Plumbing Tips- Teflon Tape, Pipe Dope, Channel Locks
Posted by Wayne
As I’ve mentioned several times before, back in the day I fancied myself a plumber. This was a very valuable experience and I learned these 3 handy tidbits which I will now dispense:
Teflon Tape
If you’re bold enough to be doing DIY plumbing, you’re probably aware that you need to use teflon tape to prepare any metal threads on a ‘male’ piece before screwing it in to a ‘female’ fitting. I can’t think of any exceptions to this, except when you’re joining two plastic pieces you’ll probably want to use pipe dope only (see tip #2 below). The teflon tape basically squashes down into all the little crevices in the joint and prevents leaks.
What I didn’t know was the proper way (and direction) to apply the tape to the pipe. If you wrap it in the wrong direction it will come unraveled when you try to screw the male piece into the female piece. For me at least, this is very tough to figure out just by looking at the two pieces and envisioning what is going to happen when they get screwed together.
Tiling a Backsplash
Posted by Wayne
I had been looking forward to tiling the backsplash ever since I had installed the under cabinet lighting. I knew it was going to look really good.
Before
Laying a Hardwood Floor
Posted by Wayne
We had our appliances scheduled for delivery on about January 19, and my original goal was to have the hardwood floors installed before that date so I could start right away with installing the appliances. We picked out some engineered wood in early December from Home Depot and it needed to be special ordered and they told us it they would have it in about 2 weeks. We also had to order a t-molding for where the hardwood floor of the kitchen would meet the carpet of the living room, and a threshold piece for where the hardwood would meet the sliding glass door.
I prepared the floor by ripping up the old linoleum and removing all of the baseboard trim. The linoleum left a fair amount of paper and glue residue. I spent quite a bit of time scraping up all of the paper, but I was still left with a lot of old glue that didn’t really want to come up. The difference between where there was glue remaining and where it came up with the linoleum left a lot of spots in the floor with up to an 1/8th inch difference in the height of the floor. I had intended to nail down the wood to the floor, but because I couldn’t easily get a super level surface I went with the easier option of gluing it down. I knew the glue would fill in any of these height differences and leave the finished wood at a perfectly level height. This was probably over cautious because the height differences were really minimal, but I didn’t want to take any chances.
Filthy Animals
Posted by Wayne
Over the past week I’ve made a huge effort to finish our kitchen, mostly because we can’t stand living like this anymore. It is really tough when you don’t have a working kitchen, and when part of your house is under construction you eventually lose motivation to keep the rest of it clean.
The garage is really bad. Virtually everything I’ve taken out of the kitchen (old appliances, countertops, etc.) is still in the garage. I need to make a run to the dump to get rid of a lot of it. Plus, because it’s so cold outside, I have to do a lot of my work in the garage. It’s going to take me an entire weekend just to clean it up. It’s quite terrifying:
The worst of all is that we’ve got some kind of weird skunk living in our house now. I keep trying to stuff it back under the porch but it keeps showing up, sometimes even in our bed. It’s a little bitey too. Read the rest of this entry »
Installing Undercabinet Lighting
Posted by Wayne
Because we had chosen absolute black granite for our countertops (which are like black mirrors), we were debating whether or not I should try to install under-cabinet lighting because of the reflection. We were worried that you’d look at the countertops and see lights and a bunch of wires running around under the cabinets (which was not the look we were going for). I was also under the impression that I’d have to run a wire or two inside the cabinets, which wasn’t a huge deal but it certainly wouldn’t look that great when you have a cabinet door open.
I never got the official OK on this from my wife, but I was at Home Depot one night and found a set of 3 black halogen “puck” lights that I thought would fit the bill. Because everything was black (lights and cords), I thought you probably wouldn’t be able to see it that much in the reflection of the granite. I think a set was about $25. I bought two sets figuring that I’d install the first one and if it didn’t look good I’d just return the second set.
When I got home I opened up one of the packages and was not particularly happy with what I found. I expected this set to be ready for hardwiring, but it actuality it was designed so that each light had an outlet plug and it also came with a cheap 3 outlet extension cord so you could plug them all in and then plug it into a wall outlet. I can’t imagine how you would use this set as-designed underneath your cabinets and make it look any good. And just where do they expect you to plug the extension cord into? Do they expect you to use duct tape to hold the big bunch of plugs out of site underneath the cabinet? I wanted a permanent set of lights here, not some riffraff!
As is usually the answer when I get angry with inanimate objects, I resorted to brute force. I’d “hardwire” (technically it would still end with an outlet plug) this all together onto one side of the cabinets and see how it turned out before opening up the other package and and starting on the other side.
Kitchen Sink Plumbing
Posted by Wayne
Most people who look under their kitchen sink just see a mess of plastic tubing, and I was one of them until I worked as a new construction plumber.
The new plumbers all had to run water pipes, and the more advanced guys installed drainage and kitchen sinks. I think the reason is that there is just more code surrounding the drainage, and the water lines basically just have to not leak so any idiot can do it. I was assigned to kitchen sinks pretty early on, and I probably did about 30-40 in my short lived plumbing career.
So here’s what you’re looking at when you open up the cabinet under your sink:
Installing Granite Countertops
Posted by Wayne
My original plan was to install 12×12 granite tiles over the existing laminate countertops, however our cabinets turned out so nice that we felt obligated to go for the gold and upgrade to solid granite countertops if we could afford it.
My wife found a place that sold standard countertop depth pre-cut sheets with a finished front edge. These sheets are 30 inches deep, 8 feet long, and cost about $400 each (give or take, based on the granite type). We needed two sheets to cover our counters. Installation and cutting the hole for the undermounted sink was not included in the price.
I wisely decided that attempting to install these sheets myself would not be a good idea, and the granite seller has an installer that they frequently work with that they recommended. We decided on ‘absolute black’ granite (my wife is the interior designer, so I didn’t argue). We paid for the granite up front and would pay for the installation after it was completed. Our total for the granite (with the sink hole cutting/polishing and tax) was about $1000. The installation would cost an additional $900.
More posts coming soon!
Posted by Wayne
I haven’t posted in about a week and it’s because I’ve been making a huge push to finish our kitchen and haven’t really had time to write. Our house is a nightmare and my wife and I can’t stand it anymore! We’re also planning on having a party in early March and want to have everything done by then.
In the past week I’ve installed hardwood flooring, new appliances, and tiled a backsplash behind the kitchen counter. It has been a very busy week, and the kitchen really looks fantastic. We’re about 97% done, and I hope to get close to completion tomorrow.
Kitchen- Replacing a pantry door
Posted by Wayne
Like the rest of the doors in the house, the pantry door in our kitchen was brown and ugly. My first step in replacing it was to remove the matching brown trim from around the outside of the door. I was a little surprised to find that the builders of the house had sized down the door frame by building out pieces of wood trim to match the size of the pantry door. This inside framing was loose, a result of nails that were too short to hold it to the surrounding framing, but I didn’t really want to go to the trouble of rebuilding it so I carefully left it in place. I would resecure it to the surrounding framing and paint it to match the door before re-trimming the outside.
Before
Cabinets- Installing European Hinges
Posted by Wayne
As I detailed in an earlier post, before painting the cabinet doors I bored 35mm holes into them for mounting european “cup” hinges with a drill press and a special drill bit. The european hinges are a real visual upgrade over standard hinges because they are hidden from sight when the doors are closed. The moving pieces of a european hinge basically fold up and go into the cup when the door is closed, and the cups are recessed into the back of the door by about 1/2 inch.
When I was boring the holes for mounting the hinges, I wasn’t particularly concerned about the vertical placement of the hinges. I just bored the holes into the doors at about the same location as the old hinges. The important part was that they were all the right distance away from the edge of the door. I bought a european hinge kit from Home Depot in the cabinet hardware section which included the 35mm drill bit and a plastic template which you could place against the edge of the door and mark the perfect location each time.
A lot of places on the internet lead you to believe that you need some sort of jig to locate and drill these holes correctly. While I probably wouldn’t try to freehand these holes with a boring bit in my hand drill considering the consequences of a mistake (a ruined door that I couldn’t replace), the kit I bought from Home Depot cost about $15 and included a template and the required 35mm boring bit. The $15 kit paired with a drill press was more than sufficient. It took me about an hour to bore all the holes in 17 doors and every one was perfect, and mounting the doors to the cabinets proved pretty easy as well.
Painting Oak Cabinets- Part 2
Posted by Wayne
To prepare for the messy job of spraying paint I hung plastic sheeting to seal off the painting area in the kitchen and also created a “painting room” in the unfinished basement in which I’d spray the cabinet doors. The “room” was made by stapling plastic sheeting to the floor joists above and I covered the floor with butcher paper.
My original thought on painting the doors was that I’d somehow hang all the doors from the floor joists but began to realize that this was just impractical to do in my basement. Instead I’d lean the doors against the walls in my sealed off space, spray them, and after they had dried I’d rotate them bottom side up for the second coat to make sure I was hitting all the sides (it was mostly the bottom of the door that I’d be missing on each coat as it was against the floor). Then I’d repeat with the backs of the doors. I was also doing a primer coat on each side. So for those doing the math, that’s three coats per side, or six total coats.
