Remove old cabinets

Didn't know old kitchen cabinets were custom built for this unit and were mostly one piece. pretty hard to remove by myself but finally did it. Had to break units into smaller peices for disposal in county dump. Found a HUGE hole behind the sink cabinet where builder removed the drywall to access plumbing and never replaced the drywall, you could hide a dead body in there! Reinsulated and installed drywall. Resurfaced walls to receive new cabinets.

Purchase and assemble new cabinets

Chose the new cabinets for the kitchen at Home Depot: Mill's Pride Fairfield system. Good looking and good price. Looked at better quality cabinets but didn't fit budget. Store cabinet expert was very helpful and the cabinet plan very thorough. We kept the same layout, just modernized it and added more convenience. Placed the order and cabinets arrived 2 weeks later.

Started assembling cabinets, instructions are good but the cabinets parts are NOT labeled so have to guess as to which part the instructions refer to. The Home Depot plans are also not very legible the way they are printed and had to make MANY phone calls to clarify some parts. In addition, the plans' labels do not match the labels on the boxes so it takes a bit of time to figure out which cabinet goes where, it sure helps that I can read maps and blueprints!!

Install new cabinets

Installed upper cabinets according to plan. Not as difficult as I first thought, the wall's not perfectly flat and have had to shim and adjust the units but they're looking good. These cabinets look better when installed than I first thought they would. The upper trim my wife chose had to be the most difficult to cut and fit! The wood spindle style would have been much simpler to assemble but it doesn't look too bad, at least to me! Maybe later on I'll purchase another strip and fix the corner that only I can see doesn't fit 100%. Then again I'm the only one that can see the mis-match so it may stay like that.

The lower cabinets are also in position and ready for the new appliances. These took a bit of alignment and shimming to make ready for the granite countertop.

New appliances

Well, at first all I had planned on was to install a new LG over-the-range microwave/hood but it didn't look that great with the old GE range. So we went ahead and bought the matching LG LRE30451 convection range! This was a bit of a fiasco, Home Depot contracts with GE for all their deliveries and 3 times they delivered a damaged item. I mean, not a small dent or so but bashed-in tops and crunched lower parts! I had to refuse 3 deliveries so finally went to talk to the store manager. After explaining our situation he gladly upgraded our range to the LG LRE30755 model which is about $500 more than our model so we agreed to give it one more try. The 4th delivery was a success and we now have a fantastic unit that almost cooks for itself!

After installing the microwave and range the dishwasher didn't look right (the LG units and GE refrigerator are all white and the old dishwasher was black and white) so we went ahead and replaced the dishwasher also with a new GE model. Now the only old unit left is the refrigerator and I guess it felt bad so the icemaker unit stopped working! Took it out and fixed it but have no plans to replace the refrigerator for now, maybe later for a more energy efficient unit. Anyway, the whole kitchen is now up and running except for the countertop, it arrives today and then we'll finally have a sink!

Install new countertop

Yesterday the countertop installers came and installed the new granite countertop. What a job! Glad that I hired experts to do it as it is a very intricate job and MUST be done right for it to come out looking good, plus there are a number of specialized tools and materials to be used for it. The kitchen now looks awesome and is a bit more spacious since we extended it about 6 inches into the family room. Glad to realize we made the right decision when we went for a quality countertop and medium priced cabinets. Now the cabinets look a lot more expensive thanks to the granite top. A friend redid his kitchen with excellent quality cabinets but failed to include a good looking top, although he paid more for his Corian top than I paid for the granite. His $13.000 kitchen looks good but I think mine looks just as good, if not better, for half the price. Including appliances I spent about $6200 total. The wife is really happy with the results and that's what counts so call this one complete!