Kitchen reno - hardwood and cabinet installation

Moving right along, it was time for the dated vinyl floors to come up and hardwood to go down.  

When installing hardwood, the planks have to go perpendicular to the floor joists so they have support all the way across the room.  We discovered during the planning process that our floor joists change directions in the middle of the room.  Another little snag... so this means that we had a couple of options.  We could change the hardwood direction halfway through the room.  We could rebuild floor joists so we could run it all one way.  OR - we could go diagonally!  We were a little skeptical at first, but we LOVE the floors!!  

To give you a time frame reference, they were installed on the Friday of the second full week.

Once the floors were in, it was time to go to work installing cabinets.  Monday of the third week, they started on cabinets.  As you may remember from a previous post, we put them all together, and the contractors are installing them.  M stayed home the two main installation days to help them find the right cabinets, pieces, etc since they were a bit all over the place.  

After day 1 of cabinet installation

Ikea cabinets are installed on the wall a little differently than others.  They go on a track system.  So you hang a track on the wall (see the top middle-left of the photo) and nailed into the studs.  Then you hang the cabinets from the track, and bolt them together.  

The fridge will go here, and a TV will be installed above the fridge - thanks to the blog Design Megillah for the idea!

We also got new cabinets for the mudroom.  While we were doing the construction, we thought we should just go ahead and replace those as well.  Plus we wanted another big pantry cabinet for things like boots, umbrellas, Cady's dog food, etc.

So part of the deal with the contractors was that we would also finish putting the cabinets together once up.  M said this was WAY worse than the initial part that we thought was relatively easy and quick!  He spent hours in the kitchen installing drawers, slide out shelves, and putting the finishing touches on everything.

But having all of these shelves in the new cabinet pantry is going to be great!

Moving right along!  It's starting to look like a kitchen!  At this point we're waiting on the island to be delivered so it can be installed, then countertops measured and installed, floors finished, more lights installed, tile, hood and appliances!  We are now finished with week 3...

Kitchen reno, previous posts:

Before photos

Cabinets

Progress