Pantry, Refigerator and More

After the crazy month of non stop house efforts, I took a couple weeks off. I went to Vegas for a long weekend and then celebrated St. Patty's Day enough for this year and next. This past weekend I got back to work in the kitchen.



The first step of the weekend was moving the pantry into place next to the upper. The outlet for the refrigerator is behind the pantry, so I thought it easiest to cut a whole in the pantry and put the outlet in there. With the baseboards removed I was able to slide the pantry up flush to the wall. Or as flush as possible with a hand molded plaster wall. I used shims on the pantry as well as loosening some screws on the upper and shimming out its bottom.





Next I began preparing all of the trim pieces, including the quarter round, the white skins, the casing, and the baseboards. The first step was painting them all white and letting them dry. Then the fun part: measuring and cutting. I bought a manual miter box that allows for simple 45 degree cuts for corners. For the larger skin pieces, I used a circular saw to make the "precision" cuts. It took nearly a full day to cut all of the trim. I am still missing the large skin for the side of the pantry, so the nail gun rental will wait until next weekend.





The hardware for the cabinets arrived a while ago and it was nice to finally start installing them. I was only able to install the cabinet knobs so far because the pulls came with 1" bolts and I need 1.5" due to the thickness of the drawer faces.

I picked up a sample piece of "reducer" transition to test the height and color match. The height is perfect and once the full length piece is mounted, I will add 1/8" of grout between it and the tile. This piece of wood is dry and the way to test what a natural stain will do is to rub water on the wood. The result is a perfect match for my floors, so I will be using a clear stain on this transition piece.




When I cut the baseboard to fit the back wall of the kitchen, I realized something very unfortunate. The tall baseboard that I had chosen to cover the line from the previous baseboard is not going to work in my kitchen. The base cabinet against the wall has 3 drawers and this style of cabinetry has very large drawer faces that cover nearly the full width of the cabinet. As a result, the baseboard is too tall and does not fit. The toe kick is about 4" high so I will need a standard 3.5" high baseboard. Unfortunately this means fixing the bottom of the wall so that the line from the previous baseboard is not visible. This starts with putting mud on the wall.

Next I began working on the refrigerator panel that goes on the other side of the upper opposite the pantry. The front of this panel has a trim piece to match the rest of the cabinetry, which I attached with wood glue. The resulting gap between upper and panel is 1" so I glued together some shims and glued them to the top of this panel. Now I can apply screws through the upper into these shims and 0.25" into the panel. Two of these screws in the back and two more through the front trim piece holds the panel in place. The two in the back required some team effort from Mike Tall and Brooke.  I intend to add some "L" brackets down below the upper to provide stability all the way down the panel.



With everything mounted together, I finally tightened the screws on the upper and mounted it to the pantry. Then I mounted the pantry to the wall through a stud, not that it is going to move anywhere. The final touch on the pantry is mounting the outlet and applying the face cover for a nice looking finish.

Now that I will not be working on the house nonstop, my posts will be more like this with weeklyish updates about accomplishments. I hope to finish the kitchen (minus painting) in the next week or two and I will create a tab for before and after shots. I will add to this when I paint the kitchen and buy the wine fridge and full sized refrigerator.