Sink cabinet installed.

The sink cabinet was installed last week. This was a little tricky because the cabinet had to be coped into the baseboard. Here is a picture of the portion that is coped around the baseboard and trim.

Next up was to glue the cabinet in place with a bead of silicone adhesive.

After this was set it was time to work on fitting the doors and the toilet paper holder to the side.

Trim and sheetrock around windows

Over the last two weekends Kristen and I have been putting in drywall and trim around the new windows. This is a picture of the window sill. It is rather complicated because it is scribed to go in and out around all of the posts.

 

This is what it looks like once it is installed.

Next up came some patching in of the drywall all around the opening.

Kristen also decided that since we had the wall open we should put in some lights over the sink. You can see the holes in the ceiling with the wires hanging down.

A little joint compound and tape.

 

The trim pieces were then put in place in between and on both sides of the windows. Yes, we also got a couple days of snow..

The top trim piece was then put in place and Kristen painted up the wall and ceiling.


There is a little more sanding that needs to be done on the trim and then that can be painted. There is a trim crown that will have to be made and attached but I think that will come a little ways down the line. There will also be a piece that will go under the window sill but we will wait on that until we get the cabinets built so we can determine how plumb everything looks.

Feet for the sink cabinet

 Last night we glued up and cut out the feet for the unit. The original foot design had a curve to them but these were constructed with straight sides for ease of manufacturing. They are attached with a screw that is located down a long hole on the bottom of each foot. The leg that is in the corner of the unit has a thin veneer on one of its visible faces to give it the quarter-sawn fir look.

Kristen took the opportunity to put one more coat of paint on the whole unit.

This is what it will look like when it is turned over right side up.

Finishing up downstairs bathroom

Now that the windows are in and sealed we took a slight detour on working on the trim and worked on finishing up the downstairs bathroom. We had built a plywood temporary sink unit in there until the real one could be designed and built. Last week we finished up the design shown in the picture below.

  

The unit is going to be built of fir and just  urethaned so it is a little slower going and harder to work than the usual popular. Here is a picture of the front panel of the unit getting glued up and pocket screwed.

 And the doors getting built up. The center panel in the door is a 1/4" veneer grade fir plywood.

Here is the bottom of the unit. It is cabinet grade plywood with edges of fir. It is a little hard to tell but the fir is routed into a large bead profile along the whole edge.

The front panel around the doors gets a bead detail glued in place.

The front panel gets glued to the two sides and the bottom gets screwed in place

The top of the unit is cut to allow the bowl of the sink to fall into place. Here you can see a dryfit of the sink on top of the unit.

 The unit is put in place and the profile of the wall was marked on the back.

 Here is the profile of where the baseboard is interfaced after being cut. 

Kristen put the first coat of urethane on the unit and doors. The doors have to be fit and hinges installed then it will be complete.

Windows are now installed

We finished installing the windows over the weekend. First you can see the asphalt flashing that was used around all of the openings on all three windows. 

A finished box was then constructed and installed in the roughed out window frame. The box is the actual dimensions of the window and will become the casing on the inside.

Here the box is installed in the opening with shims to make it true and square. 

Here is a picture from the outside showing both of the side windows flashed and installed. If you look closely you can see the flashing on the inside edge is not adhered down, it is waiting for the center window flashing so that it can overlap. 

Here is the same stage seen from the inside. You can see that there is still a small section of "wall" that had to come out for the center window to go in.

And finally the third window goes in.

The original thought is that we were going to use some of the small siding boards from the center section to fill in the gaps that exist along the bottom. When we removed them we realized that they would be way too small. We went around town to all of the different lumber spots any finally found one that had some drop-leaf siding that is close to ours.

After we put it up it looked pretty good, and blended in even better once a coat of paint was put on it. Now there will be some work to get the inside and outside trim up.

 

New windows for the kitchen

We have started work on taking out the existing kitchen windows and replace them with a set of three windows with the center one over the sink. Here is a plan for what we are thinking about for the windows.

The cabinets will still need some work to determine what they will look like. On the far right we are planning on having a free standing unit that may look like the drawing below. That space is where we might put the microwave.

The first step in putting in the windows was to remove the existing wall where the windows will go down to the studs. You can see there used to be a larger window in this location. You can also see the old water line, drain and vent for the sink.

Here is a picture a little further back. As the studs are removed to allow a header to be put in a temporary 2x12 brace is put in along the top to support the roof loads

After all of the studs have been cut off a header and jack studs are put in place. As usual, everything is a little tight so the header needs a little persuasion to get in place.

The waterlines, drains and vent for the sink had to be moved to the new location. You can also see that there is a vent for the HVAC that was moved from the original location in the floor to a spot that will be under the sink cabinets.

Next up, out came the windows. The two pictures show the window getting removed from the inside and the sheet of plywood attached to the outside that is designed to keep out some of the cold.

Here is the beginning of the new framing for the windows. In the pictures you can see the vent for the sink that travels under one of the windows and ties into the vent that used to support the tub that was once there when it was a bathroom. You can also see the electrical outlets that were spaced at a couple intervals in the back. These will be used to power any outlets in the cabinets and the dishwasher that will be located next to the sink.

 Here is an overall picture of the kitchen. You can see the three windows fully framed out. You can also see the cabinets that were pulled off the wall and into the middle of the room. In the original process of getting them removed they were quite beaten up.

 So Kristen dismantled them

And I set about building a new temporary sink cabinet using the original countertop that was located in downstairs bathroom.

Here is a picture of where we are now after everything is all picked up. Next up will be to put some windows in this weekend