Cabinet Creations

For the past two days, Rick and I have been working in the garage "workshop" as we start to assemble the cabinets for the laundry room.  We knew that once we cut the component parts from the plywood, we would have to work quickly to get everything assembled before the lovely humid weather (even though we are storing the parts in the air conditioning indoors) would cause everything to warp.  We are working as fast as we can.

On Friday, we assembled the first base cabinet.  Because we were not sure exactly what the best way was to put it all together, we spent about three hours just getting everything in place.  We found one small (1/4 inch!) error in one piece.  Rick's math was correct on the drawing, but in transferring that measurement from one drawing to the next, he added a quarter inch.  Thankfully, it was ADDED, which meant that we could easily correct the problem by trimming a quarter inch off one piece.

Today we were back in the garage to try to beat our assembly record.  My goal was to get at least two base cabinets constructed today.  In reality, we constructed the other two large base cabinets and the smaller base cabinet that will reside next to my washing machine.  The second cabinet took us a little under two hours to put together, and we assembled the third cabinet even more quickly.

Rick had to cut some of the pieces for the smaller cabinet, so that took a little extra time; however, by noon the two larger cabinets were finished, and by 2:00 p.m. all three cabinets were safely back in the cool indoor air.  (The temperature in the garage, sadly, was in the high 80s.)

The boxes for the four base cabinets await final placement in the new laundry room.

At that point, Rick and I carried his router table upstairs so he could cut the dados in the sides of the upper cabinets.  While he experimented with how those cuts would go, I came into the house to do a little laundry and a little baking.

Stephanie arrived last night so she could spend a couple of days in Door County with Lindsay.  One of her co-workers had given her a huge zucchini, so she gave it to me yesterday with a request to turn it into bread.  While Rick figured out how to route dados, I turned the zucchini into eight mini-loaves of zucchini nut bread.  I had a little batter left over, so I used it to make some mini zucchini muffins.  After sampling a few, I made Zucchini Man and sent Stephanie a picture. I am sure Owen will get a smile out of it before his Grandpa eats the muffins.  I still have enough shredded zucchini left to make eight more mini-loaves of bread.  I will do that tomorrow evening or on Tuesday.

Zucchini Man... before Rick ate his nose!

When I finished with the bread, I ventured into the garage only to discover a delighted Rick who not only figured out how the dados would work with the upper cabinets, but he also had gone ahead and cut all of the joints.  He was about to finish dry-fitting an upper cabinet when I joined him. I had to persuade him that at 4:00 p.m., he had done enough for one day.  The upper cabinets will be our next project on another day.

We are taking tomorrow off to join our family in Door County.  We need a rest, and I am sure that no mischievous elves will steal into the garage to assemble the cabinets while we are gone.  Work always waits for a person to return.

We accomplished more than either one of us thought we would today, so we both are happy with our progress as we transform our old den into a functional laundry/ craft room with lots of storage.