I don't know exactly how to put this, but let me paint a picture. Tony and I move in about a month before we even have kitchen walls. We've been eating out so much that I can't stand another individual packaged meal. Our cat Alby (whom we treat like our own son) is still living at my parents house because we still don't have kitchen walls. Fast forward a few weeks and the walls are up and painted. We get our floors installed by Lowe's. We pick a ceramic wood look tile which I forgot to mention earlier. Sorry I don't have pictures of the floors done.
Now I'm standing in a room which is our kitchen and the next step is to assemble and install the cabinets. I'm nervous. I have never put a kitchen together. How the heck are we going to do this? It can't be that hard... can it!? Oh dear lord, please guide us in the right direction. I hope we're doing the right thing. All of that is on my mind, but I'm not vocalizing it because if I tell Tony there will be two people freaking out.
Now, after purchasing all of our cabinets at Ikea we haul them into our car and drive 10 minutes down the road back home. They sat in a spare room for about a week before we dive right into it. Tony and I count through all the boxes and compare it to the item list we got from Ikea with our receipt. We have to make sure everything is there so we don't panic later when everything is laying across the kitchen floor outside it boxes.
Thankfully assembling them were not bad at all! We started with all four wall cabinets. Probably the easiest route to go since they have to go up first on the wall. Soon enough my dad helped me get them up!
That's a "oh-my-god-I'm-so-happy-they're-finally-up-and-I-still-have-my-hair!" face. See, the thing is we followed the Ikea instructions step by step. All went smooth until we realized that although the instructions stated to hang the cabinets 83 7/8" inches off the floor it looked like the space between the wall cabinets and where the base cabinets would be was too small. So I panicked. And as a result we undid everything we patiently got done. Meaning we had to unscrew the suspension rail (used to hang the cabinets) off the wall studs in which we already secured so tightly so as to make certain nothing would fall. Pain. In. The. Butt. But it had to be done. So we hung the wall cabinets about 4 inches higher than expected. This allowed about 20" between the wall and base cabinets.
Everything else sort of flowed right into place as soon as we overcame that hurdle. We were able to put in the pantry cabinet and the base cabinet. Right after, Tony installed the doors in too. We picked the Ikea Adel off-white doors. Following that, the stove and dishwasher slid into place to make sure my measuring was correct. I did all my planning on the Ikea Kitchen Planner, but of course we had to double check. It fit right in.
So at this point we're moving right along. We got a bunch of installing done in one day and the rest would be pretty simple to finish.
You can see in the picture above that since the wall cabinets were hung a few inches higher than normal the pantry cabinet was standing lower than the rest. I plan to add molding or trim to the top to make it all look cohesive.
You can imagine my excitement at this point. My dad and Tony ended the night by installing the stove and refridgerator so at least we can start cooking our own food. We have never wanted to cook so badly in our life. The next big necessity was getting the sink in to wash dishes and what not. But one step at a time. Miracles don't happen overnight. I wish.
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