Drawer of Drawers

With a running motorcycle, spring weather and time to get back to work I buckled down and started on the drawers for the kitchen. With my methodology of mortise and tenons over dovetails I set to work.

After building all the bottom drawers I installed them only to realize that I'd made a 1mm error and that they were tight on the slides. It was easy enough to space them out and getting them working right but frustrating. Of course I don't know if I should be happy that my 1mm error was consistent throughout or not...

 

I wanted to make the drawers deep and extremely heavy duty. They're all built with 18mm sides and 12mm bottoms in baltic birch and they can support in excess of 100lbs each with ease.

 

I've gotten very accurate with my construction and every drawer is bang on square and perfect to the mm. It's encouraging. 

I've also had a little help along the way. Emphasis on the little. :-)

A benefit of living in the house as you're still doing the construction is that you learn where you tend to naturally work and that informs how you build. We always prep to the left of the sink and so it made sense to put the knives there. It also made sense to make a knife block to fit the drawer. 

I also wanted the top drawers to hold all the normal utensils that would sit on the counter in crocks or such and so the drawers needed to be a bit deeper but also have dividers. For instance the knife drawer is deep enough that a cutting board can sit on top of the knives and such and be out of the way. 

At this point I went back to my drawings and adjusted my numbers and started on the second and third level drawers. 

It's been a lot of work but the drawers are turing out fantastically and they only need their coat of poly to get them finished. After that it's just a matter of installing them and I can move on to closets. 

And just because all work and no play would be a drag I made a swing for the kids. 

Mise en Place the Kitchen

Holy cow, so long since I've done an update!

Once we moved in I thought it would be much easier to find time to work on the house and frankly it was the opposite. I am the one who gets the kids ready for school, makes breakfast, packs the lunch and then take the to and from school and also makes dinner. All that takes up a fair bit of my day and by the time I'm finished with it all I don't have the energy to go back into the shop.

Despite that I've made some progress in fits and starts. My highest priority is to get the kitchen functional or perhaps more functional. It works but it's a pain to live without cabinets or drawers and the sort of things you take for granted.

I tested various stains as after the bath was done Judiaann and I both agreed that we wanted something darker for the cabinets so that it didn't just blend in with all the cedar or the maple floor. While there are some nice colors there we went with the lower right as it was the most "neutral" of the bunch and sat well with the other colors in the house.

The next step was to at least get the upper cabinets and range hood done. I used walnut on the ends but birch on the top, bottom, back and drawers to keep it light inside.

The range hood and the 3mm walnut edge banding I got were very frustrating to work with. In the end they turned out fine but I don't know if I'm going to continue with them or not.

Along the way I learned about putting dynamat on the sink to quiet the sound when you put in dishes and I have to say it's a brilliant trick. The sink sounds much more quiet and solid.

Next up was to put the back into the island counter as the kids were dropping a few too many snacks back there. The end was a compound angle that was tricky to get right but it worked out.

I also finally got around to putting the end cap on the counter to complete the waterfall.

With the cabinets and hood in they were immediately filled up. The walnut plywood is difficult to work with so at this point I decided that I needed a brake and took a little time out to fix up one of my bikes so I had a motorcycle to ride in the perfect spring weather.

Next up: drawers.