Federated Handy People

“Oh… There are lots of reasons why your kitchen drawers don’t work right anymore…”

At first, the kitchen was grim. Drawers that couldn’t be opened, a lazy-susan corner that wouldn’t turn, and doors that were opening in the wrong direction were among the top reasons they wanted to gut it and buy their own. Planning on saving money, they looked into the unfinished options. It was a good plan…

… And speaking of plans, we sketched out their current kitchen so they could get the Home Depot pros to show them all the options they could think of to better use the space.

Surprisingly it was a general letdown for them. The person available acted unhappy to see us, drew the plan we gave her, and crushed any of their hopes for improving the use of the space. She produced an estimate that broke the budget which was the only pleasant thing she did. Now we had only one choice…

… We would be getting out the glue bottle and clamps to make the “good-enough” repairs so the drawers & shelves worked like new, but didn’t exactly look like new where people never look. The hinges had to go, and there would be knobs and handles on the new version. The only major purchase that remained was a solid surface countertop and a sink to go with that.

We had a lot of work ahead of us now. Hidden hinges were to replace the original visible ones. All the old holes would need wood filler, and new mounting points needed to be fabricated and installed. Sanding to bare wood would be necessary to ensure a like-new look after painting the Benjamin Moore cabinet paint on the surfaces.

One thing we did change from the original, was to make use of the space at the front of the stationary sink panel.

The Transformation

Use the photo browser buttons below to see highlights and my notes.

My work here was done, but theirs wasn’t. The countertop company jerked them around claiming the framing was wrong for the raised corner. They had to add the plywood front before he would come back at a later date to finally measure. That’s right, after waiting for the appointment to measure the cabinets for two weeks, he wouldn’t take out his tape measure till that 3/4-inch plywood strip covered the front of the 2×4 at the front of the triangle. Another two weeks of waiting to have it measured!

Finally, a countertop arrives a month later!

Good thing they got the plumbing lessons already. They need to hook up all the sink parts now.