Finished Kitchen
Posted by Wayne
Kitchen Before
Kitchen AfterÂ
Quite an improvement, huh?
Replaced garden window, replaced countertops, painted cabinets, new appliances, new sliding glass door, installed wood floor, new pantry door, new ceiling lights, installed undercabinet lighting, tiled backsplash, replaced outlets
Total cost: $8000. Total time: about 120 hours (that’s my estimate and I’m sticking to it). Most of the work was done in random 3 hour shifts over about 5 months.
Kitchen Sink Plumbing Modification
Posted by Wayne
Installing a Refrigerator
Posted by Wayne
Okay, so you’re probably thinking that you don’t really “install” a refrigerator, you just plug it in. I had hoped it would be that easy, but it wasn’t the case.
Our new fridge has a water and ice dispenser, which means it has to be hooked up to a water line. Previous owners had already run a copper water supply line over to the fridge location, but the fridge that I removed was not connected to it. I put the end of the copper supply line into a bucket and turned on the water valve underneath the kitchen sink for a few mintues to drain the line of the water that had been sitting in it for years (I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be healthy to have that pipe right into the fridge). It was filthy and brown, but quickly turned clear.
Installing a Dishwasher
Posted by Wayne
When we were purchasing our appliance set the salesman asked us if we wanted to have their guys install the appliances, and I told him I could handle it but I was curious about installing the microwave because I had such a tough time getting the old one removed. He told me if I could install the dishwasher, I could easily install the microwave. That removed my fears about the microwave because I knew the dishwasher would be a piece of cake.
It certainly didn’t hurt that I removed the old dishwasher so I had a good understanding of how the new one would go in. There are 3 things you have to connect: the dishwasher drainage, the water supply line, and the hardwired electricity. The water supply line has it’s own shutoff valve underneath the sink and the electricity is on its own breaker, both of which I turned off before removing the old dishwasher.
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.
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:
Updating the Kitchen
Posted by Wayne
Before
Oh boy, now we’re getting to the fun stuff. As I write I am in the process of finishing the kitchen updating. As you can see from the picture above, we started with your typical 1980’s kitchen: honey oak cabinetry, laminate countertops, linoleum flooring, ugly bay window, ugly sliding glass door (just outside the picture to the left), etc. If I go upstairs now and look at the kitchen, I can’t believe it’s the same space.
For this project I’d be painting (hopefully) and installing hidden european hinges on the oak cabinets, tiling or installing granite countertops with an undermount sink (and all the plumbing that comes along with it), adding in some sort of tile backsplash, replacing the appliances, replacing the lighting, replacing the bay window, replacing the sliding glass door, tearing up the linoleum and installing wood flooring, and replacing the pantry doors (not seen just to the right of the photo). This is a big job. Probably not so start-from-scratchish as the office space I completed, but there was just as much work to do here.
I read a while back that the absolute minimum cost for upgrading a kitchen is $15k. I knew for a fact I could do this for $5k, with all brand new nice appliances, and people wouldn’t believe how good it looked. Tune in again to see how I did it and how it all turned out (or come to our unveiling party March 1, invitations to be sent out soon).
Leaky valves, blizzard plumbing, & curb stops
Posted by Wayne
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about my house, it’s that if I shut off a water valve that’s been turned on for 20+ years it might not want to turn off, and if it does I’m probably going to have some problems when I go to turn it back on. There is something wrong with rubber stop brass shut off valves like the one pictured below over a long period of time.
I have two good examples of this, one that was quite nightmarish:
