Hales & the Hacienda: It's the Little Things

And sometimes the not-so-little-things.

Last night, Doug and I were eating dinner when he casually asked, "So, what's the next household project?"

Thinking "FENCE!", I calmly said, "The kitchen, then we can start drywalling downstairs."

He smiled. "I've been thinking all day about drywalling!" Then he realized that my first suggestion was not drywalling. "What's wrong with the kitchen?"

After sighing and rolling my eyes, I started enumerating the many faults of the kitchen-that-almost-was-finished. The doors on the cabinets don't open from the center out.

The bottom hasn't been fixed yet in this picture -
both upper and lower cabinets all opened to the left.

The trim has never been finished around the tops of the cabinets.

Again, just one example of many...

And what about the tile that has never been finished around the door? There are other trim issues, but this is the most noticeable...

There are random screws that have never been screwed in - mostly because they don't fit and just need a shorter version put in.

We need handles on the doors, so we're not constantly prying the doors open from the sides (which is doing a number on the sliding mechanism) or the bottom (which would be better but is always second choice).

In the way of improvements, I want to get rid of one of the top cabinets and put up shelving on either side of the range hood so that it looks, well, not symmetrical, but more purposeful. And as if they have a purpose.

Doug then shocked me by starting in on the work in the kitchen. No kidding! He fixed the cabinet door that had been split before we moved in (gotta keep responsibility where it lies, right? Otherwise known as My Kids Are Not Breaking Everything - Yet).

Glue drying on the split cabinet...I can't even see where it was broken anymore.

Then he turned the cabinet doors around on the pantry cabinet so that they opened the right way. This whole thing took maybe half an hour.

And we've been waiting for a year to do that? Seriously?

Then he took down the upper cabinet. Or tried to. It was resisting all efforts in that direction.

Hanging on for dear life

The cabinet over the range hood, directly adjacent to the offending cabinet, was screwed into the trim using torque screws (yeah, I didn't know what they were either, until Doug told me). The offending cabinet was also screwed into the trim...but somehow the heads of said screws were missing.