Another view of kitchen pass through with architect's post framing the entry

After installing all the lower cabinets into the kitchen today, I quickly threw together some hardboard pieces to form a 4" x 18" post that was originally drawn up on the plans and have placed it where it would be. THis was painted just with Zinsser's 123 white primer and dried quickly.

Sarah's thought was maybe to leave the post out as we could have some sort of sculptural piece on the end of that countertop. either a large vase/floral piece, or maybe a bronze sculpture that my uncle gave us. And yet, this picture does not fully block out the architecture since there will be another upper cabinet above the lower white ones to my left here. The uppers will only extend out over the square-ish filing cabinet drawers are, stage left. My thinking right now is to not worry about this until those cabinets are installed since the overall look will be quite different with them in place.

The (infinitely) patient architect is Tim Larkin, and he very kindly sent me some other mock-up sketches late yesterday showing some alternative views of what it could look like with no post, or with a smaller post inboard a bit. Tim wasn't so sure about the inboard post, and I'd agree. The open plan looks good, but it goes in a direction that might not be supported by the "craftsman bungalow" theme. Hard to say...

Here are some more views of the kitchen from the other direction. Sarah was out of town this week and got back just a little while ago and was really happy with how things are moving along. That's pretty much the best you can hope for :-)

so much work, not enough time photodocumenting it

We're navel-deep into our remodel of the kitchen and bathroom for our house. No sink to shave out of so a pelt of facial hair ensues and it's all good. The plan is to have a post going from the peninsula of cabinets to my left up to the ceiling soffit. The column was going to be 4" thick and butt up against the end of the cabinets but my carpenter and me feel that might be too tight and so maybe we move the column inboard and have it start from the top of the cabinets instead.

bathroom vanity mostly done

too busy to make interim fotos because the kitchen/bath remodel takes a lot of time. here's the bathroom vanity, ready for install. Overall dims are 48"wide, 20" deep, 32" high.

I will place a large drawer behind a frame-panel facade under the sink once the sink is dropped into place and plumbed. The back of the drawer box will have to clear the P trap from the drain, so I won't be doing this until we're installed.

The whole assy will be floated on a 4" floor kick leveling frame once we get down to the baseboards. I will have to coordinate with the tile guy on what he wants to do with regard to the interface.

The box is made of maple ply, edged with reclaimed fir. the drawer fronts are 3/4 fir veneer ply with reclaimed fir edge banding. Blum 563 slides. baltic drawer boxes using 1/2" finger joints.

I'm trying Minwax Water based gloss polyurethane brushed on. Not the nicest finish but it should be pretty durable and good enough for the bathroom, right?

PS, the drawer pulls are still in development as I humm and haww my way through more iterations. So in the tradition, my interim pulls are blue masking tape.

how about this drawer handle

overall length is 2,1/2", 1" deep, 7/8" high. Birch, done with a 3/4 straight cut router. Mind you this is going on shaker style drawer fronts.

Sarah likes them but i duno.

kitchen remodel part 0 - island cabinets

Our little North Oakland bungalow from 1911 will have some hefty work done on the kitchen and adjacent jack/jill bathroom in the coming months. Small movements of one wall in the bath will give much needed elbow room. We'll raise the ceiling to its original 108" height and improve the overall flow of the kitchen cabinet/storage.

Cabinetry will be done in my shop, as much as possible in advance to reduce the downtime and save $. Cabinets will mostly be done euro-style using prefinished birch ply, however we're going to continue to use a kitchen "island" benchtop, using a narrower, but wider top.

for reference, here's the original kitchen. island here is 30"x60". We'll do something much longer and narrower at 24"x96"

The new island will have two lower cabinet units which will be made in frame/panel style. Posts are 2,1/4x3". rails are 9/8". Used vg fir ply for panels.

Note above you can see a stack of 1/2" boards on teh tablesaw calming down after an initial milling. These are alderwood from my mom and dad's farm that my dad shipped to me a few years back. much of this wood had been infiltrated by boring insects, however I figured they had been gone. Only after I had milled all the drawer parts to final thickness did I notice some larvae still soft to the touch of my pocket knife. Much sorrow was expressed at this point. It's Alderwood from a wind storm that took down a large swath of trees on mom and dad's farm, and I wanted to use this wood somewhere important, and now it's been spoiled by the bugs. I'll set these boards aside for now. Heat kills them but I don't have the time now to bring everythign up to 150F in my kitchen oven.

I'll use Russian birch ply as drawer boxes for now.

Below, an initial frame test fitment. Double tenons for each rail that I will then reinforce with a 3/16" oak dowel for belt-suspenders treatment.

Milling down reclaimed ship-lap fir for the rails, laminating up the posts, too.

I use the cabinet maker's triangle to help me orient all the pieces. all the tenons were cut using my bandsaw and so there was some regularity to the layout. I also used my drillpress to beaver out most of the mortises, while using my 13mm japanese chisel(the only one so far that's sent me to the ER) to take care of the rest of the waste

Reclaimed wood means pulling nails. Sometimes nails that had been sheared off by an infernal sawzall

My first japanese paring chisel from Hida Tool off S. Pablo Ave. really helpful in getting my mortises dialed in.

more drawer pulls: "give it a yank, hank"

Ralph from the Accidental Woodworker web log, plus my buddy Tom Waits in Niwot, CO both liked the curved pull from my last post which is valuable feedback, thank you. Tom also suggested trying to size these things a bit smaller and see how that fits ("20-30 percent. A jockey full of bourbon ought to still be able to find it...").

well i got fairly big mitts, so i'm given to larger grab bars and handles and usually the XL gloves in the hardware store. Still there's always room to try that out, even if the turkey needs immediate internal temperature reading and your thermometer is buried deep inside drawer number 2. what size handle does that mean?

Here are 3 tries: 3" 3,1/2" and 4" long.

It is surprising how different it is to hold on to one from the other. The smallest one might be just fine. I've attached these and others to various cupboards and drawers in the kitchen to see how they feel for us over the next few weeks.

The bigger one might be most appropriate for something like a pantry or laundry door. Too big for smaller drawers.

I also think how these things are finished will affect the feel a lot. I've just got 'em sanded to 120grit. but imagine if they had a lot of poly on them. Then there's the other idea of using a hard wood like maple, or mesquite. Also, have to consider painting these, which could be really cool little dollups of color on a natural wood panel finish...

Also tried afew of the blockier style as well, in various positions and pairs in cupboards and drawers.

afternooner project: couple neo-schwarz saw benches from scraps

2 4' long 4x6 rough-cut pine timbers, plus several odd lengths of 2x4 pine were used to protect the outside of my hammer a3-31 planer/thicknesser on arrival months ago. i pulled the nails and random fasteners from these sticks and set them aside thinking this wood might be useful some day.

So with an afternoon spinning wheels, i decided to practice surface prepping these boards on teh planer, then busting out a few saw benches, ala c.schwarz. I actually used two of his blog entries in this project which has to be a record for me. Went with the $5.87 design he posted here

I also used a technique to help scribe the bottom to the floor by turning the benches over and using a reference off a flat surface to define the height. Here it is

These came out to be about 18,1/2" high which is also a good shop stool height. bonus. Honestly i'm not sure how much hand sawing I plan on doing with these benches but they are going to be really handy while staging boards during various stages of their milling process. also a good height to post something like a cabinet when I need to apply finish, or hardware etc. Today I used them to brake down a pallet languishing next to our house using both a circ saw, and a pull saw. these were a perfect height for this sort of adventure.

in total, a productive way to spend a few spare hourse in an afternoon.