another break in the wall, pt 2.
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 12:46PM 
I think the picture says it all. My good friend Maui came by the other day and checked my place out. He pointed out that getting that wall down without a sawzall was going to be a really really difficult... for those of you who don't what a sawzall is, that's a generic name for those recripocating saws with a blade that protrudes about 8". Good for cutting around corners, through 2x4's and most importantly in our case, through a bunch of nails hammered in at weird angles where we couldn't get at the heads. I was on the fence about dropping cash for a sawzall and Maui suggested I go by one of the (plentiful) pawn shops around here to again capitalize on someone else's misfortune (I saw a guy trying to a pawn an electic weed whacker at one of them). Well, third place I went, I happened upon this lovely Milwaukee sawzall, marked 50% off- $25! Six dollars worth of blades at the local Lowe's and I was in bidness.
Anyway, god bless Mr. Maui for saving my ass again, because he's a little more experienced than I at these things and was a tremendous help. The framing for the previously-there glass case (of emotion) was shockingly overbuilt, thus really hard to get apart. Lots of doubled-up 2x4's and even a 4x4 beam across the top. Thanks guys. The biggest suprise was that it appears the wall was always there. I thought the wall was an add-on, but the giveaway is that the rocks for the fireplace stop and there's a space in between:
To put it in perspective, this is the other side of the fireplace, i.e. next to the entry to the family room:
Ideally I'd want both sides to be "all rock" as it were, but that'd be difficult, so instead I'll just try and get some 5" wide trim pieces and go around the perimeter of the opening. By the way, whoever said demo work was messy was REALLY right. I didn't think it would be too bad since the wall is only six feet wide, but I was super wrong. It's a mess in there. Clean up on aisle seven...
In other really significant news. I ordered the new cabinets today from Ikea. That took some some cajones, because it pretty much means no more changes on the design. But I'm pretty confident I got it all right. Total was $1505.71+$350 to ship the whole mess from CA to here. I was afraid the shipping would be more, so I'm fine (MDF is really heavy). Should arrive in about two weeks.
$1500 is pleasantly cheap for cabinets, but keep in mind I only ordered the actual frames and drawers. All the doors, drawer fronts and exposed side panels are coming from Semihandmade Doors in CA. Think I mentioned them up here before- they're a cabinet place that makes custom doors specifically for Ikea frames. "Why didn't you just order all this crap from Ikea?", you say. Because I didn't really love any of the doors Ikea sells. I wanted very minimal, totally flush face doors with zero extra flourishes. In Ikea land, this means their Nexus model doors. For reasons I can't comprehend, they discontinued their medium brown color leaving only "brown-black"-too dark, or birch, which we all know so well from the ubiquitous Malm line of bedroom furniture. And I'll kill a motherf&*er before I bring one more piece of that damn Malm fake-birchiness into my realm. What I really wanted was medium/honey-colored mid-century-correct wood.
Fortunately I discovered Semihandmade on an Ikea forum. Their concept is to make beatiful kitchen doors by laminating really nice thin wood onto MDF doors-pretty much what Ikea does, but I don't think Ikea uses real wood. It's a little more money than Ikea, but not that much.The idea is that you get a fancy pants custom-looking kitchen for a fraction of the cost of a real custom kitchen. Right now I'm on the fence between their teak (lovely honey-tinted color) or mahogany (slightly more brown, less $$$), so I'm gonna get quotes and see. The nice thing is that I can send them the file for my 3D Ikea online kitchen designer thing and they just use that as a guide.
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ronlwarmu e3d3fd1842 https://redebr.org/ransthosneowa
ronlwarmu e3d3fd1842 https://redebr.org/ransthosneowa
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savberdo d4f391380b https://cdn.thingiverse.com/assets/06/44/3f/7e/a1/jamiray718.html
savberdo d4f391380b https://cdn.thingiverse.com/assets/06/44/3f/7e/a1/jamiray718.html