Day 1 - the kitchen begins - the "iron beast"

[Rich Engelhardt]

Hello,

Week of the 12th:

First picture is the cabinets before.

2nd picture is what I woke up to on Tuesday morning. ~ 2 to 3" of snow - and a ~ 75 lb drill press I needed to transport to the jobsite.

3rd is "the iron beast". My $78.00 closeout benchtop (if ~ 75lbs can be called benchtop) borg drill press.
I needed to use a 1 1/4" Forstner bit for the hinges which meant moveing "the beast" into place. The ~ 2"/3" of snow didn't help matters much. Thankfully I got the beast into place before we got the additional 10 + inches later in the week.

4th shows the dance I had to do attaching featherboards to the Hitachi. a standard 3/4" miter slot would have made life a lot easier.

5th shows the false panels being glued and tacked.

What I did was take the existing plywood doors and ripped a false frame for them, then glued and nailed them in place.
Over time, movement may be a concern, but this is really a temporary solution for the time being. If I get 2 or 3 years out of it I'll be content.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Well, here's a shot of what it looks like with a coat of primer and the first hanging.
I need to readjust the blind hinges so that everything lines up fairly square.

This ended up being quite a bit more work than I anticiapated. I seriously doubt if I would go this route again - using the existing 3/4" 1950's Birch plywood/pine frame to make false panels.
If the budget had not been so extremely tight, I believe a complete tear out and replacement using borg unfinished cabinets would have take a lot less time.

@ this point, I'm roughly 1/3 finished. It's been a learning experience to be sure.
So far, it's turned out better than expected in some respects and not what I hoped for in others.

There's quite a bit of finishing and filler needed on the panels, but they are turning out quite a bit better than I hoped for at first.
My final cost per door is roughly going to be ~ $2.00.
Not bad all things considered.
My goal here was to see how much I could do, with as little as possible invested.
So far, I believe I've accomplished most of that.

[Steve Clardy]

Looks like fun!!

Looking good

[Chris Barton]

Hi Rich,

It looks like you did a nice job to me! Cabinetry is one of those cases where you can make an argument for making your own as long as all you are talking about is cost of materials. If you have to figure time in it gets murky. When I was younger all had lots of time and little money so the question became academic, I built many things because I couldn't afford otherwise. Now, I continue to build projects like your but, it just for fun. I hope you had some fun with this project.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Hello,
Yes, it's been fun. A lot of work, but fun.

My wife and I took a week of vacation and spent it working on this. We had planned on going to West Virginia to play the slot machines on Wednesday of this past week as a mid week break, but the weather got so bad we went Monday instead.
(lost enoough to have put a real dent in the purchase of a Bosch TS w/gravity rise - oh well - it's only money )

On Tuesday, "day 1 " - I moved the drill press from the garage into the van and drove it over to the site. Trudging through 3"/4" of snow carrying the ~75 lb "beast" wasn't a lot of fun I admit.

As far as the cabinets and how they are turning out goes. I decided to start with the ones over the stove/fridge since they are the least conspicuous and the easiest/cheapest to replace if it went South on me.

Worst case scenerio would have been the false frame idea being a total disaster and have to be scrapped. I had a sheet of borg 3/4" plywood in reserve and the dimesnions to remake the 5 panels if need be. thankfully, it worked out well enough that I won't have to.

My only real oops happened when I thought back on it and realized that the cabinets in the garage were made the same way. I could have (should have) practiced on them first - oh well live and learn.