Minor Pantry Design Changes

We were working on the design of the pantry a little last night and decided that we would modify the right unit to include a wine rack at the top. We don't drink any wine, but we do drink a lot of sparkling cider! I think that we are happy with the way that it now looks. You will also see that the top of the main cabinet has changed, but I think we are still going to do the previous design.

Kitchen Pantry

We have started work on the kitchen pantry! We designed it to look like a traditional butler's pantry with cabinets on the bottom and open cabinets on the top. Here is the picture of the plan for the pantry. On the left is a picture of the face of the main cabinet and on the right is a picture of the side cabinet. The final shape from the top is like an "L".
I finished the base cabinets on either side. There is still some more trim bead pieces to put in but other than that they are pretty much done. The cabinet on the left will have a face frame that will be once piece with the top unit. The doors will still be a little while to come yet....

It is a little hard to tell from the plan above but the unit on the right has a wood countertop. We want the countertop to be fir to match the floors and bought a large piece of fir to work with. But...then we decided that we would try and use some of the old baseboard fir to make it instead. The wood still had a couple of coats of paint on it that first had to be striped.
The boards had quite a cup to them after spending the last 110 years in the garage or in the house so I ripped them down to thinner strips and alternated them when they were glued up. By alternating them in the glue up means that if they cup any more or less they will just add waves to the top instead of a big cup. The board across the top is used to keep the boards inline during the glue up.

Here it is after drying and being cleaned up with the scraper to remove dried glue. After this point the top was leveled a little with a hand plane and then 60 grit sandpaper on the random orbital sander.

Here it is after the sanding...

The top is made to look like it is 1.5" thick instead of the 0.75" by gluing a second piece on the front. This second piece also allows the edge profile to be routed in.

Measurements were taken of the space for the fir top and was trimmed by hand to the line. I put a little back bevel in the cut to get the tightest fit to the wall and the other cabinet.

Here it is all urethaned up after the cutting to fit the space.

Here Kristen is painting all of the cabinets. The baseboard still needs to be painted and put on in other spots.
Here is an look of the cabinets with the fir top put in place. It is not screwed down yet but gives an idea of what it looks like. You can also see that the front doors are missing the beading and the back beadboard is still not done yet. It should all be finished up by this weekend minus the cabinet doors which will be their own little mini project.

Kitchen Ceiling Medallions

The ceiling medallions have been put up in the kitchen over the eventual island. We can't wait to hang our beautiful old brass chandeliers up! It will be awhile though - want to wait for the dust to be gone.

Kitchen/Dining floor transition

The new doorway left us with a problem - the flooring did not go all the way through. There was some that did, evidence of an old door, but not all.
This was solved by cutting the existing boards flush and putting in a new fir threshold.

We will have to do this on the other two kitchen doors as well. It was planed smooth and even but left a little high. It will get sanded flush when the kitchen floor finally gets sanded. Hopefully it will age over time to the same color although we made add a little stain to help in this darkening process.

Framing in the Dining/Kitchen Door

We are trying to match the newly created doorway to the other one in the dining room. We have yet to find the perfect French doors to match but are working on the matching opening. Tyler used old fir boards he found in the garage for the sides of the jambs. The rest is new poplar that has been cut to match.