kitchen uppers installed

Upper cabinets were finished and done earlier this week and last couple days were spent installing them. A nerve wracking endeavor and i was remiss on taking pics of some of the more ugly parts. there are so many things to remember when installing plywood boxes into unsquare/unplumb field. I allowed myself some room on the upper part of the exposed ends to scribe into the walls.

below, to the right is the stove hood upper cab. background are two flanking cabinets over stove. left on saw-benches is the bigger left hand side upper, adjacent to fridge surround.

I elected to use some surplus shelving brackets screwed into the wall below where the cabinets would be installed so that I could place them, shim them to level/plumb and then spend hours worrying about making sure all adjacent pieces are oriented.

also, had to reposition the romex a bit so that it will go into the aft knock-out port of the hood

The right side trio of cabinets were the hardest. I had scribed the part above the window into the wall before clamping them together. the wall ended up bowing outward so this made life hell because i then had to shim everything to the right of it to keep the scribe hugged to the wall.

There will be a two step molding along the top. a continuous ribbon along the horizontal intersecting with the top of the window

Here's a quick snap i took of the upper left cab, after installing and finding out it was 3/8" out of square. Had to take it down, remove the 1/4 ply back, wrack things into square with my camo tie-down and then reskrew the 1/4 ply back into place. WOrked okay this time, but best to try building square in the first place, hombre

I try to leave messages into unseen parts of the built-in work as a joke to whoever might see them in the future

kitchen pass through cabinetry and trim molding progress

trim molding is a deep pit to dive into, but necessary when releasing all your hard earned square plywood boxes into the unsquare, wild and wiggly world of a 105 year old house!

I chose to install these painted lower cabinets 3/4" proud of the surrounding drywall/lathplaster opening. this complicated things because the casement molding that surrounds the opening has to butt up against the face frame assy. of the cabinetry. You want to avoid having the spring of the interior curve of your casement on a lower plane than the cabinet's frame, which is exactly what I set myself up for here. The result is we'll have to fur out the casing a bit in order to make it look OK with the cabinet.

Here's what i'm driving at below. you see how i've lifted the casement molding off the wall and we'll have to lift it even further to get it looking alright. Tim and John both had mentioned just trimming the inside curve a little bit via table saw and this will help push the spring of the curve out further.

I have the mostly finished upper done today. Skrewed into the top and side with GRK cabinet screws. It is not attached to the countertop on purpose. it's just about a nickel's thickness over the countertop you see here. The idea being that I can remove the countertop and refinish it at some point (using "The Good Stuff"). also makes painting the cabinetry easier without masking tape.

I might have some little white shims under the cabinet that could also give the appearance of plinth blocks to allay any worries held by serendipitous, classically trained, neurotic guests, worrying about what i'd done...

I did not have much of an overhang on the countertop, so the "ear" you see where it overlaps the vertical trim is let into the trim a bit.

here's some more shots of the countertop construction. It's a lamination of a bunch of flatsawn sapele, ripped and turned to make it quartersawn. I chose this approach because the flatsawn boards were bound to have movement issues and i couldn't do a good job grain matching them. This way there is a sort of randomness to it, though not *too* random as I kept the strips in sequence and made sure to clock them all the same direction.

drawbore pegs driven home for that breadboard end. very satisfying indeed.

also, here you can see how the sapele is not full thickness. I figured it would be a waste and I have since attached some transverse oak battens with expansion slots for the skrews. this should help keep the board from cupping too much (i hope)

handle/knob location test

I'm pretty sure you want to center knobs on the level defined by the inboard edge of the rail in your door panel like so

Still not sure how to locate the hoop pulls for drawers. Are they centered on rails for the frame/panels, or do you locate them at the center of the panel itself of the topmost frame/panel, and then use the same distance from top of panel to locate the handles on the lower, deeper drawers?

Option A (I'm leaning towards this one). I center the drawer pulls on the top 2 solid drawer fronts. These are 5" high drawer fronts. I then center the shallower depth frame/panel pull, and then take this offset from the top edge and apply it to the final, lowest handle.

Option B