DIY Kitchen: Building Extra Cabinets

Hi Everyone,

Now that the holidays are over (I finally took down my tree) , we have been busy working on the kitchen again.  To get yourself up to speed, you can  click here to  see the fridge surround that I built, and here  for a tutorial on how to  put pulls on new cabinet doors.

I still owe you a post on the new and finally, finally finished Ikea Counter tops, but I decided to wait until after the sink is installed so I can get some nice after shots of everything finished.

Let’s start with a picture of the kitchen with the ordered cabinets installed (except the one for over the range).

We took the cabinet for over the range down to bump it out exactly one inch from the wall.  The reason was twofold.  First, it would be flush with the surrounding cabinets we wanted to build and second, it gave us space to run the plug from the future vent hood to the outlet near the ceiling.

I found some scrap wood that’s thickness was exactly one inch and cut three pieces (on the stove in the picture above) and glued them to the back of the cabinet.

We used Super Grip Loctite for most of these projects.  We clamped the spacers to the cabinet and waited for them to dry.

When all was dry we put it back in place, using the same holes as before.  This was not fun however.  We both thought it would be easy to line the holes back up, but it was anything but! I had my head, arms, legs, everything holding the dumb thing in place on the counter top while Edmond drilled, which seems to take forever when your muscles are screaming at you.   It may look small and light, but coming in at 39 inches long and being a well built cabinet, it was pretty unwieldy, especially holding it over your head. Cursing may or may not have been involved

But when it did get back in place, we were ready to start building what I call the pillars and the panel, LOL.

The pillars will go from the ceiling to the counter top.  The top of the pillars will have sconces and the bottom thirty inches of the pillar with hold appliances such as my coffee maker, blender, juicer etc. Whatever I can get in there and off the counter top surface, really.

Though the bottom part will open, hopefully, the pillars would look pretty uniform from top to bottom, you know, like a pillar, when the doors are on.

The panel is a removable panel that will go from the ceiling to the cabinet above the range.  This will hide the outlet and corresponding wires from the plug-in sconces (converted from hardwired sconces) and the range vent.

Using loctite we put 1/4″ spacers at the back of the cabinets flushing it to the face at the front.  There are three there in the picture, though the third near the bottom is hard to see since it is the same color as the cabinet side.  Once applied, we attached oak plywood from ceiling to counter top on each side, screwing into the cabinet sides.

Once they were up, we could start adding the 2×4′s that would box in the removable panel over the range.  Screwing everything to each other and making sure to set them back so the front of the panel is flush with the front of the cabinet when in place.

We planned on a 14 inch finished depth (with doors and molding attached) which would look nice as a large unit encasing the range, but would also allow us to attach crown molding to the side cabinets which we needed to make sure would not stick out beyond the pillars, if that makes sense. Hopefully you will see what I mean in the after shots.

Working our way around, we started on the right pillar, attached a face piece to the left pillar and started attaching the molding.  The piece of molding going across the pillar at the ceiling is purposely lowered an inch, so that when the crown molding is up, most of it will show , otherwise the crown molding would cover over half of the width.

This is the first panel I built.  I ended up not happy with it because I used narrower molding than on the pillars, since that is what I had on hand and it matched the face width(flat non-routered part) of the molding on the cabinet doors.  Also it was a little too narrow from top to bottom. Not good.

So, this one got tossed aside and I made a new one that worked better.

If you can see it, the molding is again, dropped one inch below the top. This is so the panel can slide under the crown molding when placing and removing it in the future, and I wouldn’t run the risk of cutting it too narrow again since I  took the measurement to the top of the ceiling. Dropping it here also would mean the molding would be close to the same placement as the piece going across the pillars.

Here we are before the crown molding, but after trim and paint.

A shot from the other side.

A shot after the crown molding is up.  Sorry for the small shot here, this was a sneak peek on my Facebook page and I can’t seem to make it bigger. :/

At this point we were ready to attach the lights and install some pull-out trays for the pillars.  Tutorials on both of these projects will be covered over the next couple of weeks.

This leaves us here, some (still in progress but getting to be) after shots

I am so happy with the progress so far, though we still have a way to go.

I still need to make the doors for the appliance garages, build some rustic wood cubbies for either side of the stove, and a rustic shelf for the same area,  install the subway tile backsplash and finish the crown molding around the cabinets. Whew!

But man, oh man, it is starting to look like the kitchen I envision.

Take Care,

Nicki

~ by Perfect Prospect on January 28, 2013.