The first thing I've learned about home ownership is the overwhelming feeling. It's easy to think of all the fixes, projects and changes you'd like to make. Unfortunately for us, Brett and I both have full-time jobs and a budget to adhere to. So it's time to prioritize! While I can still rattle off about 30 projects I'd like to tackle (this is where the overwhelming feeling sets in!) we NEEDED a microwave! Thus project Number 1 for our household is installing a microwave, woot woot!
I'm a big believer of the built in microwave for many reasons but the most important reason being, it saves valuable counter space. Since our kitchen came with no microwave (don't worry it did come with a wine fridge) I got to choose the exact microwave I wanted. I researched, shopped and priced out all our options. In the process I learned something very interesting, the space above our stove was 36 inches wide and as luck would have it most microwaves, at least the affordable ones, are 30 inches. You can buy extension pieces, which are essentially just 3 inch stainless steel pieces that can be installed on both sides of the microwave to cover any gaps between the cabinets. But it turns out the extension pieces are almost as much as the microwave! Yikes! We decided to create our own trim pieces and still purchase the 30 inch microwave.
So...onto the installation! We started off by ripping out the old hood vent which was super easy! Turns out that the demo part is much faster than the installation/rebuild! In our microwave research we learned that we needed a space of 30 inches between our stovetop and the top of the cabinet and the cabinet needed to be at least 66 inches from the floor.
Drawing is courtesy of the handy dandy Frigidaire Installation book.
We knew going into the project that our space didn't really fit those dimensions, we had about 28 from stove top to cabinet and 64 inches from floor to cabinet. Our solution was to adjust the height of the cabinet. Simple, right? Not so much. If you adjust the cabinet height then you have to adjust the size of the doors if you plan on replacing them. And with the detail the cabinet doors have it just may not be worth the effort. We decided instead to keep the cabinet sans doors, my idea is to make it a cook book shelf. Maybe a good idea, maybe not but we'll see. Overall we took 3.5 inches off the cabinet. It wasn't easy mostly because whoever installed the cabinets stripped the screws when the cabinets were installed therefore we had to get creative and cut the cabinet while it was still hanging. See below...
Look at that focus! Once we got through the obstacles of using a saw to cut a cabinet without damaging the others, things started moving! With the cabinet height now corrected we reinstalled and reinforced the bottom of the cabinet. We also learned that we need a better drill! The next step was to patch the hole that use to be the hood vent. Because we adjusted the height of the cabinet we weren't able to reuse the vent from the old hood. We decided the easiest option was to allow the microwave to vent back into the kitchen (this decision may not have been the best however it was 11pm on a Monday, I was irritable and tired!)
Here's our beautiful patching job...
After patching the wall we needed an electrical outlet for the microwave to plug into. Luckily I married an electrical engineer who knows how to do things like install a junction box, install and ground an outlet. Power source - check!
Next we had to cut part of the tile to mount the bracket that the microwave would rest on. Valuble lesson learned here, any time you cut tile cover everything you don't want covered with a fine layer of dust! Suffice it to say there was a plume of masonry dust floating in my kitchen. Once we cut the tile to make room for the bracket (and cleaned up the dust) we installed the bracket.
It took a couple tries at it but we finally go the bracket installed correctly and it was time to mount the microwave. We had a few ill fated attempts at getting the microwave into the bracket but around the 4th attempt we got the microwave locked correctly in place. The last thing to do was to mount the top of the microwave to the bottom of the reinforced cabinet using screws. This is when I realized we really absolutely definitely needed a better drill! A couple screws that should have taken not 2 minutes to get in took 30 minutes of me holding a 100lb microwave in place...not fun. But we survived and have completed our first of 30-ish home improvement projects ahead of us!
Check out our almost finished work!
I'm a big believer of the built in microwave for many reasons but the most important reason being, it saves valuable counter space. Since our kitchen came with no microwave (don't worry it did come with a wine fridge) I got to choose the exact microwave I wanted. I researched, shopped and priced out all our options. In the process I learned something very interesting, the space above our stove was 36 inches wide and as luck would have it most microwaves, at least the affordable ones, are 30 inches. You can buy extension pieces, which are essentially just 3 inch stainless steel pieces that can be installed on both sides of the microwave to cover any gaps between the cabinets. But it turns out the extension pieces are almost as much as the microwave! Yikes! We decided to create our own trim pieces and still purchase the 30 inch microwave.
So...onto the installation! We started off by ripping out the old hood vent which was super easy! Turns out that the demo part is much faster than the installation/rebuild! In our microwave research we learned that we needed a space of 30 inches between our stovetop and the top of the cabinet and the cabinet needed to be at least 66 inches from the floor.
Drawing is courtesy of the handy dandy Frigidaire Installation book.
We knew going into the project that our space didn't really fit those dimensions, we had about 28 from stove top to cabinet and 64 inches from floor to cabinet. Our solution was to adjust the height of the cabinet. Simple, right? Not so much. If you adjust the cabinet height then you have to adjust the size of the doors if you plan on replacing them. And with the detail the cabinet doors have it just may not be worth the effort. We decided instead to keep the cabinet sans doors, my idea is to make it a cook book shelf. Maybe a good idea, maybe not but we'll see. Overall we took 3.5 inches off the cabinet. It wasn't easy mostly because whoever installed the cabinets stripped the screws when the cabinets were installed therefore we had to get creative and cut the cabinet while it was still hanging. See below...
Look at that focus! Once we got through the obstacles of using a saw to cut a cabinet without damaging the others, things started moving! With the cabinet height now corrected we reinstalled and reinforced the bottom of the cabinet. We also learned that we need a better drill! The next step was to patch the hole that use to be the hood vent. Because we adjusted the height of the cabinet we weren't able to reuse the vent from the old hood. We decided the easiest option was to allow the microwave to vent back into the kitchen (this decision may not have been the best however it was 11pm on a Monday, I was irritable and tired!)
Here's our beautiful patching job...
After patching the wall we needed an electrical outlet for the microwave to plug into. Luckily I married an electrical engineer who knows how to do things like install a junction box, install and ground an outlet. Power source - check!
Next we had to cut part of the tile to mount the bracket that the microwave would rest on. Valuble lesson learned here, any time you cut tile cover everything you don't want covered with a fine layer of dust! Suffice it to say there was a plume of masonry dust floating in my kitchen. Once we cut the tile to make room for the bracket (and cleaned up the dust) we installed the bracket.
It took a couple tries at it but we finally go the bracket installed correctly and it was time to mount the microwave. We had a few ill fated attempts at getting the microwave into the bracket but around the 4th attempt we got the microwave locked correctly in place. The last thing to do was to mount the top of the microwave to the bottom of the reinforced cabinet using screws. This is when I realized we really absolutely definitely needed a better drill! A couple screws that should have taken not 2 minutes to get in took 30 minutes of me holding a 100lb microwave in place...not fun. But we survived and have completed our first of 30-ish home improvement projects ahead of us!
Check out our almost finished work!
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