The real estate photos for this house made the house look sharp and glowing. But, they couldn’t justify keeping those upper cabinets between the kitchen and dining room. Kyle did not agree that these were hideous, but in the end he allowed me to rip them out. I was dying to do a project and I gave him the option one Saturday to either replace our bedroom ceiling fan or tear out this cabinet (projects I thought would take no more than 2 hours). Turns out I was wrong. Big surprise, right?
Removing the Cabinets
We started to take apart the cabinet, removed the doors (we removed the glass from a couple of the doors because they were loose, so when we’d close the doors it would rattle or threaten to fall out). After removing all the doors on the cabinets, we went to work detaching the main supports from the ceiling. It turns out the two posts furthest from the wall were attached to the ceiling with super long metal bolts. When they built the addition, they added wood between the joists and threaded the metal bolts through them so they’d hold weight. Once we got them out, we had to pry the posts off the ceiling, but we couldn’t get them loose since the cabinet was one large piece glued to the wall cabinet. We ended up having to put stuff below the floating cabinet with some pillows and then saw it off in pieces to disconnect it from the wall cabinet. I was disappointed to not be able to save the cabinet, but we would have needed four people to remove the entire L-shaped cabinet set in one piece. It turns out that there was also hardwired lighting attached to the wall cabinet, weird florescent under-cabinet lights that we detached by accident when ripping down the cabinets.
4-ft bolts securing the floating cabinet to the ceiling.
Pillows and dog food container to prevent the cabinet from crashing down.
This new look, sans floater, wasn’t gonna work either. The wall cabinet was custom built to go with the floating one, so there was this weird gap and I am convinced that the wall cabinet started to sink after it was separated from its sibling. I capped the wiring and then while I was home for work a couple days later I decided to remove the wall cabinet myself. I removed the screws and then had to pry it off the wall carefully with a crowbar. In addition to the many screws in it, there were twenty or thirty very long nails. I damaged a lot of the drywall in the process of bringing the cabinet down, but was able to safely remove it and drag it out to the garage myself.
Why we had to remove the wall cabinet as well as the floater. This weird hole was too unsightly for my delicate eyes. The blank wall and nowhere to store our plates and glasses is WAY better.
What our kitchen looked like for seven months. Is it annoying anyone else that the trim on the windows is different? Just close one eye and squint and you won’t be able to see that…or the blue countertops.
A couple weeks later we hosted a fundraiser for my sister’s campaign, and I swore I’d have it patched up by then. Buuuut, I severely underestimated things, which is why it took me seven more months to finish the project.
The Final Design
Part of the reason it took so long to finish this was because I was trying to decide what to actually do with the space. I really wanted more lighting over the counter and we needed cabinets for plates and glasses back on the wall. But, I had never done electrical work beyond replacing a fixture so I was pretty nervous to run new lighting. I had also never done drywall finishing and I really didn’t want to screw this wall up since I’d be looking at it everyday.
I finally decided a few weeks ago to bite the bullet and finish the darn project. Kyle helped me choose lights through my new process of figuring out what styles he likes. Here’s what I do, I take screenshots of fixtures I like and then I use Layout to set the images side by side. Then I send images to him and he tells me which of the two he likes better and then I narrow in a NCAA Basketball bracket style tournament. It works way better than me showing him everything. I definitely recommend it if you and your spouse don’t agree on style or it’s hard to narrow selection down. Anyway, I found these great, inexpensive lights at Lowe’s (I bought them online and used Rakuten Rebates to get 1% back on my purchase, something I learned about from Finance Blogger Her First 100K). The challenge with this space is that we aren’t doing any significant remodeling on it, so I needed to use fixtures and styles that would work with what we currently have, but might also work with a future design or be so cheap that I could start from scratch on a new kitchen some day and not feel crappy about not using what we already had. These lights were perfect for that because they were inexpensive, but also a pretty timeless and minimal style.
For the cabinets, I went super affordable. I bought brackets on Etsy. I did not feel like doing floating shelves, because they’re too much work to align the holes and I didn’t want to worry about them being level and fitting perfectly. I also like the industrial look of exposed iron brackets and wood slabs. The open shelves would bring more light into the room and be easier to access than the 3-level wall cabinet that used to be there. If I’d been more patient, I would have tried to order the brackets from an Oregon maker, but I needed to get the project done and these were the right look and price for me.
The Project
The first, and most difficult part of the project was getting the new electrical installed and working. There were two sets of wiring coming out of the wall so I had to figure out how to connect them. It turns out no electricity was running to one of the wire sets. To find out where the wires came from (or went to) I would have had to rip open the wall and tear out the backsplash and I didn’t want to add time to this project, so I added a box and capped the ends off just in case. Aligning the pendants was easier than I thought, I did some Pinteresting and found guidance for pendant placement. I penciled in the location of the pendants (somewhat eyeballing). I actually marked where the lights would go months ago, but then waited to come back to the project. Before cutting out the drywall, I ran a piece of blue tape down and marked where the lights line up. And then I cut into the ceiling. My dad was a huge help during this project, having an assistant makes a big difference and makes these projects go by faster. It’s especially helpful when your assistant is a more experienced DIYer and very patient with your bossiness.
Once I opened up all the drywall we had to figure out how to get the wire up through the corner of the ceiling/wall connection. We had to remove a piece of a stud to get the drill in at the right angle. To thread the new wire, I first threaded a string through the hole. To get the string through the small, right-angle hole I created by drilling through the side of the top stud and the bottom of the bottom stud (my dad’s idea), I tied a metal weight ring to the end of a string and then tried to shove it through. When it wouldn’t go through I grabbed the magnet-on-a-stick that I use for canning to snag it and pull it down through the hole (my idea) and it worked! We threaded the wiring up through the hole and across the two fixture boxes that I’d installed for the pendants. It took several tries to get the lights working with the wall switch. The troubleshooting was caused by poor connections of the wires. Once I got all the wiring splices properly connected and the lights working I could close up the wall, finish the drywall, and paint.
I cut up the drywall pieces in probably the sloppiest way possible. The holes I cut when I opened up the wall were pretty bad and I had to rip them out so I couldn’t reuse the original pieces. I know a lot more now about finishing, and while the wall looks fine, the next time I do it, it will look MUCH better. Once I got all the pieces in, I applied the joint compound. On the first hole, I totally over did it, mostly because the drywall pieces weren’t flush and I wanted to make sure I had a lot of room to smooth it out. In retrospect, I would have started with less compound and added more if needed. On the positive side, I only had to do one application of joint compound, it required A LOT of sanding, but meant I didn’t have to wait an additional 24 hours for the next round to dry AND sand again. In the meantime, I took down the light fixture that was above the sink, it didn’t go at all with the kitchen, didn’t bring in enough light and the way it was hanged wasn’t centered. I bought a $10 fixture at Lowe’s and swapped it out in about 2 minutes (it was nice to have a quick, straight forward project amidst all the crazy trial and error of the other lights).
After about 24 hours of drying, I decided I should rehang the pendant lights and check to see if they still worked. How awful would it be if right after I closed up the wall, I had to turn around and reopen it? Well. When I reattached the lights and flipped the breaker, no lights turned on. None. I was so upset! I checked all (or I thought I did) the splices and then turned the electricity back on and still nothing. I figured I’d sleep on it and try again after work the next day. After the baby went to bed, I got back to work, I was reading everything online and I read both my home electrical books front to back and couldn’t find anything that could be wrong with my work. The frustrating part was that electricity was getting to the lightbulbs in the pendants, but not enough to light them. Kyle kept saying you probably have a weak splice, to which I replied, “no, you are wrong.” Turns out he was right. I had checked EVERY splice, except the connection from the end of original under-cabinet light to the new pendants. Turns out when I tried to strip those wires I had inadvertently cut all the way through the black and white wires. I was so close to giving up when I discovered this, it was a HUGE relief. Even if I was totally wrong and had to tell my husband that he was right. Now that the lights worked, I had to close up the outlet (even though I still needed to add another outlet) for safety and because we’d be out of town all weekend. I actually think it’s a good idea to take breaks during projects, it gives you down time to not think about what you need to do and, in this case, gave me the energy to power through the end of the project.
Back to finishing the drywall. Since I applied too much joint compound on the first hole, when it dried there were a bunch of cracks. I didn’t want to sand it down and reapply the joint compound, so instead, I sanded down the whole wall and the ceiling (actually left the light fixtures in, because I was so tired of disconnecting them and didn’t want to deal with another splicing issue). Then I primed the wall, this filled in some of the tiny cracks and then I filled in the larger cracks with caulk. While this dried, I went off to the hardware store to get a few things, including the wood for the shelves and a new outlet (one with USB inserts). When I got back, I painted the ceiling and the wall. While that dried, I went outside and cut the 2” x 12” x 8’ board in half, sanded it and applied clear stain to one side of the boards. As fate would have it, the sun came out the moment I finished staining the boards so they dried a lot faster than they would have under the clouds.
I put in the final touches with the paint, turned on a fan and then did the hardest and more nerve-wracking task of this entire project: I drilled the holes into the wall/studs for the shelf brackets. It’s not a great feeling to tarnish a wall you’ve spent weeks making look as smooth and perfect as possible. After hanging the brackets perfectly level and perfectly into studs, I put the cover plates on the electric boxes. I’ll have to paint these eventually, but for now they’re just fine.
Finally, I placed the wood boards on the brackets. I bought Douglas fir wood, nothing fancy, just something simple to get us by until who-knows-when we renovate the kitchen. There are projects, that when you finish them, they’re just done, and then there are projects that when you finish them, you feel more complete. As I was placing our plates back on the shelf, adding glasses and some decor, I was so so so glad I had done this project right. It looks like our kitchen has always looked this way, open and bright, cozy and accessible. It looks so good, that my husband even suggested we add similar shelves right away around our stove hood. I think I’ll take a little break before I jump into the next project, but damn does this one feel good.
All the progress shots below, so many because this project got worse before it got better and seeing the backtracking and slow progression toward the finish made it that much more enjoyable.
Dad helping find studs.
Cutting out the drywall to run the new wiring.
