Making kitchen cabinet carcasses is basically an exercise in making a bunch of boxes that fit inside and beside other boxes.  Thus, it is not a terribly difficult process.  But it requires one to think a few steps ahead to make sure all of the parts are going to fit together into a whole.

After getting the corner cabinet done and the under stove cabinet cut last week, I started with the sink cabinet this week.  Sink cabinets can be a pain because there are so many plumbing and electrical connections in them.  I generally just leave a good sized area without a back rather than try to fiddle with cutting each hole in the exact spot.  That makes the whole job much easier, but it does require quite a bit of hand routing.

And if the hand routing is not bad enough, glue-up is a pain because the cabinet is pretty flimsy until I put the face frame on it.  (Sink cabinets cannot have a frame on the top because we need the space to set the sink.)

But once the glue is cured, it fits like a glove.

The light you see on the left side is due to the wall having about a half inch bow under the water pipes from the tapers.  That can be fixed easy enough with about 5 minutes of quality time with my belt sander.

Then it was time to start cutting the parts for the rest of the base cabinets.  Since the gas pipe that I described in last week’s post required me to adjust how I was building the cabinets on that wall, I decided to change how I build the cabinets on the other wall so the face frames will match.

But the first order of business was to make a hole drilling jig for the base cabinets with a shelf.

Yes, the bottom hole is a touch off, but that will not even be seen in the finished cabinet.

After machining the parts, I was able to get the big cabinets glued-up.

My biggest concern was that I did not want to glue-up the 4 drawer cabinets until I had gotten the drawer glides in place and the drawer glides were still “in transit”.  They finally arrived Thursday and I was able to get them installed and do the final glue-up on the base cabinet carcasses.

I finished up glueing in the final few pieces and got the cabinets set in place (but not permanently affixed to the wall).

The wires you see hanging in the foreground are for a center island that I have yet to build.

Th reason for the early post this week is because we have family coming down to see us.  So we will be getting a much needed break from working on work and working on the house.

We finally got to the point in the build that I have been looking forward to since we decided to embark on this enterprise.  Of course, I am talking about building the cabinetry.

Warning: Since I know several regular readers are sawdust heads, for the next few weeks, while I build the cabinets, I will be going into more detail on the process than I normally do.  So, if you do not care about the finer details of how or why I build cabinets the way I do, please feel free to just skim the blog after you get the appropriate mental help for not being a sawdust head in the first place.

This week started off with me getting the rest of my machines unpacked, put together and tuned back to square.

I even got some of my favorite hand saws hung up in my shop.

These are not saws that I use on a regular basis.  A couple belonged to my favorite grandpa, one was my dad’s, one belonged to my grandpa’s best friend and a couple were my grandpa’s brother’s.  I know how to sharpen a hand saw and even have a swedge to set the teeth, so they are all razor sharp.  But I do not use them much.  I just like having them around.

I decided to start the cabinetry with the wall that must be exact.  The blueprints for the house call for a 36 inch corner cabinet followed by a 30 inch cabinet under the cooktop, followed by a 12 inch cabinet.  That would leave exactly 38 inches to fit a 36 inch refrigerator.  So I decided to make those three cabinets first.

The way I make cabinets, I always rough cut the plywood to height first using a circular saw.  I cut them about 1/4 to 1/2 inch long, then cut them to exact size on my tablesaw.

Then I cut out the toe kick.  In this case, I was able to reconfigure a dovetail jig that I made several years ago to cut the toe kick.

I made up a jig to route dados to hold the bottom of the drawer cabinets and a piece to mount the trim on the toe kick.  I obviously cleaned up the corners with a bench chisel.

The next step was to plow the dados to hold the pieces for the drawer glides.

The drawer glide manufacturer does offer a bracket that just mounts to the plywood on the back of the cabinet and the face frame on the front.  But since I am going with 100 pound drawer glides for most of the cabinets and the 200 pound drawer glides under the cooktop, I do not want their strength compromised by how I mounted them.  So crossgrain hardwood is the way I am going.

When building base cabinets, I like to make a pine frame that goes at the top of the cabinet.  It helps to keep everything square during glue up and adds a little more rigidity to the cabinet when installing it.  Obviously, I do not make them for the under-sink cabinet due to space constraints.  But otherwise, it is something I usually do.

Since the frame does not get much stress once the cabinet is complete and installed, I just put them together with a quick dowel joint.

The corner cabinet was the first carcass that I glued up.  A corner cabinet needs to have a plywood top since the top will be visible when the door is open.  I also need it to have a surface to mount the lazy-susan.

Every woodworker has a few things they do to make their work unique.  One of my “signature” things is to cover all the cabinet bottoms, drawer bottoms and shelf tops with Formica.  If you have never worked with Formica, it can be a challenge.  Until it is glued to a surface with contact cement, it tends to tear and chip real easily.

When I built the cabinets for our Minnesota house, I was able to buy Formica in sheets that were 25 inches wide and about 10 feet long.  The 25 inch width made them somewhat manageable to be able to rough cut them to size on the tablesaw, then cut them to finished width using a flush-trim router bit once the Formica was glued to the part.

Unfortunately, this time around, I was only able to get it in 4 by 8 foot sheets.  The 4 foot width makes it very difficult to manage on the tablesaw.   The first sheet I tried to cut on the tablesaw ripped into 6 pieces as soon as I started cutting it.  At almost $60 per sheet, I really do not want to make too many mistakes.  So I began experimenting with other ways to rough cut it.  I found using a tin snips works pretty well if you go slow.

Also, since the house is empty except for our tools, I decided to glue up the corner cabinet in the livingroom to avoid having to build the back corner with a 45 degree angle to fit it through a doorway.

That was when I noticed we have a bit of a problem with the 30 inch cabinet for under Tina’s cooktop.

The gas line for the cooktop comes out right at 30 inches!

My solution was to combine the cooktop cabinet with the skinny 12 inch drawer cabinet.  This allowed me to make the drawer cabinet 11 inches wide and expand the cooktop cabinet to be almost 33 inches wide and still leaves 37 inches for the refrigerator.  It will be close, but I am pretty sure it will work.

I also decided to not use the crossgrain oak for mounting the drawer glides on the left side of the drawers.  That allows me to make the drawers almost the same size that I had planned with my original design.  The drawers are small so I am keeping my fingers crossed that weight will not be a problem.

I have not yet done the final glue up on the drawer side of the cabinet as I am still waiting on the arrival of the drawer glides.  The drawers are too narrow to be able to drill the holes for mounting the drawer glides once the cabinet is glued.

Doing the cabinets this way is how I should have planned it in the first place since it will also allow me to do the face frames the old school way, where I have a single face frame that goes across the front of all of the cabinets.

It will also allow Tina to start finishing the insides of the cabinet carcasses as soon as I get them glued up.  Then I can make the face frame, doors and drawers and get those in place and she finish them separately.  So it should make finishing much easier as well.

We got the last of the grout done in the master bedroom.  Tina got the grout haze on the floor in the master bedroom mostly cleaned up this weekend.

These tiles are the absolute most miserable things I have ever worked with.  Not only were they a pain to lay, but Tina is having to scrub them with a stiff bristled scrub brush and mop them several times just to get the grout haze off of them.  Once she does that, they look great.  But damn what a chore these have been!

For my part, I did get the toilet permanently set in the master bath.

I also got a sink set in the laundry room.  This is a big deal because it is the first time we do not have to go outside to draw water.

I did not fix it to the floor permanently yet as we are not sure how it will fit with the washer and dryer.  There will be some cabinet somewhere between 8 and 12 inches wide, but until we get the washer and dryer I am not sure of the dimensions or the location.  So it seems wise to keep it not affixed to anything until we figure out the final dimensions,

You will also notice the blue wash bin under the P-Trap in the sink…  That is a testament to my lack of confidence in my plumbing abilities.  (I HATE plumbing with a passion!)  But so far, it is dry as bone…

I also got the rest of my hand tools put away in the tool chests and got them put where they belong.

We also got the last of the machines moved from the rental house to M.T. Acres and started putting them together.  It is nice to finally have a shop again after going for almost a year and a half without one.

I also got my tablesaw put back together.  That was a big job and it took the better part of a day because there is a LOT adjusting and fiddling around to get the cast iron wing and the sliding table exactly square with the top and matching the table height exactly.

I have not yet squared the fence or the mitre gauges because I did not have any scraps of plywood large enough to test cut them.  But that will not take too long to do after I have rough cut the cabinet sides and have the scrap from that.

I was amazed at how well the top of my tablesaw survived the mild winter here!

When we were living in Minnesota, every spring I had to spend an entire day just cleaning off a very thin layer of rust that would build up on my saw top from the humidity during the snow melt.  There is virtually no rust on the top this year that I need to worry about!

I still have to unload and assemble my jointer and my lathe.  But both of those are quick and easy to assemble.  I also have to unload my drum sander, but there is nothing to assemble with it, only finding a place to put it.

Finally, we got all of the appliances ordered and paid for.  That was a real pleasant surprise.

We had originally priced appliances at Lowe’s and Homie Despot and nearly had a heart attack from sticker shock.  Then I found a small local family owned appliance shop in Sierra Vista, AZ (a small city about 30 miles south of our rental house).  This was one of those finds that was absolutely by chance and was worth a LOT of money.  They not only saved us more than $3000 over what we would have spent at the box stores, but they also got us much higher quality appliances than we were looking at in the box stores.

For you fellow Arizoniacs, if you need a new appliance, check these guys out.  Their website sucks and their showroom is nothing to write home about, but their service, selection, price and help navigating which brands and models to buy is the best!

http://www.kgsappliances.com/