Sunday afternoon Nathan and I set about modifying the cabinets to suit our new kitchen plan. We will be installing a slide-in range where the cooktop previously resided. In order to make this happen, we needed to cut the 30" hole in the cabinets where the range will go and then remodel the remaining cabinets on either side.
I removed the cooktop right before Nathan arrived. First, we set about removing some of the Formica countertop. Nathan hates Formica. I only included this because I think this fact came up about 2 dozen times. It was removed pretty much without incident.
The next step was to cut the cabinets. We brainstormed a little bit and then came up with a system/jig to promote straight cutting and clean edges for our cuts. The cuts were made with a circular saw, which worked well except that you can't cut all the way to the floor with a circular saw. The front edge of the blade is recessed a few inches short of the front of the tool.
As we had anticipated this problem, I borrowed a handy tool from Mr. James to help us out. If you are into home improvement or tools in general, one of the new tools to hit the market is these little oscillating multi-tools. You'll see commercials where they use them for cutting, scraping, sanding, etc. The often have a little triangle-shaped sanding pad or other attachment affixed to the front. This is one of those tools that is a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. I dare say that there is a better sanding tool, scraping tool, and cutting tool out there, but this little guy is mighty handy. He allowed us to cut pretty much whatever we wanted, wherever we wanted. We used him to cut a lot of parts that were hard to get to.
We then set about building the end pieces for the new cabinets. We used a table saw that I had been given a while back but never really used. The next part is really a bit embarrassing. The saw was not cutting very well and creating a bunch of smoke. Twenty minutes or so into using it, Jenny rolls up and says: "Um, is the blade on backwards?" Yes, yes it was. It is really annoying when engineers do that. 90% of the time they make the job harder than it has to be, ask 1400 questions and provide little to no help. This time, Jenny was absolutely right and we hadn't even considered that particular source of our troubles. TO OUR CREDIT, the blade was installed backwards when it was given to me.
After flipping the blade around, the saw worked much better and without smoking us out from the burning plywood. Ugh.
Anyway, after an hour or so of ripping down plywood on the table saw, we had the sides and stiles cut for the cabinet. I have to finish nailing it all together since the hardware store was closed by the time we got to that step. All in all, it was a very productive day and Nathan was once again quite helpful.
I uploaded a few new pictures to the Kitchen Remodel album on picasa (link on the right.)
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