Kitchen "Upgrades and Repairs"

Since the kitchen was primarily one of the rooms in the house that was used quite often, or the most, I went and looked to see what was needed to be done or "improved".  First thing that was already on the list would be the broken garbage disposer.  Then the next thing was the deterioration of the wood countertop due to water penetration.  Before you know it, I had a list of to do's.

Projects (not in specific order):

Wood countertop
- strip and refinish

Garbage Disposer
- remove/replace old broken disposer

Upgrade current faucet to a gooseneck faucet for added space to clean deep pots etc.
Install inline water filter on the cold side

Install Blu-motion

- drawers and doors currently have BLUM hardware,  blu-motion hardware basically clips/screws into existing hardware to facilitate in slow motion of closing cabinet doors and drawers.

Total time it took to complete:

For all the projects, I would say 15 hours tops, not including the extra trips made to the hardware store.

Here are the goods.

Consists of a Delta gooseneck style faucet (satin),
filtrete under the sink inline water filter, an air activated
switch, 1HP top of the line insinkerator disposer* and
a hot water dispenser

Note the hot water dispenser.  Initially, I was going to install an
under-the-sink hot water dispenser but changed my mind
 Would have been nice though for those times when you
come home and just want a cup of tea, hot chocolate
 or noodles but do not want to wait nor hassle of boiling water.

*plan to use it to it's fullest so it has to handle everything lol

BLUMOTION hardware for the cabinets and doors.
Sorry but I did not take pics of installation, its fairly simple.

The before:  Sink with the old faucet, and if you look
towards the right you can see what I meant by
the countertop deteriorating.

Another before picture:  underneath the sink with the
broken disposer and the rest of the setup.

Removing the old layer of poly/stain with a citrus based
stripper.  Never used a stripper before but so far so good.

After stripping, the countertop is lightly sanded with a
Dewalt random orbital sander with 150 grit paper, then
sanded some more with a higher grit sponge.  After that,
mineral spirits and tack cloth was used to remove the
dust particles in preparation for the stain and poly.

Now to tackle the garbage disposer, and faucet.  Yeah, it's
a bit messy but what you expect? lol

Removed the old disposer and started cutting the existing
plumbing to fit the new disposer.  On the left you will see
that I mounted the switch and added a outlet as well.
The outlet will be used for the air activated switch that
I will be installing.

Of course as usual, with cutting comes bleeding.

The faucet I bought does not have the valve directly
attached to it so a hole had to be drilled.
Make sure to drill hole at the right spot, you only get 1 try.
Look closely in the picture and you will see the chrome
button looking switch that I have installed into the countertop.

Back to the disposer, it is finally done with the new plumbing
in place, along with the air activated switch I mentioned.

The black box you see on the left mounted is the switch.
The way the switch works is that when the "button" on the
countertop is pressed, air is being pushed into the black
box, making the disposer turn on.  By pressing it again, it
turns it off.  The good thing is since its air activated, you can
turn on the disposer while your hands are still wet.

Here are the final results, countertops refinished.

The new polyurethane sealant up close.  It is much glossier
than the old poly, which was quite dull actually.  Also, with
the old poly, water soaked in, causing black marks.  With
the new poly, nothing penetrates.  Water beads on top.