My goal for this weekend was to get the carcass for the center island in the kitchen built.  I mostly accomplished my goal, but I also made a lot of really dumb mistakes along the way too.

Tina set out to get the final 3 coats of varnish on the top cabinets and they came out GREAT!

The way she does the finishing is to first sand the bare wood with 220 grit sandpaper.  After wiping off the dust with a tack rag, she puts on 2 thin coats of varnish.  Then sands them with 400 grit sandpaper and puts on the last 2 coats.

Saturday afternoon, she came out to my shop and told me she was having some trouble with the palm sander.  It was stopping intermittently but would then start up again.  A few minutes later she came out and told me it started shooting sparks at her.

At least this one died like a palm sander should.

When we were building the kitchen cabinets for our Minnesota house, she killed a palm sander exactly like the one pictured above by sanding through the cord.  To this day, I have no idea how she did it because she caught it right next to where the cord goes into the housing.

Since we have an anniversary coming up this month, I wonder how she would feel about a new palm sander for an anniversary present?

One night last week we went into Tucson and picked up some more wood for the kitchen cabinets and got the wood for the bathroom cabinets.  So my first task was to rearrange my wood pile.

So I put the black walnut for the guest bathroom on the bottom.

Then came the quarter sawn white oak for the master bathroom.

The original plan was to do the master bathroom with hickory.  But the hickory they had looked like crap.  It looked like it had gotten really wet, then dried.  It was all stained and not single board ran straight for more than 12 inches.  So we settled on white oak, but I think it will look good.

Then I got a few more pieces of rift-sawn red oak because as the design of the kitchen has evolved the last few weeks, we added quite a few more drawers than I originally anticipated.

Finally, I added the red oak I had and the poppel for the drawer bodies.  I might need to get a little more poppel, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it because I do not want to have much poppel left over because I do not use it making furniture.

Lastly, I had to get the plywood for the master bathroom cabinets and a couple more sheets to finish out the kitchen.

Then it was onto constructing the center kitchen island.

When most guys build a center island, they build a false bottom.  Then they screw the false bottom to the floor and set the cabinet over the false bottom and screw the two together.  But I am not “most guys”.

This center island needs to be rigid and strong.  Not just strong, but as my good friend Harold says, “It has to pass the elephant test”.  I.E. It needs to be strong enough to hold an elephant sitting on it.  So I decided to build the entire thing from 3/4″ plywood rather than just the sides with no false bottom and all as one piece, strengthened with oak where needed.

Tina wants the lower part of the cabinet to have 2 doors and pull-out shelves.  She plans on filling it with plates and china etc.  That is, really heavy stuff.  So I decided to go with 200 pound drawer glides for the shelves.

Since the cabinet is a full 48 inches wide, I decided that an extra piece of 3/4″ plywood down the middle will help keep the shelves from warping and also, effectively double the weight the cabinet will hold.

The problem is, the electrical for the switch and outlet going in the right side of the cabinet comes through the floor right in the center of the cabinet near the front.  So I had to work that out.

The first step was to cut the sides and the center piece, then plow the dados for glueing the oak to hold the drawer glides.

That is where I introduced my first “operator error”.  Because the dados on both side of the center piece are each 1/4″ deep, it means there is only 1/4″ of plywood left in the middle.  Therefore, when I glued the drawer glide mounts, I had to be really careful to keep even pressure on the clamps or the plywood would warp.

I, apparently, was not careful enough because when we went to assemble it, the center piece of plywood was bent like a noodle.  We were able to make it work because it fits into a dado in the back of the cabinet and will be glued to the face frame in front.  But what a chore that was!

I also made a bad cut on the back of the cabinet.  I had to cut a 3/4″ wide by 1/4″ deep dado on the top and bottom of the back to hold the top and bottom of the cabinet.  Because the back is 47″ wide, I knew I should have cut them by had with a router, but I used my table saw instead.  When cutting the bottom dado, I was about 2/3 of the way through the cut and I got the back jammed up on the table saw fence.  So I tore out about 1/8″ of veneer on the inside bottom.

It will never show because it is in the inside back of the cabinet and the bottom shelf will hide the mistake.  But I know it is there.

The next step was glue up.  Glue up is where everything comes together or it doesn’t.  Since this cabinet had been fighting me every step of the way, I was sure something was going to go horribly wrong during glue up and I would have to start over.

We did it in phases and it went surprisingly smooth.

The first step was to glue the center piece in and get it perfectly square.

I thought that I should also glue the other top piece in at the same time, but when I checked it with my square everything was perfect.  Not wanting to tempt fate with this one, I decided to let these two pieces set up before proceeding.

Next up was to get the side and bottom of the left half done.

Normally, I take the clamps off after 20-30 minutes, but I left these on for a full hour because I wanted it good and dry.

Once that was done, glueing up the right side was easy.

The notch you see in the bottom is where the electrical will come through.

The last part to finishing the carcass was to make a piece of oak that goes across the top of the toe kick and fashion a couple of pine boards that I can mount the toe kick trim to.

I measured carefully.  I cut carefully.  I even carefully cut a dado to give some added strength to the center plywood.  I test fit it and everything fit perfectly.  Then I promptly glued the pine to the wrong side of the oak.

It was at that point that I decided to end the day, even if it was a little early and I was not completely done with everything I had set out to do.  Making rookie mistakes like this are a sure sign that I am about to ruin more material or cut off a finger.

So we packed it in and went back to the rental house.  I took a much needed shower and then a nap.