The Island

Our new old island

The hold-all box. We keep oils and such in there

The maple work surface and cherry shelf on the stainless base

It's always been our plan to build a kitchen island to round out the space and utility of the room and give the area a gathering point. Up till now it has felt a little too spacious because there has been that central piece missing. So it was something of a coincidence that my sister called us up and asked if we'd be interested in borrowing their old kitchen island for the indefinite future as they work on selling their current home and make plans to build a new house.

We jumped on the idea because although we fully intend to create an island when the time comes, its not currently at the top of our list since the kitchen is functional enough without it and things like shelves, screen doors, and places to store our clothes are a bit more pressing.

So, I went over earlier this week and picked it up and my 4 year old niece Solveig helped me load all the parts into the car.

It is turning out to be a really great addition to our home and I said to Randy on the phone after we'd got it in place that our motivation to go ahead and build our island just decreased by about seventy-five percent. It matches the wood types we have in our kitchen: a maple countertop/cutting surface, and a cherry shelf that matches the cherry cabinets. It fills out the general area of the kitchen really nicely and answers to what was a significant missing element in our overall plan.

Randy had this island put together after asking a restaurant supply house if they had a metal base that might work as an island and Liza found the cutting board at a yard sale, although it was a little to short to fill the full length of the base, so they had their friend Johnny built them a hold-all box to fill out that remaining space, along with the cherry shelf down below. I would never have thought to put in a box like that, but its great. It keeps the stuff you use all the time right in the middle of things and keeps the work/eating area of the cutting board clear.

The island also gives our groovy industrial stools something to gravitate around. They fit together well with the style of the the island.

Dying Camera

This is the detail overhead when you come down the stairs to the first floor

A slightly better photo of the new shelves in the kitchen

I managed to coax the lens out on our dying camera today to take some semi-okay quality photos. At least they are better then the grainy photos the iPod takes when the light is low.

I finished a little playful detail over the stair of steam-bent maple that forms sort of a swoop from the second floor down to the first. Quality-wise it is a little rough, but I like the effect. I may re-do it sometime.

Besides that I got a bunch of the last pieces of trim poly-ed and I'll be throwing some quills in those tomorrow and that'll be that for trim.

Checking for square

The first two pieces joined

There's a lot of clamping, drilling, gluing and screwing in this process

Checking for square. You can see the overlap pattern at the corner. You can also see the first counter section that I built sitting in place on the cabinet--it still needs to be trimmed and sanded before installing

This is my little sketch that sort of shows the plan. There's a gap where the sink will be

The work at the end of the day. I should have the rest built up tomorrow

Today I started building up the second section of maple counter top. This one is a little more complicated then the one featured in the last post, since it encompasses the corner of the cabinetry. Usually, counter tops that turn a corner and cut at a 45 degree angle and joined. In our case we are going to build the corner into the counter as a unit. Adam had the excellent suggestion to "every other" the pieces coming in from each angle and sort of make a weave pattern at the joint.

It's important that the whole thing maintain a nice 90 degree angle so it'll fit into the corner well when its done and I'm glad to say that seems to be working out pretty well.

Maple counter, Cherry landing

Scraping glue drips off the maple counter top

The glue-up process

Adam admiring his work having just put down a coat of poly on the stair landing floor

Today I built up the first section of maple butcher-block style counter top. The process requires drilling out the pieces one-by-one with two different size bits, putting in an anchor screw, taking the screw back out, gluing both boards and then putting them together with screws--about eight holes to a strip of maple. It took quite a long time to build up the section I made today, but that's how it goes. I'm very happy with the result. All that's required now is to trim it to fit and install it.
Tomorrow I'll be working on the section that goes around the sink and turns the corner on the cabinets. It'll be a little more complicated, but after today's work I'm feeling confident about it.

Meanwhile Adam installed the cherry floor on the landing located halfway up the stairs. They look great.

Cabinets and Trim

Adam at work on the casing around the pocket doors

Lining up the forstner bit with the pilot hole

Drilling the mounting hole

Doors in place. Notice the red line at the top -- I've yet to adjust these doors so they all line up level

Here I'm using the laser to sight the height line for the drawer slides, one of which is mounted on the left

I've been working on the cabinets, specifically the doors and the drawers. Having never before built cabinetry in any real way I've felt trepidatious at some of the critical junctures. One of those junctures is marking, drilling, and mounting the doors. I spent a good bit of effort to make a couple of jigs that allowed me to make accurate marks for drilling. I tested one door before deciding that my jig was going to work and then after it worked fine went ahead and did the rest. The doors are all mounted with what are known as "European" hinges. They are quite common these days, but used to be somewhat exotic. The beauty of them is that they allow for adjustments in three directions (or more on some models), so if your doors are not all quite straight or a little off center or whatever, you have some room to correct.

I also mounted the slides for all the drawers and that went fine too. Actually, what made it really easy was Adam's laser level. I set it up, found my height and the laser shone its horizontal beam into all the bays of the cabinets and I was able to mark all my drawer heights super accurately. The alternative would have been cumbersome and of dubious accuracy. Hooray for laser levels!

Tomorrow I'll mount the drawers and then make the drawer fronts and finish the cabinet face frame inbetween the doors and drawer fronts. When I get to that point I'm basically done with the major work on the cabinets and will then been getting ready to build the maple countertops.

Working alongside me this week, Adam has been building the framed door passages at both the exit doors and between the office and living space, which is the wall that houses the pocket doors. He's done some nice work and these things all look like pieces of furniture. He'll probably have all the doors trimmed out tomorrow and then be on to running the baseboard that connects it all together.

Progress...

The last few days have seen a few developments: the floor finishing crew has been here and given all the floor surfaces a thorough sanding and have now put down the first of three layers of polyurethane. The floors look great but the fumes are nearly unbearable, so consequently Nance and I are fully living back in the yurt for the week until the floor process is complete.

I installed the shower fixtures last Sunday before work on the floors began. They look great but we haven't had a chance to actually test the shower out yet since we were waiting for some caulk to dry. We'll get our chance this weekend once we can get back in the house.

I've been back at the cabinetry project and have put together most of the cabinet doors. Tomorrow I'll start building the drawers and drawer fronts.

Today I also made a run over the mountain for maple that we'll be using for the baseboard and door trim on the first floor.

Trip to Bristol

The lumber stacks

Our load of maple being loaded onto the feed table to the planer

The planer

The lumber then being run through the table saw edger and onto the feed table from which I loaded the lumber onto the trailer

Night view of the house with moonlight

Today I made a journey over the spine of the green mountains with my trailer in tow to pick up the next load of maple for our window trim project.

Purchasing lumber can in fact be pretty stressful because you need to be clear on how you are going to achieve the finished product from the rough form the lumber is available in. Its a bit like reductive sculpture where you take away the layers to reveal the completed work.

Despite the stress, I enjoy the trip to the lumber yard and appreciate the latent beauty of the materials found within the confines of a drab industrial setting.

Once I've selected my lumber, Jody the guy who I deal with at the yard comes and picks up the pile with a fork lift and drives it over to a massive industrial planer that can plane massive amounts of hard maple in seconds. It is an astounding machine. What's cooler is that I get to help in the process by unloading on the outfeed table. From the planer the wood gets driven over to an industrial scale table saw that holds and edges the board in quick order.

Having the planing and edging done at the yard saves us massive amounts of time doing the same work here, so it is well worth the nominal charge.

More stress comes into play when I load this large pile of lumber on to the trailer and strap it all down. Though I've never had a mishap in all my many journey's carrying lumber atop my car or lately on the trailer, I still take it quite seriously and am somewhat anxious until I arrive back home.

I also made an abortive attempt to select some slate or bluestone slabs for a hearth to put under the woodstove but gave up just when I thought I'd selected the right ones. I was plagued by concerns about a few variables that I didn't quite have a handle on, so I punted and decided I'd go back with Nancy, hopefully this weekend.