*Kitchen Remodel Project*


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Photobucket


Photobucket


The latest step in our kitchen remodel project has been trimming out our new kitchen window.  This has been (another) multi-step process.  The replacement window we choose is has a vinyl frame with energy efficient glass.  The bit that makes these windows special is that they have real oak panels that snap into the vinyl sash frame so they appear to be made of wood from the inside.  An advantage of this arrangement is that I was able to remove the wooden parts, finish them, and put them back without worrying about the finish gluing the window shut. 

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Here is the window as it was installed.  Note that the window isn’t as thick as the wall so the first step was to make spacers to make the window frame appear to be the same thickness as the wall.

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Several changes here.  The spacers (made from the same oak as the cabinet face frames) are in place, foam insulation fills the gaps around the frame, and the oak coverings have been removed from the sash.  The paper is there to mask the fuzzy weather striping.

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Here are the oak bits that will clip onto the vinyl frame as well as the window molding in the back.  Much easier to finish this way than it would have been to do it in place.

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Project completed!  Having the window trimmed out is a big step toward making the room look more like a real kitchen and less like a work zone. The window trim matches the cabinets quite well.

The next step will be to get back to working on the cabinet doors and drawer fronts.

The weekend was too cold to be working in the shop but I was still able to put the finishing touches on one more cabinet.  I put the last coat of finish on the drawer fronts of the three drawer cabinet on Saturday and installed the fronts and pulls on Sunday.  Looks pretty good, don’t you think?

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The temperature on all of my days off lately has ranged between too cold and way too cold to be working in my (unheated) shop so I’ve been making precious little progress on our kitchen project.  Even so, I have been able to check a couple small items off the to-do list. 

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First I installed a third pull out wire basket on the lower section of the microwave cabinet.  One would think that should have been easy but, well, it wasn’t.  It was  well worth the effort.  As you can see Su is already using the new basket.

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Today I fixed the pantry pull out on the tall cabinet next to the fridge.  We installed this cabinet quite some time ago but the lower pull out just didn’t work as well as it should.  When I took it apart I discovered the undermount slides were a bit out of parallel. That problem has been resolved and it now works just fine.

I’ve finally been able to assemble, finish, and install the first six upper cabinet doors.  All the pieces for these doors had been cut out months ago but only now have I been able to complete these final steps.  Six more doors are ready and waiting for the final glue-up and finish steps and yet another six (or eight if you include the doors for the big storage area in the hallway) still need to be made.  Here are the first six…

kitchen 211 (11)

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It seems that life has been getting in the way of our kitchen project even more than normal lately so it’s encouraging to be making some real progress again.  Yesterday I installed six more cabinet doors and attached the pulls on those as well as the six doors that were already in place.

Here is the tall microwave cabinet with its four new doors.  Yes, I know it looks silly to have the beautiful doors and no front on the drawer.  Now that the doors are in place I can cut the drawer front to the exact width.

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The other two new doors are on the small cabinet above the fridge.  On the right you can see the jig I made to locate the screw holes for the cabinet pulls.

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Speaking of jigs, here’s a photo of the way clever jig I’m using to glue up thin narrow slats into the wide panels for the next batch of drawers.  The jig is based on one I saw that was designed to glue guitar sound boards together.  Pounding in the wedges not only squeezes the panel between the upper & lower sections of the jig (so all of the slats remain in the same plane) but also tightens the rope against the edges of the slats thus pulling the slats tightly together.

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I’m not at all sure that I explained the jigs function very well so just take my word for it, it works great – it’s cool..  Honest…