Kitchen Remodel Blog

[Jefferey Scott]

Finally posted pictures of the existing kitchen so that the drawings that are posted will make more sense. Brace yourself for one tired, ugly kitchen! It won't be that way for long though!

[Mark Blum]

Nice job with the blog Jeff, and quite timely. I'm just beginning the same project at my house. Plywood and lumber is all on-site and plans are all drawn up. It looks like we are going to have very similar cabinets as well, as I'm going with the same maple and face-frame style, with overlay doors and almost all drawers in the bases. Tandem undermounts for me as well.

I'm aiming for a bit more aggressive schedule than you though. Whether that turns out to work against me remains to be seen.

Good luck with your project. I'll be following along.

[Mark Blum]

Incidentally, I tried to work out the design so the face frames were flush to the cabinet sides, at least for my drawer banks. But since several banks share a partition there was no way for me to make a wide-enough face frame for consistent reveals and have it flush with the sides.

I'll be interested in your testing with the slides, as I still have to determine if I will go with the hanger brackets or blocking on the sides.

What are your plans for finishing?

[Carl Beckett]

I'm aiming for a bit more aggressive schedule than you though. Whether that turns out to work against me remains to be seen.

I will be following you both. Whats your hoped for schedule Mark?

[Mark Blum]

I will be following you both. Whats your hoped for schedule Mark?

I'm aiming to have cabinet construction completed by the end of August.

[Jefferey Scott]

I'll be interested in your testing with the slides, as I still have to determine if I will go with the hanger brackets or blocking on the sides.

What are your plans for finishing?

Hi Mark,

I'm not committed to either method on the drawer slides yet. Blocking would be pretty easy to accomplish. My face frame overlap on the inside of the cabinets is 3/4" give or take a 32nd or so. I would probably use maple and plane it to the needed dimensions. Blum has two kinds of rear hangar brackets, one metal and one plastic. I'm not sure which is easier or better.

As far as finish is concerned we are going with natural maple. I'm going to try to match the color of the prefinished plywood as closely as I can. I am using Target Coatings EM8000 conversion varnish as a topcoat and I also bought some of their water based shellac in amber to try out as a sealer coat and to give the finish some amber tone. I'm going to spray some samples this weekend of the EM8000 with and without the shellac as an undercoat. I'll post the test results on my blog. I also just got my new HVLP gun in so I'm looking forward to trying that out too.

Best of luck with your project and timeline. Keep us informed as you go along.

[frank shic]

jeffrey, those cabinets you're building aer going to be a serious upgrade to the current ones! love the lazy susan on top of the shelving - that'll make it less likely to fail like the ones that have a single post running down the middle.

[Todd Burch]

Hi Mark. Why wouldn't something like this work for you for adjacent banks? A common face frame solves the issue, with a just a bit of dead space between the boxes.

[Mark Blum]

Hi Mark. Why wouldn't something like this work for you for adjacent banks? A common face frame solves the issue, with a just a bit of dead space between the boxes.

Thanks Todd. I did consider such a configuration, but the tradeoffs (extra weight & bulk, extra wood) didn't seem worth it just to have the face frames flush. These adjacent banks will have common face frames, in essence being just one big cabinet.

[Jefferey Scott]

Posted pictures of the finish test panels today. I'm using Target Coatings conversion varnish and shellac. How do you guys like the color/tone and finish schedule?

[frank shic]

looks great, jeff. the shellac definitely warms up the color a bit and that CV should provide a pretty durable finish.

[Mark Blum]

Yep, looks great. I like your schedule and will likely go with a similar plan. I'll probably include a bit of tint in my schedule to go a few shades darker, but not much. All depends on what the wife wants.

[Jefferey Scott]

Yep, looks great. I like your schedule and will likely go with a similar plan. I'll probably include a bit of tint in my schedule to go a few shades darker, but not much. All depends on what the wife wants.

Mark, I was originally going to go with some Transfast dye in water to get a little deeper color. But when we saw what the shellac did to the wood we decided it was as dark as we wanted. I was recommended the Transfast over the Transtint dye because it was supposedly more lightfast FYI. If you do stain I would go with a shellac to lock that layer into the wood before your topcoat. At least that's what I've been told. Be sure to post some pics of your project, I'd like to see them

[Jefferey Scott]

looks great, jeff. the shellac definitely warms up the color a bit and that CV should provide a pretty durable finish.

Thanks Frank! This is the first time I've used their CV. I like it. I've used a fair amount of the EM6000 but I chose the CV because it's supposed to be a little more durable and water/liquid resistant. I know it shoots as easy as the 6000.

[Dave Stratos]

Very nice blog with some good detail. Cabinets are coming out great! Thanks for sharing.