Well, I managed to miss the whole month of April on this blog, so I thought I’d post an update for those of you who follow it.

My own path has been moving further from remodeling and toward woodworking, cabinetry, and now furniture.

(I have a mental hierarchy in my mind that goes like this: trim carpentry graduates to cabinetmaking, which is below furniture building.  Then at the top is musical instruments or maybe the “arrow carver”?? See Cole Porter on that one.)

Anyway, I’m in that transitional phase between cabinetry and furniture.  Here’s a piece I built recently.  This was not a completely solo effort, but it was mostly my baby.

The other big development, and somewhat related, has been the recent opportunity to go deeper with CNC-based woodwork and design.  (Translation: programming a robot to do lots of your work for you.)  For good or ill, this is the future.  Hopefully in future entries you’ll get to see some work created on this machine.

If you have outgrown your small kitchen but can’t afford a major upgrade (a new house or a full kitchen/cabinet remodel), then this idea is for you.

Friends of mine had the same problem, and they solved it by adding this cleverly-designed, custom pantry unit in a (previously) useless area of the kitchen.

When you open it up, you are immediately jealous of the immense amount of storage that this crazy thing contains. There are shelves on the outer doors, then you realize that there are also shelves on a tricky set of inner doors. Then you swing those out and a very beefy set of additional shelves is revealed against the back wall of the cabinet. And because it was custom, it is sized to take advantage of the entire nook where it was built. Every inch.

As you can see, they aren’t filling this thing up yet, but with five children it won’t take long.

Here’s the catch. (more…)

In my experience the following is a common scenario:

Katy Kitchen is ready for a remodel. She heads out for a day of planning and decision-making.

Stop #1 is a warehouse home-improvement store. Katy spends an hour with a kitchen designer and comes away with a price estimate for her cabinets and counters.

Stop #2 is a small, locally owned kitchen and bath showroom. Katy spends 1-2 hours with a kitchen designer and comes away with a price that’s 10% higher than the warehouse store price.

Seems like Katy will get the best deal by going with the big store’s offer, right?

Probably Not! (more…)

It’s always a tough call: Should you go with Free-Standing or Built-In Cabinets for that [insert needed item here: bookshelf, office, entertainment center] that you’ve been needing? Free-Standing will always win on cost, but it’s your home and Built Ins would be so nice…

For a little extra, a custom cabinetmaker can make a built-in so that it can be moved like a free-standing unit. But this presents some problems:

1. If a cabinet can be moved somewhere else and look just as good, it wasn’t a “truly great” built-in. To understand what makes for a “truly great”, you’ll want to take my free built-ins course. A one-sentence summary would be: (more…)

Recommendations work well when choosing a contractor, so do they work equally well when it comes to choosing a line of cabinets?

This from a leading consumer advocacy and testing website:

Readers who chose cabinets based solely on the advice of contractors, designers, or architects were twice as likely to report a problem as those more involved.

There’s an important difference between choosing contractors and choosing cabinets.  Cabinets are a known quantity that can be objectively measured against other cabinets, so there’s definitely a place for testing agencies in this process.

One shortcoming of the testing agency, though, is that they aren’t actually putting the cabinets on the wall.  I can tell you from experience that some cabinet lines have faults that no testing agency is aware of.

So, if you wanted the opinion of someone who really knows about the cabinets, skip the designers and architects and ask a kitchen cabinet installer.

I found a refreshingly honest article at the Nova Scotian Chronicle Herald. One weird thing is that, although the entire article is written in the first person, no author is listed on the page. Anyway, good stuff:

I tend to find the [glossy home] photographs misleading in some ways. Like how clothes look on runway models. Yes, you might be able to purchase the outfit, but what will it look like on a normal-sized body?

You’ll never be able to achieve a successful space by copying these design photographs if your room is a square box, so you are already at a disadvantage before you even begin.

Don’t you hate that? But if there was a magazine that showed real solutions for normal homes, would anybody buy it? (more…)

I’ve been noticing these nice deck screws with color-coated heads.

You can choose from around a dozen colors that match up well with typical wood or synthetic deck boards.

It’s a great idea, and the obvious question is… (more…)

Old kitchen drawers have quirks.

You know.  There’s that narrow one with the little catch when it’s halfway out and the big one that you have to kick to get all the way back in.

And then there’s that wonderful “binding” action where you have to maintain perfect straightness or it grinds to a halt.

Yes, this too is an important part of the human experience.  But here’s a tip from a friend that might help a little. (more…)

After writing my previous post, it occurred to me what a godsend this built-in cabinets series is going to be for owners of Ranch-style homes.  There are bazillions of them out there and I’m one.  We really struggle when it comes to making this kind of house into something really special that we want to grow old in.  In the past, our options have been: (more…)

Original Quote from the Indy Post:

Because the kitchen work was such a large project, the Bontragers decided to work with what was already in the master bath to control cost. They kept the cherry cabinets and enhanced their original beauty via a simple refinishing.

What could this mean? (more…)