(Sep 13) Kitchen Appliance Installed

This week reaffirmed that life is about changes and transitions and making adjustments as you go. I had spent considerable time working on one wall in the kitchen last month only to decide to turn 180° and do something else this week because I thought it looked better. Anyway, I'm thrilled that we get our kitchen further along and more thrilled that Kim and I work so well together! We really are having fun doing this!

I was worried for a bit that we were going to have trouble getting the fridge and stove carried into the cabin by ourselves but we did pretty good for a couple of old people!  :)  I got the truck backed up as far as I could and put down some OSB to transition to the pallets we call a porch. From there the hardest part was getting it up over the threshold. All-in-all, it went pretty smoothly.

Guess we should have put out a sign for free beer to help unload appliances! :) 

We started with the stove. I cut a hole in the floor to bring the gas line in through. This still freaks me out every time I have to do it! We're just using our 20lb propane bottle right now until we get our large tank delivered and installed. I took extra care in attaching all of the pipe adapters and hoses to make sure there were no leaks. I doped up all of the threads and sprayed it all down with soapy water to make sure. Hard to enjoy your new digs when you're dead.  

I did feel bad. I had set a box of pool cleaning supplies (really irritating when you consider we don't even have the pool anymore!) on the stove when it was in our garage. Some of the chemicals had leached through their container and rusted a couple of the burner grates. They're cast iron, so they cleaned right up but I hate that our brand new stove started off with a blemish!  I do think the colors look great in the kitchen. Our first meals were eggs, sausage and skillet toast for breakfast and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. Good to be back cooking with gas! :) I look forward to baking with the convection oven also though I think most of that will be done in the cooler months. I hate heating up the place when I can do a lot of cooking outside still. It did give us an excuse to test out the vent though. Glad to report it all works well. The first time I fired up the vent, it scared a hummingbird that was feeding right outside the window. I've moved the feeder since.

New stove in place under microwave vent-a-hood

Next, we turned attention to getting the fridge put into place. It seemed harder to level than the stove had been. I had already reversed the door swing on the fridge as well as changed all of the jets and regulator on the stove to accommodate propane. This was about an hour on the fridge and about 30 min on the stove. Wasn't hard, just followed the directions that came with both. The stove is a full sized 5 burner Kenmore with convection oven and the fridge is a Kenmore 20 cubic foot bottom freezer model. 

I think the stainless and black enamel on them blend in well with our kitchen.

New appliances installed!

After these were done. We decided to finish "bricking" the bathroom walls. After spending a entire day trimming out and finishing the shelves by the fridge, I decided to cover it all up after seeing how good the brick veneer looked in that corner. We decided that we had enough pantry space to give up the storage in order to keep the look consistent. I think we made the right choice. It looks great!

Bathroom bricked in and trimmed with the new fridge in place

We had to take down the Elfa shelves and re-install them over the brick but it was also worth it. We raised them to accommodate room underneath for Kim's sewing cabinet. I like them on that brick wall so well that I think we've nixed the idea of building a cabinet around them. 

Kim found a transition piece for the the bathroom entrance. The flooring in the kitchen was a bit taller than the bathroom tile and I was worried that someone might trip eventually. It went down pretty easily except for the fact that I cut it 1/4" too short! Really irritates me when I get in a hurry and lose track of what I'm doing. 

We also trimmed out the bathroom entrance and installed a cedar beam across the header of that wall to tie the two walls together. We installed the header above the doorway high enough to leave about 6" open above the sliding barn door hardware. We wanted to keep the bathroom well ventilated. 

Bathroom door in front of new brick wall

We put a coat of Tung Oil on the cedar door jams and header as well as another coat on the door itself. I ran out of time and didn't get any on the beam across the top of the wall. It will have to wait 'til next week as well as installing the sliding door hardware. I can't wait. It's like Christmas after waiting for over 2 years to get some of this finished! :)

Overall view of kitchen area

As a parting note, here is our raccoon family that visits nightly. The kids are getting bigger by the week. Couldn't have anything to do with our feeding them nightly! They're so fun to watch, constantly washing their hands and food in the water bowl we put out. I did have to move the humming bird feeders to raised PVC poles to keep them from ravaging them nightly. Sorry guys! No more sugar water for you! They don't seem to mind the noise of the generator or even our sticking our heads out of the door occasionally to take a quick picture. 

Raccoon family feeding outside our front window