I have a great promotional idea for Ikea!

Three Free Sessions of Marriage Counselling with every Kitchen Purchased!

...and now for the kitchen update.

Actually, it hasn't been that bad. I say this with the same tone as I would with, say, childbirth. You know, it really can't be classified as fun. It hurts. You might say unpleasant things to your spouse. You look forward to the end. The finished product is quite lovely and you are pretty sure you'd do it all over again. Maybe.

I would actually do another Ikea kitchen but there are certain tasks I would hire someone else to do. The counter tops are one of those tasks. I should have known when my very handy neighbour, who can Macgyver just about anything together (and incidentally owns nearly every power tool known to man - many of which we are still hoarding), shook her head and said we were very brave to tackle it. We wanted to save a few bucks by buying one of the premade vinyl slabs. Cutting out the hole for the sink, easy. The rest, so unpleasant. Walls are never even. Ours, I am sure, are worse than average. How a wall can bow only on the lower half boggles my simple mind. The endcaps just glue on with an iron and one then merely shaves it smooth with a file. Ha. Ha. Ha. We needed to raise the counter so the top wouldn't impede the doors from opening. That meant screws needed to go through the cabinet, some extra particle board, and then into the counter...don't ask me why this was so difficult but it was. We have yet to screw down the last two counter tops, a 21" and 24" on either side of the stove. Never again will I touch a counter top.

We are nearly done. Or it looks nearly done. Last weekend we added the sink and hooked up the dishwasher. That part was actually quite easy and was even fun. That might be the ABS pipe liquid cement fumes speaking though. We put in a sink and a half because I really wanted my sink cabinet to be 30" long to match the other base cabinets. We splurged a bit on the faucet and I am quite pleased with the results.




We seem to alternate good days and bad days. The day we did the plumbing, everything went right. It was beautiful. The next day, everything went wrong. That is how it seems to go. I am very impressed with how user friendly the whole Ikea cabinets have been. The doors were actually a breeze to put up. Really only took a few minutes for door, if that. The handles took much longer.

The kitchen looks nearly finished and within a few days will be completely usable again. I have yet to move anything into the cupboards. We still need to secure the counter to the other two base cabinets and put in the drawers. There are what seems like a hundred details left to attend to though, and that will take a while. I have to change all the outlets to white sockets. We are tiling the backsplash with white square tiles. The toekick needs to be cut and put on. The spacers for the upper cabinets need to be cut and installed. There are end caps for the upper and lower cabinets to add. Some trim to go under the cabinets to hide things like the lighting, which also needs to be added. I have tons of little accessories, like the birch rack that needs to be attached to an upper cabinet that holds these 5 glass containers. There are these funky drawer dividers that need to be figured out. We need new baseboards for the whole room, not to mention all the walls need to be repainted and I am terrible at picking out colour schemes. Sigh. Details...and lots of them.

I have to say I am quite proud of what Rob and I have accomplished. We laughed the other day, after Rob had taken out the headlight on the car to change a few bulbs, and joked that we could never have imagined a time when Rob had greasy hands and knew what a nut wrench was and I was in the kitchen sawing strips of wood for the counter top. At this rate you may hear about us planning our upcoming kayaking trip this summer. Or maybe not, lol.

Here are the latest pics of the kitchen: