space saver microwave finally starts saving space

It's amusing to see someone playing rock, scissor, and paper and one tells the other, "I'm gonna give a rock so you do scissor." This can be analyzed in two way, that either the first person is playing a trick and will switch to paper, or will stick to his word and give a rock. Odds are? It's sad that this kind of tactics are at every corner of modern life. Is this deal a real deal? Any hidden fees? Any fine prints? What's the gimmick?

Having the space saver microwave sitting in living room taking more space instead of saving space for over a month certainly made me skeptical. I carefully shopped and compared 5 different microwave before making the purchase, and carefully followed the instruction to drill the holes just in right place and all.

It was a heavy 60lb piece of metal, which does attribute to the difficulty of the task. Nothing I see at homes with wall mounted microwave hinted the sucker should weigh so much, but the one that arrived certainly did weigh 60lbs.

After me and Dave struggling and cursing for several tries we gave, I finally started scanning craigslist and phone at least two dozens handyman before we got someone to agree to come over last night around 7pm for an easy job.

I was stressed that the contractor would tell me the metal plate to hold the microwave on the wall is not aligned correctly that he'll take it off to drill more holes to the wall and all that. That would certainly take more time than 2hrs the contractor gave as his minimum hour and would worry me in rainy season with bunch of holes in my kitchen.

The guy who came over was pretty cool. He had all his tools, and used his common sense to look up our place without calling me at every corner of the street as I expected. 2 bags full of drill bits, power tools, level, and such. Yeah, I felt maybe we do have a professional (heh if any newbie contractor's starting out, get yourself lots of well-used tools to fool someone like me). To my amazement, he didn't take down the plate, and 3 of us working together we got it up in less than 30min. Oh yeah! Horray~~~ He got himself underneath the microwave, his head above the stove and facing up to the microwave, while I'm helping hold the microwave and its cord, and telling Dave to hold the microwave and tilt it forward to as much as 45 degree angle until he could secure the bottom back of microwave to be sittin on the metal plate's slots. All 4 of them securely went in, then they pushed microwave back to the wall to secure it with screws from top cabinet above.

How neat was that!

we spent at least 10hrs, drilling, lifting the heavy microwave up to the wall and taking it down, and ...
And, it takes easy 30min to get it up. Oh! my...

We gladly paid him for 2hrs, and got his number. Aussie man Rob is the man! Does his work, for a small job, and is well... friendly and helpful too. What can a small time self-remodeler ask for?

I went back to kitchen several time for no reason last night, just to see how it fits well into the top cabinet above the stove. Phew... finally about 1/5 of kitchen remodel is done. About $500 for cabinet pieces we picked up and assembled ourselves and installed ourselves, and $300 for microwave itself, and $100 for Rob to help us put up.

Took the depression out of daunting task of kitchen remodeling. Now living room is larger by 30x20inch the microwave tookup, and kitchen will also be as we throw out the old microwave sitting on the counter next to sink.
Can't wait to start axing bottom cabinet to install the new ones. Baby steps, works!