The new cabinets are here! The new cabinets are here!

(Sung with exclamation like - "The new phone books are here! The new phone books are here!" from The Jerk.  My mom says that line all the time...) 

Boy were we excited the Saturday morning that the Casianos drove up to the house with our new cabinets! (The actual date was March 3, to give you an idea of how behind the blog is!) The rough-in stage had been rough and we were ready to move on to the good stuff. 

Getting everything in its place and mounted

Love it!!!

 We made some minor adjustments/changes once we saw our design "in person".  For example, we did away with the triangular upper shelves on this end piece.  They just weren't working like we thought they would.  And they hadn't stained some of our open shelving, so we had them fix all of that.

The brothers getting everything level.

Rudy's using a dremel rotary tool to cut the wood floor out below the base cabinets so they fit nice and snug and level.

 

Roland and Billy putting in the new built-in...

 It had been 2.5 dreadful months of basically coming home from work every day to work on our kitchen for hours into the night, and every weekend too.  So it was really shocking how quickly we went from  this...

 To this...

 Crazy!

bye-bye built-in

Still playing sooooo much catch-up... our kitchen is in a completely different place now and we are seeing the light at the end of the 2-month tunnel.  It's hard for me not to skip ahead and show you how things are progressing, but I'm trying to be patient so every step gets chronicled (really more for us than for you...)

Every day we lose more of our kitchen.  It was time to tell our built-in bye-bye.  It serves as our pantry, so that meant taking everything out and finding a flat, clean surface (which is hard to find around here these days) to hold it all temporarily.  In case you don't know, I love to cook and we LOVE to eat - who am I kidding... all of you know that.  So naturally, we have a lot of food, oils, spices, etc...

I tried pulling this beast out by myself, very difficult because it's really heavy and sits below the level of the wood floor so it has to be sort of pried up and out..  Coincidentally, as I'm in the middle of this, our cabinet-makers called to say they wanted to come remeasure this space to be sure of everything before they started building the cabinet for it.  So they said they'd come the next day and take it out for me and measure.  They're so nice! 

Rudy showed up to remove the cabinet and measure.  We just thought we had a lot of tools...  he had a lot more tools at his disposal created for things like this, which made it considerably easier.

Despite all the tools, it was still quite a task and we worked really hard not to mess anything up.  I'm hoping we can reuse this piece.  I want to add framing around the unfinished built-in part so it can be a stand-alone entertainment center/bookcase of sorts that I think will go well in the office once sanded down and refinished or painted.

So we took off the face and all the doors and drawers.  We took out all the nails and staples and runners... very tedious, but I learned some new tricks of the trade.

Then once we got it out of its cubby, we laid it on its back and put the face back on and reattached the drawers.  I told him not to put the doors on because I'll have to take them off again eventually if/when we get around to refinishing it.  Again, these are all things that the Casianos don't really have to do.  We're not paying them for any demo work.  Rudy could have just peaced out once he got it out and got his measurements, but they go the extra mile to take care of you.  Plus they're pretty impressed that I'm so interested to learn and willing to get my hands dirty, which makes me feel good :)  Just another reminder that we made a good choice to go with the local guys.

Lonely little alcove... notice the dual purpose windowsill.

Our new and not-so-improved pantry.

newsflash: white house selects new cabinet

[does anybody get that?  chris didn't find it very clever... but I'm rolling with it since it's the season of the caucuses and all... is "caucuses" a word?]

The cabinet story:

We went to Lowe's and worked with Bernie - who was so nice - to design semi-custom cabinets.  We spent a good deal of time and came up with a pretty sweet configuration with him using their CAD program.  Only downfall - the price tag was $8500 without installation and that didn't include anything to replace our built-in "pantry" in the nook.  We probably would have gotten some discounts bringing it closer to $7500 but that was still considerably more than we wanted to spend.

Here's what we came up with:

Then we met with the Casiano brothers - of Casiano Cabinets.  They're a local, family-owned business that our plumber told us about, and we're so glad he did.  They've been great to work with, it's all completely custom, and they're really flexible.  Plus the whole thing - including installation and a custom built-in in the nook - is going to set us back about $7200.  We're really confident with our decision and are happy to be supporting local business.  Lowe's gets enough out of our paychecks as it is.  (But I still get nervous and hide every time we walk by Bernie's area at Lowe's because I feel bad.  Chris thinks I'm ridiculous.)

Here's their old school CAD (as in Casiano-aided design) drawing:

This is the new wall of cabinets.  From left to right beginning on the left with angled open shelves and ending with the double oven on the left.

This is the side wall with the cooktop in the middle.  We want a big "statement" hood above the range.  The the fridge on the right with open shelves above.

This is the island with the sink and dishwasher.  To the left I want a shelf with baskets like this, which I thought was silly/trendy at first when I saw it in magazines.  But I like the idea of storing things like potatoes and onions in there.

say hello to our new kitchen!

The moment you've all been waiting for...

Check out our new kitchen!  Complete with open-shelving, which is all the rave...
 

Just kidding... Did you really think we'd finished our kitchen in the three weeks we've been "away"?

But yes, this will become our temporary kitchen for the next month or so.  It's actually the cabinet we removed from the kitchen that was next to the back window.  It even comes with a dishwasher right next to the TV.  So convenient. 

Yes... I've been really bad about updating the blog.  I was so gung-ho at first but clearly I don't have a future as a serious blogger.  I'll tell myself I need to post something about the kitchen, but would rather actually do something about the kitchen instead.  I'll try to be better so it doesn't stack up on me.

More updates coming soon!