The last several hours have been trying. I'm down to less than 10 cabinet panels that need to be veneered (I'll explain that later) and hoped to come home last night and finish those off this weekend. The whole kitchen plan seemed to be coming together perfectly... quite atypical for one of my projects, and certainly not expected of a project of this scope despite the hours of careful research and planning. Well, when I got to this one stupid filler panel that goes over the built-in oven, there it was: the glitch that always comes.

 

There's certainly been hiccups in the process, but this one had me seriously worried some major deviations would be needed. It took me all last night, unpacking and measuring appliances, pouring over installation manuals, collecting and analyzing dimensional data, consulting the stars and reading bones to determine that I did not have sufficient space above the oven for my cooktop. It took me till late into the evening and a good part of this morning to figure out exactly how to remedy the problem.

The original plan was to have a 24" oven in a separate cabinet, not in the island below the cooktop. But when we decided to go with a 30" oven, we moved it to the island and I neglected to consider whether it would fit beneath the cooktop. Still, I feel justified in bitching that when I planned this all out, I was thrown off by:

• The unavailability of Ikea appliance manuals online
• Lying and misleading photos on Ikea's Website
• A lack of complete design and installation information from Ikea
• The erroneous assortment of parts that Ikea's little helpers sold me

Once I figured that out, I was able to move forward.

 

Bottom line... I need to raise the countertop on the island an inch or more without making the countertop too high. 36 inches is the standard counter height. The cooktop we purchased (Dacor® Distinctive® 30") rises 2" above the countertop surface, and we're not tall people, so any additional height is a problem. The oven (IKEA® FRAMTID 30") has to be 4-5/8" minimum off the floor, so the kick panel has to be at least 3-7/8", no less. The oven requires a 27-3/4" vertical space, and the cooktop requires at least 4" above that. All this dictates a counter height of approx. 36-3/4", which is marginally acceptable. I am, for the moment, reservedly relieved.

So, after chasing down several possible solutions, I determined my best solution is to simply add layers of plywood to the top of the island onto which the quartz countertop will sit. I'll have to fashion some veneered filler strips to cover the edges of the plywood between the underside of the countertop and the top of the drawer fronts. I'm running out of veneer, so it could be a challenge to find good veneer to match the drawer fronts.

Okay, so, about all that veneer business. I'll explain everything in my next post. Promise.