A Few Things We Did

Here are a few of the projects we have done over the last few months while changing residences.

Built in Cabinets for Alcove

We had this 6'+ wide, 20" deep and 10' tall alcove in the sewing room.  So we bought three 24" wide 18" deep and 84" high unfinished Birch pantry cabinets from Home Depot.  It was well worth the $75 to have them delivered.  These cabinets were OK, not top of the line.  The two biggest problems was size consistency between the three pantries and the panels in the doors showed multiple defects after they were stained.  This might not have been true if we painted them.

I removed the baseboard, built a 1.5" platform so the toe kick would be high enough for the baseboard to be put back.  Finally had to add 1"x 3" strips of Birch hardwood on either side to fill in the gap enough that a 3/4" trim board would cover any remaining gap.

Then I added three 24" wide, 30" high and 12" deep matching wall cabinets.  To support the final moulding on the top, I had to add another 1"x4" Birch hardwood board across the top.  I used the Stain and Poly in one finish from Behr.  It did not go on well with a bristle brush or a foam brush, at least I was not very successful.  This was especially true on the panel inserts on the doors.  I changed to a paint sprayer which did a much better job. But not having much experience with this, especially with stain, it took a while to get the motion down.  But this required applying more coats than I wanted to and thus resulted in a darker color.

This is the final look.  Darker than what we wanted, but that was the cost of learning how to use a paint sprayer.

New Work Bench and Lab

I used the same cabinet series as the alcove for the work bench and lab in the garage.

 The counter top area is 16' long and 26" deep.  It is still a work in progress.