Momplex Vanilla Kitchen

For me, the sawdust is where it is AT.

Wood is my medium of choice.  I love how easy to cut wood is, how naturally beautiful it is.  I love how it smells when you work with it, I love how functional it becomes when you use it.  I love that wood is renewable, and while it renews, it renews our air.  I love working with wood.

But while taking on a Momplex, we've had to work with alot of other mediums.  Styrofoam blocks, poured concrete, and drywall. &

It took us two tries to get you all the deets on installing the Microhood ... good thing we got two moms and two Momplex units to finish up!

Microhoods to me are like toilets or power lines or my big toes....  function over form here, especially when space is at a premium.

The good news about every microhood I've been a part of installing is they come with pretty darn good instructions and hanging hardware.

The tem

So where were we ....

We got kitchen cabinets built, 

then we DIYed a laminate countertop, 

Now it's time to install them!!!

Most countertops are just glued down, but remember us? And our overbuilding, do-it-right-the-first-time issues?  

Yeah, glue just not going to be enough for us.  I know it would work just fine .... but why not add some screws too?  Help us.

My friend Kate made me a believer.

When it came time to install a countertop for the Momplex Vanilla kitchen, we did go have a solid surface countertop priced out.  

The cost of the solid surface countertop was MORE than the entire kitchen!!!  And it would take 8 weeks and we'd have to pay for a full travel day each time someone drove to the site to measure, fit and install the countertop (yes, we are to blame there for living in the sticks in Alaska).

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Truth is, we didn't hang 20 yesterday.

We actually only hung 18. 

We were dreading the last two.  Can you guess what two doors I'm referring too?

Yep, you guessed right!  

The lazy susan we built for the corner will require two doors, hinged together with multiple different hinges.

You can buy the whole kit, or buy the hinges separately, as we did.

Image from Hardware Source

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With the doors painted, it's time to take this -

And turn it into this -

Pretty crazy how just installing doors over cabinets can do that, isn't it?

The doors we ordered are measured for full overlay, and will require a Euro Style Concealed Hinge, 1-1/4" (sometimes referred to as Full Overlay), Face Frame.  

Full Overlay means the doors pretty much cover the entire cabinet - there's a 1/2" gap between all doors and

I remember back when we used our Get Out of Jail Free card on the Momplex, and I dreaded receiving comments about hiring help and taking a step off from DIY.

But you totally suprised me.

Instead, many of you commented that a good DIYer knows when to DIY, and when to seek help.

The primary reason we hired out the drywall finishing is tool investment.  In order to tool up to do two homes worth of drywall, we'd be into it about as much as the cost of hiring

Whether you buy kitchen cabinets or you DIY them yourself (I'm totally on team DIY here!) I think the biggest difference maker in how professional looking your kitchen cabinet ends up appearing is in the tiny little details.  In other words, after you hang your cabinets, you aren't done quite yet.

After installing all the kitchen cabinets for the Momplex Vanilla Kitchen, there's a few little things that will make a big difference to take care of.

The most obvious one is finis

Hi everyone!

I'm really excited today to share with you how we installed crown moulding on top of the wall kitchen cabinets - finishing out the seam between the top of the cabinets and the ceiling.  

But before we get to that - don't forget - today's the day! 

The Home Depot Do-It Herself Workshop - featuring a storage trunk plan designed by me (it super simple so very beginner friendly) is happening tonight!!!

You can re

After a couple of weeks of building kitchen cabinets and finishing them, I can't tell you how excited and eager I was for this day to come ...  Kitchen cabinet installation day!!!

Yep, this blank space is going to be a kitchen after today!

We are going to do the wall cabinets first.

First, we mark the height of the bottom of the wall cabinets.  Standard height is 54".

But we can't just mark 54" and pull a string line,

Well, we started working on the next set of kitchen cabinets for Momplex Unit A - and man, have things ever been slow going with a newborn! The Ram's pretty much been a one man show this kitchen ... poor guy, on the last kitchen we built, his building partner was 8 months preggers. One of the things we really wanted to do this time around was put together video tutorials for the bigger steps in building kitchen cabinets. I know many of you find helpful to see something done, and not just r

Hi everyone!

Happy New Year!

Thank you for welcoming our son to the Knockoffwood family!  He's doing wonderful, and I promise, I'll be sharing some more photos and details with you soon.

While I was pregnant, the Ram and I worked extra hard to finish up Grandma's (the Ram's mom, otherwise known as Sewing Mom) side of the Momplex so she could be moved in by the Holidays.  And knowing we'd have a newborn baby arriving, we wanted to get as much done as possi

So let's just say you got a team of two building a kitchen, and one hates painting and the other can't paint.

Well, it's not that I couldn't paint.  They say occassional painting in a well ventilated area is fine for pregnant women.  

But up here in Alaska, in the cold winter months, working inside a poured in place concrete building, with no ventilation, where your full time job is to build and paint or stain furniture, it's not occassional and it's not well vent

So what is the most intimidating part of building your own kitchen cabinets? 

Apart from the huge scope of the entire project, I'd have to say building and installing easy to use drawers can seem very intimidating.  Kitchen drawers get used dozens of times a day, so you want drawers that are both easy to use and will hold up over years of use.

For the Momplex white kitchen, we decided to use a drawer side/slide combo system, call Metabox drawers by Blum.