Update time!
We're now up to present day on the updates so business will likely slow down a bit in this thread. But I'll do my best to make future updates full of good stuff!
During the few months the garage was under construction, I was patiently combing Craigslist for any decent garage accessories that I could find. Since I'm in a smallish town, it's slim pickins compared to some of the larger Craigslist city websites I've seen.
My first score was from a restaurant that was changing locations and selling their old equipment. From that I picked up two 60x36 stainless prep tables. The legs and lower shelf weren't too impressive (thin/galvanized) but the tops were made by Aero manufacturing and looked sturdy and well made. Both have backsplashes for extra rigidity. I plan to use these as workbench tops, so stay tuned for that in a future update.
My second find were a set of 8 Ikea wall cabinets from a barber shop that was merging with another shop. This was an especially great find because the nearest Ikea is a long way from here, and I actually planned on driving there with a trailer to get a bunch of their cabinets for my garage. This saved me the travel, cost and assembly! Jag gillar den verkligen! Driving for five hours and paying full retail would've definitely made me look like a Knäppgök!
When I found them on CL, I immediately called and as soon as I had a free moment, headed to U-Haul for their $18.95 enclosed trailer and picked them up tootsweet. The cabinets were in great condition and the seller even threw in a mini fridge, which I'll post pictures of later too.
Ok, now that I had the cabinets, I had to do two things: figure out where to hang them and get my hands on the wall hanging hardware that the seller misplaced. Neither one of these tasks were easy!
First, I used the great tool,
Sweet Home 3D to try a variety of cabinet placements. This was essential and made the decision much easier! I highly recommend using this, Google Sketchup of some comparable tool for your planning. You can see my printouts in the picture below that we used as a guide. Cool, no?
Second, have you ever tried to call Ikea USA? I firmly believe it is run by Swedish robots as I could not get a human on the freakin phone!
Their website is weird too, as you can buy the wall cabinet rails, but no hardware. So I placed my order for those, but that didn't work either! I got an error telling me a representative would call me within 24 hours. I sadly waited by the phone...a phone that never rang.
So I started "Google-ing" and finally found a backdoor to a helpful human! He was great and got both my rails and modest hardware order on the way. Success! On to the install!
Here's my temporary workbench with hardware and renderings spread about. I humbly asked the Ikea folks for just enough hardware to hang my 8 cabinets. They sent me enough to hang every Ikea cabinet made since 2005. This is just a portion of the pile. Thanks!
When I tested the various placements in Sweet Home 3D, I couldn't figure out a way to cram all 8 of the big cabinets in, so I decided to use 5 for now. I may use the others in the house garage later on. We started by laying them on the floor where they would be mounted.
Next up was busting out my laser again to get the cabinet rails nice and straight. I had to get really creative to get the laser high enough. My Joby Gorillapod was just the right size/height to do the job!
Once the laser was operational, I used my new Dewalt driver to mount the Ikea rails to the wall. I haven't owned an impact driver before and I love this little sucker!
Here are the rails mounted up.
Before we hoisted the cabinets up, we tore off the doors, removed the shelves and gave them a good cleaning.
So these cabinets came from a barber shop, which means I got a few barber-shoppy surprises, like these "Barbee Sanek" things and a boatload of hair clippings.
After they had been de-haired, we hoisted them up.
Here's a set of cabinets mounted, I'll likely re-position or remove the sliding drawers. I'd hate to remove them though, they are really sturdy and nice.
All done! I'm one step closer to moving in. This is thing 138 of 651 to do.
Thanks for reading everyone!
