). Aw, Christmastime, how do I love thee. Let me count the trees, er, ways.
So that’s the inside of the house all decorated for ya. Well most of it (I still have a holiday frame gallery project to shoot and share with you guys). Oh yeah, and for the first time ever we decorated the outside of our house too! We’re talking lights and stars and even a homemade wreath and some bright red ceramic-looking reindeer. That’s right, we went all out. Pics to come as soon as we can snap them and write something up!
Psst- We’ll be back with a kitchen update tomorrow for ya! Lots of the stuff that we’re working on is extremely detail oriented (ex: cutting down an old cabinet to make a smaller one that “matches” the rest of the kitchen and houses a built-in microwave), but we’re moving just as fast as we can!
Pre-Counter Progress
We were feeling a little less than pumped about how unfinished our “new,” tile-ready walls were looking…
… mostly because we found ourselves staring at that mismatched unpainted paneling (shudder) and those ugly unpainted/stained/gross parts of the ceiling that were exposed when we removed the upper cabinets.
So what’d we do? Why we got a-paintin’ of course!
The paneling took two coats of primer and two coats of paint (just to be safe). And the ceiling took… well, more coats of primer and paint than I care to share (I lost count, actually – maybe five or six?). Since some of it was totally unpainted and other areas were stained, we just wanted to be extra sure it looked seamless with the rest of the ceiling when we were done. Thankfully, after lots o’ coats of Kilz CleanStart primer (it’s no-VOC) and the ceiling paint that the previous owners left us in the basement… it all matched in the end. Can I get a whew?
The effect was much improved kinda-sorta improved. I mean it’s still a very raw space. But once we get the new counters installed (we hope to share photos of that shebang tomorrow!), get molding back around the window, add some backsplash tile, redo the lighting, paint those cabinets, and lay our cork floors, things should look a lot more polished. So we’re happy to be inching ever so slowly towards the finish line.
The last thing we had to do before the whole counter installation was add those darn support brackets that we mentioned back in this pre-Thanksgiving post. Basically we learned from the counter template guy that any overhang over 10″ needed some support (our peninsula will have a 12″ overhang on two sides). We could’ve paid $300 to have the Corian reinforced, but the guy also mentioned a cheaper DIY option. It’s like he knew us.
So we bought six 10″ steel brackets in the hardware aisle at Lowe’s and Sherry did her favorite thing (enter spray paint, stage right). At $6 a piece it came to $36, which isn’t free, but sure beats 300 big ones.
Once they were dry I brought them in, along with some scrap pieces of wood that I cut into 12″ sections. The template guy said we shouldn’t just screw the (heavy) brackets into the cabinets alone, but instead should put some wood inside the cabinet to help them hold nice and strong by drilling into that thicker wood surface hidden behind the cabinet.
So after measuring and marking my cabinets to make sure the brackets would be evenly spaced, I loosely hammered my scrap wood in place on the other side of the cabinet (if this isn’t making sense now, it will by the end of the post… hopefully).
To screw them in, I used another scrap piece of wood to act as my temporary counter so I was sure to place them at the right height (to be sure they would carry the load of the overhang without being too high or too low). Then I secured the bracket with three screws.
Here’s how it was looking after I secured the first three brackets in place. Of course, once the counters arrive we’ll also screw them into the Corian from below (Corian has wood reinforcement stuff to screw into underneath it whenever it’s manufactured for an overhang).
And although once the counters are installed and the cabinets are all painted white the brackets will barely be visible, we’re still thinking that we’ll add some shaker-style panels to dress up the back (and side?) of the peninsula. That way those will add some detailing and also allow us to completely hide the brackets behind some panel trim (by routing out the back of it and laying it over the brackets to conceal them). Hopefully it’ll be a fun challenge. I’ll keep you posted on that when we get to that step.
So here’s the kitchen in its counter-ready state. Oh, perhaps you’ll notice that we also primed a stripe of the refrigerator surround right where it meets the counter:
We didn’t want to prime and paint the cabinets before our impending counter installation (when our granite counters got installed in our first house, the white cabinets required lots of touch ups due to tons of scraping and shoving to get the heavy, tight fitting counters in place). So we’d rather just cover the counters and paint stuff afterward. But we thought that little stripe of primer applied beforehand would make it easier to paint right up to the edge of the counters without leaving a sliver of wood peeking through (now if there’s a tiny gap between the paint and the counters, it’ll be white and not brown, so it should blend right in).
It’s looking somewhat like a kitchen, right? Oh but of course ignore the wood chairs (they’re not counter height or the right color so they’re just place-holders for now).
In keeping-it-real news, the kitchen is actually looking more like this:
Of course, as parents when we saw those exposed brackets our “Toddler Impalement Device!” alarms went off, but thanks to some leftover cabinet shelves, we fashioned a dummy counter to make the edges more visible to Clara (and her sometimes clumsy parents). Having the chairs there certainly helps too.
Maybe we should just cancel our Corian order and learn to love these?
Yeah, or not. So excited that our next update for you guys should be INSTALLED COUNTERS. Hopefully tomorrow morning. Woot!
Oh how joyfully we’ll use the sink (my have we missed it!). Merry Countermas to us! We actually have a working fridge, stove, and dishwasher so we’re still able to cook at home (thank goodness) but washing the not-dishwasher-safe-stuff in the bathroom sink/tub is annoying. Is there anything you guys are anxiously awaiting? Have you done any ceiling priming & painting lately? Did you lose count of the coats. Oh man, it feels good to be done, doesn’t it?
Psst- We’ve listed our old granite counters on craigslist for anyone who is interested. You can find more info on them here.
Redoing The Undone
As exhilarating as demolition can be, there’s always that nagging voice in the back of your head reminding you that you’re going to have to replace whatever you’re demolishing.
Bummer, right?
Well, we didn’t let ourselves wallow in that realization too long and dove right into reconstructing the kitchen. Actually, between demoing the tiles and the plywood we actually snuck out to The Tile Shop (in my sister’s borrowed SUV) to buy cement board so we’d have all of our supplies ready as soon as demo was done.
The cement board (1/4″ thick Permabase Ultrabacker to be exact) was about $10 per 3ft x 5ft sheet after the 10% discount code that they offer everyone (YHL10) and I bought four of ‘em. Actually, I bought eight of them because of some gross miscalculations on my part but only used four. So once our extra board returns were made it was about $40 spent. We knew we’d be using them along the entire back wall above the stove (that’s going to be our focal wall with tile to the ceiling, a big range hood, and open shelves) as well as wherever else our standard 18″ backsplash would go on the other walls of the kitchen. I started with the 18″ backsplash boards first since they were smaller and more manageable. They just required some careful measuring to ensure that I cut accurately around the window and for the outlet holes.
To make my cuts I used my jigsaw, since it was convenient and I was good at controlling it. I also wore a gas mask (not a paper one, a real deal rubber one with filters) to avoid ingesting any of the nasty dust that flew. Though I’m pretty sure I wasn’t using the right blade for that material though. It cut just fine, but by the end of the job my blade looked like this:
Notice all of the missing teeth in the middle? Cutting literally sanded them off. So yeah… lesson learned. Maybe I was supposed to use a diamond blade since cement board is so coarse? Either way, I was happy to get ‘er done.
Setting the cut boards in place was pretty easy. I was able to balance them along the old plywood under them (they were the same thickness, which was really handy for a seamless result). Then I just made sure they were level and drove some screws in all by myself while Sherry kept Clara out of the danger zone (aka: our tore-up-from-the-floor-up kitchen).
So once I was sure that all of my screws were adequately sunk into the cement board (pokey screw heads are bad for flush-laying tile) I continued on my merry way around the room. This wasn’t so bad, actually! Especially since I dreaded it so much because we didn’t exactly have a great time with the same process while rebuilding our first house’s bathroom. Maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder?
The thing that made my life much easier was the fact that the 5ft tall boards fit just about perfectly in my 5ft tall wall behind the stove. That meant I didn’t have to do any cutting on those boards (except for the outlet holes). So the ease of cutting made up for the extra difficulty of maneuvering a bigger, heavier board. Luckily Clara was napping by this point so I was able to enlist Sherry’s help to hold them in place while I drilled. It certainly made this part of the day go much faster.
Oh, and as for the dangling outlet up by the vent – it’ll eventually be used to hook up our future range hood. Since we’re not 100% sure how /where that’ll be hooked up we just placed it somewhere temporarily that could (hopefully) work . If not, at least the hole will be hidden behind the vent cover we’re eventually going to build (and there’s some play in the wiring that connects to that junction box so we’ll be able to move it if we need to).
If you look at the photo above you’ll see that our future range hood won’t be perfectly centered on that wall of tile, but it will be perfectly centered on that back wall of the kitchen (when you include the space next to the cement board over the doorway). So once we add our penny tile to the ceiling and install our open shelves and our built-in range hood, we think the way that we “accessorize” the floating shelves will also help restore balance. We plan to use them to house everyday dishes that we’ll use so often they don’t have a chance to get dusty along with other items that are always stored out in the open like vases, some art, a plant or two, etc (more on the whole dust/open shelves thing here).
But just because cement board was done, didn’t mean we were done with our walls. After all, we still had this going on above the sink and pantry:
We briefly talked about doing more tile to the ceiling on that wall, but thought that one focal wall with open shelves and a big range hood with tile to the ceiling would be enough. So we decided that a regular old wall with a standard 18″ backsplash will better balance the other side of the kitchen which will also have that going on next to the fridge. Oh and we also thought tile over the pantry would just be super weird, and that would be the natural stop point for a rectangular effect like the other wall, so we’re happy we bailed on that idea.
But the walls of the kitchen aren’t drywall. Nope, remember they’re painted paneling (which we actually don’t mind for the soft texture and coziness it adds once it’s painted – we had some in our first home’s den too). So we did the unthinkable…
… we actually purchased a sheet of paneling. And oy how it pained us. We’re pretty sure everyone at the checkout was thinking “welcome to 2011, why the heck are you buying paneling?!” Luckily we had one leftover piece of painted paneling leftover from the doorway opening project that we were able to reuse to the right of the window above where the backsplash will go. So I just had to buy one sheet at Lowe’s.
So yes, that was a first. Never in my life did I think I’d be BUYING new wood paneling. And thank goodness it’ll get painted any second now (along with that rough looking ceiling), so we didn’t have to worry about matching color.
Luckily that one 4ft x 8ft piece o’ paneling covered all of the areas that we needed. We had the guy at Lowe’s cut the pieces to size so (a) they’d fit in our Altima and (b) we didn’t have to do it ourselves. But I did buy a new jigsaw blade while I was there (so I could cut the hole for our microwave outlet).
Oh yeah, and notice our moment of laziness above? Since a small-ish upper cabinet will be covering that section of wall we didn’t go through the trouble of cutting out that piece of plywood (it would’ve meant moving the pantry, and it won’t be seen once we install the cabinet with added crown molding around the top anyway). Gotta love one wall-hanging shortcut along the way.
As for the cement board seams, we’ll be taping them and then using thinset over them to set the tiles, which should hold everything in place for the long haul per The Tile Shop’s recommendation. But wait, let’s go back to this picture of that wall head on:
You might be wondering about that oddly placed window (it’s not centered on that expanse right now) but once we add the small-ish upper cabinet to the right of the pantry there will be exactly 14″ of wall space between the side of that cabinet and the window trim. There will also be 14″ of wall space between the right side of the window trim and the 12″ floating shelves that will be hanging on the focal wall (they’ll jut out 12″ to house all of our big dishes and stuff, which is nice because the window will eventually look perfectly balanced with 14″ of wall space on either side).
Anyways, here’s what the kitchen was looking like when we were all done. Still not great, but definitely better. And not only do we love how the room feels without upper cabinets crowding us, it’s also nice to start to see what it’ll look like once the tile backsplash is installed. I wish I had taken a wider shot so you could see the paneling on the other side of the room with the 18″ backsplash that will go over there (next to the fridge) since it really feels nice and balanced with one wall of tile and two standard backsplashes on each of the other two side walls.
Oh, and since lots of folks asked on our last kitchen post – these are both interior walls (that window looks into to our heavily insulated sunroom, not the outdoors) which is why they weren’t insulated before and why we didn’t opt to add any insulation during this step of the process. We lived here through last winter (which was colder and snowier than most) and we knew that the sunroom didn’t get very cold, so thankfully the kitchen never feels drafty or uninsulated (in our experience, brick ranches are great about maintaining a comfortable temperature in general since they’re so solidly built and aren’t usually drafty).
As for the timeline, this whole destruction/reconstruction process took us two days (one for demo/buying cement board, one for installing the new walls) so overall it wasn’t that bad. Though I was pretty darn sore by the end of it all. Thankfully Sherry pointed out that our next step was paint touch ups, which aren’t too bad (ceilings are my least favorite surface to paint, but we don’t have much of it to deal with). We’re actually kind of excited to get that done because the room will hopefully look less Frankenstein than it’s looking now (mismatched appliances + mismatched cabinetry + mismatched paneling = ca-razy). But still better than the before that we started with:
What about you guys. Have you ever hung cement board or actually had to (gasp) buy paneling? Any ceiling painting on your agenda?
Pssst- We’re over on BabyCenter chatting about the birthday time capsule that we finally completed for Clara to open on her 18th birthday.
Psssst- We’ve listed our black above-the-range microwave on craigslist if anyone is interested (it’s only a year old, works great, and is still sold by Sears). Here’s the link.
