Eric and I decided our tiny kitchen needed some storage in the dining room and what better way than a classy "buffet" "hutch" or "server" (you pick up lingo like this with a little time on your hands and google). By the way, we decided this approximately a year ago and have been waffling on how we want to accomplish this task without going bankrupt.
So- at first I was like "WE WILL MAKE ONE!" and Eric was like "yeah!" and then we didn't and then it became winter and then I was like, "We will BUY one!" and then we went to the Amish Furniture store in town with promises of a "great" sale and "plenty" of pieces that fit the description I gave the guy on the phone. It turns out that Eric and I aren't willing to pay $2,000 for a piece of furniture that doesn't fit our exact idea of what we want, and that is VERY specific to this house.
As I mentioned, this cycle went on for about 10 months. Getting motivated to make one then getting lazy about planning it and deciding to buy one then looking at furniture in the store, getting sticker shock, and going back to deciding to make one.
One weekend, with some intense motivation (after a month of negative degrees as high temperatures, I believe it was a balmy 15), I dragged Eric to Lowe's and Home Depot to look at some Hickory in-stock cabinets. I promised him that it would only be a reconnaissance mission and wrote up a list of things to look at... which we did a great job at doing. Per usual, I was a lot happier to wander the aisles than Eric was, but hey, I like to shop. So, Home Depot won because their cabinets were on sale. The next day we went back and purchased 3 base cabinets in hickory (I really don't care how much of it is actual hickory... I think it looks pretty) and our countertop- which took two tries, but we finally settled on 2 pieces of glued together lodgepole pine that were each 8' long, 3/4" thick, and 24" wide. Sort of butcher-block-ISH, but we won't use them as such.
Alright, we get them home IN OUR CAMRY (well, one was on top...) much to the disbelief of the group of people gawking at us as we struggled to geometrically fit a bunch of lumber and 3 cabinets into our practical sedan. Then, we had to wait several weeks to start working because, well, weekends are busy and after work was still too dark for me to take on such a job.
The plan- one 12" wide cabinet attached to a 15" cabinet, one with 1 drawer and 1 cabinet, and one with 3 drawers (current kitchen drawer count = 1), then a 16" space that we would build shelves in so that our heat vent would be available to give us precious, precious warmth. Finally, a 24" 1 drawer 1 cabinet unit. Here's a drawing I made so that you won't stop reading my blog because it's so $*%&%* wordy.
When I finally had a little time to work on it, I decided it was time to dust off my biscuit joiner (literally dust it off...) and attach the two pieces of counter. It took something like 6 hours for the following reasons: 1. I'm kind of nervous when it comes to wood working 2. I practiced joining pieces of wood on several other pieces and I kept ruining them 3. it was 18 degrees outside, so it took a solid 5 minutes to suit up and suit down every time I had to pee, which is a lot 4. My wood working area is an unheated 12' x 8' shed... which is jam packed full of tools. So, moving two 8' long pieces of wood around is tricky... let alone finding a place to set them up to drill biscuit holes... When all was said and done the pieces looked fine, but the biscuit joiner had slipped while I was drilling a hole and it drilled the hole diagonally out of the top part of the wood that was slated as the "nice" side. So, I got to practice using wood filler!
By the end of working as much as I wanted (which was a lot) for two days, the buffet looked like this:
It became apparent that my biscuit joining job was going to require more than my "little engine that could" orbital (palm) sander. In the middle of the two boards that I attached there was about 1 mm of offset... a little like a normal fault... but since this is a piece that is going to be front-and-center in the dining room, structural geology needed to take a back seat to flush surfaces. So, I went on a city-wide search for the "perfect" belt sander. Frustratingly, I ended up purchasing one at the Home Depot about a mile from my house. I like it though! Although, after belt sanding for an hour yesterday my shoulders are very sore... I think I was fighting it too much... when you buy a belt sander the instructions should say "don't fight it, just let it wash over you... Also, and this is for Beth, mostly, please stop sanding in one small concentric circle because you're putting topography into your work and that's bad".
Yesterday I sanded, today I dabbled in attaching the trim with dowels! Tomorrow will be more sanding.
I might post pictures when I'm done... if it turns out okay!
