Continued kitchen work. My Dad, Tighe and I are still working on our kitchen every weekend. Check out our latest progress - In the past week we had the plaster done to fix all the holes in the walls and ceiling, painted over the ceiling, and then started installing cabinets. On saturday we were able to install the corner cabinet (which was complicated due to having to cut crown molding and deal with exposed drain pipes). On sunday we finished the rest of the base cabinets.

After this weekend I really do appreciate and understand the idea of being 'level'. Carpenters must be annoyed by this requirement all the time.

Level: to be on a precise horizontal plane, parallel with the ground.

I never knew this, but there is so much trial and error in getting something to be level on top of floors and walls that have imperfections. I learned a lot about how to go about this task. You find yourself asking these questions many times over in the course of installing cabinets:

How many shims does it require to bring this cabinet to the same height as the previous one?

How far do I push the shims in?

If I move the cabinet 1mm to the left does it mess with the little bubble in the water? It does - dammit! Take out the shims and try it again.

My dad has this cool tool that helped to make things a little easier. It's a laser light level projector. A LAser beam (picture dr evil saying that :-)) sits on a little tripod and when you turn it on it finds the horizontal and vertical lines relative to the room and projects them onto the walls. It makes it much easier to check as you install the cabinets that everything still looks right.

Anyway, Now that all this is done we can finally template the granite countertops and be on our way to having our kitchen back (complete with sink and dishwasher). Did I tell you we have not had a kitchen sink for 3 weeks now. Yep, I'm washing dishes in the bathtub right now :-) You should see me it is quite comical - My pregnant-ness form leaning over to rinse the dishes under the tub - not pretty.

This weekend on saturday we plan to tackle the rest of the wall cabinets. We still have to decide on the backsplash. I'm thinking of doing travertine tile - whats your opinion? Leave a comment and let me know.