More cabinets completed in Spring & Summer

Over the Spring and early Summer I managed to build two new cabinets similar to the one completed earlier (see prior post).  These two cabinets fill the recesses on either side of the gas fireplace in the Den (Study).  Since I'd made on set previously, these weren't too complicated in terms of the basic boxes and shelved.  However, this time I added a bank of drawers (2 in each cabinet) and and doors (to hide A/V) equipment.  I'd done drawers before and they're not too bad, especially if you cut them all out at once.  The doors were a little trickier since they old glass which is a bit heavy.  Nevertheless, they came out fine, close easily and all the remotes communicate right thru the glass.

Left Side Cabinet

Right Side Cabinet

 After the cabinets were complete, installed and finished with polyurethane, I made the mantle piece  from Peruvian walnut and then templated the mantle top (rock).  Richert's Marble and Granite (Sequim) cut the top out of a spare piece of 3-cm-thick Serpentinite that we had left over from the kitchen.  Just a little filing away of dry wall and the rock top slide right into place.  I lifted it up, put a half-dozen 1/2" blobs of silicon caulk on the mantle and dropped the rock back down into place.  If I ever have to pull the top off, I can just run a thin saw (Japanese type) under the rock and cut thru the caulk (advise from John Richert).  However, I'm not ever planning on doing this--but never say no. 

Walnut mantle and rock top

Whole wall, weird angles are a result of stitching 3 pics together

Remaining jobs to be done in our 98% completed house are upstairs marble tile work around the shower and tub (a big job), upstairs closet shelving (buy and install), build out the wine cellar (a winter job), install the reflective tubes on the solar tubes, and landscape the back yard.  At this rate, I'll be done in about 2015 and on Medicare. 

Custom built cabinets, Spring 2012

In keeping with the now occasional posting to the blog, its time to report on some custom cabinet building that's going on in our home. The Den is the main object for cabinets. When we built the house, we left alcoves on either side of the fireplace, which occupies a long wall. Also, on the opposing shorter wall, we wanted to put up a large wall bookcase. We'll, I'm happy to report that at least the wall bookcase is done and the built-ins are underway.

We decided to build the cabinets out of fir, to match all the trim in the house (windows, doors and baseboard). You'd think that fir would be cheap and plentiful--NOT, at least good clear vertical grain (cvg) fir. 1x stock is easy to find, but expensive compared to paint grade woods, and most times the vertical grain of the wood is only displayed on the face, not the sides (the 1x part). So you have to be a bit careful, or laminate the edges with cvg strips.

Plywood is another matter. At Edensaw, our local quality wood supplier (mainly to the marine and furniture businesses around PT), 1/2" and 3/4" two-sided, A-grade cvg fir plywood goes for about $125-145 per sheet. YIKES. Even 1/4" ply for the back of cabinets is nearly $100 per sheet, so you can see how a cabinet can eat up some serious money quickly. There are less expensive options, like using one-good sided plywood, melamine 1/4" ply for backing, etc. but you end up with an IKEA looking cabinet when you're done. Conversely, its a bit comforting to know that you'll be saving thousands (yes $1000's) of dollars in professional labor if you have the woodworking skills and tools.

The wall cabinet that I've finished is about 8' wide, 7' high and 12" deep. Mainly designed for displaying art objects and some books and magazines. I basically built four 2 ft-wide boxes and ganged them together. Then I built the face frames in places, using 1x stock that I had already prefinished with clear, semi-gloss polyurethane. This type finish is easy to apply and dries fast (hours), and is good away from water. Two coats on a 220-grit sanded surface, then light sanding with 220 or 400 and a finish coat usually is all that is required. I fill nail/screw holes , then spot finish the filled hole before the final coat.

The tops and bottoms of the cabinets are trimmed out with a craftsman-style detail that I picked up from a coffee table in this same room. It has a series of square holes (spacing is 1-1-1-1-3-1-1-1-1) centered in each bank of the cabinet, with an arched base. To finish the whole unit off, I built a piece of crown molding that matches that used on the kitchen cabinets. After 2 years of building, I'm actually starting to understand you can integrate a concept by carrying themes and styles throughout the house, furniture and art items. So we have a Craftsman house trimmed with cvg fir, salmon, and ginkgos. We added LED lighting bars (12" long,$30 @ IKEA) behind the face trim at the tops of the cabinets, with a remote control device between the outlet and lighting. Just flick on the small remote and you get some nice mood-lighting on the glass shelves.


I kept track of the labor and cost involved in this first cabinet, although I knew the outcomes before I even started. Basic materials were about $600 for wood, $50 for finishing, and $115 for 8 glass shelves. The project timed out at 78 hours (OUCH), or almost two full weeks. I suspect a professional could do it in about half the time, but at $40/hr (a cheap furniture builder), the labor would bill out at $1600. So that would be $2400 for the 8 ft wall bookcase. Now I don't feel so bad about the material costs.

I started the two built-in cabinets this week. They'll take about the same time and materials as the first bookcase since they are both 4-ft wide. The cabinet on the left side of the fireplace will house the TV and media equipment, whereas the one one the right side will be for books. Four drawers across the center of the cabinets will house our soon-to-be collection of CDs. There will be one large speaker on each side, a left over from the old days of free-standing speakers. They are B&O's, which I traded for a semi-prof bicycle back in the 70s (that's a separate story).