Save the Cabinets!

This morning I started out pulling staples from behind the dryer.  Mom and Dad graciously surprised me with moving over my appliances from the middle of the kitchen, but the staples prevent any real scooting from being done without tearing up the rubber feet.  So I decided to pull them up in the little "laundry room."  It's a tedious process, but it actually tells a lot about the house.

The old luan removed along with the tedious staple removal in process.

Rust denotes water was here!

One at a time.  An area the size of a clothes dryer took a half hour!

Namely where the water leaks have been in the past.  The staples are obviously steel, as the ones that have been wet over the years are rusty.  And, boy, did I have some rusty ones behind the washer and dryer!  I also had some old luan that needed to come up (a small strip), so that should be the last of that!

Dad decided to come over and help since he is retired now (congrats, Pa!), and we decided to work on a massive project:  repairing my kitchen cabinet.  Just last night at their house, I had talked about replacing the cabinets altogether.  For here is my issue:  The end cabinet is nearly destroyed from the massive water leak from the ceiling.  The cabinet body is made out of particle board (oh, you thought those were OAK?!  Me, too!), so once it became wet, it quite literally disintegrated.  The sawdust became just that.

A view of the rear of the cabinet (upside down).  The water totally contorted the shelf to the shape you see here!

What is more, the cabinet that was removed would now sit on two different surfaces.  The flooring was installed before the cabinets, so the base cabinets sit on top of the linoleum and luan.  I have removed it from everywhere else in the kitchen, but I cut the luan board along the cabinet edge to prevent having to remove the cabinets (or such was the goal at the time).  But as I would later learn, I needed to remove the end cabinet in order to have the damaged floor replaced.

PLUS I have a shelf in yet another base cabinet that has been ruined by a water leak.  This is the one underneath the kitchen sink.  So because of all of these issues, I greatly contemplated just replacing ALL of the cabinets, spending the couple to few thousand dollars, and making the house easier to sell.

But then that got me thinking.  It's a couple to few thousand dollars!!!  And a lot of work!!!  Would I get the money back in a sale?  Possibly.  But why NOT just rebuild the cabinet and keep the money?

Well, frankly, I have stared at this cabinet NUMEROUS times.  But it was just a little bit demoralizing.  I wasn't sure I could cut it apart while keeping the integrity of the sides.  Long story short, I knew it was going to be a long pain-in-the-butt process of rebuilding it!  So I just didn't.

Well, enter my dad!  Why NOT rebuild it, he says?!  Well, because it's a massive project!  Well, you've now got time on your hands (I left my job on Monday), he responds!  Valid point!

So we decided to rebuild the cabinet.

And, oh, what sorry shape it was in.

The base of the cabinet was shot.

The base was worthless.

One side was definitely ruined (the far side), and even the closer side was torn up.

Cheap particle board was no match for a massive water leak.

The other side of the cabinet was also tore up from water and being scooted along the very staple-y floor.

Where to begin?!

I had to carefully trim down the base of the cabinet while keeping the integrity and strength of the top portion.  The old particle board shelf used to slide into a groove, but we decided to built a platform base and place the shelf on top.  I carved the particle board away with a knife on one side (the flaky side) and then used a small saw for the other side.  It was surgical work to not pierce through the particle board and penetrate the oak outer wall that I needed to keep.  But it was working!

One side is cut away!

The warped shelf removed.

The old particle board base was gone.  Now we had to build it back up.

The old base just disintegrated on one side when I cut it with a knife.  Hardly anything was left except for sawdust loosely held together.

Both sides removed and ready for a new base!

Ready for a new shelf.

I was dealing with extraordinarily thin sidewalls here (think cheap paneling).  I had to be careful not to cut through this when cutting away the inside particle board base.

We were getting ready to head out to the hardware store for wood when I decided to just look around my garage.  I had lots of wood taken out of my old shed!  And sure enough, I found all the pieces we needed to rebuilt it, even the shelf!

Our new base all beefed up.

An old piece of wood waiting for this very purpose to be re-used as a shelf!

The new base of the cabinet!



Stronger than it's ever been!

The cabinet ready to be turned upside down.  Look at that awful fading on the side, though!

It was tricky work at times, but you basically just cut out a new base and made a shelf fit into where it needed to be.  And it turned out looking great!  I will put a nice linoleum cover over the old wood shelf and give it a nice look.  But several hours of hard work paid off today, and it looks like I'll be keeping $3000 in my pocket!

Oh, the final cost after all was said and done?  Zero bucks.  Just scrap wood laying around.  I love it!  Frugal flipping at its finest!

In some other exciting news, I had my new internet installed today, and it works great!  I've been waiting more than two weeks for that.  I also sold my little truck this afternoon.  With the job loss, I'm trying to bring all the money back in that I can.  I expect to have a couple hard months ahead of me.  I paid $1000 for it, put over 4000 miles on it (lots of those moving back and forth between houses!), and sold it for $2000, so it worked out great.  It was such a handy little truck.

I also changed a rubber washer on my clothes washer hose, so that leak has stopped (Dad told me it was leaking when he hooked it up).  So the washer needed a washer.  And I mounted the left-hand side of the laundry doors tonight.  It's nice to start seeing the room as it should be.  Even closing off doors makes a huge difference.  The right-hand side doors are currently broken, so I will have to address the splintered wood issue there before I make any progress.

I tried to hook up my used dryer vent hose, but it was too stiff to work very well.  And when I cut it shorter to try to make it work...well, I cut it too short.  The rigidity of it (from being used) makes one side pull off every time I get the other side attached.  I could never get them on at the same time!  Oh, well, time to buy a new one.  Sometimes you just have to...

But what a great day!  I was overwhelmed with the idea of fixing that kitchen cabinet, but with a little bit of motivation, LOTS of time, some creativity and ingenuity, and some free spare parts, it all paid off.  It's ready for another 25 (dry) years!

The cabinet all ready to go again!

What a difference!  Ready to go!