Kitchen Building 3: The Counter and Appliances

This is part three in a four part series on putting in our kitchen. Part one is here, part two is here, and part four is here.

The Counter:

I think I can say, without a doubt, that the counter was my least favorite part. Early drafts of my plan included standalone ovens and apron sinks precisely so that I wouldn't have to cut any counter pieces. Ha! That wouldn't have worked - unless you go with a pre-cut counter, IKEA simply delivers you some combination of few-meter-long pieces of counter and you get to figure our what to do next. 

In some ways, that was actually great. Our initial plan was a 320cm-long bank of cabinets, but we were delivered one 250cm-long piece and one 190cm-long piece (not two shorter ones because of where you can and can't have breaks in the counter). The addition of these two turned out to be just over the full length of the kitchen, so we decided to cut another counter support and extend the counter across the whole room. Such a good call. 

But I still had to cut it - one cut across to shorten a piece, a hole for the sink, a hole for the range, and a small hole for the faucet.  I bought a cheap jig saw and went to it. Here's where I was set up in the kitchen for this endeavor - it's not lit well for the photo, but I'd drilled the sink hole at this point:

Using the jig saw was tough. I don't think I had the right blade - I ended up getting replacements (hardware store trip) after my first one bent, and it was much easier with the new blade. It was hot, it was dusty, and the jig saw was not very happy with straight lines. I got better as I went on - after all, it was my first time working with a jig saw. Here's halfway through the sink hole, complete with tape to prevent chipping and supports to avoid the whole thing falling out in progress:

And here's the hole when finished:

You can see that it's uneven - oh, did I do a lot of sanding to get it better. I don't have any pictures of cutting the next hole - I think it went a bit better but I was so tired at that point. And after both holes were cut and sanded, we sealed them with something that I think translated to water-resistant. It smelled terrible. 

I don't have pictures of fixing the counter to the cabinets - it was a two person job, which probably means that we were trying to get it done late at night. I know it involved a lot of squatting and trying to screw things in way in the back of cabinets. Here it is after it was mostly installed. I'm pretty sure I was gluing the two counter halves together here. 

Looking back, there was a considerable drop-off in pictures at this point. We were a good 20 days after IKEA delivery, and 10 days after moving in to this apartment. Our cabinets and counters were in, but we still didn't have a working sink and had not yet gotten our fridge. And yet, life was moving on around us and we still couldn't eat at home. So while there was still plenty to do, it's not as well documented.

Doors and drawers:
I have no pictures of the assembly of IKEA hinges, doors, drawers, and knobs. That kind of stuff is right in my wheelhouse, so I just put on some podcasts and got it done. I could install the top doors relatively soon, but the bottom drawers and doors sat in a pile for a while so we could have easier access to the appliances.

Caulk and more caulk:
Once the counter was in, I caulked all the way around it. We also dropped in the sink so I could do the caulk around there too. That face mask I got for drilling came in handy; caulk just smells terrible. The below picture is during a caulking night:

Washing machine and fridge:
Oh! there's a washing machine in that picture. We walked down to the new+used appliance store on our block and picked them out. The delivery involved a machine that walks up stairs using some sort of hydraulic system. Really! Sadly, even though the sink and washing machine appear in the photo, neither are hooked up. This fridge picture isn't from then, but I think it's worth including because our life was substantially upgraded at this point:

So much plumbing
On the first try, neither the faucet nor the drain worked. The lines from the faucet weren't long enough for the input, and due to user installation error (mine) we couldn't use the first set of IKEA drain plumbing. David says at this point I was very sad. I was probably mostly just done with using the bathroom sink for everything. We went to the hardware store and back to IKEA to solve our sink problems, and David spent some quality time watching plumbing videos on youtube to be sure that our drain installation went well. I think the key part was plumber's putty. It's pretty surreal to run water into a sink and watch it go down the drain, knowing that you did it yourself.

We had paid a bit extra for the washing machine to be installed, but since the sink wasn't installed when it came up, they couldn't do it. Fortunately, they didn't mind walking back up the stairs to do it after the fact - buying local has strong benefits.

And then the dishwasher. We wanted it so badly - I've heard plenty of people say "oh, it's just the two of us, we don't need one" but for whatever reason that has never been our experience. We use it all the time. When we first tried to install it, we followed the handy IKEA instructions, only to find - to our horror - that the drain hose didn't reach our plumbing. We turned it over, took apart a bit of the base and found we could pull that hose tighter. We put it back together to check. Still nope. I'd just like to mention at this point that we modified our whole kitchen design so that this hose would reach. Nope.

We ended up - though extensive googling and at least one hardware store trip - replacing the hose. Our dishwasher had a slightly non-standard hose setup that made this particularly difficult, but David was a hero with the plumbing. I then took the lead on securing the dishwasher to its place under the counter and putting the matched-front doors on. We put in a test load and run it... only to find something was leaking.

I forget if we had to take it apart and tighten everything only once, or whether we did it twice. But we got it tightened and non-leaking in the end. Here it is installed - 27 days after IKEA delivery:

It's sort of consoling that the things in the picture are actually kitchen items (rather than construction stuff) - for the first time! But there seems to be a giant hole...

Oven and range 
At IKEA, they sold us an oven and a stove, assuring us that there were lots of people who standardly installed these things, and that they would supply the missing parts - a plug for the oven, and a gas hose for the range. After the dishwasher went in, we were at the limit of what we could do ourselves and David was having little luck finding any affordable leads.

In the span of a day, he got two lucky leads - we had a gas person come and check our radiators - David asked him if he could install our range. He said yes, but we had to get our own hose. I was immediately dispatched to the end of one of the U-bahn lines to a gas supply store. David also asked the electrician at his work to come in and do our stove. They both came in one day, and both did more than I expected - I thought they might just make the connections and go, but they were drilling holes in the cabinets to run pipes and screwing and clamping everything in place, then testing it out.

We then installed the range hood/vent fan, I grabbed the drawers and doors from the other room, and suddenly we had a functional kitchen! I think David immediately cooked something.

Totally functional, but definitely not done. Part four finishes off this series!