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Sunday, December 14, 2008

Seven Drawers For Seven Slots

The holiday season and icy weather are both to blame for the severe downturn in cabinet making over the past few weeks. I was able to fix the sticky problem with the first 4 drawers I made. They now glide effortlessly. I also made the last 3 drawers for the butler’s pantry side.

The additional 3 drawers on the butler’s pantry are located just behind the lower section inset on the dining room side. This is where the tile panel is located. I thought about doing a cabinet there, but you can never have enough drawers. Am I right? They were fairly simple to make. The one thing I would do over if I had the chance was not make them so deep. I figured that making 3 deep drawers was easier than, say, 4 shallow drawers. The problem with this is that I had to come up with some nice pieces of salvage 1X9 redwood to make the drawers. This is easier said than done at this point in the game.

I also called about marble. I went with a different stone fabricator than when I did the kitchen. If you recall, in the kitchen, I just had the fabricator cut me a rough slab and then I cut the sink hole and finished the edges. It was a lot of work, but it saved a lot of money.

This time, money is less of an issue and so I thought I would have it done. Well, after I got the estimate I’m now rethinking that. The marble slab for the kitchen island is about the same square footage as the slab needed for the dining room. I paid $350 for the rough slab for the kitchen and picked it up myself. The first estimate for the dining room was $1,700.00 and some change! Half of that is milling, finishing, transport, installation, etc.

I specifically said I don’t want the laminate edge and they charged me for that. The laminate edge is where they glue a strip under the front edge to hide the sub-counter. I told them I didn’t want the so there estimate was $250 too high. That brought it down to a little under $1,500.00. It is not that I can’t afford it, so much as I down want to. Even if I got just the rough cut slab from these guys their price for square footage is still about twice what I paid from the other guys and it is the same type and thickness of stone. Maybe marble prices have skyrocketed over the last 3 years. I don’t know.

I’m going to get an estimate from the other guys next week. We’ll see what there estimate comes in at. This first place I contacted said they wouldn’t be able to do the work until the end of January. That is longer than I thought, but what are you going to do. I still have 18 doors to make, so it is not like I will be waiting on them.

11 comments:

Marilyn said...

>>I thought about doing a cabinet there, but you can never have enough drawers. Am I right?<<

You are going to make some woman extremely happy! lol

One can NEVER have enough storage space.

Sam said...

Greg, the server is looking really, really stupendous. You do nice work. And the carrera will look really great with all that beautiful curly wood.

Unknown said...

Looks darned good!

Jennifer said...

NEVER enough drawers! I love drawers!

Anonymous said...

i hope you're having lots of nice hot toddies and mulled stuff (i always imagine the cold up there being especially piercing). and cookies. happy hols! peace!

Marilyn said...

Greg:
Two weeks without an update! How are the drawers coming?

Greg said...

It feels like it has been a lot longer than 2 weeks. The drawers are done and so are 4 of the 18 doors. Some day I'm going to blog about it again. Can't say when that will be.

Kathy from NJ said...

Greg - did you fall into one of those drawers & DIE??? Where are you?

Greg said...

I'm still here! Now that the holidays are behind me, and the weather is improving, hopefully I can start up again.

HPH said...

The withdrawals. Oh, the painful withdrawals. Come back! Come back!

Shane said...

I can't tell what day your last comment was posted (but I know what time!), so I figured I'd bug you to get cracking on those cabinets ;). I haven't noticed any new posts in Google Reader from here in a while