Week 2 of the $100 Room Challenge - How NOT to Install an Ikea Drawer
There has been some exciting progress being made on this island over the last week and a bit. As you can imagine, when you have a pre-schoolers and a baby, there isn't a whole lot of spare time around to work on projects like this, but I've been plugging away at it every chance I get. So much so that it's been really hard to take the time out to actually sit down and tell you about all the work that's been done! As a result, I'm a little late in sending out this update, but I assure you that the delay has been for a good cause, and hopefully you'll forgive a little tardiness on my part.
And now for the progress!
As I mentioned at the end if my post last week, we've had a slide out drawer insert from Ikea that's been hanging around for almost a year waiting to be installed. The idea from the get-go was to have a pull out garbage/recycling area in the island, so shortly after we got it, we purchased the drawer. I'm sure that other stores sell pull out hardware, but Im not familiar enough with them, so I went ahead and got the Ikea one. Thing is that Ikea drawers are really meant to go into Ikea cabinets. They have great instructions, but they all revolve around pre-drilled holes, and measurements. Once i realized this, I knew we could still MacGiver something to get it to work...but that would take time, and time was something I did not have. And so it sat. Until this week.
What I'm about to tell you is how I did manage to get it all to work, but I can't say that I recommend the process. When you're working with a tight budget, there is inevitably more work involved. There has to be a trade off somewhere, and it's usually in the work vs ease category. A lot more grunt work goes into the diy process, but you do save a lot.
So we started out with an empty cabinet, and in order to install the drawer so that it would actually slide out, I decided that I would glue some wood to the insides of the cabinet rather than cut out a bigger opening (when I bought the drawer I was using the existing door's dimensions instead of the inside of the cabinet's dimensions). I found some scrap wood that would work, and glued and clamped them to either side.
Once that was done I measured out where the holes for the sliders should go and made some pilot holes. Easiest part of this phase was screwing the sliders into the reinforced cabinet.
I needed to saw out a part of the front of the cabinet where there used to be a top drawer and a bottom cabinet, as well as an inside half shelf (I had to saw it away because it was glued in to last for eternity).
I put together the drawer itself mostly according to the instructions, but again, since I didn't have the matching drawer fronts and cabinet, I had to make sure that whatever I put together that I could also still access the openings for the screws in order to make the appropriate pilot holes.
This is where things got really complicated. Parts of the drawer are made to just click into place once completed never to come apart again. While measuring some parts there were some "clicks" that happened that I was NOT ready for yet which resulted in me lying face down on the floor with the drawer partially attached to the island while I tried to screw in the rest. Not my finest diy moment.
I can now happily report, however, that it works! We have a sliding garbage disposal! Yeah!
In happier, easier diy news I also painted the front of the cabinet this week, along with most of the drawer fronts. So awesome! It looks just like I had hoped, and the paint I used was great to work with. The DecoArt Americana Satin Enamel in Deep Ruby was easy to apply, had great coverage, and was easy to clean up afterwards. I'm very happy with it, and it has been my consolation throughout this crazy process.
That's all we've got for this week. Be sure to check out the other awesome progress being made in the links below, and see our budget breakdown to date.
So to recap where we are at in the budget:
Drawer - we already had & I can't remember how much we paid (but I believe it was in the $40 range)
Door fronts - $38
Paint - $8.50
Total used: $46.50
Total left: $53.50
Until next time
God bless!
Cheryl
he project difficulties this week.
