Tina spent the weekend back in Minnesota this week so she could attend our younger daughter, Katie’s, baby shower.  Katie and her husband Mark will be giving us twin grandsons on September 28th.  Needless to say, the whole family is very excited.

The glass people got the glass cut and installed on all of the top kitchen cabinet doors.  However, when I picked them up, I noticed one that I was not happy with.  The stile on one side of the door had warped a bit before Tina got a chance to varnish it.  So rather than clamping it flat before they glued the glass in, the glass people just fit as best they could and filled the gap with silicon.  Needless to say, it looked like crap.

So before we did anything, I cut the glass out and redid it.

They are just glued in with clear silicon so I was not too worried about the warped stile cracking the glass.  I let it dry overnight to make sure the silicon was good and dry, then I unclamped it.  It worked perfectly.  The glass held the warped stile almost perfectly straight and once I got the hinges screwed to the cabinet, the hinges pulled it the rest of the way straight.

Before Tina left she got the base cabinet doors finished.  So I was able to get all of the cabinet doors hung.

I think they came out looking pretty dang good.

The last thing to do to complete the kitchen cabinets was to make moldings for the toe-kick.  Those were real easy to make, but time consuming to finish.  I started by planing some stock down to 3/8 inch thick.

Then I just cut them to size and finished them.

Finally, I installed them and the kitchen cabinets are done!

While I was waiting for the finish to dry on the cabinet moldings, I decided to put up some more base moldings.  That also turned out to be a slow and time consuming process because the living room is now filled with furniture.  So for every stick of molding I put up, I had to move several pieces of furniture.  But it came out looking good.

I still have quite a bit more base molding to do, but before I go much further in the living room, I need to make some custom moldings for around the tile behind the wood stove.

The moldings for the sides will be easy to make, but on the top, Tina wants a shelf.  I guess she thinks we just do not have enough flat surfaces to collect dust in the desert.

I had an idea for how to do the shelf, but am not sure how well it is going to work.  I started off by making some cleats that I could screw solidly to the wall.

Then I planed the back part of the shelf to 1/2 inch thick and glued a cleat to the top of it.

The top of the shelf will be rabbited and glued to the top of the back.

I do not know how solid the shelf will be once the top is on.  But worst case, I can run some decorative screws to hold it up if need be.  Although I really do not want screws to be showing if I can avoid it.

I test fit the back pieces and they seem solid enough.  They do not seem to have a tendency to “roll forward”.  I will let you all know how it turns out in next week’s installment.

Living the bachelor life for the weekend, I have also had to cook my meals and such.  For me, that means BBQ since that is about the only cooking I am good at.  But I was very proud of myself, I was even able to load up and run Tina’s fancy new dishwasher without incident!

I was not even tempted to eat the Tide Pod even though it looks like candy!