Cabinet Doors Installed

This last weekend the cabinet doors were fitted and put in place. It was nice to get out the low angle block plane, tune up the blade and make some good thin (0.001") shavings. The doors were originally made so that they were a little wider than the opening. The first step, shown in the picture below, is to get the doors to just fit in the opening. The the door was trimmed so that there was a gap that ran all the way around the width of a penny. You can see in the last picture that after the hinges were put on the door on the left has a little more trimming that needs to be done. The hinges are in place but we still have to install the knobs and magnetic limits on the doors.

Top to the cabinet

This last weekend the top was put into the cabinet. It is a nice feature and ties the unit together well. Kristen still thinks that we need some sort of decoration on the corners of the top piece maybe a carving or a cutout, we haven't figured it out yet. You can see in this picture the top piece held in place during the glue up. It is made with 0.5 inch popular instead of the 0.75 so it is set in just a little bit from the front of the cabinet. Here is a picture of the top corner on the left side taken once it was all painted up. You can also see in this picture that a cove and bead was added to the edge of the storage that is located above the fridge. Here is what it looks like painted up on the right side with the wine rack.

New Garden Bed

Well, the weather has been so nice over the last couple of weeks we have been starting to plan the garden for the summer. As we started to place things in the garden layout we soon figured out that we needed some more space then the existing raised bed. So, with a trip to Lowes and $40 we put together another raised bed up on the patio. You can see in the picture below that we still have a couple of more pieces to go on the corners and all of the soil needs to be put in.

The other raised bed still has some of the parsnips from last year growing as well as the garlic that was planted last fall. In addition we have planted some asparagus and rhubarb next to the garlic but have not seen any shoots come up yet. Once we get the soil in the bed we will just have to wait until the last frost has passed to start planting.

Workshop Tools

Well, I finally remembered to bring the camera up to the garage to take some pictures of the tools that have been made for the table saw and the router. The first tool that was made was a router table to support making the rails and stiles for the doors. This has also helped out the rest of the routing operations. The table that it stands on is made of sheet metal and originally came with the chop saw. The table is about 4 feet in length.

The second jig is used on the table saw for holding panels vertical. This is used to make the bevels on the door panels and will be handy if I have to cut tenons on parts. Not shown in this picture is the fence that the unit rides against.

The last two pictures are of the cross cut sled that was made to cut the sawtooth shelf supports.
In this picture you can see the guide that was used to cut all of the triangles for the sawtooth support. Basically you make one cut and then shift the board over and place the new cut on top of the peg to make the next cut. This is then repeated over and over. This was first done with all of the vertical cuts and then with all of the angle cuts.

Sawtooth Shelf Hangers

Instead of shelf pins in the pantry we decided on a more traditional way to have flexible shelving. This method involves having sawtooth hangers that are in each corner of the cabinet and a rail that goes across between them that the shelf sits on. I has to make a crosscut sled for the table saw to make this but other than that it was pretty straight forward. Here is a picture that shows the sawtooth in the main pantry with a sample rail in place.

Here is a picture of the sawtooth hanger rails on one end of the cabinet under the wine rack.

Picture of the sawtooth hangers for the main portion of the pantry getting painted prior to installing them.

Trim on Front of Wine Rack

The trim on the front of the wine rack was finished up this weekend. We thought that it would take a long time to get it all done but it was actually quite quick. The molding stock was made using a scratch plane on the edge of a board then ripped off on the table saw. None of the pieces are the same so they all had to be cut by hand. This is pretty quick with the Japanese pull saw. As you can see in the picture below the joints are pretty good but I still went over them with some caulk prior to painting.

Here is a picture of the wine rack portion with once all of the glue had dried but before the caulking and painting.
Here it is all painted up. You can also see in here the sawtooth shelf hangers that are discussed in the next post.