Kitchen War... Boxing Match

March 23 was the one year anniversary of our home purchase.  We've made a tremendous amount of progress but are probably starting our most difficult project, except for maybe the bathroom.  We spent just about the entire weekend working on the kitchen.

Sunday afternoon we took a break for the weekend to go pick up our stained glass mosaic from the place we took our class a couple of weeks ago.

Here's Robyn's:

That's a copy of the sun tattoo on her wrist.

...and here is mine, a copy of a stained glass mosaic that I found on-line.

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This weekend we got started boxing in the ductwork that is exposed in the kitchen.  If you remember, the last time we did this, I conked Robyn on the head with a 2x4.  So I tried a different approach this time, building the box on the floor in sections out of 2x2's.  This made it lighter and easier to handle.

Here are the pieces as they were built and assembled.

Top part of the first section

The top and bottom pieces for the first section assembled.

Robyn's help was needed to hold up the box sections and to assist a bit more, 

 I screwed some 3 1/2 inch screws into the wall just below where the box section will ultimately be attached.  That actually worked fairly well...

Cause that bubble was pretty much in the middle.  Here's what that first section looks like from across the room.

Things went fairly quickly and it wasn't much longer before we had the next section built...

And hanging up...

We're planning on putting suspended shelving along this wall.  I haven't made up my mind exactly how they will be attached so each section was attached with six 4 inch long lag screws in addition to the 3 1/2 inch wood screws we first used to attach the box sections to the wall and ceiling.

Ratcheting in the lag screws was quite the workout.

Here's Robyn cranking away.

About the worse problem we had was this one lag screw...

Which pulled the plaster away from the wall before it finally dug into the underlying stud.  I forgot to take a picture but we did splice the two sections together.

Next day it was time to hang some sheetrock.  

First piece up. 

Here you can see the box where the track light will go.

Pieces two and three up with the wire for the track lighting run through the box.

And finally, the last piece up and the remaining hole in the ceiling patched.

Now it was time to run the wire for the microwave.  But first I had to fix the slats which were loosened when I cut the hole for the box.

To do that...

I re-purposed the spacers I had ripped when we were putting in the laminate flooring.  Here's one of the other holes which had to be patched as well.

If you look closely, you can see the repair in the background.

In addition to the wiring which I was threading between the slats through a hole I drilled in each stud with a spade bit. Running the wire was extremely difficult.  Like Robyn says, I knocked the "bark off" just about every knuckle.

This went so well, I decided to change the route for the wiring for the track lighting.

So well, that I busted up a good portion of the plaster on that section of the wall.  Fortunately, it will be behind the new pantry.  But it will still get patched and painted.