Sawdust on the Floor

When my father-in-law and I built our current kitchen cabinets, we made them using traditional methods. By that I mean that the cabinets all were built with the traditional toe kicks in the fronts of all of the lower cabinets. Those cabinets have been in place for over fifteen years. They have worn very well, but the finish is starting to show its age, and the design is dated. One of the things I do remember about installing them is how heavy and bulky there were, and how much time it took to get everything just right. Bud, my father-in-law, wouldn’t have had it any other way.

If you have ever installed cabinets, you know that one of the hardest things is getting them all plumb and level. That task is rather easy if you are installing a single cabinet, such as in a bathroom, but it gets rather complicated when you have a whole bank of cabinets like we do in our new kitchen. Your cabinets must be level across the entire range of the cabinets, not just one cabinet. At the same time they must also be plumb and square. If the floor and wall were perfectly flat and level, and we all know that will never happen, then you would simply place the cabinets in place, bolt them to the wall, bolt them together, and you’re done. It doesn’t work that way. Cabinets are heavy, they’re hard to move into place, and it’s real hard to shim a big cabinet into place.

I was looking thru a copy of “Fine Woodworking” magazine, and came across an article about building kitchen cabinets. The gentlemen who made the cabinets had an interesting idea. Make the base, (toe kick area) separate from the cabinet. In other words, if your cabinets cover a length of 96” wall length, make the base, a single piece that is that length. In this example the base piece would be 95 1/4” long, 20“wide and 3 ½ “tall. If you want a finished end, like the picture at the right, hold the base unit back by ¾”.

You would level this piece first, securing it to the wall and floor. Now you make your cabinets as a complete box with a flat bottom. I wanted my cabinets to be 36” high at the highest point. Our final choice for the countertop material is 1 ½ “thick. Adding the 3 ½” of the base, the actual cabinets are 31” tall.

This process worked like a champ. I was able to make the base out of ¾” Plywood. Glued and screwed together. I added horizontal pieces along the bottom and top, to give me some place to connect the base to the floor and the cabinets to the base. Leveling this light weight piece was a snap. A couple of shims, and some good old 3” long sheet rock screws and the entire base was installed flat and level. When I brought the actual base units in from my shop, the only issue left was scribing the cabinet ends to the wall.

Not only did I like the idea about making the cabinets in two pieces, we also fell in love with his design idea. Well, not totally in love with it, we made some changes. My cabinets go all the way to the ceiling. I plan to add crown molding when all are in place. We also choose a darker stain, and elected to use Mission style hardware. The one other change I made was more a structural choice than a decorative one. After kicking around several options for the counter top, we decided to go with a granite surface. Granite is quite heavy and I was concerned about the weight bearing down on a finished edge of the cabinets. On cabinets that will have an exposed end showing, I doubled up the side. I made the actual cabinet out of ¾” Plywood, and then applied the decorative end treatment to the outside of that cabinet. For all intents and purposes it looks like a normal cabinet, but I am now sure that it can hold any amount of weight ever applied to it.

Was this double wall an over kill? Perhaps, but it was the way I was taught to do woodworking. If you want some to last for many years, then you should build it to last at least that long. Sure it would have been easier, cheaper and quicker to not add the double wall. But as a woodworker, I would have known it wasn’t quite right, and I would have seen it every time I walked past the cabinet. If you are a true woodworker, you are probably agreeing with me right now.

I hate to apply labels to people. If you have ever had the opportunity to attend a lecture by a motivational speaker, or sat though a college class on management styles, I am sure you have heard the terms Type A or Type B personality. And to be very honest with you, I never really knew which style I belonged to. I always felt I was part of each group. So I wasn’t sure what I was, however, lately, friends and family have labeled me as the “never satisfied” type. I think that is a very accurate description of a good woodworker. I want every cut to be perfect, every finish to shine, every surface as smooth as glass, you can keep going on and on with the ideas. But I think that really is the best description of us.

Since we moved into our home in 1978, we have been busy rebuilding everything in site. We started out replacing all of the windows in the house. I am not sure why anyone would ever install aluminum windows in a home in New Jersey. Maybe in a warmer climate, but not here. Sorry, I digress. Being a woodworker, I naturally decided to make the jam extenders for the windows,and install the trim. You know the thought process, why pay for something I can make, and it’s easy… well, lets just say it was a learning experience.

The rework of the home has continued, sometimes we would make something, and put it in place, and sit back and ask ourselves,”What were we thinking”. It was the wrong size, too big, too small, wrong color, and on and on. Gosh, I hope I am not the only woodworker to do this. Being the “never satisfied” type of person, has lead us from one project to another, some very small and some very large, like the addition to the back of our home, or the remodeling of our kitchen.

Our original kitchen area was modest by the standards of today’s McMansions. The standard 12’X 18’, that included a eat-in kitchen. Next to the kitchen was a single car garage. This was my original woodworking shop/garage. The woodworking shop has long since been relocated to a separate building. After a lot of discussion and a couple hours of work with a Sawzall, we knocked the wall down between the kitchen and garage and made a rather large kitchen area. Half of the old garage was given over to an actual dining room. I hate to use the word formal, because we are not the formal type. The other half of the area was added to the kitchen and now the kitchen area is 29’ x 12’.

My father in law, a professional cabinet maker, helped us build the original kitchen cabinets. We left the layout of the kitchen as it was built, and we basically replaced the existing builder grade particle board and laminate cabinets, with solid oak cabinets. This was twelve years ago, and there is nothing wrong with the cabinets, other than the finish is wearing in several places. Our refrigerator is also 12 years old and not working as well as it should, unless it’s normal to have frozen milk. Looking at replacing it, we found that it is nearly impossible to get a replacement unit without water in the door.

The current configuration of the kitchen did not allow us to connect water to the refrigerator, so we discussed moving it to another wall. We wanted to have the water in the door, so the discussion then went like this,” if we move the refrigerator to here, we can then move the stove here and then we can ……….”
I drew up so many variations of the kitchen layout that I often got confused on what we were trying to do. In desperation, we turned to the computer for help. We purchased a copy of Punch! Interior Design Suite I got mine from Amazon.

The software, like everything, had a learning curve, but in the end it was a great time saver. After several false starts, I was able to figure out how to move the cabinets around, or move the appliances without redrawing everything. As an added bonus, I was able to print realistic elevation drawings which helped us look at everything from multiple angles. The software also gave me the ability to easily convert 2D drawings to 3D drawings as not every one I showed the 2D drawings to were able to visualize it in 3D without the pictures. We finally found a layout that we liked and met all of our wish list items. Or so we thought. There were more changes in our future.

So, we had the big room, we had a plan that we both liked, so all that was left was to build the cabinets. The unfortunate thing is that my father in law, Bud, is no longer without us so we couldn’t ask for his help again. We decided hey, we can do this, and that was over a year ago, hopefully next week we can start the install. All of the cabinets are done and finished.

Getting here wasn’t easy; there were still obstacles, or opportunities, depending on who you listen to. We had to refine the design of the cabinets, select a finish, select the cabinet hardware, and find the materials. Even with these decisions made, there were still many items left to finalize, the type of counter top, what type of backsplash, and even what type of floor to install.

Am I complaining? No way? After all I am a “Never Satisfied” guy, I love a challenge. I guess I wouldn’t be satisfied unless I could make the new Kitchen the exact way we envisioned it. It’s been fun, tiring and at sometime frustrating, but I loved every minute of it.