United Nations of Ikea

Sorry, no photos, but how crazy is this: We bought our cabinets from Ikea, so of course every part comes in a different box, resulting in probably 50 or more boxes. As I was assembling things, I started paying attention to the manufacturing origin of each box. Here's what I noticed:

• Cabinet carcasses - USA
• Cabinet doors - Hungary
• Cabinet hardware - Austria
• Sink and faucet - Hungary
• Cabinet feet - India
• Pull out drawer unit - China
• Wall hanger rails for cabinets - Lithuania

And of course, everything designed in Sweden. I probably missed a couple of boxes, so there might have even been other countries. Pretty amazing job of sourcing components from around the world.

Despite a couple of hiccups assembling the cabinets, I've got to say Ikea has really designed some very clever systems for assembling them. They actually make it pretty difficult to assemble things incorrectly.

Kitchen progress

Over the past couple of weeks, we've been working on getting the kitchen built out. It started with a visit to Best Buy and Ikea:

We loaded up the truck with a new fridge and then picked up all of the cabinets from Ikea. We forgot to think through whether everything we were ordering would actually fit in the truck, but fortunately with enough shoving, everything fit in.

Out at the cabin we started replacing our bare bones kitchen. We built out some of the cabinets and hooked up the refrigerator, which resulted in:

Cold beer! It's been nice to have a way to store food that stays cold for more than a couple of days.

The next weekend we built out more of the cabinets, so most of the kitchen is set up now. We also got the farmhouse sink in place. That weekend was also the first weekend we had (cold) running water, so we actually have a functioning sink!

Still a bit of work to do to finish off the kitchen, and we're still waiting on our stove to be delivered, but it is coming together nicely. I think for this winter we'll be making do with plywood countertops; we'll figure out how to finish those off next year some time.

Gee, what's that bright light?

We have power. Pretty cool, to have electricity straight from the Sun.

Dishes by light.

Power!

Last week the electrician finished work on the solar charge controller, so we finally have power. We have started hooking up the circuits we wired up last winter, so we are starting to see lights work, etc. Next weekend we should be taking out a new refrigerator, so that will put it to the test.