Progress through Friday

We completed the texture, painting, wiring, hood venting and close-in. We are not texturing & painting the area below the soffits, since it will all be tiled using backer board. It only needs to be taped and mudded once.

A little bit of a disaster occured when I drilled through the power line to the oven (40 amp) by mistake. It vaporized the end of the bit, and of course ruined the cable. There was really no option to try to repair it, since it was aluminum and three wire. I needed to pull it out and 3 hours + $100 later, we had a new cable. The up side is now we have a 8 gage copper 4-wire cable, which is the new code.

I will refer back to a previous post - the low profile drill was a life saver for this. I needed to drill a new hole down from the attic through the soffit, where the roof comes down. I had to lay on my stomach and reach in where I had less than a foot of clearance. There is not way a regular drill would have fit. That little tool and a spade bit bored the hole in seconds.



To texture, I use a sprayer powered by my air compressor, called a "spraying mantis". Its about $75, and overall a great tool for DIY sheetrock.

Today we finally install the windows (hopefully the rain will continue to break), and start on the cabinets.

Half way through "vacation" week

Right up front: I am never satisfied with my progress on projects, and I always want to be ahead of where I am at. That being said, things are moving along.

What we accomplished today:

• Picked up windows. Did not get them installed - it rained hard all day.
• Tore out all the cabinets, removed applianced and cleaned them.
• Finished mudding, sanding and texturing the soffits. Not yet dry enough to paint.
• Completed moving the plumbing supply and drain lines over about 14 inches to the new sink location. The sink drain is 2 inches, and now the distance to the vent is just under 3 feet - well within the critical distance requirement of 5 feet.
• Traced out all the circuits and opened up the wall to move and add outlets & switches.

The most frustrating part of the day was driving to HD and Lowes to get stuff. The pre-holiday traffic was terrible. Friday will likely be worse! I am staying home...

Wall work

We are spending Monday and Tuesday doing all the "wall work": modifying the soffits, resizing the window openings and adding can lights.

We decided to keep the soffits and put a display shelf along them. Since the upper and full height cabinets are a couple of inches deeper than standard, we needed to extend them. Also we have the new double-oven cabinet, so that soffit was added (left side of picture).

The pictures below show the progression of this afternoon's work: framing, sheetrocking, and taping. I will tear out the (and throw away) the uppers tomorrow.