Short and sweet

Hi everyone! This is going to be a fairly short and sweet blog as there’s really just one primary topic for it – doors and drawer fronts!

I didn’t blog last week because we spent a lovely week back in Atlanta. We were able to do some lovely socially distanced socializing and catch up on some things with our house there. We had a not-so-fun visit to Ikea to return a bunch of extra cabinets we didn’t need. It took an hour and a half to get waited on, and we were both close to losing it. Ikea saves you a lot of money but it definitely adds to the stress level! But on a more exciting note, we took delivery of our Ikea Akstad doors and drawer fronts, which was pretty exciting and went flawlessly! We loaded them straight from the delivery truck into the Jeep and it all fit easily. When we made our order, there were five fronts we weren’t able to get because they didn’t have them in stock online. So we are forced to wait until they come into stock locally. We do have them on “reservation order” at the Ikea in Atlanta. Which basically means they’ll be put aside for us when they come back into stock in Atlanta. I’m hoping they actually show up soon as right now our kitchen is a little “checkered” looking!

Now on to those doors and drawer fronts. First and foremost, we are thrilled with the way they look. They don’t have any sheen to them and are a nice matte white. I think they look awesome and I hope you do too!

Keith ended up having a bit of a free day on Wednesday so he got to work putting them up and got them all on! We still need to adjust some of them to make them line up, and we also need to switch the hinges to the other side on a few. After living with them for a few days we decided that several of them need to open on the opposite side of what I initially thought. So those (all upper doors) don’t have their hardware on them.

This weekend, I was able to put the hardware on the doors we are happy with and all of the drawers. To make that easier, we built “jigs” (templates) to make sure that our placement of each of them was perfect and they would look. Then I took the jig and set them on the door/drawer. It took a few minutes to make the jig but saved time in the long run.

Notice that we have a line for center and a little “peephole” to allow me to see through where I marked center on the drawer so I could set the jig in exactly the right space.

Here are a couple of pictures of the hardware now that it is on. We ordered the hardware from Amazon and I am very happy with it. It’s very heavy and was very cost-effective!

And last, here’s a view of the entire kitchen. Please ignore the mess! I wanted to get the blog out and obviously didn’t take the time to neaten things up! 😉 Notice that we are still missing some fronts and some hardware. As soon as Keith can switch out the hinges (the doors are too heavy for me to do on my own), then I’ll finish up the hardware. And hopefully we’ll have the rest of our fronts by early October.

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A few other things did happen this week. We had our countertops measured and hope to have them installed in two to three weeks. At that time we’ll also have our new dishwasher installed, which we are both looking forward to! One other thing I’m looking forward to is getting a disposal. I really miss one! But honestly, after washing dishes outside for two weeks, I won’t complain too much.

As I said, short and sweet and not a lot of pictures. As we wrap up the big renovations, we’ll start working on some of the fun projects we’ve got in mind. One of the early ones will be to build our banquette for the kitchen. We’d also like to build a coffee table for our outdoor furniture, build a little “candelier” for our outdoor table, build the cover/planter for our well, etc. So we’ll be busy for a while! Oh, and we have to build a table for my sister Susan’s new house. That will be fun and I’ll be sure to share that when we do! But for now we’ll try to finish up the kitchen and all of the little punch list items like ceiling, lighting, painting, trim, etc. Since color season is about to begin here, we’re also looking forward to some family visits!

Have a great week and I hope to have more to share with you next weekend!