This started out as a simple project of removing the wallpaper and painting the walls in my dining room. I ended up taking down the ceiling, some of the walls, doing some electrical work, and doing cabinetry and all of my own moldings.
The cabinets and all moldings are made out of walnut purchase from Lumber Logs. I think I ended up using over 120bf. The cabinet boxes are baltic birch plywood from Kunz Carpentry Warehouse. The cabinet panels are all veneered with walnut crotch veneer from Veneer Supplies. The cabinets and moldings are all finished with General Finishes Enduro-Var.
For the counter-tops I had originally thought to do an all end grain hard maple top. So you can see that I did a bunch of glue-ups with this in mind. Eventually I changed my mind on this and just joined all those glue-ups together. The top is finished with a few coats of General Finishes High Performance.
Under the upper cabinets is recessed LED lighting from Lee Valley. The tile is a grout-less glass tile from Menards.
A lot of pictures below with a lot of captions.
Decided to pull the ceiling down, mostly because I wanted recessed lighting and didn’t have an easy way to do it otherwise. Ceiling came down very easy, took well under an hour. Went with whitewashed pine car siding for the new ceiling Applying whitewash Ceiling up and wiring roughed in for lights. My step-dad, Dennis, helping out as he often does. I went with 4″ LED wafer lights On the walls we went with an oil based primer directly over the wallpaper and a skim coat of drywall mud to hide the seams. Looking at a test piece of the crown molding Profile view First round of lumber Only round of plywood Cabinet pieces all cut Door parts and edge banding Edge banding on case parts prior to assembly. I went with frameless cabiness. Bunch of drawer slides and some other stuff Tile choice compliments of my mom Paint choice again my chief designers (mom) choice. The areas unpainted will be hidden by cabinets and tile. Filling up the garage with cabinets Walnut crotch veneer Pulls for cabinets and drawers Backer veneer is curly walnut, would have been fine with some boring plain sawn for this, but this is what Veneer Supplies had. As usual, doing veneer work in the vacuum press. Wide hard maple board that I’m going to cut all up! Counter-top material all cut up, getting ready for glue-up You can see here that I included some outlets within the cabinets, for the lower cabinets you’ll see why in later pictures. While getting ready to hang the uppers, found there was no studs for a long span. Ended up taking down all the paneling on this wall. This used to be an exterior wall and you can clearly see where there used to be a window. I added some additional framing in the window location and hung some drywall. Not too worried about the taping and mudding looking great as it will all be hidden anyway, but still did a decent job on it. Cabinet door parts I tried to get the straightest grain I could on the rails and stiles, but was already using a ton of material so have some “interesting” pieces on some doors. All the doors use Blum soft close euro hinges Some end panels as well to cover the plywood The backer veneer on the end panels is whatever pieces I had around since it would never be seen Uppers and lower door’ed cabinets done, lots of drawers coming up for left side. Note the lowers here don’t have a drawer like you would typically see. LED lighting installed The drawer slides are all Blum soft close undermount Filler pieces put in near the ceiling to fill most of the gap, crown molding will fill the rest. Testing some baseboard molding profiles, I ended up going with this one. Ended up going with the profile on the left. Also did a good amount of quarter cove molding Lots of small cutoffs Baseboard installed Crown installed, cove in the wall corners Gluing up counter-top pieces Getting an idea of what it will look like Pulls installed Time for lots of drawer boxes. Kept it simple with just a rabbet, glue, and brads. Bottoms are glued in, so adds a lot of strength. Drawers all put in. Frame and panel drawer fronts coming soon. Counter tops installed The reason for having power inside the cabinets and no top drawer. Two of the drawers have appliance lifts. I had planned for all four to have them, but found I hadn’t sized the cabinets to fit my other appliances after factoring in the space needed for the lift. Oh well. Tile installed. Not having to grout was nice, but there was still a lot of cleanup (still need to do some on the right wall several months later…) Starting to come together! Finally getting some drawer fronts. Note that bottom drawer of each cabinet has a crotch panel. Drawers all done! Realized that I couldn’t keep the cheap blinds after all this work, so got some walnut colored blinds from one of the online places (blinds.com I think) Adding under cabinet power strips on each side. Adding some simple window molding Some more cove molding to cover any small gaps Thought this hole wouldn’t be visible, but it was so I patched it and repainted. All done! Right side is pretty much a coffee station. Left side is more of a prep station.