Pirhana-- I totally keep forgetting to answer a question you asked

a long, long time ago. Yes, I redid my kitchen. :-) You said you had some questions for me. Here is a before and after pic from mine. As you can see, I had the hideous 80's laminate, which I hated. I did all of this work myself, after pricing new cabinets, I decided to work with what I had, because new cabinets would have cost about 40K. I still haven't done the countertops, and the backsplash, but I am putting in quartz after the 1st of the year. Like an ivory/beige, with some dk. brown flecks in it.(silestone)

But anyway, in a nutshell, what I did here was, removed the upperlightbox, removed all of the oak trim on the doors/drawers, made the frames for the doors, primed the doors, and applied the frames, painted, and put a detail on the low parts of the frames, put up the upper crown, boxed in the top, so everything sits nicely, added the lower cabinet trim, painted the range hood, and updated the toe kick. Oh, and I switched out the dishwasher too. Here are some before and after pix;



Toe kick & detail on cabinets;



New dishwasher, before I put the side panel on;



After the side panel;



All in all, I'm very happy with the quality of my work. For a girl. :-) Once I bought a compound miter saw, it was a piece of cake. :-) Crown is a bitch though. It has to be cut on 2 angles at the same time. I practiced on about 8' before I cut the 12' section. Now, I'm just anxious to get new countertops, a new ceiling fan, and thinking about replacing the stove too, to one that's all bisque. Oh, and I have recently thinned out the things on top of the cabinets....it looks much "lighter" now, only have 4 plants, and 3 things up there. Much better. :-)


Oh, and I should add, total cost for the WHOLE project; EIGTH HUNDRED DOLLARS!!! I was so happy. Lots of hard work though.

Anyway, what did you need to know, LOL...

You wanna come and do mine? Oh wait, I need to buy a house first :dunce:

get a house, I'm there. :-)Me and my saw. ;-)

:shrug:

I was going to put up an ad in my community, because we all have the same crap in the kitchen....but I was going to charge like $1800 + materials. I will put that on hold until after the 1st of the year now too, because of this order I have.

I really had a good time doing this though, but it did take me a month, from start to finish. The doors took 3 hours each to do. Having done it, I bet I could get it down to 2 weeks now. And I worked on it non stop most days....I grew to love the carpentry end of it, and I loves me some compound miter saw.. :-) LOL, when I was done, I was like; ok, what can I build now, LOL...

:thumbsup:

and don't you love the feeling of saving all that dough? :applause:

after the fact, I said; hey, I did the "green" thing....not just trashing the old cabinets. :-) there was really nothing wrong with them structurally, and there was no visible damage to the doors or drawers, so why not work with them. I have the same type in my master and second bath, so I am going to do them as well after the first of the year.

I am on an environmental kick too. I am commuting into the city for my advanced German class in the afternoons. I take the train in, it is about a 35 minute ride, very peaceful (except note to self, don't take the 1:36pm train tomorrow, it is full of hormonal teenagers :eyes: ) Our new house will have geothermal heating, no more gas or oil bills. :D

and she lives with her 21 yr. old daughter. She was telling me that she was getting a new washer, and that it would hold 24 towels?!? and I said, yeah but when do you need to do 24 towels, and she said; Oh, I do 24 towels a week, so now, we can do them all at once! I said; whaaa? She said that they use 2 towels a DAY, each! Now, I'm all for clean, but come on. Why not hang the towels up, and at least use them twice. I use mine more than once, and I make sure they get a lot of air. I use one for hair/face, and one for the rest of my body, but I just can't see changing them out every day.

Am I wrong on this?

but not anymore. I use them for a week. I finally got it through my pea-brain that the only time I use them is when I am squeaky clean. :rofl:

That is amazing! And it is gorgeous too. What a great feeling to have done all that yourself.

but I was worried at first. The last thing I wanted was for it to look like a DYI project. When I first started cutting the trim for the frames, I was doing it with a standard miter box. I was very unhappy with the quality of that, because there's just no way to make sure the cuts come out perfect. I don't care how firm you hold them, most of the pieces did not fit perfectly together. When I would go to glue the 4 pieces together, before I put them on the doors, I was filling in the corners of each frame, which bothered me. (I am a perfectionist) So, when I first started to do some recon about the crown moulding, and how hard it was to cut an inside corner, I went to HD, and a guy was helping me with the degrees, with a book, telling me the angles I had to cut it at.

He had the book laying on a box, and I looked down at the box, and it was like a sign from God, LOL...Ryobi Compound Miter Saw...$99.00! clearanced! I was like huh? I threw it in the cart, came home, threw away all of the wood I had already cut/glued, and in 2 hours, I had all of the wood cut for all of the frames, and they were perfect. No fill at all. :-) I don't think I had considered the saw previously, because I thought they were much more expensive. But it was the best $99.00 I have ever spent. I will get a ton of use out of it.

I look back now, and think about how fucked it would look had I continued on with the hand miter. Of course no one would have known, but I would have, therefore changing my opinion of the entire project.(because I would see all of the mistakes, forever!!)

So, if you count the saw, it was $900.00, but I'm not counting it. :-)

How perfect that the book was on the box that contained your perfect solution. I love when things like that happen.

HELLO, McFly....:-)

Why I was asking was because my parents owned a townhouse. Paid in full.
When my dad died, I told my brothers that I would buy them out, that I wanted the townhouse.
It hadn't been remodeled in over 20 years, so that's what I have been doing - by myself - and I wanted to share tips with you.

Well - you know last week when my daughter was in the hospital?
At the same time, the pipe that goes from the toilet to the wall....in the upstairs bathroom no less,
exploded. I got a phone call last Wed to tell me there is water coming out of the back of the townhouse (we don't live there). I go running over there thinking that I left the hose on *again*.
Nope, I open the back door and the place is flooded. The ceilings were on the floor. All my hard work - gone. Trashed. I am sick.

This is just an example of my luck. Any other time, I would have been over there especially on the weekend. But because Jenny was in the hospital, I wasn't there for 1 week, and that's when it had to happen. The funny thing is, I took all my money out of the stock market to pay off my brothers.
I emailed one of them the other day when the markets went way down and asked what's worse - having your money invested in the market or in a flooded house?

But I will say, your work is beautiful, much better than mine...and I was very proud of mine.

Oh well - now I will get it professionally done. Thank god for insurance.

what a nightmare....I feel your pain. I hope it all gets fixed soon.

a DIY project! You have every right to be proud! It takes guts (you too, Pirhana) to try to do this stuff yourself.

A friend of mine worked with a woman who actually put a new roof on her house. I think of her when I'm up against something I think I can't do -- and I'll think of you now, too!

:-)

When I pulled out the range hood, I was amazed by what I found. I had also been amazed at the shitty contractor work when I took the light box down from above, but they did the same thing behind the range hood;



Florida contractors! Instead of cutting out the hole, they just bashed it right through the wall. Now the really stupid thing is, that the power for the range hood, is on the LEFT anyway, so my guess is, they had the wiring too far to the right initially. Idiots. Thank god no one sees it. The whole kitchen was way off too, not square in many places, and the bottom cabinets are not level at all. :eyes:

Shoddy work for sure.

Must be the same shitty contractors in Az.

Why do it right, when it will be hidden anyway?
:sarcasm:

It looks fantastic! You really did a super job!

I like doing home improvement projects too, but I've never done something this extensive or involved. It does give you a good feeling, doesn't it, to know that you did it yourself, and it looks damn good!

I would just lay on the couch and gawk at it, LOL....I'm pretty much over the "new" of it, but I totally appreciate it every day. I started this project because my outdoor project was getting rained out. I needed 12 full hours of rain-free weather to do a section.

I started doing a cracked tile on my patio, which is 525 sq. ft, back on March, 28th. And to date, it's still not finished, and may not be now until December. That's the first I will be able to get back to that, but it's very time consuming. I'm almost done with it, about another 8 days or so, if I work solidly. I have, on several occasions, worked well into the midnight hour on that, with a light strung up. But at some point, I would run out of broken tile, and couldn't be smashing tile at midnight, LOL, it's very noisy.

Tomorrow, I'll take an updated pic of that and post it. I have pix, but none of the whole thing. I took pix daily on that, and had an email going out daily, since everyone I know thought I was CRAZY for doing it, LOL.

home inspections or something.

when I was househunting, and having read 3 house inspection books, I was about ready to study for an inspector's license :)

:-)

Wait until tomorrow when you see my patio pix. It's another skill I can fall back on if needed. :-) It's nice to have back up skills.

Heck, we'll just make this the DIY thread, LOL...

drives me mad. When I was househunting, I was looking only at fixer uppers - mostly due to budget, and liking older houses - but also because I'd actually love to spend my nights and weekends working on a house!

and had done nothing to it, other than paint, and put in the tile, when I bought it. The house was in great shape, and really, just needs updating. I didn't even bother with a home inspection when I bought it, because I could see all of the critical things, and most everything, mechanical wise, was brand new. I paid 99K for the house, back in 02, and at one point it was up to about 242K. now, I'd say, about 170-180, is what they go for, if and when they do sell. But, I never took money out of the house, so I still have some equity. I am so glad I didn't either.

My neighbor, bought his house at 249K, same as mine, and now he is so upside down...he won't be going anywhere for a while. He told me a while back, that he tried to give it back to the bank, and they told him, they'd rather "work with him". LOL! So he's still in it.

That's when you know things are bad. When you willingly tell the bank to forclose, and they refuse, LOL....

Did you spray them?

I used a mini roller and had a couple of drip issues.
Thank god for 400 grit sandpaper!

The trim is amazing :)

Mine looked like paneling. They too were in perfect condition, but by painting them white, they had that cottage look.

Glidden Gripper, which I was really happy with. One thin coat, rolled on. Of course, I used a TSP cleaner on them first, sanded lightly, and then sanded lightly after they were primed. I used the white foam rollers, and even used Floetrol to condition the paint, but I was still disappointed that they were not that smooth.(not like glass) I'm probably being too particular, though, but I really wanted to stay away from oil based paint, because it takes a long time to dry, and it stinks. But, I tried everything to get it smoother, to no avail. I turned the air off, fan off, worked quickly, etc. nothing worked. It's just the Behr paint I think. It's very thick. Even with the Floetrol. And, if you add too much Floetrol, it doesn't hide as well, so you have to do 2 coats. I was initially going to spray them but with the patio tiling project going on, I really didn't want to get paint on it. I'm posting pix of that tomorrow. :-)Sometimes, spraying can be a bigger mess too.

Here is what the finish looks like, up close, but from 1-2 ft away, you can hardly see it.



I took all of the doors off, and used a turntable that I had,(for a television) and put the doors on top of that, so I could just spin them around, and it made it a whole lot easier. Especially when I did the detailing on each door, which I did with a pinstripe brush. I primed both sides of the doors, then painted the front of the doors. I painted the frames while the doors were drying. Then when the door was dry, I glued the frames on, waited until that was set, and hung the doors. They all were a BITCH to rehang, because they are the older style european hinges, and they never go back on the way they came off. I spent more fucking time hanging them back up then I did painting the damn things. Needless to say, I am NEVER taking them off again. LOL.

Once I got them back up, and got the hardware on them, I painted the inside of the doors. If I had painted the back of the doors while they were off, it would have really slowed me down, since I would have had to wait until they were fully dry to turn them over. About 24 hours.


Oh, and I know exactly the kind of doors you are talking about. My parents had a townhouse in PHX, off of 17th and Pierson, and they had the same type doors. You could probably have added a 2-2.5" X 1/4" trim board to the doors, on the edges, like a shaker style door, and that would have made the center look like beadboard. But I'm sure you did a good job!