Cabinets 1

Do you know how to build a kitchen cabinet?

I didn't either. At least, certainly not in a day!

All it takes is a little planning, the right tools, and the right people.

When my brother Tim and his family visited for a week in early October, he and I (and Laura, one day!) focused on getting a few cabinets built for the kitchen. Randy and I had heard about MyWorkshopSpace at a business fair, and conveniently, it's a program located at Down to Earth Woodworking, just across Pine River from our place! For $50/week, you get to use all the tools, purchase materials through the shop, AND Allan Wiener, the owner and operator, is on-site to teach you...

How best to plan your project

How to use the equipment

How to put everything together

What not to do, too, and how to fix mistakes

Now, with my super-great brother Tim, Allan didn't need to help "me" much, as Tim actually went to school for woodworking and spearheaded that week of work once he was familiarized with the machines. BUT... After Tim left, I put in a little more work and Allan was very available/helpful!

Here's the sketched plan of our first kitchen base cabinet: the sink base (2 doors and a tip-out) with attached 2-door cabinet. That week we also built a unit with 4 drawers and 2 doors, and another unit with 4 drawers.

Little ol' me, cutting our first pieces for the face frame...

 Tim, assembling face frame pieces on the... frame... thingy.

Our situation is a little different, as Randy and I had previously "put together" an entire kitchen with cabinet doors that we got from a friend, who, 6-7 years ago had ended up with a semi-load of unfinished cabinet doors because they were in an accident and he knew someone who knew someone....

Anyway, we did things a little backwards and built cabinets based on the door sizes. It threw Allan for a loop at first but he went with it. Cuz hey, it's free doors! And he definitely agreed it was advantageous and efficient not to have to make doors, too.

I didn't get any pics of Tim and me assembling the actual cabinet boxes. Because I forgot to take some.

Pictured below: Allan showing me how to install a door onto the cabinet box. It's certainly not rocket science, when you have great tools that make everything dummy-proof! Then, I got to install the rest. :)

(You can see below that we're putting a cherry door on a maple cabinet. Hirshfield's Paints in Baxter did a great job mixing custom stains to get cherry and maple to match. And I got contractor pricing because I mentioned I built my cabinets at Allan's shop!)

In the next couple months I should be able to post photos of the finished product! As of right now, we have more cabinets to build, walls to mud and paint, flooring to install.........