Sawdust on the Floor

Both my wife and are very avid readers. If there was ever any doubt about that, one look at the many bookshelves in our house would convince even the most skeptical of you. There are book cases in the family room, the bedrooms and a couple in our office space. But up until we rebuilt our kitchen, we never had a bookcase dedicated solely to our cookbooks.

For design ideas we went to every home improvement store that we could think of. We also looked at numerous kitchen design magazines, watched countless kitchen improvement shows on TV, all to no avail. It seems that designers either totally ignored the concept of cookbooks in a kitchen, I guess gourmet cooks don’t need cookbooks, or went totally over board. In these the bookcase was part of an elaborate kitchen/office workspace, complete with computer and printer. We wanted something in the middle of those two extremes.

Our first thought was to put the book case in one of our lower cabinets. But that would be a total waste of space, since bookcases only need to be at most 15″ deep, while the standard base cabinets is 24″ deep. Using one of the upper cabinets would make more sense, but I was concerned about the added weight the cook books would add. So our solution was to use one of the two cabinets that flank our stove for the bookcase.

One of the design concepts that I learned along time ago was that in order for things to look right, things need to be symmetrical. So both of these cabinets were made to appear to be identical. But only the cabinet on the left is a real set of drawers, the ones on the right are dummy drawer faces sat inside a rail and stile set so they mimic the one on the left.

The actual carcass for the book case was relativity easy, once I figured out the math. I knew that I wanted the top of the finished cabinet to be just below the surface of the stove. I knew that the stove was 35 5/8″ tall and it would be sitting on tile that was a combined thickness of 3/8″ ( tile and mortar), giving me a starting height of 36″. From that I subtracted the thickness of the granite,
1 3/8″ and 3″ for the kick panel, giving me a cabinet height of 31 5/8″. The width of the cabinet is 15″ and the depth is 23 1/4″. I kept the depth of the carcass for the cabinet at 22 1/2″ , as I wanted to apply a 3/4″ false front that would mimic the cabinet set on the left side of the stove. 

I departed from conventional wisdom in building the cabinets. I made the kick panel separate from the actual cabinet. The logic is that it is much easier to level the base assembly then it would be to level a complete cabinet. Both the base and the carcass are made of 3/4″ plywood. I used good oak plywood for the carcass, while I used standard 3/4″ plywood for the base. The inside of the cabinet will be visible behind the books, while the base will be covered, so there is no need to use good wood here.

For the carcass, I cut the end panels to width and length, and then cut dado’s along the top and bottom edges and one in the center of each side for a center shelf. As I normally do, I clamped the two ends flat on my work bench, and abutted the edges together, so I could cut the dado in both pieces at once. I used my plunge router equipped with a straight bit designed for 3/4″ plywood. I like to do both pieces at once, that way if the measurements are off even a little bit, both sides will still be at the same point. While I had the router out, I also cut a dado in the back of each side, the dado was sized to accept a 3/4″ piece of plywood.

The end panels were attached to the top, center and bottom shelf with glue and screws. The screws were driven in from the out side on the end panels. I wasn’t concerned about the screws showing and one side is against the wall and the other will be covered by the fake front panel.

Next I made two face frames, one to cover the plywood edges of the book case, and the other was made to replicate the face frame of the left hand base stove cabinet. I used Kreg Pocket screws for both face frames. The assembly is quick and easy, and none of the pocket screw holes would be visible.

The side face frame is nothing more then a set of rails and stiles. which were applied to the side of the carcass with glue and a couple of pin nails, to hold it in place while the glue sets up. The front face frame was constructed using the same Kreg Pocket screws, two additional horizonta

l rails were added to act as dividers for the drawers. The measurements for these are the same as the actual cabinet on the left side of the stove. I used 4/4 oak for the drawer false drawer fronts, and inset these between the dividers . I used the drawer pulls to actually hold the false faces in place. When I had the drawer faces in the correct location, I drilled thought the false fronts and the plywood carcass. Then using longer screws then normal, I attached the false fronts and the drawer pulls.

Then it was off to be finished.  These cabinets were done with the same stain and top coats as the rest of the cabinets in
our kitchen.

So maybe the bookcase isn’t actually hidden, but I like to think that we found a good solution for adding the bookcase to our kitchen. Let me know what you think.