Kitchen Cabinets Part 11- the Final Fronts

Before you get too excited, our kitchen is not done, BUT we put together the last pull-out cabinet and built the fronts for the corner cabinet, so we are *so close* to have the base cabinets completed.

Is the term "so close" losing effect at this point? I feel like we're always "so close" yet there's always something else to work on. Ha!

Thd last cabinet was just waiting on a slide which finally came so we were able to build the skinny pullout. It's been a while since we've compared before and after, so here's a little side-by-side (or top/bottom):

In the top photo you can see the sink cabinet had a really skinny cabinet to the left (we only stored floor cleaner in there, it was too skinny even for a roll of papertowels), the two cabinets under the sink with the fake drawer on top (there was so much going on with plumbing under the sink and the garbage disposal there really wasn't much room for anything), and the one drawer and skinny cabinet to the right (this was actually open to the whole under-sink cabinet, and it's where we stored our dishwasher pods mostly). It was a large space, but nothing was really usable.

Now we have a skinny pullout to the left if the sink where we can store cleaning supplies:

The two doors to the cabinet under the sink hide tons of space (not really being used right now):

Then we have the three drawers holding more cleaning supplies and towels:

Do you hear that? It sounds like angels singing in awe of all of our storage space!

Alright, I might be a teensy bit biased, but the space is much more usable than it was before, so I'm feeling great about it!

I sort of started with the end on this blog post, so I'll rewind and show you some photos of us building the pullout. We used the same basic idea that we used for the oil pullout, with two shelves:

There were two differences: the first was the width (the cleaning pullout is a bit skinnier than the oil one), and the second is the hight of that top shelf (we actually moved it down 2 inches to fit taller items up top). Construction was the same though.

The pullout is on the Blum slides I've previously talked about, while the other three drawers under the sink are on the "off-brand" slides and the difference is really insane. I'll admit I have absolutely turned into a drawer-slide snob. I suppose we can add this to the list of items I'm a snob about (coffee, yarn, kitchen tools, I'm sure there's more...).

In addition to getting in the cleaning pull-out we (Scott gets 100% credit for this, actually) built the door for the lazy susan.

If you don't have a lazy susan cabinet with the fold out door its hard to understand why this was such a big deal. I'll try to break it down though. There are two sets of hinges, one set that actually folds 165 degrees and one that works like a "regular" hinge. The two sets of hinges work together to let the door close inward against the cabinet, but also open out almost flat. If that doesn't make sense (even re-reading I'm not sure of it), here's a video of Scott opening and closing the "practice doors" he built.

The two sets of hinges came separately, delaying the building of the doors but Scott finally took the leap on building them, but not without the precautions of building the practice door first (wood isn't cheap right now, we didn't want to screw it up!).

He built the practice doors out of 1" MDF, the same depth as the Poplar we'll use for the final door. The hardest part was determining where to drill for the hinges. We were able to use the same concealed hinge jig we used on the other cabinet doors, but the placement was different, with one set of holes extending beyond the edge of the door to accommodate the hinge:

In the last picture the hinges between the two doors actually rest outside of the edge of the cabinet, so placement was crucial and drilling a hole in the wrong spot on the finished door would've ruined it, so I was completely onboard with the trial-run.

As Scott was building and drilling I was taking down measurements and making notes so when it's time for the real-deal there is no guesswork.

Once we knew the door would fit we used the measurements from the trial-run to build the doors. We built them the same way we built the drawer fronts: with 1x2 Poplar edges (called rails and styles) and an MDF center. This is different than the cabinet doors because we wanted the extra "heft" of the mdf instead of the 1/4" birch ply we used on the cabinets.

We built two doors, so we cut 4 rails, and 4 styles, then used the Dado to cut the mortices and tenons and rabbet around the MDF.

When we built all the drawer fronts we used an assembly-line approach, cutting all of the rails and styles, then doing all the dadoes, etc, and we based our cuts off of the finished measurements instead of the actual measurements. We did this for the sake of time, but we don't have a real setup a true cabinet-maker would have, so things were a little off and needed a little extra filling and sanding, but Scott got us pretty darn close. This time, we used the actual measurements to ensure a tight, clean fit, and it paid off big-time in terms of sanding and filling. There was very little to be done to get the doors looking great!

We still haven't been able to locate the paint we need so it might be a while before these are painted and mounted, but they're built and that's a huge check off our list!

We've also need taking care of some little things around the house. These are projects that aren't really hard or tome consuming, just stuff we've been putting off. I hope we aren't the only ones with a mile-long list of things we've been putting off!

For instance, we put the transition strips down in between the guest rooms and hallway, and at the sliding glass door. It took all of ten minutes and had to dry over night. Not a big thing, but one more check off the list. I also put another coat of paint on the crown in the guest room. We put it up and caulked it months ago, but never got around to painting it. Again, not hard, but it meant getting out the ladder, finding the trim paint, and just doing it. It helps that we have Scott's mom's upcoming visit to look forward to and push us to take care of these little things, even though we know there would be zero judgment if they weren't done it feels good to see it all coming together.

I'm not sure what our focus will be this week, Scott keeps saying he wants to work on the kitchen ceiling so I have my fingers crossed for that, but it's a huge undertaking so I'm trying to keep my expectations realistic (this is something I'm working on, typically I have no concept of what we can actually accomplish in a given timeframe). Either way, I'm sure we'll keep ourselves busy!