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.

All Dressed Up And No Where To Go

Two weeks ago the fabricator bought the slab of marble for the cabinet. I made 3 phone calls to them and each time I was assured it was a simple job and they should be able to get it to me soon. As far as stone counters go, it really is a simple job. It is just 4 or 5 straight cuts, with no sink holes to cut, and no finishing or polishing of the edges or surface.

Last week someone was out sick and they got a little behind. No big deal. These sorts of things happen. This week I called and was told I would get it by Friday (Yesterday). I was sure it was going to happen, so I spent a few hours after work each night getting ready for the installation. I got all of my tools set up and took care of some normal weekend chores so I could spend all weekend working on marble and trim for the middle section.

The marble needs to have the edge trimmed, and then the surface polished and sealed. The final trim for the middle section will consist of more than 4 dozen small pieces that will need to be cut precisely as they are installed. I decided to just set up shop in the dining room, rather than making what could be hundreds of trips back and forth between the shop and the dining room. Each piece will take multiple cuts, so despite the potential for mess, this will save hours and hours of time.

Below are some shots of what the dining room looks like right now.

1. Router hooked up to the shop vac with a new bit installed and tested for height, ready to finish the edge on the marble
2. RO sander with 100 through 220 grit paper, along with the polishing attachment and solution
3. Compressor, hose, and brad nailer to put on the trim after marble is finished and in place
4. Compound miter saw ready to install the trim
5. Router table set up with the female bit of the rail/stile set installed and tested for height, ready to install the trim
6. All of the trim I’ve milled over the past few weeks ready to be installed






There is, of course, just one little problem…..



The marble never showed up. I feel like I’ve been stood up for the prom. I spent all week getting all gussied up, only to be left here waiting and wondering where my date is. It is very frustrating. If I were a woman I suppose the thing to do at this point would be to start shoveling ice cream in to my face while I watch predictable chick-flicks all weekend. As a man though, I feel compelled to get shit-faced drunk while I sit around and watch predictable sci-fi movies. I have nothing else to do!

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.

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.