OH MY GOODNESS!!! We have made so much progress in the past two weeks since we’ve been up here and I can’t wait for you to see it! Just a reminder that it was just two weeks ago yesterday when we demoed our kitchen. Last weekend we focused on the ceilings since they had to be done prior to the kitchen install. This week it was time to MAKE IT HAPPEN! And that we did!
During the week, we worked together and separately and assembled a lot of the cabinets. It’s not super glamorous work but thankfully it isn’t really hard. Once you’ve assembled one Ikea cabinet, most of them are the same. The only exception is the corner cabinets. They’re a little more complicated but as long as you follow the picture instructions, you can assemble them fairly easily. By the time we built our last cabinet, it probably took us less than 8 minutes to do one together.
I also started assembling some of the drawers during the week. We have a LOT of drawers in this kitchen. Again, they’re not super hard to assemble, but there are a few steps. In case you’re interested, I took pics as I assembled one of the last pantry drawers today.
Before I get back to the cabinets, I’ll tell you what we think is honestly one of the hardest things to do with Ikea cabinets. It’s not assembling anything and it’s not even installing anything. It’s hanging the rail that the cabinets hang on! It is much harder than you’d think to find the studs in the wall with the weird rail and then to actually get it level. And level is kind of important for cabinets!
We eventually got the hang of it but it took a laser level, a 4′ level and a lot of fun marital discussion to get those rails up. Keith was convinced we would run out of rail and we wouldn’t be able to hang everything. But Ikea knows best and the kitchen planner had us buy enough for us to even have about 4′ left over!
Once we got the first few rails up, it was time to hang the first cabinet. We’re such nerds but we were excited and high fiving each other when we hung that first corner cabinet!
Truly, hanging the cabinets takes about 2 seconds once you get that pesky rail hung!
As we moved our way left in the kitchen, a very exciting moment happened! I got indoor plumbing back in my kitchen! It’s just temporarily set, but we installed the sink cabinet and have two 2×2’s holding the sink up. Oh happy day!
Yep – that’s a plywood countertop we’ve got going there now. Keith really spoils me! 😉
Back to the rest of the cabinets. We hung them intermittently throughout the weekend, as we had my aunt and uncle up for a visit. While they were here we took off some time to play. I went on a little excursion with them to Cashiers on Friday and yesterday we all went to a beautiful spot in Clayton called Bull Sluice. After our outing yesterday, we finished assembling the last few cabinets and hung them. Woo hoo! We had a kitchen!
While I had gotten a really good head start on the drawer assembly, we still had more work to do. Keith started installing the drawers I had assembled and by the end of the day yesterday we had a really good start on the interiors of the cabinets on the right side of the kitchen. We called it a day at a reasonable hour and enjoyed some amazing pizza from a place we discovered only 5 minutes from here!
This morning, we got a leisurely start to the day and worked on assembling and installing the rest of the drawers. Chloe was apparently feeling very left out of things, as she decided to try to “help” me assemble some drawers!
We finished installing the drawers early this afternoon and then I moved ALL of the food and cookware off of our rolling shelves into the kitchen! There is a crazy amount of storage in this kitchen. I don’t see me ever filling it up, but that’s okay. It’s a bitchin kitchen! 😉
And here’s the reveal!
One last thing we did before calling it a day was to finally hang the glass for our pendants above the island. You may remember that I bought these (used) a few weeks ago from a Facebook exchange group I’m a part of. I think they work perfectly in here!
While we still have a lot to do, we feel REALLY good about how much we’ve accomplished in such a short period of time. We are headed back to Atlanta for a week or so and will take delivery of our doors and drawer fronts. By the way, we were insane for ever thinking we could make those ourselves!
When we return, we still have a lot to do but nothing terribly daunting. After we hang our doors and drawer fronts, we’ll make decisions about how to trim things out. We’ll need to install the toe kicks, a backsplash, some additional can lights in the kitchen, finish up the ceiling and paint the rest of it, etc. But we should be able to spend time enjoying ourselves up here as fall color season begins!
We did take a couple of pictures the other night when we went to watch the sun set with my aunt and uncle. It was a little cloudy so not the perfect sunset, but it was beautiful nonetheless!
Since we’ll be home in Atlanta next weekend, I doubt there will be a blog post, but I’ll write more in a couple of weeks when we get our doors up! Until then, stay safe and healthy!
At Home with the Heffrons 
Y’all need your own TV show. It looks beautiful!
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