DIY Novice

DIY - Kitchen Remodeling Part III - Completion

2010-07-12T19:59:00.000-07:00

The construction has finally comes to an end. Besides a few minor hiccups here and there and the whole four weeks without a kitchen, we finally got ourselves a brand new kitchen. We put in a lot of effort in skim coating and applying texture on the walls and ceiling and as a result, it does pay off. The quality comes very close to a professional work. A new trim and silt around the windows make them stand out and more prominent instead of being blend in like before. The design of the glass tile back splash in combined with a wall mounted glass/stainless steel vent hood turns out to be quite nice for the setting. We got many compliments from friends on this combination. The LED lights give the kitchen some dimming illumination at night – be warned though, some people may say it’s a bit cold looking due to the bluish color tone from the LEDs, for me, it’s just a clean and modern look.

All new stainless steel appliances we picked compliment one another and blend together perfectly. The dual drawer dish washer from Fisher & Paykel is a plus: we have a small family and most of the time we only have enough dishes and utensils to load up one drawer, so this is a perfect match for us. The four-door LG counter depth refrigerator recessed nicely with adjacent cabinets and appliances. This refrigerator is smaller than a typical French door refrigerator (20.5 cf vs 24.7 cf); however, it’s quite roomy for the size of our family (or perhaps we don’t eat that much, except me). The Bosch glass cooktop got us by surprise: it’s not easy to keep it clean as we thought; there were some stubborn stains that take a lot of baking soda (yes, we try to stay green and toxic-free) and elbow grease to remove. The Bosch convex oven and microwave are conveniently occupying the area next to the refrigerator and so far have served us very well.

Tying all of these appliance pieces together is the cabinetry and the granite counter top. The blank granite counter top comes from 2 large slabs cut to size, and we asked the fabricator to connect them at the sink so there’s no long seam near the corners as typically seen in many kitchen displays. The cabinets are from KraftMaid, which has built-in drawer soft closers as their standard option. I found that KraftMaid and many other cabinetry manufacturers are using Blum Blumotion soft closers for their cabinets, thus I ordered these soft closers from an online store and install on all cabinet doors. These closers keep the doors and drawers from being slammed in which besides making a loud noise, will damage the hinge and door in a long run… a must have if you have young kids in the house. One thing worth to mention is that the Blum Blumotion soft closers for cabinet doors are selling for three to five bucks a piece, while at the store they will charge sixty dollars for the exact same closers installed. Same cut-throat deal with the glass inset cabinet doors: they want an additional four hundred dollars per each door with glass; we end up ordered three doors without panels and got the decorative glasses of your choice from a local glass store for 1/5 of the price.

One last thing I want to mention, if I haven’t mentioned it before, is that we did all of this by ourselves (with exception of the granite top). We probably have saved a few hundreds or perhaps a few thousands by doing it ourselves, but that’s not the point. The main point here is the pride of being able to put things together while keeping up the high workmanship and paying attention to details. This project also made me become more flexible to changes as there are many small changes throughout the project. Finally, this project is just to proven that we do have a true spirit of an DIY Novice.

Now, we just have to think about our next project: fire place mantle, hallway bathroom remodeling, skylights, front yard landscaping, concrete walkway, paver driveway… Uhmm, maybe next year.

DIY - Kitchen Remodeling Part II - Construction

2010-06-03T23:29:00.000-07:00

The list is not that long, but also not short for a DIYer. It can be summarized in chronological order as follows:

Install recessed lights
Cover & patch 4’ fluorescent ceiling light box
Shorten wall near refrigerator & patch
Clean up garage and make room for appliance delivery
Remove & dispose wall tiles, cabinets & counter top
Install sheet rock on walls
Prepare flooring for cabinets
Skim coat and levels 4 & 5 patching
Re-texture walls & ceiling
Prepare plumbing and electrical
Paint walls and ceiling
Install cabinets & plywood tops for counter top
Fabricate and install counter top (by Contractor)
Install microwave, oven & dish washer
Install back splash tiles and grout
Install range hood
Clean up

Schedule? as soon as possible. Availability? every day after work and weekends. Resource? DW, DD and myself (except for the granite counter top). We pulled it through in a little less than 4 weeks. We didn't get into any major surprises except a few that are worth to mention:

When installing a wall mounted range, make sure you plan out the mounting before finishing the wall. In my case, I put up the back splash tiles and grout before checking out the range hood, just to find out that the range hood is heavy and I need to get it into the stud... I was lucky enough to be able to cut out the sheet rock on the other side of the wall (my entrance) and spanned a 2x4 between the studs to provide the support to the range hood. If I know about this earlier, I could've easily installed the stud before installing the tiles everything could be done from the kitchen, no extra patch work from the other side.
Don't sweat out too much if you can't get the crow molding to be perfectly lined up with the ceiling. Some ceilings are not as straight as you think (especially in older houses) and gaps can be as big as 3/8 of an inch. Don't worry! Just try your best to cut the miter and put them up as straight as you can. Use paintable caulk to finish it. You'll be surprise to find out that you won't see any imperfections with naked eyes from 10 feet away. On my first wall cabinet, I stayed up until way past midnight to cut and recut the miter (my good friend neighbor must be really mad at me for making all the noise in my garage that late) forcing them against the ceiling and trying to minimize the gap... at the end, they all looked the same with some caulking and painting.
Use plumber putty whenever you can, even when the manual says "no plumber putty is required." The installation guides for my air gap vent and the sink drain say something similar to this, but when installing them without putty, it leaked like hell... the rubber gasket they provided couldn't keep the water out. The putty will definitely help here and it's cheap. Just get it.
When it comes to plumbing job, unless you're a pro, you should just buy everything related to your project that you can think of and return them at the end if you don't use them. I was so confident thinking I know exactly what I need, and ended up buying the drain extension 3 times to get the right one. Make sure you keep all your receipts, of course.

Another advice for the amateurs... If you want to skim coat your walls or ceilings, you definitely should take a look at the Magic Trowel. This tool helps a novice like me to transform a rough, beat up orange peal textured walls and ceiling into a perfectly smooth wall. Of course you would also need a 12-in blade to finish the job, but the underlain coating was mainly built by using this magic tool.

It was quite a job, but we really enjoy doing it. Here are some pictures we took along the way...

Part III - Complete Kitchen (to be continued)

DIY - Kitchen Remodeling Part I - Planning

2010-05-25T21:25:00.000-07:00

It's been a while until I have some spare time to blog about our recently completed kitchen remodeling project.

We planned to wait until next year when our toddler daughter is old enough so that we can replace the kitchen cabinet without having to put back the child proof latches on our cabinet doors and drawers. However, there was an after Christmas sale on appliances that we could not past, and one thing after another, by January we had already shopped for all appliances for the kitchen. The next logical step was to select a good set of cabinets and counter top and pick a date to start the demolition.

We came to Lowes, Home Depot, and other smaller local cabinetry shops trying to get some ideas on what's out there and what is our style. We didn't want to go with modern or European style because then we have to change out the furniture in our dinning room and great room to match the design... and besides, it's a little "cold". We thought of traditional American style, but the idea didn't last for more than 5 minutes. After a few weeks looking, we settled for French's cottage style as this would match our taste and tends to have an everlasting look. This style also has a little more details to look at, while not being too busy and bulky.

With a style selected, we started our shop list again. Surprisingly we could not find any smaller local cabinetry shops that do painted wood. After further research, we found that painted wood would require a multiple paint and cure processes to provide an enamel finish look while ensuring no cracks along the joints. When it comes to this complicate process, larger cabinetry companies seemed to be a better choice. We finally settled for KraftMaid from Lowes. This is only a mid range cabinet amongst all higher end cabinet manufacturers. While Lowes and Home Depot both have a similar promotion, the display at the local Lowes was newer, thus had gave us more ideas of what the finish product will be like, thus we went with Lowes.

It took us a couple more weeks to finalize the design. One weird thing about Lowes and any other Kraftsmaid authorized retailers including Home Depot is that they don't give out an itemized price list until the design is final and we have paid for the whole thing. Perhaps they want to avoid shop bid? Anyway, at the end we decided to go with Montclair Maple Full Face in Canvas color with Cocoa glaze.

Choosing the counter top typically wasn't easy as there are many good materials and colors to consider. However, in our case, we can only pick a something heavy in dark color to go with the cabinets and our grayish granite tile floor. We can either go with Absolute Black, but finally decided on Galaxy Black granite slab which has some sparkles that would eventually go with our back slash.

Now we just had to wait for the cabinets to arrive and call the warehouse to deliver the appliances.

To see a the construction, please continue to Part II - Construction

Here's a sneak peak at the construction...

DIY - Car Mount for HTC Incredible

2010-05-22T17:02:00.000-07:00

I bought the HTC incredible when it first hit the market on April 29 and until now, I still haven't found a good car mount for the phone. After searching the internet, I found that basically there are 6 types of car mount for smart phones. They all have some pros and cons...

Windshield mount - most popular, may not be stable if a long extension is needed. Also if you have to put up the car shade every day, this will not work very well.
Cigarette lighter mount - depending on the layout of your car, this could put your phone at a good or bad location; In addition, the arm tends to turn/move when pressure is placed on the phone.
Cup holder mount - this would be stable, but my car doesn't have a cup holder up high
Air-vent mount - as you could guess, this is not very stable. A fried of mind had his car cleaned and the dude dusting the car broke his clip and it falls into the vent system... not fun.
Friction-weighted mount - I haven't use this, but was told it could work very well.
Pro-clip type - this is a semi custom type of mounting made by Pro-Clip; tend to be the most stable with no extensions or arms. I like this one the most.

Obviously everyone has different taste for their setup. Without a mounting made specifically for the HTC Incredible, either I have to go with a bulky "one size fit all" cradle in one of the styles listed above, or build something by myself. You guessed it - I picked the second option and here it is... This will stay until I found a good car mount. For now, this is it.

Let me know what you think, or if there's anything can be done to improve the design.

Why this color? this is the left over from other mini projects I had before. Materials? I was using a 12 ga. electrical cable and a piece of sheet metal laying around in the garage. Questions? feel free to ask.