Saturday, August 28, 2010

It's Time for a Cabinet Meeting

The great cabinet build started in earnest on Thursday.  Before any cabinets got built, however, I had to wait for a little help to show up to cut the full sheets of plywood down.  While waiting I gave the shop a pretty good cleaning and even managed to organize my sheet good pile.

I even manged to measure and label all of the partial sheets with their size, including thickness.

With the layout of my shop, cleaning up this space was very important in order to have a clear path for feeding the plywood over my table saw.

As it turned out, after much initial frustration of not getting consistent sized cuts off my table saw, I found my rip fence was loose when locked down and was moving as much as 1/8" during the cut of the big sheets.  Once I figured what was happening and snugged the fence adjustment down, I ended up with my cuts being a full 3/8" narrower than I had planed.  It's not the end of the world though as long as they are all ripped to the same exact size.

Using the tablesaw, bandsaw, and mitre saw, my wife and I (she came home early to help) got all the pieces cut, assembly line style, for all 4 cabinets.


Here is the first:


This will be the only cabinet with an exposed end and will eventually hold the trash can for the kitchen.



When we stopped working that night we had the first cabinet's twin also done:


The second cabinet will have one door and a sliding shelf.  These cabinets are both 15" wide.




Saturday we went into my wife's office and painted all the walls to freshen the place up, but I did get out into the shop around 4:00 and put together the last cabinet in the row (skipping the 3rd cabinet because it is the biggest at 36" wide and I was working by myself).


This cabinet will up with two doors opening into a 28 1/2" space with one or two sliding shelves (I'm thinking about putting a "false bottom" shelf in for easy access.



That just leaves the last big cabinet that is going to have 3 drawers in it (a 12" deep, a 9" deep, and a 6" deep).  Right now it is sitting in parts waiting it's turn (maybe tomorrow).
















As with any new project, the opportunity presents itself to add a new tool to the arsenal, and surprisingly enough my wife grabbed this little gem off the shelf at the Big Blue Box Store and threw it in the cart while I was getting some more pocket screws.


As funny as it sound, I think I might prefer the Multi-Mark to my regular adjustable square (I'm not big fan of the way a regular square tightens down I guess).  I just wish this came with a12" ruler instead of the 6".

That's all for now.

Monday, August 23, 2010

One Project Down, Another Project Ready To Go

Finally finished the face frames on the built-in bookcases, and they are now done except for painting (and my lovely wife is going to take care of that).

Here is the "finished" product that still needs some "finish".



























Now on to new and (gasp) even bigger things.  We are going to take a wall out of the Kitchen and open it up to the dining room, and where the wall was, we're going to put in a new set of Cabinets with a built in breakfast bar.  The run of cabinets is going to be 8' long.

We started out with a hand sketch:








I then took this to Sketchup and rendered some views:
















































Did I mention I have to have these cabinets done by Friday?  No?  Thank goodness for the Kreg Pocket Hole Jig!  I really just need to get the cabinet(s) into this stage shown below.  I'm going to build in 4 pieces and bring them into the house one at a time.

















Maybe I will be able to post a quick update each day this week to show progress.

Friday, August 13, 2010

A journey of a 1000 books begins with a single shelf...sort of.

It has been unusually hot and humid here for the past few weeks with a couple breaks in the weather recently.  The small air conditioner in my shop does an admirable job of keeping things bearable, but only if I give it a 2 hour head start to get things under control.  This means really no work on the really hot days after I get home from my day job.

I have been working, slowly, on a new set of built in bookshelves in our home office.  I had some nice simple plans in one of the many books I have collected over the years.

The plan has a 2 sets of shelves on the left side of the door and one set on the right (the door not being in the middle of the wall).  Construction starts with a 2x4 frame for each side.













































I screwed the top and bottom plates directly into the ceiling joists and sub-floor accordingly.  The vertical pieces were secured using 2 1/2" pocket screws.  I used my Kreg Mini to make all the holes and cut a spacer to help make sure they were in the proper position.
















Next 1/2" plywood was installed on the 2 exposed ends (near the door) and to make the bottom shelf and the top "cap" of each unit. Also we painted the wall behind the shelves a deep chocolate brown.













































Next, 1/2" plywood was run up the insides of the units at set lengths and 3/4" plywood was installed horizontally across to make the shelves.













































Finally (so far) some 3/4" poplar was cut and installed to begin the face frame.














































Hopefully on Sunday I will be able to cut and install the rest of the face frame across all the shelves, then the whole this is going to be painted white.

Sorry the photo's aren't so great, but the room is not big enough to get far enough away from the shelves to get the whole thing in frame....