We spent the weekend tiling our backsplash but we’re not quite ready to reveal it yet, so I’m backing up to talk about the microwave cabinet Melissa gushed about in this post.

Just as a recap, this is actually the second microwave cabinet that we purchased from Lowes. The first microwave cabinet that we ordered looked cheap and poorly made. It was a microwave shelf cabinet, similar to this one (but not as nice!):

and we decided to go with the better, nicer-looking built-in microwave cabinet, like this:

The tip here is that if anything is damaged or doesn’t meet your expectations, don’t hesitate to return and re-order items. They happily exchanged it for a more-expensive model. Of course.

Microwave cabinets for built-in microwaves come with a pre-finished opening. After plenty of online shopping, we could not find a microwave that would fit the opening, nor would we want to. It was very small and left a lot of unused space.

When searching for a microwave, the depth was the biggest limiting factor. We had to find one that would fit in within the 18 inch depth with at least 1 inch for ventilation space in the back.

We went with this microwave.

It was also the largest one that would fit in the cabinet. So we needed to make the original hole bigger in the cabinet.  The microwave came with instructions on the total size the hole needed to be.  So I measured and marked the hole, centered in the cabinet and got out my jigsaw

A little closer.

After cutting out the excess, I used an old belt sander belt to smooth the edges.

Next we were ready to test fit the microwave.

Then we attached the trim piece to the microwave and test fit it again, to make sure everything was working like we thought.

Now that we know everything was going to fit how we expected, we were ready to mount the cabinet to the wall. You can see the board mounted to the wall to help hold the cabinet up and level.

Melissa plugged it in while I held it up and then carefully slid it into the hole.

The trim had four screws that held it in place. I used a drill bit to pre-drill the holes and then screwed the trim into place with a screw driver.

And here it is, finished and installed with the doors back on.

Bonus pictures:

This next one is me holding up the refrigerator panel before installation. We lumped the progress of this entire corner into one post because it really all came together at the same time.

And then mounting the cabinet over the refrigerator to the panel and pantry.  We screwed it into the ceiling and the two side cabinets. To do this, I made a T-shape out of 2″ x 4″ boards that was the right height to hold up this cabinet without having to attach it to the panel. This is because we wanted the cabinet to be close to flush with the fridge and it was actually too shallow to do that (fridge cabinets only come 27 inches deep, even though our fridge is bigger than that).

So, it doesn’t actually sit against the back wall, but floats about 6 inches in front of it.

This is what I meant by close to flush with the fridge.

We will also be putting doors on the pantry soon. We had to order them online from Home Depot.

You’ll also notice the steps for this process of customizing a cabinet were similar to the ones we followed for our apron front sink, here.

Ever had a built-in microwave before? Melissa says it makes her feel fancy. And I was worried about it being too small (compared to our old one) but really, it seems to suit our needs just fine.