no way. i tried once with an interior door, and my house is so crooked that it sucked. took me all day, and it still didn't work right. ended up paying someone else to do it, and it took them like 20 minutes. it's worth it to me to have someone hang doors, especially an exterior door. there are certain things that i'm ok with doing, and usually have to resort to the internet for help, but some things are worth paying for.

 

Yeah, now I know to just pay the extra $79 to have the store deliver/install it

 

finally got back to work on the kitchen. There's still quite a bit to do like finish the back splash, paint, and change out the lighting, but i decided to work on the seating. we don't really have a good area for a kitchen table, or seating in general so i decided to build a banquette (aka a bench). took me about a full day.

before; you can see that we have a small area for the table, which gets smaller when there are chairs you need to pull out to get to:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/flippedcracker/6121447565/
the base for the bench. had to make sure to leave room for the dog food container:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/flippedcracker/6121449259/
another during:http://www.flickr.com/photos/flippedcracker/6121450819/
pretty much finished:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/flippedcracker/6121995922/
just have to add some finishing touches:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/flippedcracker/6121997302/
i ran out of baseboard after the stores had closed. i also plan on adding some crown under the bench top to make it look a little nicer. and then i'll be painting it white and making some cushions and pillows to make it more comfortable. I think it tripled our available seating.

now we just need a table that fits better:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/flippedcracker/6122023032/

 

I like the bench, did you make it a lid style bench for extra storage? Seems it would be perfect considering the amount of floor it is covering.

 

i thought about, but i didn't. i kinda figured that once we have pillows and cushions, we wouldn't use that storage very much. i am still thinking about putting a drawer in the side of the bench where the single chair is though.

 

That sounds like a good idea.

The only reason I asked is storage area is a big plus if ever you put the house up on the market and storage that is out of sight/out of mind is something that comes in handy more often than not.

Either way the bench looks really good, its something I considered but am probably just going to go with an island setup instead.

 

yeah, i could see that. we really don't plan on selling for a long time, so we're making the house how we want it, not how the next owners would want it.

i love the island seating setups, but our kitchen is way too small for that. and our immediate family is 7 people so we need room for everyone to sit, and this was the only way i could come up with to have that.

 

nice bench. You need like a long skinny table now