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.

Almost Done!

I am so close to finishing the butler’s pantry I can taste it. I got the glass installed and re-hung the upper doors Friday and Saturday, and then installed the last of the hardware today.



Putting the glass in was nerve-wracking and time consuming. Because there is the possibility that the glass could break someday, it must either be installed with wooden stays that can be removed or with the more traditional glazing putting. I had wanted to do wooden stays, because it would take less time. Because of the way I made the doors though, there wasn’t enough room. I made the bevel on the front too deep and it did not leave enough room for piece of quarter round for the stay.

So I had to do glazing putty on the eight panels of glass. It seemed to take forever and I was afraid I would break the glass. And that glass ain’t cheap. Once it dries I will paint the putty with burn sienna oil paint to match the wood.

As with a lot of my cabinet making projects, they look good in pictures, but when you get up close it is obvious I’m not a trained cabinet maker. The upper doors are especially wonky. Most of the wonkyness is because of the hinges. As I said in an earlier post, every time I’ve ever mortised hinges and hung doors I’ve worked with loose pin hinges that could be separated. It was really difficult for me to hang these doors without being able to separate the two hinge parts.

I’ve learned a valuable lesson though. The hinges for the dinging room side are antique cast bronze hinges that don’t come apart either. So for the that side I’ve made jig to router out the hinge mortises. I’ve already done on pair of doors – or at least one stile from each door.

On the butler’s pantry side I completed the doors and then went to hang them. This time, I’m taking one board from each door and the first thing I did was mortise the hinges and hung that board as if it was a complete door. I now know that the hinge stile board is the proper height and the matching hinge mortises on the stile and face-fame match perfectly. Now I can make the rest of the door and only need to worry about getting the width correct. I hope the dining room side doors will go much more smoothly.

On the butler’s pantry side, the only thing left to do is a little touch-up painting and make the small door for the middle section. That door will need to wait until I do some more work on the dining room side, though. So for now, I’m going to stick a fork in this baby and call it done.

Thank God!

Iron & Wood

Cast Iron Pulls: Circa 1890
Burl & Curly Redwood: Circa 0

Nine Up & Seven In

While it's true I haven't been blogging a lot lately, that doesn't mean I haven't been working on the house. The lack of blogging is largely due to my inability to both do hard-core coding at work and maintain the blog at home.

When I become immersed in a big project and I'm doing a lot of programming at work, I really find it difficult to write on the blog when I get home. It is like there is a finite amount of creative writing in me during any given week. If that is all spent at work, then there is nothing left over for the blog.

I think the solution is clear: I need to quit my job. Until that happens, though, there are going to be long periods of inactivity on the blog. It's a fact of life.

So, yes, work has been progressing on the cabinets, albeit at a much slower pace. The winter is not conducive to work, and post-season NFL can cut in to the weekends quite a bit. But the weather has turned warm again, and football season is over, so I'm starting to get some things done.



I've made and installed 9 doors and 7 drawers on the butler's pantry side. The drawers were not too difficult, but the doors were a real challenge. The upper face-frame did not go smoothly and ended up being less than square. The mortise and tenon doors themselves were a challenge because I've not made a lot of them. In fact, I think I've only made three before these. They are really a lot of work.

Also, I'm accustomed to working with loose-pin hinges and none of these were. With a loose pin hinge you can remove the pin and have two parts of the hinge to work with. It seems minor, but when you are accustomed to doing something one way, the change can be frustrating to deal with.

Shortly after the above picture was taken I dismantled the cabinet by removing all of the doors, drawers, and hinges so I could paint everything. After it is painted I will install the glass in the upper cabinets doors and then put everything back together. After that, there will be a little more trim and then it is on to the A-Side of the cabinets. That is to say, the dining room. The practice on the butler's pantry side was much needed. I hope the other side goes better.

The glass in the upper cabinets will be colored glass with alternating red and gold glass. This is inspired by the Luther Mansion in Smallville, Kansas. Each of the 4 upper doors will have 2 glass panels. Starting from the left, the first door will have red on top and gold on bottom, the next will have gold on top and red on bottom, and the pattern will continue to the right. The idea is that the dining room side will have single panes of etched, clear glass. With the lights on in the butler's pantry, the interior of the cabinet will be bathed in red and gold light from the dining room side.

Now I just need to find the glass.

The Winter Hiatus

An anonymous blog reader pokes their head in the virtual front door of The Petch House.

“Knock, knock, anybody home? Greg, are you there?”

They wander in to the foyer while cautiously looking around for signs of life. The house is frigid and seems deserted. Again they call out, “Greg, is everything alright?”. They can faintly hear singing coming from behind the closed pocket doors leading to the parlor. It sounds like the TV.

They push open the doors to see me on the couch under a blanket. There is a half eaten box of Oreo’s and an empty bottle of wine on the coffee table. On the TV is season 6, episode 7 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. It is the musical episode, "Once More With Feeling". I’m asleep under the blanket.

They tip-toe across the parlor and gently rock my shoulder. “Greg, are you alive? Is everything OK?”. I don’t move so they rock me harder. Finally I come to. I hear the singing, sit up on the couch, and reach for the remote to turn up the volume, pretty much ignoring the person standing there. Again they ask, “Greg, is everything alright?” I ignore the question and only reply, “This is a great episode. I love this musical episode, don’t you?”

{Singing on the TV}
(Buffy)I was always brave and kind of righteous,
Now I find I'm wa - vering.
Crawl out of your grave, ya find this fight
Just doesn't mean a thing
(Henchman) She ain't got that swing.
(Buffy) -pause- Thanks for noticing.
(Demon & Henchmen) She does pretty well with fiends from Hell
But lately we can tell
That she's just going through the motions
Faking it somehow.
(Demon) She's not even half the girl she...owww!

(Buffy) Will I stay this way forever?
Sleepwalk through my life's endeavor.
(Handsome Young Man) How can I repay - (Buffy) Whatever!
(Buffy) I don't want to b - e
Going through the motions,
Losing all my drive.
I can't even see
If this is really me
And I just want to b - e a - live.

The blog reader asks, “Greg, can I get you anything? How’s work going on….”. I look up at them and cut them off in mid-sentence, “Shhhh! TV”. I lay back down on the couch and pull the blanket back over me while I sing along, “I don’t want to b – e going through the motions, losing all my drive. I can’t even see, if this is really me, and I just want to b – e a – live”.

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.

Four Drawers

The first one took about 3 hours, but after that I was able to make each of the others in less than an hour. I had only made one other drawer before this and that was only due to a mistake. When I made the corner cabinet in the bathroom it was supposed to be a single door for the whole thing. Well, I made the door 6-inches too short (gun to head) and so I ended adding a drawer to the top to make up the room. The logic at the time was that adding a drawer was less work than making a new door. The verdict is still out on that, but regardless, it was a good experience.

These drawers presented a unique challenge for me – well, I guess at this point, almost any drawer presents a unique challenge considering I had only made the one prior to this week. Anyway, the main challenge with these was that they are pass-through drawers. They can be opened on either side of the cabinet. If I were making a standard drawer on a 24-inch deep cabinet, the drawer could be 20-inches deep or 22-inces deep. It really wouldn’t matter how deep it was so long as it would close. With these, they needed to be pretty darn near close to the exact depth of the cabinet or they would always look odd from one side.

The target depth was 22-inches. I had already made the draw fronts for the front side so I needed to make the draw fronts for the back side. Then by measuring the thickness of both, minus the rabbit at the end that would accept the draw sides, that would give me the length of the sides.



Well, I panicked. That is one of the reasons it took 3 hours to make the first one. No, those aren’t the drawers I made. Those are the 1920s drawers that came out of the old rental kitchen. I dismantled them to make the new drawers. This is the other reason it took so long to make the first drawer. I want things to look authentic, so using 7/8th inch thick redwood drawer sides and bottoms from the 1920s did help in that, but it added a lot of time.

The other panic induced decision was to make them a hair longer than they needed to be. One of the things I’ve been worried about all along was that the cabinets will seem too 2 dimensional. These are supposed to be High Victorian dining room cabinets. A lot of times these would incorporate columns and mirrors and bump-outs and what ever other trick the cabinet maker could come up with. Also, when you think of Victorian trimwork there are always parts in relief of other parts to accentuate shadow lines. For instance, the head blocks and plinth blocks always sit a quarter inch proud of the casing. It gives the trim that added dimension to catch the light and throw a shadow.

So with all of that in mind, and the blinding fear that I would make them too small, I made the first one a quarter-inch too long so the dining room side would sit a little proud of the rest of the cabinet. I did it and then I did the other three exactly like that, and now, surprise of all surprises, I’m doubting that decision. I don’t think at this point I will be taking them all apart to trim a quarter-inch off the sides, so once again I will either need to live with this or sell the house.

I’m leaning towards selling the house, but since that won’t be tonight, here are a few shots. First the long shot and then a left and right close-up.










Regardless of the quarter-inch I’m greatly relieved that this task is behind me and I generally like the way they look. It is going to kill me to mount hardware in those burl drawer fronts. The only problem with them now is that they don’t operate all that well. Because they must open from both sides, the draw guides need to be dead-perfect, straight-on. Mine aren’t. These are not modern guides but redwood ones I made. My hope now is that I didn’t use glue when I installed them three weeks ago. If they are just put in with brads, I should be able to pop them out and reposition them, or even make new ones. We’ll see.

New Wallpaper!

I just found this yesterday and had to get it up immediately.



You can click here to see a full size view of this. If you’ve got it, flaunt it, right?

Oh, and in case you haven’t figured it out by now, this is my new computer screen wallpaper. While I will miss Rita Hayworth, who wouldn't want a little marble cottage by the sea?

Trim Tint

A friend of mine who seems very knowledgeable at times told me that 2 parts Red Mahogany stain and 1 part Walnut stain would be a good mix for tinting the light colored redwood to match the darker stuff. Well, it was more like 10 to 1, but since I started with the 2:1 mix I now have a lifetime supply of tinting stain. Even after adding a lot more Red Mahogany I ended up thinning it even more with 1:1 ratio of BLO and turpentine. I really, really have a lot.

In the end though, it worked out. Here is the before shot. You can see how the left and right casings are much lighter than the other wood. As I said the other day, the wood is really nice tight grained old-growth wood. It is just very light for some reason. The header casing on the door at the right is cut from the same piece of wood and so has the same problem.


Here it is after tinting. I did the door header first and was concerned it was too dark. That is the mix prior to adding the BLO and turpentine. Then I diluted it even more and did the other two. In this picture they still a look a little light, but in real life it is a pretty good match. I may go over it once more though.


Staining the wood is not like doing a traditional stain job. Normally, I would use a brush to apply liberal amounts of stain and then let it sit for 5 minutes before wiping it off. Here, I just wanted to darken the color a little bit. I worked with a folded up paper towel that was dipped in the stain and then rung out well. I then rubbed the paper towel on the wood. There was usually no excess on the wood at all. Any amount that was on there was quickly wiped off. The stain was applied so lightly that I never once had to change paper towels.

Today I was able to get most of the trim installed on the butler’s pantry side. There is not a lot to it, really. I also needed to build a false wall behind the center panel on the upper section. On the butler’s pantry side that will be shelving and I wanted to hide the backs of the burl panels for protection as much as for aesthetics. So the wall is built and three shelves installed.

I can’t do any more on the butler’s pantry side until the center section is trimmed out on the dining rooms side. I need to build a little door jamb for the pass through door before the rest of the trim can be done on the butler’s pantry side. Before I can do the center section trim on the dining room side, I need to get the counter in. That means Monday I need to call about marble or the whole project could grind to a halt while I wait for some stone guy to return my call.

I can move forward with the drawers though, so that will be the next project: 7 Drawers.

It Is Risen

This is a second coming of sorts, I suppose. It is the resurrection of the cabinet. Even so, I’ll stop there before I offend anyone. I’m talking about the dining room cabinets, of course. They have taken full shape and the trim is on. It went smoothly except for a few issues.

First, some before shots for perspective…

This is June of 2005 from inside the kitchen. That is the fireplace in the dining room through the gaping hole. This large opening was originally a door which was widened in the 20s to accommodate a Murphy Bed.


Again from the kitchen side, here is the wall rebuilt.


And just to finish that series, here is the finished kitchen side.


Now at long last I have finally finished the dining room side. Only the far right-hand pair of panels on the dado are original in this shot. The other 6 panels, along with the rails and stiles are reproduction. The dado goes all the way around the room like this. Everything else in the room is original to 1895.


Here is the other gaping hole as of August of 2008.


And here it is today


One of the issues is painfully obvious in the last photo. The two pieces of vertical casing are way too light. The header casing on the smaller door is cut from the same wood and has the same problem. I’m not exactly sure why they are so light in color. They are definitely not second growth wood. In fact, the growth rings are so tight on them they are difficult to count. They are really very beautiful pieces of wood, they are just very pale.

I’m must fix this problem, but it will need to wait. All of the trim was oiled moments before this photo was taken. I’m going to let it try and then tint some BLO & turpentine with red mahogany stain and see if I can even it out. I have a few scraps I can test with.

The other issue is on the right side of the lower cabinet the trim does not fit tightly near the top. It has the same problem on the left side, only not as pronounced. I’m not sure how I can fix this at this point. That cabinet is nailed in there so tightly that if an 8.0 hit right now the only thing I could be sure was left standing was that cabinet and the two walls on either side. I’m going to need to come up with something to make it less noticeable.

All said though, I’m relieved with the way it is coming out. Next up is the upper face-frame on the butler’s pantry side.

Upper Two In

I think this is one of the few times in the history of this blog that I am actually on schedule! Last weekend I said I wanted to get the second upper cabinet installed by Thursday and I actually did it. It’s a Petch House Miracle!



Originally the plan was to build the uppers as one giant cabinet (4X8 feet) and then get a few friends over to muscle it in to place. In the end though, I decide to build it in sections because I can get each section in place by myself. Right now they are both just tacked in to place. Tomorrow I will get them level and flush with the lowers and nail them in to place. I think I can also get the center panel installed tomorrow, as well.

Then on Saturday I can put in the plinth blocks (behind the hammer), casing (to the left leaning against the wall), and head blocks (not in picture). This is a really big deal because immediately to the right of the cabinets is the wall leading in to the kitchen, which I rebuilt years ago. This wall was where a Murphy Bed was put in back in the 1920s when the house was turned in to apartments.

They removed the door and widened the opening leading from the dining room to the kitchen and installed the Murphy Bed. At the same time they removed some of the raised paneled dado and closed off a dumb waiter style door used to pass food from the hot stove to the sideboard.

All of this was rebuilt 3 or 4 years ago when I did the kitchen, but it was never trimmed out on the dining room side because these cabinets needed to be installed. So now – FINALLY – The wall has been rebuilt. The dado repaired. The doors reestablished. The plaster repaired. And NOW, after so many years, the cabinets are in place and I can trim out this wall.

It is like one giant 113 year old puzzle.

A Milestone

I just noticed that The Petch House Blog went over the half million mark in page views today. I’ll be the first to admit that this is miniscule by internet standards, and probably even by House Blogging standards. Still, it’s something….

What’s the old joke…

“Hey Boss, I just found out our web site is the number one non-porn site on the internet! That makes us 10-billonth over all!”

One Up-One Down

I got the right side upper cabinet made and installed. It is really just tacked in to place right now. Once I get the left side built and up there I’ll make sure everything is square, plumb, and level and then secure it in place.



In the photo, the center panel is just sitting there right now. Once the left side is in place I can trim it to fit and then nail it in. I’m still not overly thrilled with this panel. I think by itself it looks fine. I’m just not sure how it works with the cabinets. Regardless, it is going to be installed either way.

I have 2 of the panels glued up for the left side, and today I’ll glue up the other 2. After the glue sets they get trimmed to size, sanded, and oiled. Once that is done I can start assembling the left side. I’m hoping to have it assembled and installed by Thursday.

Once the left side is in I can permanently install the center panel. Then I’ll do the butler’s pantry face-frame and then trim out the dining room side with the casing, plinth blocks and head blocks.

Once all of that trim is in the width will be defined and I can start to look at counter tops. I will be doing white marble. The marble needs to go in before the middle shingle scrap section can be trimmed out. After that, it is just doors and drawers.

Right, just doors and drawers….

Me Wanty

This is the style wallpaper I want for the parlors...



This is another Shorpy Shot. I'm going to go for an eclectic mix in my design choices. The fabric of the house will be period (lighting, wall coverings, woodwork) with everything else being an eclectic mix of contemporary and other decidedly historically inaccurate pieces. They will be mostly second-hand and span decades. The only prerequisite will be no synthetic materials.

What To Do About Doors

I’ve been pretty much ignoring this issue for a number of reasons. I think the only time I have mentioned the doors is when I lamented the shear number that I need to make. I need 18 doors in all. It just seems like it is going to take forever.

For me, the two big challenges with door making are the mortise and tenon joints, and making the panels. Ok, aside from hinges and latches, that is pretty much the entire door. Oh, and did mention that I hate doing hinges as well? As for the latches, I’m fairly indifferent towards them.

The other issue with the doors is the material. Even though the butler’s pantry side will be painted, you will see the inside of those doors from the dining room side. Especially on the uppers, because the doors on the dining room side will be glass.

The face-frames on the dining room side are, of course, all made from the curly redwood. I don’t have anymore of that for the doors. Even if I got more, which I’m sure I could if I really wanted it, it would not look the same as the face-frames. With this in mind, I’m probably going to do plain redwood, of which, I have an abundant supply. I’m not sure if that will look odd, though, to have curly redwood face-frames and plain redwood doors.

Then there are the panels. Lots and lots of panels. Eighteen of them, to be exact. That is a lot of damn panels and a lot of wood. I will need a lot of nice wood too. I need a lot of 12 and 16 inch wide panels. I have found that I am not the best at gluing up panels. I can do it, but sometimes my seams show.

So I’m thinking obscure or stained glass for the butler’s pantry side uppers. The dining room side uppers will be clear glass with some subtle etched design around the edges. The idea is that one would display their assortment of fine china in the uppers to impress their guests. If I did a stained glass on the butler’s pantry side it would look very cool with the lights on in the butler’s pantry. The inside of the cabinets would be bathed in a colored light. Very Victorian and a nice alternative to having lights on the inside of the cabinet.

I’m not thinking any kind of designed stained glass in the traditional sense. Rather, large panes of colored glass in place of solid wood panels. Glass size could become an issue. Most glass makers, except Kokomo Glass, make glass in either 12 or 24 inch wide pieces. I’ve been trying to calculate the width I would need, but my brain has seized up. If I had to get it from Kokomo Glass again, then that means another trip The Bay Area.

Plenty to think about and plenty of time to think about it.

And Now Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

So the politics has run its course, at least for the next 2 months or so. How about a little religion before we get back to the cabinets.

The Jehovah's Witnesses came by today. Two very pleasant, elderly woman stopped by and wanted to talk with me about The Bible. I thanked them politely and then informed them that I was a devout Atheist, so I wasn’t really interested. One woman’s eyes bugged out and she said, “Atheist!”. The other one looked at me and asked what does “devout” mean. I said, “You know, ‘devotion’. I’m devoted to my belief”. She then looked at me puzzled, placed her hand on her chest, and replied, “But I’m devout”, as if to imply if she was, then how could I be.

The other woman quickly changed the subject by commenting on how tall I was. I was covered in red sawdust and they asked if I was the one doing all of the work on the house. The conversation turned pleasant again, but by this time I was ready for it to be over. I inched the door shut while I smiled and thanked them for their compliments on the house. Across the street I could see a small group of men in crisp blue suits knocking on my neighbors door. The Jehovah's Witnesses come by a few times a year. Sometimes it irritates me. Sometimes it doesn’t.



The cabinets continue to rise, albeit at a very slow pace. I got the sub-counter on and the middle section attached. The sub-counter is made from small scraps of siding from the 2 story addition. I had a lot of pieces that were 3-feet long or less. I ran them through the planer to get them to a half inch and then nailed them on. Some of the boards had cupping issues that the planer won’t resolve. I had to do a little hand planning once they were on.



I also put on the butler’s pantry finish counter. It is only 5.5-inches deep, so I ripped a piece of the old casing that was put on during the 1920s when the original cabinets were removed. It is actually deeper than the original back counter from 1895. To maintain symmetry on the front side with the shingle scraps, the front counter top can only be so deep. I put on the back counter now because I needed to get the finished back of the middle section on. The counter goes under that. It is finished with a simple bull-nose and there will be a piece of cove molding under it to hide the sub-counter.

The back of the middle section is made up of these 3/8th-inch thick, tongue & groove boards that are about 6-inches wide. These I got from my neighbor. He had dozens of them in a garbage can in his backyard. The garbage can had filled with rain water and he figured they were ruined. They are all made from really nice old-growth redwood, so all I had to do was dry them out. They are stamped Simpson Lumber on one end. I think these were originally made to be used as the backs of medicine cabinets.

The main reason I need to get the back on is so I will know the finish depth of the middle section. This will determine the finish depth of the upper cabinets. The final number is 18.5-inches. That should do nicely. So the next step now is the upper carcasses, which is really just sides and tops since the back will be another face-frame on the butler’s pantry side.

This means gluing up panels. I need 4 sides, 2 tops, and 2 bottoms. I have enough clamps to do 2 at a time. Normally I would keep them in the clamps for 24 hours, but since it is raining now, I will probably do 48 hours. The dining room face-frames are finished but I still need to do the butler’s pantry side.

The real tricky part in all of this is going to come when it is time to install the uppers. They are going to be 48-inches tall and 8-feet wide. I need to get them up on top of the middle section. I’ve never asked for help with this sort of thing in the past, but this may be the time to ask. With any luck, that will come next weekend.

Remember Pete…

"With great power, comes great responsibility."

That’s what Uncle Ben told Peter Parker on the night he died. If I could, that is what I will tell Barack Obama tonight.
 
 
 
 
 

Having said that, "Its a beautiful day!"

A Revolutionary Vote

New York circa 1917. "Calm about it. At Fifty-sixth and Lexington Avenue, the women voters showed no ignorance or trepidation, but cast their ballots in a businesslike way that bespoke study of suffrage." Shorpy.Com

Tomorrow is a day for another revolutionary vote.

Less Is More

When this is all said and done I think these cabinets will less represent fine cabinet making and more represent folk art. It looks nice, but you if get up close you can tell I’m not a trained cabinet maker. Don’t get me wrong, its reasonably straight and level, and it should be very presentable, but its far from perfect.

Upper-Center


Lower-Bottoms w/ Stiles


I have made more progress, though. I finished the upper-center section and I put in the bottoms on the lower cabinets. I also made the face-frames for the uppers (not shown), and I had just enough left over to add the center stiles on the lower cabinets. This means that each door will get its own cabinet latch on the lowers. On the uppers, each pair of doors will share a latch. This was always intended to be that way.

I am really cutting it close on this wood. The only thing left longer than 6-inches from the two big slabs of curly redwood are two end-cuts. The end cuts were the last pieces that were not full thickness. One side looks good and the other is sloped and slanted and varies in thickness from inch and a half down to 3/8ths of an inch.

These last two pieces will be used in the final assembly as almost veneer for the small inset area on either side of the upper-inset panel. I treat them like rare treasured objects which are the last of their kind. They've both been moved to a secured, undisclosed location in one of the garages. I could tell you where I put them, but then I’d have to kill you. We wouldn’t want that.

Tomorrow I’m going to put in the drawer guides and add in a bunch of glue blocks in the corners to strengthen the lower carcasses. I’m also going to glue and brad thick strips of wood behind the longer rails and stiles of the lower cabinets to strengthen them. The undulating grain pattern of the curly redwood means that you some times get grain that moves almost back to front instead of across. This makes for some very weak parts in the wood. The strips of wood attached to the back with glue and brads will add some much needed support.

Six Little Indians

As I was putting these together tonight it dawned on me that at some point I must have decided to not do a glass panel but I don’t really remember when that was. Its not that I think I made the decision at some point and now I’ve forgotten when that was. I don’t think it was ever a conscious decision to do the wood panel. So, because the decision was made subconsciously, my conscious mind has no recollection of it. The brain is a tricky little thing, isn't it?

Most of the process of building this cabinet is about how I can use the wood I have in the most efficient manner. So I had the last few pieces of the burl slab left over and I guess it just seemed like the natural thing to do. This is the same burl I used for the drawer fronts and for the single burl panel on the lower center section.



Having said that, I’m not sure this is the right way to go. The idea is that the panels, which have the same trim as the drawer fronts, will be surrounded by curly redwood rails and stiles – same as the drawer fronts. This upper panel will match in size the lower panel. Its not that I think it won’t look nice. My fear is that the design may come off as too simplistic. These are supposed to be High Victorian, after all. Simplistic was not in their vocabulary.

We’ll see.





The panels themselves are pretty spectacular. Hopefully that will make up for the simple geometric pattern of 6 horizontal panels. We’ll see.



Putting them together was a challenge because I didn’t bother to smooth out the bottoms. As I said, this is the very last of the burl slab and the bottoms are very rough and uneven because it looks like this was cut out with a chain saw. I mean that literally. When I was adding the molding on to the sides they tended to wobble around a lot.

To compound the problem, I didn’t do the best job at measuring the molding when I made it. I thought each piece would be enough to do either 2 long sides or 4 short sides. Well, when it came time to actually start cutting and assembling, each piece was, in reality, an inch too short to do either of those things. I thought I had several extra pieces, but as it turned out I had no extra pieces! It was a nail-biter. One bad cut and I would have run out. Of course, I could always make more, but it’s a bit of a process. It takes 2 different router bits and a pass on the table saw for each piece. I got lucky.

Tomorrow, hopefully, I can start putting together the panel. Then I will get some idea of how this will come out. I can always go back to glass.


Edit: After reading this post my subconscious mind just kicked me in the head. What I SHOULD have done was use this as the lower panel and made 6 small drawers and then had the tile panel on the upper section. Oh well, too late. There is no way in hell I'm going to dismantle the lower cabinets.

This will haunt me for the rest of my life, though. No question: I'm must sell this house the day I finish it.

Bottoms Up

I have many fantasies but not all of them include the beautiful bag girl at the local market. Years ago I wrote about my fantasy in where Norm Abram from The New Yankee Workshop would come and help me build these cabinets. Well guess what? Just as with the bag girl, my fantasies about Norm have gone unfulfilled. I was forced to build the cabinets myself.

So its 10:00 AM Saturday morning and I’m about to start assembling the lower cabinets. I start to feel queasy at the thought of putting them together. The palms of my hands and feet get sweaty. Suddenly I drop to my knees in the middle of the dining room. Looking up at the ceiling, and with a single clenched fist reaching in to the air, I yell out, “Why have you forsaken me Norm Abram!!!!”

I then composed myself as best I could and continued on with the assembly.

I can honestly say that everything I know about making cabinets, and carpentry in general, I’ve learned from watching The New Yankee Workshop. Even so, I don’t build cabinets the same way Norm does. In no way would I dream of suggesting that my way is better than his. In fact, I would say that Norm’s method of construction is better than mine. My way works for me, though, so that’s the way I do it.





As you can see, I have the bottom section mostly put together. I went with 3 drawers on the butler’s pantry side (Thank you Kathy). I also went with a traditional face-frame instead of beadboard. The middle part with the shingle scraps is just tacked in to place at this point. I needed to get that up there because it is important that I calculate the height of the uppers accurately. The trim work around the entire cabinet will be identical to the trim work around all of the windows and doors in the room. I need to make sure the tops of the cabinets will be high enough so the 1X6 casing will cover the gap. In order to get an accurate measurement I needed to have the middle section in place. It will come down shortly.

There is still a lot of work to do on the lower cabinets. I need to install the bottoms, drawer guides, and shelves. Of course, I need to make the doors and drawers, but that will be the very last thing. What I would like to do is to add an additional a stile on either side to separate the cabinet doors. I don’t know if I have enough wood, though.

With a center stile each door would have its own cabinet latch. With out it, the latch would be on one door and the catch on the other. The door with the catch would have an additional hook mechanism on the inside. This is the way the cabinet in the laundry room was constructed.

So the plan now is to stop building the lowers and to start construction of the upper face frames and upper middle section. Once those are done, if I have enough wood left over, I will add the additional stiles to the lowers. I can then go back and finish the lower cabinets. As with the lowers, the first thing to do on the uppers is to make the center section. So that’s the next job.

Oh, and as it turned out, the center panel I made for the lowers was a quarter-inch too wide and needed to be trimmed. Another way of looking at this is to say that if I had made it a half-inch narrower I would have been screwed because it would have been too small to fill the space.

Whew!

Some Assembly Required

That seemingly innocent title is actually filled with ominous portent. The realization that at some point I must put this thing together has come crashing down on me over the last few days.

But I’m not nervous. No, not the least. The cabinets will get assembled. One way or the other - crappy or otherwise - they will get put together. There’s no pressure. I don’t feel it at all.

The Wait is Over

There must be a problem with the hit-counter for this blog. I can only imagine that most of you are checking in dozens of time a day looking for updates about what I’m going to do with the center sections of the dining room cabinets. For some reason the hit-counter doesn’t show any big increase in traffic, so it must be broken. I’ve shot off dozens of emails to the tech support staff and Sitemeter.com to try and get it fixed. For some reason their site has started rejecting my emails. Obviously there is a much larger problem over there than just my hit-counter.

These two center sections have occupied so much of my time lately, but I’m happy to report I now have a plan in place….for now….it could change. I’m sure this is a huge relief to everyone. Many of you will probably sleep better at night and your productivity will skyrocket. There’s no need to thank me. Its all a part of the process.

Kathy from New Jersey suggested drawers on the butler’s pantry side. I read her comment, slapped my forehead, and yelled out, “Of course! Drawers!”. You can never have enough drawers. Am I right? I figure I’ll do 3 or 4 drawers on the butler’s pantry side. It does mean making more drawers, but it also means making fewer doors. Considering I was looking at making 17 or 18 doors, it’s a good trade-off.

For the uppers I’ve decided to do open shelving for the center section. You’ll notice the beauty of this: Open shelving is infinitely less work that either drawers or doors. Also, I won’t do a glass panel on the front side. This means less cost, less work, and fewer long pieces of wood. All very important points.

Instead of a glass panel I’m going to do a series of inset panels of burl redwood with curly redwood rails and stiles. I have 4 more pieces of the same burl I used for the drawer fronts on the lower cabinets and I have a lot of short pieces of curly redwood. This plan both costs less money and uses up more wood. A winning combination.

So rest easy tonight everyone. The wait is finally over. You can all go back to your regular routines and hopefully the good people at Sitemeter.com will get the hit-counter fixed soon so once again it will reflect the real traffic to the site.

It’s Going To be Close

I’m measuring the wood on an almost hourly basis now. I’ve come up with an idea that involves an internet-cam and a helper monkey so I can get a status of the wood while I’m at work. Nothing firm yet. The idea is that with a mild electrical stimulus the monkey would hold a measuring tape up to the remaining wood and I could watch on the web cam. Even if I could find a monkey with those skills on such short notice, I’m not sure the people at PETA would approve.

I woke up at 5:00AM this morning and spent the next two hours laying in bed going over what to do with the center section on the upper cabinets. It all comes back to the wood supply. I cut up those two slabs of curly redwood and I’m bound and determined to use it as much as possible without buying more wood. Part of it is – as I’ve said time and time again – is that I Am One Cheap Bastard. I don’t want to buy more wood.

Beyond that, though, is the wood itself. The pieces I cut out of the slabs are unique in color and grain patterns. I was forced to do the center section of the lower cabinets with different wood and the variation in color is noticeable. Naturally, after seeing this, I began to think about the uppers.

The uppers will have an inset center section that mimics the lowers. Depending on the design of the uppers there may or may not be enough of the slab wood left to do everything I want. Hence the constant measuring and re-measuring.

The plans have changed so many times over the last 48 hours I sometimes forget exactly which plan I’m obsessing about. Some have glass panels. Some have burl panels. Other designs have shelves. And then today I came up with a herringbone pattern of curly redwood.

The glass panel design actually requires the least amount of wood but it requires the same lengths and dimensions of the other sections of the upper cabinets. This is the problem. If I go with shelves or smaller solid panels I can utilize smaller pieces of wood, of which, there are many. Each piece I cut for the face-frame of the lower cabinets yielded short pieces which will be waste if I don’t use them for something else.

The ideas are spinning….

I think by Friday I will be ready to start assembling the lower cabinets and attach the middle counter section. After that it will be crunch time. Just as with the lowers, I need to design and build the center section first. A decision needs to be made by early next week.

Monday’s Plan

I’m in full obsession mode about the cabinets. Losing sleep. Lack of concentration during the day. Plans change almost by the minute. Lately what has been occupying a lot of the angst has been the center section. The real question is will it end up as dead space or usable space.

Really, its not the space that is important. Even if it ends up as dead space I’m still adding over 200 cubic feet of cabinet space to the dining room. The space behind the center section, with its tile panel, is less than 10 cubic feet. That is less than 5% of the over-all space.

Chaz thought of some clever ideas to make a hidden door to store potent potables or some other secret treasure. While there is a definite coolness factor to having a hidden door, there are some problems. First and foremost, I didn’t really design the center panel, with its tile and burl inlays, to be viewed from the back side. As good as it looks from the front, it looks that much worse from the back.

The other issue is that the walls of the lower cabinets are made from salvage redwood flooring from the kitchen. These panels that I glued up weeks ago have a definite A side and B side. It might not look that great inside the center area. There is also the level of work and craftsmanship that would go in to pulling that off. I’m not sure if I’m up to it.

What I can do though, is to make a fake wall inside to both hide and protect the backs of the tiles. This would allow me to make a door on the butler’s pantry side. That side I can paint and hide the B sides of the inside walls. That is the way I’m leaning now.



On the dining room side it would just be the panel. On the butler’s pantry side it would be a 12-inch wide cabinet. Not of much use, but better than dead space. I’m also seriously leaning towards beadboard faced doors on the butler’s pantry side. I’m considering all options after the reality of needing to make 17 mortise and tenon paneled doors set in over the weekend. This is what I did in the kitchen and it worked very well. It is traditional and it would really save a lot of work. I just hope I have enough beadboard still up in the attic to pull it off.