Kitchen War... Hanging Around

It's been a busy couple of weekends on Pacific St.  Between graduation parties, volunteering at events and a little bit of gardening, not a whole lot has gotten done, including doing an update.

Weekend before last, after the Mason Jar light was hung up, I also got around to hanging up a couple of other things that'd been hidden away in various corners of the house.

First up, was a whimsical hanging light from Ikea which Robyn picked up last year.  Originally intended for a kid's bedroom, we just liked the feel it brought to the kitchen.

It doesn't put out a lot of light but with the other 2 lights in the kitchen we have plenty.

All of our cooking pots and pans were either hanging on nails in the basement stairwell or buried in the back of a bottom cabinet.  With the countertop in place, and before we put wallpaper up, I hung up our new pot rack.

Unfortunately, once we put the pots on it, we found out that they hang in our way when we work on the countertop.



It will get moved a bit back closer to the wall.  We also started painting the pine wood on the walls.  It just did not clean up well.  You can see the first part in the background of the picture.  We also started painting the plyboard on the back part of the counter extension.

We also pulled the doors off the new cabinets.  While Robyn was painting those outside, I installed our new tray / lid sliding rack in the cabinet between the stove and refrigerator.

... and painted the edge of the cabinets.



Later in the week, I was finally able to finish up the last little bit of countertop tile.

Now we need another trip to Ikea to pick up the rest of the knobs for the new pantry and cabinets.  This pretty much finishes up the kitchen except for under the sink, a little bit of painting and some wall paper on the ceiling.  I'll be starting on the new breakfast nook shortly.

Out in the garden, we harvested some bok choy

...and some turnip greens.

And had grilled pork chops with curried mustard greens with kidney beans.



We have a good mess of collard greens that need to be picked very soon and we're exploring some creative recipes for them as well.

Sunday afternoon, we cut grass and I finally got tired of ducking tree limbs.  I started off pruning a few hanging limbs but soon broke out the saw and ended up with a truckload to haul to the compost site down the road a bit.

Robyn says that now that people can see the front of the house...

I'm gonna have to clean the construction materials and debris off the front porch.

Kitchen War... White Lightning in a Mason Jar

For the past 15 months, I've been staring at this outlet box cover next to the cabinets...

...and this covered over light fixture over the sink.

 Wondering if at one time there was a light switch controlling a light over the sink.  I figured it was time to check.  First thing was to check to see if the wire behind the covers were live.

The red light means the wire is live. 

I wired up a new light switch and then checked the light fixture and found that when the light switch was on, the wire was live and when the switch was off, the wire was dead.  I had a place for another light in the kitchen.

While the power was off, I also replaced the other fixture. 

(I got a fixture with an outlet, Ken Watts, so we could have another one and get rid of the "octopus.")

I connected a simple pendant light that I had picked up from Home Depot a few days earlier.

I had originally picked this up with the intent of letting Robyn pick out the globe she wanted at a later date.  I wanted the fixture on hand for when I had time to fool with this outlet to see if I could get it to work.

But over the last few months, we'd seen a lot of "Mason Jar" chandeliers.  This things were ranging anywhere from $50 to $300 online which I thought was a bit pricey for something someone just through together without any real knowledge of electricity.  Yesterday, I saw one on Instructables where people commenting on it had some real concerns about the safety of the wiring.

However, the instructable did give me an idea.  Why couldn't I make a "Mason Jar" pendant light?  I had a UL listed light fixture, a Mason Jar, ring and lid.

First thing I did was trace the light socket on the lid.

I drilled four hole around the out edge and one in the center so I had a place to start with my tin snips.  (The lid is from some Mississippi sweet lime pickles with hot peppers that my sister Tammy made me.)

And of course, I couldn't find my tin snips and I ended up using my wire cutters to cut out the center of the lid.

It looks a little rough but I smoothed down the edges by squeezing the burrs with a pair of pliers to press them flat. 

Next, I took the ring and the lid and attached them to the pendant using the ring that came with the pendant.

Screwed in a bulb and then the jar onto the lid...

Over to the light switch to flip it on...

...and for the price of a $15 pendant light, an old jar, and a used ring and lid, we had "white lightning" in a mason jar. 

Later, I'll replace the CFL bulb with a cooler (temperature-wise) LED bulb.  They were all too expensive at Target when we ran in there to pick up some other items.

Kitchen War... Drips / Getting laid

Drips

I absolutely hate hooking up sink drains.  I have yet to ever do one which doesn't leak on the first attempt.  This kitchen sink was no different.



But before I started on the drain, I wanted to make sure that the water lines had full flow.  The cold water line has a stretch of galvanized pipe connected to copper in the basement and we had a problem with full flow in the old faucet.



I ran a full five gallons of water from both the hot and cold water without a problem.

As for the drain itself, I figured I'd do this one correctly and not cobble together a drain.  I started off with a center drain kit from Home Depot.

But first I had to install the strainer basket in the tub on the left side of the sink...

The plumbers' putty went down around the drain hole...

I tightened up the strainer basker under the sink and got a good "ooze" of putty all the way around the strainer basket.  A quick wipe with my index finger around the basket and...

Voila!  Strainer basket installed. 

Now under the sink to connect the water lines.  This faucet was interesting in that the water lines in the faucet were woven stainless steel.  However, neither the cold nor hot lines were marked.  I figured I had a 50/50 shot at getting the lines hooked up right the first time.  I started with the hot water source first.

I was cooking with gas.  Got it right on the first attempt.  After the water lines were hooked up, I started on the drain lines.

... and my luck started to turn.

First, the elbow part of the drain line was about 2 1/2 inches short.  No biggie, I had bought a 6 inch extension just for this type of circumstance.  I cut it to the correct length.

And the sink drains were connected.  I used the old P-trap with the accordian section and elbow to connect to the drain coming out of the wall.  It looked a little rough but I was ready to test...

Aaarrggghh!!!  Water was coming out of 4 of the 8 new connections plus the old strainer basket which had come with the sink.

I took off the old basket and discover the putty had deteriorated; it had probably gotten bumped and turned when it was removed from the prior installation.



I cleaned it up, put new putty in...

I reconnected the drain and left the bucket and bowl under the sink until the next evening when I could get to Home Depot to get a longer elbow so I could simplify the drain connections.

Frustration... I still had one leak.  I took the drain apart and trimmed 1/4 inch off each elbow so I could get the connection to the sink bowls perfectly straight.

Aaarrrgghhh!!!  But that didn't work.  I'd get one drain to stop leaking and then the other would start.  I tightened.  Undid.  Redid.  Nothing worked.

...until in desperation, I filled the connection with plumbers' putty.  Three of the four joints went right together.  But the 4th one... Let's just say I gave it a good talking to before it decided to cooperate. 

90 minutes after I started, I finally had a kitchen sink that didn't leak.

Getting Laid

In addition to installing the sink, for the last two weeks, we've been working on getting the tile installed on the counters on the west side of the kitchen.  Inspired by George Iverson's comment that the cabinets used to be covered by small tiles, we choose tile with a white victorian octagon with black square dots pattern along with a white sink rail.

Most of the time was spent fitting and cutting the tile.  The sink rails required some complicated cuts (at least for me they were complicated.)  Here's the one for the 90 degree corner.

...and for the 45 degree corner in the seating area.



The tile was installed over two weekends.  Weekend one we worked on the side with the countertop extension and diswasher.  After the sink rail was installed.

We used spacers to keep the tile the correct distance apart.

Once the tile for this side of the cabinet had been all cut, we started installing the tile using a product call Bondera TileMatSet.  Bondera comes in two basic types.  20 mil for horizon applications like below and 40 mile for vertical application.

Bondera is a double-sided adhesive which can be used on level surfaces in place of backer board and thinset.

You can do a slide the tile a small amount and once you have it in the proper location, you either press it down for 5 seconds or roll with a rolling pin.  I pressed down.

One of the advantages of Bondera is you can immediately grout once the tile is down rather than having to wait 24 to 48 hours for the thinset to dry.  You do have to grout within 8 hours of installing the tile.

... but before I did that, I had a bite of lunch on the new countertop.

...and then it was outside to mix the grout.

With black, it's not to hard to tell where you've grouted and where you haven't.

...and it gets everywhere.  Here's I am before it got really messy.

Once the grout was in, we cleaned it up with sponges.  We went through several five gallon buckets of water.

After the grout completely dried, we cleaned up the remaining haze with an acid cleaner (for which I worn rubber gloves.)

Weekend two, we spent focused on finishing the remaining 10 square feet or so on the other end of the existing counters.  (Next weekend, I plan on doing the small 12 inch wide cabinet between the refrigerator and stove.)

First down, the sink rail.

I changed up the process a bit this time and put the Bondera TileMatSet down first before I cut the tile.



This was a lesson learned from the previous weekend where I found it was difficult to remember which piece of tile went where when I picked it up to lay down the tilematset.

With only 10 square feet instead of 28 square feet like last weekend...

... the tile cutting went a lot faster, as did the grouting



But it was still just as messy and was a chore to clean up.

Sunday morning we were up bright and early to weed the garden.  My corn and beans didn't do very well; but the rest of the garden looks pretty good.

Two hours of hoeing and Robyn and I were done.

Now for the sink front.

We had looked at country sinks, also known as apron front sinks, for the kitchen.  We really liked the look.  However, because the counters were not standard and as folks in Minnesota say, they were a "bit spendy," we chose to go with a traditional sink.  As shown in my previous blog, I had to build a new cabinet extension to accomodate the larger bowls of the sink.

As opposed to the painted exterior plyboard which had been there, we chose to tile the extension creating a faux apron for the sink.

For this tile application, I used the 4 inch wide Bondera TileMatSet for vertical installations.

I couldn't find bull-nosed 3" x 6" inch white tile so I used 4 1/2" square bull-nosed tile and cut it down to the 3" width with the full lenght on the first row and 1/2 length on the second row.  This enabled the pieces of tile which I needed to cut to complete the row to be centered with the cut center piece of sink rail.



For the faux apron front, we used white grout rather than black.

Since it was such a small area, I used a pre-mixed grout.  30 minutes later, it was wiped down and the countertops were finished on this side of the kitchen with just the backsplash remaining to do.