Eighteen of Eighteen

For all intent and purpose I am done with these cabinets!!!! I finished and installed the 18th and final door this afternoon.

Door Goes Open


Door Goes Closed


There are still a few things to do, but the carpentry portion of this never ending project has finally come to an end. I need to putty a lot of holes and everything – and I do mean everything, not just the cabinets – is covered in sawdust. There is also a little painting left to do on the butler’s pantry side. I should be able to finish all of that up mid-week next week.

Oh, and then there’s this…



The shop is covered wall-to-wall in 3 to 8 inches of saw dust. I'm hoping to find a few lost tools under there.

Trim Marathon

I had a late invitation yesterday to a Bar-B-Q out in Freshwater. I had every intention of going, but it looked like rain in the morning, so I started in on the trim for the middle section. As it turned out, the clouds cleared around 1:00 and it turned out to be a spectacular day. By that time I was committed to the trim and there was no looking back.

The Bar-B-Q would have been nice, but now I’m glad I stuck with the trim. It took about 12 hours to get it all done, but it is done!







Before I could even start the trim I had to frame out the little door in the middle section. Then it was on to mind-numbing repetition of measure, cut, cut, router, router and install. Then the next piece. That’s if I got it right the first time. I rarely did.

Each piece took a minimum of 2 cuts on the saw and two passes on the router. If it is was off by as much as an 8th of an inch it was another cut on the saw and another pass on the router. There are 62 pieces of wood total. To make it even more interesting, I was afraid of running out. Below is all there is left from that big pile of trim I cut.





I also milled and installed the trim just under the marble. It is a two part bead and cove trim. When the fabricators came to make the template for the marble I suggested an inch and a half over-hang. I was planning on just doing a ¾-inch cove under the lip. The guy making the template told me that 2-inches is standard, so I said OK. God forbid I should not do what is standard.

For the next week after the marble was in place I cursed the 2-inch over-hang every time I saw. I was too much. It was sticking out so awkwardly. I decided he suggested 2-inches because most people do a laminate edge these days. That is were they take an additional piece of stone and glue it to the underside of the over-hang. They then finish that off and it looks like you have 4-cm thick stone when it is really only 2-cm.

In the end it worked out. I did the 2-part trim and it looks fine. All of those sleepless nights were for nothing. So now it is on to the little door in the middle section. I’m going to see if I can find the time to work on it this week and then install it next weekend. After that I will be officially done with this cabinet!

I looked back through the blog and found that I started them in September of 2008. Really, though, I first mentioned this project in November of 2005.

Three And A Half Years Ago!!!

The Count Up

The sanding of the marble has officially started. I hope to finish by the weekend so I can start in on the wooden trim in the middle section. Here is the progression so far.


Factory cut


Router bit


100 Grit


150 Grit


220 Grit

So far all of the sanding has been done with the random orbital sander, so it goes fast. I plan on going to 600 wet sanding, so at some point I will switch to sanding by hand. The top has a polished surface, but I’ve decided I don’t like that. I polished the marble in the bath, and I was planning on doing that here, but I’m rethinking it. It just looks too new and modern. I’m leaning towards doing a final sanding with 600 grit over the entire surface to given it a dull, honed looked.

Shwing! Marble’s Here!

There was a message on the machine last night when I got home, but it was too late to contact them. At 10:00 this morning I got a call saying it was on the truck and ready to go. I met them at the house about 10 minutes later. Installation took them all of 5 minutes because it was pretty much just drop it in to place.



I had them leave it hanging about 6 inches off the edge so there was room for the router.



It is pretty much just a rough, saw cut edge when I get it, so the first thing to do is run the router over it.



The router bit has a bearing on the bottom that rides along the edge as the blade cuts. This ensures a even depth of cut. In the kitchen I did a quarter inch round-over and was able to do it in one pass. This time I went with a 5/8th inch round-over and it took several passes. Note the vacuum hose on the router. This is am absolute must.

The first couple of feet were very nerve-wracking. After a few minutes though, I got in to a groove and it went quickly. I would work on about a 1-foot section at a time and keep running the router over it until the bearing bottomed out.



Here is what I’m left with. From here I’ll work on it with the random orbital sander, starting out with 100 grit and working my to at least 300. I’ll probably finish it up by hand with some 600 grit wet/dry sandpaper and then polish it out. It is just the edge, so doesn’t take too long.

As it turns out, the slab they ended up getting was over 9-feet long. Even they couldn’t explain it. What this means is that there was no need for me to shorten the width of the middle section. I brought the sides in 3-inches on either side so it would be less than 8-feet. Not much I can do about it now.

Because I bought the whole slab they have a huge piece left over. Originally, the plan was to store it in the garage, but based on the size of the “remnant” (There is more left-over than I used) they talked me in to leaving it in their yard. I think I have a plan for it, but more on that later.

The Internet To The Rescue!

I think I came up with an idea for the trim. I couple of readers left some good comments, and others with rad Photoshop skilz submitted a few doctored up pictures. While it is hard to say at this point how any of the ideas will work in the end - mine or theirs - the different perspectives allowed me to think of things I might not have otherwise.

Allen’s Idea


Paul’s Idea


Allen’s would definitely work, and is not off the table at this point. Paul’s idea is closer to what I will most likely do. The rest of the trim for the middle section is sort of a coffered ceiling look. Because I must maintain symmetry with all of the squares, I can’t have the new trim encroach on the other trim. Think Paul's idea, but a little less.

The real problem all along is the space I have to work with. It is only a half inch thick. The existing piece I made is about 3/8th inch thick. Quick math will tell you I only have an 1/8th of an inch left. That is not enough to do much of anything with.

Like I said, I think I came up with a good solution, but rather than confuse the issue more, I’ll post better pictures in a few days. I thought the marble was going to arrive this week, but it didn’t happen. I spoke with the owner of the shop on Tuesday and they purchased the slab, but didn’t get a chance to cut it yet.

I’m going to call again this Tuesday. I really need to get it in next week because I’m reaching a point where I’m running out of things to do without having the marble in place. On the plus side, I am literally weeks away from finishing the project.



I got the shelves finished today….



And I have piles of trim waiting to be installed after the marble is in.

The only thing left to work on really, is the last little door in the middle section. I’m hesitant to work on it because the final shape and size will be determined by the middle section trim and marble. None of that matters though, right now, because this weekend is The Big Race, so it is not like I don’t have other things to do.

For The Glory!

Doing Lines

When I was still in the design phase I made the decision to bring in the sides of the middle section of the cabinet so I could have a single piece of marble for the counter. If I made the middle section the same width of the rest of cabinet, the width of the counter would have been 8’ 4”. I was told by local suppliers that stone slabs only come in 8’ widths. So I brought the sides in 3” on either side, which makes the counter 7’ 10”. I can now have a seamless piece of marble.

One problem solved and another one born.



As you can see in the picture above, I now have these gaps to fill. I’ve known about this all along and never gave it a whole lot of thought. It was always thought that as I trim out the middle section, I will just add a piece of wood there to cover the framing. {You can see a blog entry I printed up and stuffed in the cavity}

So yesterday I made up some trim pieces to cover the cap. Because I was impatient months back, and wanted to see progress, I put up the casing around the edges. This should have been one of the last things to do, but I couldn’t wait. Now, I may need to get the trim in place before the marble goes in.



I left a half inch thick space to slip the trim in behind the casing. So I planed down some scrap pieces of curly redwood and slipped them in to place, but I don’t really like it. In the picture above, the red circle marks the door and the green circle marks the stile of the face-frame. It seems like this trim piece should line up with the stile.



If I move it back, though, it will leave parts exposed that shouldn’t be. Because I only have a half inch to work with, there is very little room to get something else in there. I’m not sure what to do at this point, but I need to come up with something this weekend because the marble is supposed to be here next week.

I may try and cut a then piece of veneer to go behind the new trim piece and in front of the exposed section. It will need to be very thin, though. Remember, I only have a half inch to work with and I need to be able to fit both the trim piece and a new veneer piece.

The Marble Is On Its Way!

They came by today to make a template. I supplied them with an accurate diagram, but the woman in charge strongly encouraged me to get the template done. I started to protest, but then capitulated because I just got the feeling that the more I insisted against it, the more likely something would go wrong and it would be my fault because I gave them the diagram.

So they came by a made a template today. They showed up on my lunch hour and were in and out in about 20 minutes. They showed up about 10 minutes late and the woman actually apologized for being late. And it was a sincere apology! This sort of thing is almost unheard of coming from a contractor or tradesman.

I called 3 different people for estimates. One place said they only do granite, not marble. Whatever – click! The next place got the estimate wrong. I sent them the same diagram with the same explicit instructions on the edge and they still added in more than $300 for a laminate edge I didn’t want. Even after deducting that, they were still 20% more than the people I ended up going with.

The people who are cutting this marble are the same who cut the slab for the kitchen island. I’m doing the same deal, where they cut the basic shape and then I finish the edge. For the island, they had a partial slab in the yard and I picked it up, so that was dirt cheap. This time, they will need to order a new slab and I will have them deliver the final piece. I will also get the remaining part of the slab, which is larger than the piece for the cabinet. More on that later.

While the young man made the template I took the woman in to the kitchen and bathroom to show her the other marble work I had done. It was fortuitous because she said she would try and find a piece of marble that closely matched what I already had. They buy from someplace down in San Leandro. She told me the cost was about half as much as buying locally.

So they should have the slab by Monday and cut it sometime next week. If all goes well it will be in the house by next weekend and I can start to work on the edge. In the meantime, I’ll work on the shelves and start to make the final door. The only thing besides that, is the trim on the middle section.

I could be done in a month!

Back To Solid Foods

Which is good because I like solid foods. Many of my favorite foods only come in solid form. Unfortunately, a nasty abscessed tooth prevented me from eating solid foods for several days last week. On Monday I was able to pay an endodontists absurd amounts of money to drain nasty liquids from my jaw. By the weekend I was back to eating solid foods and back to working on the cabinets.


I milled and installed the baseboard. That was pretty straight forward.


I also got the glass installed. In the end I did not do any etching on the glass. I couldn’t decided on anything and I’m too far into this to drag my feet now. Even so, this was a time consuming and tedious project. I made the quarter round to hold the glass in myself. It is ¼ X 3/8 quarter round that I made on the router and table saw. Then I had to nail it in to place! I’ve broken glass in the past doing this and I didn’t want to brake any this time.


I also made the shelf brackets. Veeeerrrrry tedious work. Lots of time with a jig saw. If you’re not familiar with these types of brackets, you can read about them here.


Aaaaand, I bought a carpet for the room. I’m a sucker for 25% off and couldn’t pass it up. The rug is 8X11. Originally (1895) the room had a 9X12 rug in it. I can see where it was tacked down to the floor. I could probably find a 9X12 rug at a zillion times the cost of the 8X11 one I bought at 25%. I’m happy with the 8X11 rug.

The Last Of It

Well, Heter Brothers it ain’t, but I’m hoping the tour-de-force use of curly and burl redwood will detract from my obvious lack of fine cabinet building skills. Yes, it looks fine, but lets face it, people normally go through apprenticeships and train for years to be fine cabinet builders. I didn’t have that luxury, so it is was it is. What it is, is a very passable substitute for original 1895 cabinets in the dining room.

Here is the trim stock for the middle section after being run through the router, sanded, and oiled.







Most of this came out of that big chunk of wood I wrote about yesterday. It is interesting that the whole cabinet is being made of redwood, yet with the variations in the wood you might think there were different species of wood used. This last batch of redwood has some of the pretties grain. Some of it kind of reminds me of tortoise shell.

As I wrote before, the wood is difficult to work with. This batch had the added difficulty of being in such a large and unwieldy shape, but the curly redwood in general has its own idiosyncrasies that present challenges.

Because the grain undulates through the wood, all of the dark areas are like end-grain and the light areas and like straight grain. Even with brand new router bits and planer blades there is a lot of sanding to do with the “end-grain” areas. Straight-grained redwood mills up so nicely that it usually comes out of the machine needing little more than light sanding. Not so with this stuff.

I may not have enough of this curly trim to do the whole thing, so I ran a few pieces of regular redwood just in case. You can see them in the last picture. I’ll start at the bottom and more visible areas and work my way up. The non-curly stuff should end up in areas that will only be seen when you’re on you knees.

Hmmm, come to think of it, that happens a lot in this house. I'm on my knees a lot lately whimpering about how I will never finish this house. I may need more curly redwood.

Trim Stock

Once upon I time I bought a big, gnarly chunk of redwood burl. It turned out to be a very difficult thing to work with. In the end I was forced to cut it in to very small pieces in order to work with it. Over the past few days I’ve taken those small pieces and made them even smaller.

What I’ve ended up with is roughly 60 uniformly sized pieces of curly redwood which I’ll use to trim out the middle section of the cabinet.

Below is what I started with….
{The top slab in the back became the drawer fronts and the bottom two became the face-frames for the cabients}


It was really a difficult thing to work with. I still have some of it left in tact, but most of it ended up looking like this….


Now today I turned most of that in to this - 1.25 X 7/8ths….


There is still some of the cut up stuff left over….


Eventually the uniform pieces will be used to trim out the middle section like this…


Tomorrow I’ll run the uniform pieces through the router. Once the marble is in I can trim out the middle section. No word on when the marble is going to come in.

Seventeen Down

These last four doors are the best yet. It is nice to see that I can improve with practice. They all fit the openings well. The hinges are mortised in perfectly. They were a lot of work to make, but for the most part there were no real problems.









There is just one more door to make. It will be for that small, center opening in the middle part of the cabinet. You can see the opening in the picture above, and to the left of the opening you can see the curly redwood board that I’m going to use to make the panel for it.

Before I can do that though, I need to install the marble counter and trim out the middle part. The trim will define the jamb and casing for the door, so that needs to go up first. I’m going to order the marble on Monday and there’s no telling how long that will take.

There is still plenty to keep me busy. I need glass for the upper doors. I need to build brackets and shelves for the upper cabinets. I need to mill all of the curly redwood for the trim on the middle section. There are going to be a lot of small pieces of trim for that area and they are all in odd shapes and sizes. Finally, I need to make a baseboard for the bottom. Even if I don’t get the marble for a month, I think I have enough to keep me busy.

The bast part is, I have a punch-list and the end is in sight.

Slouching Towards Completion

I’m a little more than half way through 4 of the last 5 doors. I’m working on the 4 small doors on the bottom of the dinging room side of the cabinets. I now wished I had done these bottom 4 before I did the 4 uppers. These went pretty smooth with the jig to mortise the hinges, when compared to the uppers.



In this picture the doors are just sitting in the openings. The mortise and tenon joints are just dry fit. The hinges are mortised in but they aren’t screwed in to place. This is just to make sure everything fits. The next step will be to add a decorative bevel to the inside-front of the door and to mill a dado to accept the panel.

These doors will be solid wood, raised panels. This presented a bit of a problem and a missed opportunity. The panels need to be 12.5 inches wide by 14.5 inches high. I found some beautiful wood at Almquist Lumber that was almost perfect - almost.

Apparently there are some guys in Korbel, CA that are going up in to the mountains and salvaging old-growth redwood logs that were felled 100 years ago but never taken to the mill. For what ever reason – the logs were too big or not deemed good enough – there were left there. So now Almquist has a great selection of rough-cut, full-dimensional old-growth redwood. There is every size from 1X4 up to 1X12. They also have 5/4ths thick lumber, which is great for making the cabinet doors, since I milled all of the curly redwood to 7/8ths for the face-frames.

The problem is, the largest width is 12 inches and I need a minimum of 12.5 inches. It is not something I could fake, so I had to get some 1X8 and glue up two boards. Those are out in the garage in clamps right now.

The good news is, I should get these four doors finished by this weekend. Then there will be just the one center door left. Whew! If it weren’t for the fact that I need to write a fat check to the Government in 10 days I could order the marble, but that will need to wait. There is plenty to do still, so I don’t think the project will sit idle for lack of marble.

Sigh of Relief

While hardly Norm caliber, these do qualify as good Greg quality. The pair on the left, which I just hung tonight, still need to be taken down, sanded, oiled, and have hardware put on. The worst is over, though. They are up and they fit.



The first pair on the right did not come out as good. The doors themselves look good and identical to the pair on the left, but they are a little crooked. They are not crooked vertically, but rather front to back. It is odd because I’m not really sure why. I think it is the cabinet that is a little off because the doors themselves are square and lay flat.

Once they are closed and latched shut it is not really noticeable. As with everything I do, this cabinet has a little folk-art quality to it. I’m happy, though. This could be going much, much worse. This is a very ambitious project for a novice cabinet maker like myself. I think Norm would like them, but he would cringe and some of the craftsmanship.

Gettin' Jiggy With It

This is a trick I learned from Norm. I had never tried it before, mainly because I lacked the proper equipment. The idea is to make a jig for the hinges and then use a router to route out the hinge mortises for the face-frame and cabinet door at the same time. This ensures that the hinge mortises are identical on both sides.

You can buy hinge jigs, but every one I saw was for large door hinges that start at 3.5 inches and go up. I’m using the cast bronze hinges from the 1890s. They are 2 & 1/4 inch hinges. I looked at Sears for an 1890s, 2 & 1/4 hinge jig, but the cashier said they had been out of stock since 1912, so I had to make my own.

Making the jig was time consuming, but it paid dividends when it came time to hang the doors. The hinges are 2 & 1/4 X 1 & 5/8th. The jig sort of works like the old Spirograph drawing tool, but instead of a sprocket that rides around inside a larger sprocket, you have a router that rides around inside a hole cut in a piece of plywood. Cutting the hole to the right size is the tricky part.

Calculating the height is easy enough. The hinge is 2 & ¼ and the collar on the router (the part that rides against the plywood) adds a quarter inch at each end. That means the hole must be 2 & ¾ inches high. The width is a little more tricky. The hinge is 1 & 5/8th inch wide, but some of that is going to stick out from the cabinet door.

The knuckle of the hinge, where the 2 halves of the hinge meet, must stick out from the cabinet door a bit. I figured a ¼ inch on both sides. So that left me with an inch and an eighth. Then add on the half inch for the collar on the router and you come back to an inch and 5/8th. It seems straight forward now that I write it, but when I was standing in the shop with a hinge in one hand and a piece of plywood in the other, it was far from clear.

So here’s how it works….


Before assembling the door I clamped the hinge stile of the door to the face-frame with a spring-clamp. It is clamped on in the position of the cabinet door being completely open.


Then the jig is clamped on for the first hinge.


The router has a half inch straight bit and a collar that will ride around the inside of the jig.


After the router is run in the jig you have a mortise on both pieces. Once the jig is removed I use a chisel to square up the corners.


Then, with the spring-clamp still in place I move the jig up to do the upper hinge. After the upper hinge is mortised, I remove all of the clamps and drill the holes and mount the hinge on both the face-frame and the stile of the cabinet door.


I then remove the hinges and assemble the doors. I should be able to get these hung by Wednesday. Then it is on to the lower cabinets. I will breath a sigh of relief when these upper doors are hung. I’m not out of the woods yet.

Two More Up

At this rate, literally, I may never finish these cabinets. I think when the weather gets better this spring the pace will pick up, but right now, there does not seem to be an end in site. After the issues I had with the doors on the butler’s pantry side I am being very cautious with the dinging room side. Even with that, there were still some minor issues with the first pair. Fortunately, they were minor and I was able to make due. There was definite improvement over the butler’s pantry, though, so that is something.

Now, I just need to keep from getting cocky with the relative success of the first two. These two sets of upper cabinets on the dining room side are really a focal point for the whole room. Even minor issues will be noticeable, but major ones will be glaring. I think once I get the other pair finished on the left side, the 4 small ones on the bottom will go faster. After that, I just need to do the little pass-through door.







I changed to a shallower and wider bevel on the front side of these doors, as opposed to the butler’s pantry side. This means I will be able to use the wooden stays to hold the glass in. I bought some stencils to do etching on the glass, but I haven’t decided if I’ll use them yet. You can see some of the designs here. My main concern is that they are too small. The doors are 4-feet tall and the rose stencils are only about 7-inches tall. Most of these are made for use on wine glasses and picture frames.

The other issue with these is the color. The burl and curly redwood is a much denser and darker wood than even the tightest old-growth vertical grain redwood. I haven't decided if I should celebrate the contrast of try to darken the doors.

At the blistering pace I’m moving these days, there is plenty of time to decide about both the glass etching and the tone of the wood.