I'm Sinking, I'm Sinking!

You know I feel bad about that title but then a part of me doesn't feel bad. Bad puns are rich part of our family history and I shouldn't feel bad about maintaining a tradition. 

So, as you might have guessed this is a post about ovens. No, kidding, it's about sinks. You knew that right? Well, actually it's about kitchens and the things we do to make them happen. Like calling in any and all favors because you want desperately, more than anything, to live in your very first house that you've spent over a year working on. Judiaann said that we could finally move in when we had a working bathroom (check!) and kitchen counters and sink (check please).

So I called in my friend Ben, who happens to be our architect but is also a former cabinet maker, to help kick my ass in gear and get the basic boxes for the kitchen together. 

So we're using prefinished maple for the box construction. It won't be seen unless you open the drawers, which will be baltic birch (see previous post) so it made sense to speed the process by going with pre fin. 

This is the "coffee station" which is also the prep area and will have a second sink. Since the original kitchen was the traditional small space we are working to gain as much as we can within the footprint. By opening the wall to the main room we give the kitchen a much larger feel and by building a pantry into the laundry room and adding this second sink and prep area we're almost getting a kitchen and a half. 

This is the cabinet next to the stove and I'm using a laser to set the counters to the same height throughout the kitchen. The floor may not always be perfectly level but the cabinets will be. 

Another thing that has been confounding me is wanting the back side of the peninsula to be a seating area for the kids to watch Judiaann (and me!) cook. When I was a kid we had a similar counter and I really loved to sit and draw and hang out while my mom cooked. I want the same thing for my kids. 

But the space for the peninsula is limited to the existing kitchen foot print. While you could extend the counter outward, into the main room, it would look horrible and ruin all the work we've done to open the space and keep the clean lines. Then it hit me. The boxes of the peninsula were oversized and we were already using the largest drawer slides but there was still space at the back for the plumbing and electric but they were only at the bottom.  The only space you need room on a counter is for your knees and luckily my knees, and the rest of my families knees are all located much higher. 

If I kicked the top of the back side of the cabinet bases I could have plenty of knee room and the counter could stay within the "space" of the kitchen. 

Here I'm testing the counter height, knee kick and what I imagine will be the stool height. Once I'm in the house and am caught up on the pressing construction I'll build some nice stools for the counter but it's way down on my list right now. Ikea will do for the time being. 

One of the main reasons for wanting to go with laminate is that it's very flexible and easy to work with and it's also sort of period correct. That is low on my list of reasons but it's nice. Besides, I really like the stuff and am sort of tired of all the Corian and marble. The other reason is because I found these amazing sinks from Karran. They are designed to be set flush with the laminate with a zero inset and it's a very cool look. It is the perfect sink for formica but it's a chore to install. 

You place the sink on the underside of the counter and trace a slightly oversize opening which you cut out with a jigsaw. 

Then you bury the edge in your build up which is part of what supports the sink. 

When the top is just proud of the surface of the counter and there's a small gap all around the sink you mix up some bondo (auto body filler) and force it into the gap to capture the sink and seal it to the counter. 

Once the bondo has hardened (about 15-30 min) you then use a belt sander to flush the bondo and sink edge to the countertop. 

Then you laminate the counter as you normally would with contact adhesive but the only difference is that a special adhesive is used around the lip of the sink. 

Once the laminate is down and the epoxy has had time to cure (about an hour) you rout out the sink area with tapered bit with oversize bearing. 

Unlike their video of the installation my sink didn't route out smoothly due to squeezed out adhesive. It didn't stick to the stainless but it was time consuming to chip out. 

Once cleaned though the router made a very smooth path around the since and cleaned up the edge nicely. 

And this was the whole goal - a very nice clean white counter that appears to have a sink carved out of it's stainless inner core. It's a very cool look and and takes full advantage of laminate. 

After the sink and counters were done I spent time addressing the plumbing under the sink working to keep the lines and drains as compact and reward as possible to allow for the greatest amount of space inside the drawers. 

I'm very happy with the layout of the counter, sink and plumbing. I feel like I'm packing the ingenuity of a VW camper into a full size house and getting out twice the usable space while maintaining the big open feel of the period. 

And more than anything I'm thrilled to finally have a move in date - in two weeks. Lots of stuff still go but at least there's light at the end of the tunnel. 

I Dropped My Drawers!

So the bath upstairs was "complete" in the sense that the plumbing worked but one of the biggest things that I needed to tackle was drawers. They're a rather big deal and a mark of quality in the cabinets - a detail that counts. 

My original intention was do dovetailed drawers. I'd even been testing them by building some boxes to work out spacing and such. 

The trouble is that I've really fallen in love with baltic birch plywood. Not the fake stuff but the real honest to goodness stuff from Russia made with thick void free plies of great veneer quality wood. It machines like a dream the edges are beautiful in that modern european way. It doesn't hurt that the stuff is just way nicer to build with. 

So, what kind of drawers to make that would show off joinery, work well with BB ply and be strong and long lasting? 

This is my solution. It's a rabbeted joint glued and then mortised with a floating tenon inserted and sanded smooth. This is one of my test joints. I liked it. I built a coffee knock box and literally beat it to death and could not break it. I'm very happy with this solution. 

So, since I'm going to be making a whole lot of drawers I decided to test them out by making the four for the upstairs bath vanity. 

All the edges are rounded over with a 2mm roundover bit in the router and then sanded smooth. 

The detail in the back of the top drawers is to clear the drains but still have a maximum amount of space in the drawer. I'm all about using every inch of space. I hate wasted space. I'm sure it comes from living in a NYC shoebox of an apartment in the East Village but I can't see wasting space - makes no sense if it's there for the taking. 

Then I installed vertical grain walnut drawer fronts. Basically the bath cabinet is like a very final test for the kitchen. The matched vertical grain looks great and for this cabinet I edged it in actual 5mm solid walnut instead of edge banding. I like it but it was crazy time consuming for very little gain. I'm not convinced. 

Bath Two - Me Won

Can you tell I used to work at a newspaper? I loved writing headlines. So onto the upper bath. At this point we're almost caught up but here's the past few weeks in a nut shill.

Deciding that I wanted to float the bath cabinet because it's a cleaner look, and well, let's be honest,  because I want to get a Roomba vacuum and therefore eliminate all impediments to it's progress and eventual world domination. That thought met head on with the weight of the stupid sink we got at Ikea which I chose because it was sleek and actual porcelain instead of the easy to scratch plastic. It's actually a very nice sink but it necessitated some serious prep.

I had to open up the finished drywall and block out the entire wall behind the sink. I have no idea why I didn't do this before but it was probably because I never anticipated floating the sink. I can see how these sort of mid stream concept changes can cost a client a lot of money but since I'm both the contractor and the client I simply berate myself and then take more time.

The box is coming along nicely. It's built so well and barely moves now in it's new home.

While we're using an Ikea sink we're using very nice, super sleek and beautifully high end Hansgroe faucets since their the things you handle all the time. Trouble is that the drains for them are rather deep with the remote stoppers and to use them would take up almost all of the storage of the vanity. Oh, perish the thought! So I did what any normal person would do: I took the drain down to my shop and cut the parts on my lathe and proceeded to reengineer them to be much shorter.

Finally, in the end, I had to concede defeat. While I was able to make the drains work and made them much shorter they were no match for the slick and low profile drains that Ikea came up with. I threw in the towel (ha!) and used their drain so as to be able to keep the originally designed four drawers which are very much needed. Remember, I came from NYC and lived in a 400sq/ft apartment in the East Village so I'm all about using every last inch of space if it's there. Much like a hunter I will not let any space in this house go to waste.

Bench Testing

So the downstairs bath was a success and so was the updated method of posting on the blog. Now I can pick up the pace here. Since this isn't Garage Journal I'll sort of skim over the bench and cabinets I made for the shop and post a few photos of them. It was a good experience and turned out great and refreshed my laminating skills and improved my joinery techniques.

I kick it old school with actual pencil and paper.

The bench top is a torsion box that is cantilevered off a shallow storage box that is hidden behind two rolling drawer chests. A veritable piñata of challenges in one project.

So this also marked the end of my use of standard grade plywood and the move to full, Russian baltic birch ply which is so much better I don't think I'll ever go back. It's beyond the lack of needing edge banding, it cuts nicer, has a thicker out veneer and is just plain pleasant to work with. All my woodworking boxes now fit in these rolling carts. Jigs and larger rails fit behind and are hidden. It's very nice and it came out perfect to the millimeter.

Full Assed Half Bath

So in my last post I tackled cabinets. I killed it. I felt good but not yet ready. I needed to do some things that used drawers and I needed to do some things that used real (read expensive) walnut plywood. So I took on a few projects to hone my skills and make progress at the same time.

First up was the downstairs vanity. It is supposed to be a very simple but floating cabinet for a small and narrow Ikea sink. I brought all my chops to it and it came together nicely.

My cuts and measurements are bang on now.

Lots of loose tenons in mortises courtesy of the Festool Domino. Love that tool.

First use of the Walnut ply which we went with to be a darker and more character filled wood than the cedar. It is a great piece and super strong and simple. I'm very happy with how it came out.

Cabinets add Nauseum

I'm sure I've mentioned it more than once but if you're interested in keeping up with this in a more frequent and detailed way I have a build thread on the Garage Journal website that I update very regularly. It's interactive and this is... well, I was going to say for my family but only my sister has actually read it. Rumor has it my Mom was sent the link again so just in case...

Hi Mom!

Umm, okay, back to cabinets. When we last left off I had built one test cabinet for the garage and it came out well. So now to build the rest of the cabinets for the garage to make sure I could do better and really get my chops down.

I'm going to try a new way of inserting the images instead of uploading them - hopefully it works better for me. So, lots and lots of plywood was cut up, edge banded and sanded.

I even put my old man to work sanding. I found that like most things it's easy to be good and difficult to be great but I kept my nose to the grind stone, asked a lot of questions and read an absolutely stupid amount of books, articles and websites on building cabinets. I'm like a sponge for new information.

I ended up building 9 cabinets for the garage. Not because it took that many to get right but because I have a LOT of garage stuff and tools - my shop is a serious shop for complete fabrication of anything you can imagine so there's copious amounts of things to store.

Here's a bank of them poly'd and hung but without the doors.

And then with the doors. They're simple and strong and a great test for the upcoming kitchen. Surely I'm ready to do the kitchen right? Oh, no, there's still more skill building to do. Well, that and waiting for cash to buy the needed supplies.