Happy Memorial Day! Week Three of the One Room Challenge came and went so quickly! There were A LOT of things that went wrong this week, with the biggest being that I couldn't get into my blog. In fact, I couldn't even get it to load on my computer, tablet, or phone! I'd been having issues with it since I created it almost two years ago and finally got fed up enough that I switched from Wordpress to Wix (WHICH I LOVE) on Saturday. That meant I had to spend this weekend designing a new blog, which was super time consuming.
In the past, my brother wrote all the code for my Wordpress website. I'm so grateful that he's helped me so much and I loved the way he designed my old site, but I decided that I need to be able to maintain, login, and create posts quickly and easily myself. Wordpress was always a struggle for me and it kinda took the fun out of blogging. Maybe now I'll post more! Anyway, let's talk about the ORC project.
This week Derek and I built our range hood AND installed our open shelving in the kitchen. I'm absolutely loving how it's looking and I can't wait to show y'all the whole shebang! As far as the range hood goes, we basically built it very similarly to how we built our dining table. We sold our old range hood to my sister and bought a new one that's meant to be mounted under a cabinet. I purposefully got one with rounded corners to achieve the look I was going for. We traced it on MDF, which maybe wasn't the best material to use, but that's what we had. We cut it out and used it to trace the second piece that would be mounted on the ceiling. We cut a hole for the exhaust pipe in both pieces and then used 2x2" lumber to attach the two pieces together. Once we had the frame built, we screwed it into studs in the ceiling and mounted the range hood underneath it, just as it would be mounted under a cabinet.
Instead of routing our own dowels, Derek bought 1.5" closet rods and ripped them with the table saw, cut them to size, and used the brad nailer to attach them to the top and bottom of the frame. I really love how it looks, but the wood was total junk and I had to use wood sealer to fill a lot of knots and cracks before I could paint. Even after doing that, I still found a lot of spots that I missed so I filled them with white paintable caulk when I filled the cracks in between each dowel. I didn't have to put caulk in the cracks, but it gave it a smoother, more finished look.
On to the shelves! We ordered custom 1.5x12" white oak from our local lumber yard and installed the shelves with hidden brackets that we ordered from Amazon. We were kinda bummed when we realized that the brackets weren't completely level after installing the first shelf. Derek is a machinist and very particular about that sort of thing, which can be a bit frustrating at times! In this situation it was a good thing though because no one wants droopy shelves in the kitchen. He checked each bracket before installing to make sure he was using the side that was the most level. I guess that's what we get for buying cheap brackets!
Besides the website issues this week, we also managed to install one of the shelves too high (measure twice, cut once!) so we also got to cut more tile out and replace it to get rid of the holes. Luckily, it didn't take long, but we did lose the majority of a day installing and removing the shelf and then fixing our mistake. We'd also planned to install our Formica countertops over the long weekend, but found out too late that you can't just go buy the solid surfacing adhesive locally (at least around here). So at least we got it ordered and now we're just waiting for it to come in the mail, hoping it comes in time for us to install the countertops next weekend. Still a bummer though!
Anyway, here's hoping the next week is a lot more productive than the past week has been, but that's just how it goes sometimes when you DIY! Thanks for reading! Make sure to check out what the other One Room Challenge participants are up to this week and if you'd like to see what we've done the past few weeks, go here:
Thanks again to my sponsors: Hudson Valley Lighting, Mitzi Lighting, Formica, Samsung, TIPTOE, and Winnoby.
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