Done
time for college again. I'll put the toe-kick on, touch up the paint and straighten the wall cabs next weekend. I'd also like to pour concrete end panles for the base cabinets, but for the time being we're gonna make do with the standard Ikea ones.


i waxed and buffed the concrete after the sealer dried, so it's got a pretty nice reflective shine.

Ellen took some snaps of me sealing the concrete. We had a bunch of half full bottles of sealer left over from sealing the grout in many tile jobs over the past few years.








The weight of the concrete didn't seem to overburden the cabinets. We reinforced them just in case but they didn't settle hard on the reinforcing blocks.










the nearest surface to you in the picture is where we started the pour it came out a little rough looking but a bit of slurry took care of the surface texture.

Pour day

No pics of the pour because i was dealing with the concrete but this is the final prep set up before the concrete went in'

from form to counter

I've spent the last couple of days working on the forms for the counter tops. We're doing poured in place counters. this way the large counter that is in an L shape can be seamless.
Also the cabinets make a nice level support for the forms and it seemed wasteful and expensive to build a bunch of sturdy temporary supports. We are now required to get it right the first time and the finish work will be a big deal. I spent 14 hours on Wednesday working on the form work and most of today was spent on the sink form though i only worked for about five hours and did some painting and a hardware run in between glue setting.

The forms look janky because they are built from scrap particle board. When shopping at Ikea for the cabs last year, i was snooping around the as-is section as usual. As i was snooping an employee rolled a doubled up cart loaded with scraps from cabinets and furniture that did not have a much individual value. The whole pile of of lumber, about 8'x2'x3' in volume was only ten dollars. I figured I could put it to good use and used just a fraction of it in the counter forms. Apart from four 8 foot 2x4's that we used to reinforce the legs of the cabs All the lumber is re-used scrap. I also ripped some of the wood paneling that we tore off the old kitchen and saved. less than $20 is a pretty good deal for 70 square feet of form work.

The inside of the sink was a little problematic. I thought some 1/8" masonite was going to work it seemed pretty pliable but it didn't quite get a tight enpugh radius before snapping. So architecture model making came into play. I had a bunch of chipboard left over (scavenged from the laser cutter room) also free and re-used. I didn't feel like cutting it into 2" strips by hand so I stacked up some pieces and ran them through the table saw! less than a minute to make 20 or so 4'x2 1/4" strips of card. The card is glued to the straight edges of the sink which is just wood blocks screwed into the sunken base. The base for the sink mold is just the cut out from where the old sink has been this last year. It's temporarily supported by a frame of 2x4's that are screwed into the inside of the cabinet. It is sunken below the rest of the plywood by 3/4 of an inch. after the concrete sets up, i'll unscrew the support and push the form out through the cabinet. This way the concrete cantilevers beyond the plywood base and there'll be a nice thick edge all the way around. The underside will be flush between concrete and plywood and supporting the undermount sink should be fairly easy. The mounting bolts are in place now and will become embedded in the concrete during the pour. The knockout for the faucet is a piece of 3/4 pvc pipe I found a 2 1/4"- 1" reducer bushing (PVC) and jambed a 3/4" straight coupling into the 1" inch end a snug fit! Then i sliced half of the bushing off and then half of the coupling. The coupling allows me to tightly fit the 3/4 inch pipe into the 2 1/4 inch bushing. A faucet only needs a small 3/4 or so hole to pass it's plumbing and fiting through but they aren;t manufactured to accomodate a 2 1/4" thick counter top. The bushing provides a enough room to get the nut a little ways up inside the concrete to deal with the short hardware.

Idealy the base for a concrete pour like this should be 1/2 inch cement board. But we needed countertops last year and cement wouldn't have held up. The plywood is sturdy enough but is prone to warping from the moisture of the concrete while it sets. however i did not want to endure the time and expense and waste of switching this elemnet out. especially seeing as it is really just a support for the counters while they set. I will place tar paper over the plywood before the pour and the small amount of moisture should be ok. All the wood is being taped with packing tape and caulked to deal with this issue also.

Cheung reccomends pushing plasticine into the screw heads so they don;t fill with concrete during the pour, and then become difficult to pull out. I used packing tape instead. it will hold up to concrete drips and when time comes to unscrew, the driver will just pop right through the tape, no picking out plasticine necessary! plus much quicker to set up.

Taking shape

There's no pics but the kitchen is taking shape too. the staggered wall cabs are down and will line up with each other now. The old paint is whited out and a color is waiting to be applied tomorrow. There's some mold on the wall that adjoins the main house so we've been scraping and bleaching it, the rock is drying out tonight and will be touched up and finished tomorrow, the walls would be perfect white but the step between the old and new sheetrock is taking a lot of mud to smooth out, we're halfway through a five gallon tub of mud and we only hung two pieces of rock! Well i ripped off the rock that was sitting on top of the old exterior sheathing which was left in place during the remodel that closed in that part of the house. the sheathing has had a couple coats of mud and now we'll have flush walls all around instead of an awkward 1/2 inch step in the wall by the kitchen door. I attempted to re-wire the hall light so that the 3-way setup will work properly but now it does not work at all.

The two bulbs in the kitchen were burnt out, i think that LED bulbs we have aren't suitable to be used with a dimmer switch, though it was not mentioned on the packaging. And the plug in the bedroom which acted like an off switch for all the bedrooms and lights when something was plugged in to it, has been replaced.

the garage side of the wall is sheeted in OSB. as long as it's a storgae room this is the best surface. once we get flooring in I'll pop the OSB off. insulate the wall, put it back on and rock over it. That should make a pretty good sound proofed wall and provide a room in the house with some decent privacy. I'm gonna seal it with some of this soy sealer that Diz recomended,


that'll stop the bits of pressed wood from flaking off and catching clothes etc.

Day 2 Sunday

Late start due to Dharma Punx. Diz came by at 3 and we hung the pre-hung door and sheetrock. The prehung just needed a little trimming on the frame and because we have the finished concrete floors the door didn't need to be cut down at all. The rock went up quick and Diz cut the lower piece where the outlets are cos my success rate at that is about 2 out of 3 and a I didn't feel like being humiliated again. we got the rock and door up before 5 and Diz split. I just got done with the first coat of mud and even finally patched the ceiling where the shovel popped through last year when we were scraping off the popcorn.

I'll try to retroactively post some of the work from last summer too.

Saturday and Sunday

Saturday i met Diz and we got started clearing out the studio to B. we got all the junk relocated and actually threw out a few things too. Then we started with the new wall, I'd bought a pocket door which i thought would be sweet for this location and was only $25 at habitat but the beam hangs too low (the ceilings are low too) and cutting a pocket door down 2" didn't seem ideal. plus i want to insulate the wall for sound in case we end up renting the converted garage somewhere down the line. The pocket for the pocket door can't be insulated and we'd have to be real careful hanging stuff there too, plus no power can go in so i settled for a pre-hung. Then we ended up wrestling with the base plate for the wall, I had some janky philips head concrete anchors but the wouldn't grab, so i said goodbye to Diz, feeling kinda humiliated for screwing up the pocket door and base plate tasks, and headed to the hardware store for some real anchor bolts.

more than you need to know...

I don't like anchors ever! they never perform well and are usually a wrestling match. If i have to use 'em I like the wedge anchors with a nut on them. hammer 'em in hard and wrench 'em up tight with a socket wrench and that's a good tight hold. Incidentally if i ever do another Ikea kitchen I'll use the wall cabinet rail on the base cabs too. the rails are only 6 bucks for a 7 foot length and the cabinets never line up on studs. Even the 90# metal sheetrock anchors that screw in don't give a good hold and if the rock is at all moist, which it often is on an exterior wall or just from being in the kitchen, then the hold is even weaker.