Kitchen cabinet crown

I didn't get as much done yesterday as I'd hoped. We had company over and also had to run a few errands.

I've almost finished sanding Guest bedroom #2, I'll finish sanding and primer it this afternoon. We haven't picked out a color for the room yet. I may do that tonight.

I started installing the crown on the cabinets. I was really nervous starting this project because the pieces are so expensive ($35 for an 8' piece) so I went online to make sure I did it right. I found a really good site on cutting crown here. There are 2 different methods for cutting it; flat, and in position. In position is easier because you only have to cut on one angle as opposed to the compound angle needed to cut it on flat. The fence on my miter saw wasn't quite tall enough to cut it in position though.

I also had to figure out the spring angle of the crown. The site recommends using a protractor but I dont have one. I figured it out by tracing the crown angle on a piece of paper, extending the lines, and using my speed square. Good thing I didn't just assume it was 45/45 degrees because it wasn't. It ended up being 52/38. They have a really good angle generator chart on the site so you know what angle to cut. My miter saw happened to have the correct degrees for 52/38 highlighted in red(31.6 for the miter, 33.9 for the bevel). When cutting crown for an outside corner, one thing to remember when marking your measurment for cutting, you need to measure and make your mark at the very edge of the crown, almost on the back side. Then when you cut it you need to make sure that you line the saw up so that you hit the mark once it passes all the way through the wood. If you just mark it on the face of the crown once you make your cut you'll end up about 1 1/2" short because of the bevel. I know I'm not explaining this very clearly.

Anyways, I got 2 of the cabinets finished, I'm going to finish building the last cabinet and hang it before I put the crown on the last 2. Here are a few pics of the 2 finished cabinets:


I still need to add a thin piece of plywood above the crown so we can set things on top of the cabinets. Once I've finished building the last cabinet and installed the crown I need to paint all of them. I'm still up in the air about painting the entire cabinet white or if I should leave the doors and shellac them. Now that the crown is installed I think shellacing it too would look good, so the crown and doors would be shellaced and the cabinet itself would be white. Any comments on the idea are greatly appreciated as I need to get this done ASAP.

Kitchen ceiling done!

A lot was accomplished over the long weekend. I didn't quite get everything done that was on the schedule but it was still a very productive weekend. Scheduling the project out has really been a fantastic help. there is no way I would have gotten as much done as I did without it.

Guest bedroom number 2 was first on the list. This room was easily in the best shape of all the bedrooms. That's not saying that there wasn't a lot of work to be done though. First I had to move everything out of the room. Both guest bedrooms have been storerooms for the last 9 months. Instead of just dumping everything in guest bedroom number 1 I decided to organize it first. There was a lot of wood scraps and trash in there from using the room as a woodshop. Once it was organized and everything was moved over I scraped and sanded the walls. Once that was done I patched the bad parts of the walls with my usual mixture of drywall mud and sand.




I still have to patch a few small areas and sand. Hopefully the walls will be primered by tonight. We haven't picked out a color for the room yet either. We hope to have this room, the breakfast room, the foyer, and maybe the laundry room painted by this weekend.

The next project and one I've been avoiding for many months now was the kitchen ceiling. Over the last 4 months or so I made every excuse I could think of to not start on it. Once I finally did start it I finished in 2 days and it wasn't all that hard.



There are 2 parts to the ceiling, the part on the left in the first picture is underneath the upstairs guest bathroom. the part to the right is a fairly large attic space. I plan on making an access door from the guest bathroom into the space to use for storage.

I used R-19 for the part of the ceiling under the bathroom. R-30 will go down on the other part after I demo the upstairs guest bathroom walls. The wood is salvaged wood that I got last year before we even got the house. I laid alternating rows of 7" and 9" boards.



Most of the boards are pretty dirty so I'm going to scrub them down and then use some type of wood treatment on them like Murphy's oil soap. I might do a very light sanding and light coat of poly but I doubt it, I really like the patina of the boards as they are.

I also got a lot of small projects taken care of that had needed to get done for a while now. I installed the dryer vent in the laundry room. Everytime we would run the dryer it would become a sauna in the room, great when it's 30 degrees out, not so great when it's almost 90 out.

I installed the HVAC vent in the breakfast room now that the floor is down. Unfortunately I didn't get to hook it up to the system because the HVAC guys left the wrong sized ducting for me. On payday I'll be buying 6" ducting so I can hook it up. The back of the house gets hotter than the front because of the lack of the vent, the lack of the dryer vent, and because we didn't have the ceiling in the kitchen.


I finally moved the stove outlet to where it needed to go. It was directly between the cabinet I built and the stove, creating a large gap between the two. I moved it to under the stove, now both the stove and the cabinet are centered underneath the cabinets above them.


I also painted the little metal bistro set we got for free last year, it was painted some bright purple color. We're using it on our brick patio until we get a larger patio set, either wood or wrought iron.


I even had time to help Heather build her bird feeder for the back yard.


Next on my list will be to finish Guest bedroom 1, finish the Foyer, and finish the last kitchen cabinet then paint all of them. I hope to have all this done in the next couple of days.

More work on the kitchen cabinets

I've been working on the kitchen cabinets for the past few days. I spent yesterday building the doors for the cabinets that are already installed.



I also installed the cabinet and counter top next to the fridge. This is temporary as I hate the cabinet and will be building a new one in it's place.


Today I tackled the dishwasher cabinet, The first picture below shows the frame as I was beginning. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of it as I was building it. The second picture shows it once I finished it.


Here is a shot of the south wall of the kitchen, I have the upper cabinet over the dishwasher and the upper cabinet next to the fridge left to do still and all the drawers, then once those are done I still have to install the crown on top of all the uppers.

Kitchen Appliances

The look we're going for in our kitchen is sort of a primitave farmhouse look. We're going to be reusing the cabinets that were in the old kitchen, they are good solid plywood cabinets. I'll be building beadboard doors for them though. 2 walls will be plaster and the other 2 will be T&G wood.

For the appliances we decided to go with stainless, everything is Frigidaire with the exception of the dishwasher, it's a Kitchenaid. I know stainless is not primative but I've gotta have nice appliances.

Sorry about the terrible picture quality...