Carpeting A Closet

D: "I am so glad I didn't do this for a living!"

You can guess, this is not a project that he enjoyed. He still did a really great job at it, though. It makes the closet much fuzzier and softer to step on.

Here are some photos:

Padding down

Adding carpet tacks

Cutting corners

What do you think?

OK, he fixed it. Much better!

Making sure the carpet tacks grab the carpet

Such a lovely closet, yes? Look at those trims around the closet and the carpet! Fabulous, D.!

We placed a threshold (see the white strip on the carpet behind the dropcloth?) where the old carpet meets the new closet carpet because our carpet seam was, uh, not to our high standards.

A Closet for Our Girl!

Besides working on the kitchen, we also have been busy with our girl's closet.

Her closet was 3'x3'. As the old closet was right behind the stove wall, we figured that we might as well tear the old closet down and give our girl a wider, although shallower, new closet. That way, it can be easier to find stuff, right?

This is the only before photo I have:

The closet during the demo phase. You can see the kitchen right behind it :)

Photographed from the kitchen side. That door frame is all that was left of the old closet.

We tore down the book case, too:

The bookcase is to the left of the photo (hard to see, sorry!)

Bye-bye bookcase

The closet and bookcase were reframed. The book case is now split into a shallow book case in the girl's room side and an appliance garage on the kitchen side. The closet is wider and shallower: 2'x6'.

We mudded and taped the closet and the bookcase. D. did the work for the closet. I did the bookcase because it was such a tight and small space that only I could fit in it.

Then, came the day the closet was painted and the doors were hung. It was so very exciting!
That was in December 2012.

The new bookcase, the new closet and...

The new closet doors!

Of course, we needed to put casing around the closet doors: both on the outside of the closet and the inside of the closet. What??? You have to do all that? Sadly, yes. These are the things we never even thought about nor noticed about closet and doors.

So, the research for the "right" style of the casing and trims began. Of course, it took a while to do that. I hope you aren't surprised by now at how long it took us to research, plan and choose cabinetry, closet doors, faucet, sink, countertop, window, and why not, casing...

This is now March 2013. We just finished the outside casing of the closet about a week ago :)

We had a few false starts. But we finally settled on the decorative moulding over the top of the doors and simple craftsman casing all around the doors. Like this:

Yup, just hold it there for another hour, D!

Starting to look like a real closet!

The first nail to the casing

Uh-oh, the casing on the left couldn't stay flat on the wall

But, the casing on the right jamb was fine

The problem was:

The left jamb was bowed behind the wall a little, and the sheetrock was a bit out from the jamb

 The solution was to rabbet the casing like this:

And, problem solved. The casing now sits perfectly against the wall and door jamb:

voila!

It's time to cut the top decorative piece above the doors. Of course, we cut wood with a sharp tool at night:) Kids, please don't try this at home.

The closet is now completely cased and trimmed on the outside. I thought D. did a beautiful job.

What a gift for our darling girl, a closet hand-made by her dad!
 

Slab Taping

OK, that sounds like a bad title.

But, that's exactly what we did last Saturday.

We went to our countertop fabricator to tape up the Calacatta slab we finally chose after months of searching for the "right" countertop.

Choosing  the material for our countertop was very tricky for us, especially for me.

When I scoured the internet and looked through kitchen renovation books for inspiration, I have loved the look of white kitchens especially the ones with Calacatta Oro countertop. Like these ones:

See the similarities (besides the flowers in almost every photo)?

My vision for our new kitchen is, surprise, a white kitchen with a white marble countertop.
That might be boring for most people, but it just happens to be what I am drawn to and inspired by. The movement in the marble reminded me of my grandma's furniture with marble top. So lovely!

Of course, marble etches, scratches and stains. So, not the most "low maintenance" sort of countertop.

At some point during the big countertop search (which took months), we were tempted to go with a quartzite like Madre Perla:

Madre Perla slab looks great, right?

This is D's favorite kitchen, and it uses Madre Perla as countertop

Look at this kitchen with Madre Perla countertop and backsplash. Stunning!

We tested our sample marble and Madre Perla pieces with tomato ketchup, pineapple chunks, lemon juice, mustard, vinegar, strawberries, chilli sauce, soy sauce and all sorts of food items in our kitchen that is acidic and can stain. Marble etches and stains. Madre Perla doesn't.

Ohhh, it was really tempting to go with the Madre Perla. But, it didn't feel right for some reasons.

Thankfully, D was super supportive and helpful. He encouraged me to stick to my vision rather than caving in to practicality. (Thank you, Honey!) In the end, I decided to follow my original vision which has inspired me to begin with.

So, last Saturday was basically the end of the long search for countertop. Now, we can move forward to the installation phase.

Our project manager moving our slab for viewing and taping

I saw this Calcatta Oro slab in September but didn't decide on it until March

Our project manager started taping the "L" part of the countertop

Here, he was taping the countertop above the dishwasher

I wasn't keen on losing part of the beautiful marbling to the sink...

So, we retaped that area and moved the dishwasher countertop a bit lower so I get to keep that lovely grey patch

OK, so now all the countertop pieces were selected and the taping process was completed

Then, we found this remnant piece of a pre-fab quartz for the china cab countertop

The whole kit and kaboodle

Can't wait to show you the final product. The countertop will be installed on next Tuesday 4/2/13!

IKEA Drawers in Pantry!

We finally installed the IKEA Rationell drawers in our pantry tonight. These drawers are C-O-O-L!

Once D. figured out the IKEA pictorial instructions, it took him about 5 minutes to put together each of the drawers. Installing the railing into the pantry took some planning as we have to make sure the drawers clear the gynormous Blum® 155° Zero Protrusion Hinges which we got at Rockler.

One of four gynormous hinges for this pantry door

The drawers are a lot of fun to play with, especially the soft-close part. You can pull the drawers far out and then slam them in, and they will just gently glide into the pantry. It is fabulous!

 Of course, the photos:

Installing the Rationell door damper so the drawer closes gently even if we slam it

Ta...

Da!

Our Custom Pantry is ALMOST Done!

After we finished installing our kitchen cabinets, we started the pantry project on 14th February 2013 (hey, that's exactly a month ago!)

It took a while measuring, cutting and nailing wood pieces for the pantry wall, ceiling, shelves, trims, and more measuring the peg holes for the adjustable shelves, and again measure, measure, measure to be sure the pantry doors are lined up top to bottom and left to right (this is done by our very amazing carpenter Carl McFarland). Then it took for-e-vah painting the trim pieces (done by yours truly). Our pantry is SO SO close to being done.

I am so excited to see the door casing installed around the cabinet doors today. They look really good!!! Better than I imagined it! I simply must create a blog to celebrate this momentous occasion.

In our old kitchen, we didn't have a pantry. We had a broom closet (This photo was taken during the kitchen demo in late September 2012 - and, unfortunately the only "before" photo that I have.)

It was, uh, functional.

So, the broom closet was gutted along with our daughter's closet and the stove wall. Might as well, right?

We scoured the web for inspirational photos (www.gardenweb.com is our go-to resource) and found lots of wonderful pictures of pantries. These spoke to us:
 

Unfortunately, as I saved lots of pictures into my inspirational photo folder, I no longer know whose kitchen these photos belong to in order to give them the proper credit. Nevertheless, I thank you, owner of the pantries and photos above, for leading the way and inspiring our pantry project.

We also found these webpages helpful:
http://starcraftcustombuilders.com/kitchen.pantry.htm
http://www.atticmag.com/2011/01/pantry-pride/

D. drew several plans for the pantry. Given he didn't have any experience drawing up plans and he did this drawing in Adobe Fireworks, I thought he did a marvelous job with the drawing.

My pencil drawing (Dec 2012)

D's drawing (Jan 2013)

Today, the exterior of our pantry looks like this. It is so beautiful!!! I LOVE it!
(I couldn't photograph the entire pantry from this angle so the photos are of the top and lower portions...)

 

Admittedly, it is a challenge and a half to get the cabinet doors (which are made by Inner Most cabinetry, bought at Home Depot) and casing pieces lined up. But Carl, our carpenter, did a fantastic job at it.

The upper part of the pantry (24"w x 32" h) is hinged on left and right. It opens up like a normal upper cabinet.

 

The two doors on the lower part of the pantry are in line with the two doors on the upper part. However, while the upper doors are hinged left and right, both of the lower doors are hinged left. To open the right lower door, we need to open it from the right edge of the door, not from the left edge. Confused? Yes, it takes some getting used to. As the doors look alike from the upper and lower parts yet operate differently, it was a bit disconcerting at first. But, from functionality point of view, it works best this way. I'll explain why later in the post.

 

The lower part of the pantry is divided into two parts. The left side of the lower portion is planned to be a broom closet (9"w x 61"h). It has one fixed shelf and three adjustable shelves.

Look at the fit of the shelves!  They look so good, I don't want to sully this incredible work to store broom, mops and cleaners! I think I will make this as food storage instead of broom closet.

broom closet side

broom closet side

The  right side of the lower part of the pantry is ear-marked for food storage. It is 15"w x 61"h and will have several IKEA Rationell 15" pull-out drawers (we have only installed one drawer, as you can see.) 

As you noticed, the door is hinged on the left, so it opens on the right edge towards the kitchen. That will make it easy for us to take things out of the pantry and place them on the countertop around the right corner of the pantry.

IKEA pull out drawer for food storage side

Around the corner of the pantry, we will have a countertop as a landing place

 All I need to do next to complete the pantry is to paint the toekick boards. No problem!

Ah yes, with Carl's permission, here's his contact info.
Carl McFarland Construction
cmaq 2012@hotmail.com
510-917-2483