I built some cabinets that would not fit down the stairway

Frank Pellow

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Toronto, Ontario, CANADA
(part 1 of 8)

The cabinets were a Christmas gift for my daughter Kathleen and family, so this was quite an embarrassment.

As usual, I will extract the material for this thread from my weekly journal.

2009, Nov 22:

This week I started a couple of Christmas projects. One of them is some cabinets for the Harris family to be used in the play room in their basement. The trickiest part are the units that have to fit into the corner. I bought a neat set of revolving shelves from Lee Valley that will do the job quite nicely. Here, I am trying everything for size using cardboard cutouts:
Cabinets for the Harris family 01 -Modeling the layout with cardboard cutouts -small.JPG

The photo was taken on the floor at my woodworking shed, but I also tried them in Kathleen’s basement when no one was around to observe me.
Here are the cutting diagrams for the corner cabinets:
Cabinets for the Harris family 02 -Plan and cutting plan on chalkboard -save.JPG

I am making two of them, each with two rotating shelves.
 
(part 2 of 8)

Here are the main construction steps:

(1) Most of the panels were cut to size in the garage:
Cabinets for the Harris family 03 -Cutting plywood in garage -small.JPG

The notches were then cut out of the top and bottom corner cabinet panels with a jig saw.

(2) Rabbets were routed on several edges. Cabinets for the Harris family 04 -Routing rabbets on edges of plywood -small.JPG

All the joints in the corner cabinets were glued and screwed rabbeted butt joints. I did not attempt to hide the screws.

(3) All the panels were sanded with 80 through 220 grit paper: Cabinets for the Harris family 05 -Sanding a panel -with 80 through 240 grit paperJPG -small.jpg

(4) Before assembling the cabinets, two coats of wipe-on polyurethane were applied to the insides: Cabinets for the Harris family 06 -Applying wipe-on poly to inside surfaces -small.JPG

(5) I glued up each cabinet in several steps. Here is the first: Cabinets for the Harris family 07 -Glue-up -small.JPG

(6) Here is a finished corner cabinet:
Cabinets for the Harris family 08 -Finished corner cabinet -small.JPG

I decided (at least for now) not to put doors on the cabinets because I think that the children might find that they just get in the way. I can always add doors later.

(7) I am proud of the way I was able to best utilize the wood. :thumb: Here is all the scrap that is left over from 3 5 foot by 5 foot panels of 15mm thick baltic birch plywood building two corner cabinets:
Cabinets for the Harris family 09 -Plywood left over from 3 sheets after making two corner cabin.JPG

(8) I thought that I would need to open the double doors in order to get the corner cabinets out but, being just under 30 inches in width (76 cm), a cabinet clears the single door by about 3mm.
Cabinets for the Harris family nn -Removing a corner cabinet with about 5mm clearence -small.JPG

I’m storing the corner cabinets in the garage for the time being. The only way that I can get them to Kathleen’s place is in my trailer and I certainly don’t want to drive to her place towing a trailer on Christmas day. I think that what I will do is take them down there some day when no one is home and store them under a tarp on her deck with a note saying “don’t uncover until Christmas”.
 
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(part 3 of 8)

2009, Dec 13:

On Saturday late afternoon and early evening we spent time at Kathleen's house helping them decorate their tree. I took along the corner cabinets:
Cabinets for the Harris family 11 -The corner cabinets are on thier way to the Harris abode -sma.JPG

and stored them under a tarp on their deck.


Dec 20, 2009:

I built another cabinet for the Harris basement this week. This one is going to have 10 drawers as well as one open shelf. The drawers are being made using the Veritas Mini Sides/Slides from Lee Valley. One buys these as 3 foot long sections of aluminium formed as shown below:
K1's drawer unit -00 -Veritas Micro Drawer Side-Slide -small.JPG

The drawer bottoms slide into grove on the felt bottom of the picture and the protrusion on the right bottom slides along a groove that one cuts into the case using a “regular” table saw blade. I made these before and described the process in my notes of March 12, 2006 so I won’t talk much about drawer building here.

When building similar cabinets in the past, I have cut the groves for the drawers to slide in using my Festool MFT and guided circular saw. This time, I decided to use an Incra sled with my table saw:
Cabinets for the Harris family 12 -Cutting groves for sliding shelves -small.JPG

I would say that the time, effort, and results are about the same using the two methods.

I did still use a guided router to cut shelf dados: Cabinets for the Harris family 13 -small.JPG

The picture below shows part of the glue-up: Cabinets for the Harris family 14 -Cabinet glue-up -small.JPG

To make for easier access, I painted the inside of the cabinet before attaching the top and the bottom:
Cabinets for the Harris family 15 -Painting inside -1 -small.JPG Cabinets for the Harris family 16 -Painting inside -2 -small.JPG

The aluminium sides were cut in half:
Cabinets for the Harris family 17 -Cutting the aluminium drawer sides -small.JPG

thus the drawers will be 18 inches deep.
 
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(part 4 of 8)

Jan 3, 2010:

On Tuesday, I went down to Kathleen’s place intending to take the corner cabinets from her deck down to the basement and to start the installation task. Much to my surprise and embarrassment, the shelves would not fit down the stairs. I had checked the various doorways at her house before making the cabinets, but I never thought to check the stairs. The picture below taken with a piece of cardboard with the same footprint of one of the cabinets illustrates the problem.

Cabinets for the Harris family 18 -small.JPG

:eek: :eek: :eek:

I went home, got my trailer, returned to Kathleen’s, then brought the cabinets back to our house and took them down to our basement (they fit). I will somehow make use of them and build something else for Kathleen’s place.
 
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part 5 of 8)[/I]

aside: Before I came up with the method that I used for "knock down" connections of adjacenet panels at 180 degrees, I spent quite a bit of time in an attempt to find commercialy available connectors and came up with nothing. If anyone can tell me of something that I could have used to do the job, please let me know.

Jan 10, 2010:

On Friday, I got some hardware that I had been waiting for from Lee Valley. My hope was that I would be able to utilize the hardware to connect Kathleen's corner cabinet pieces after I had sawn them apart. Yes, my thinking had evolved to utilizing the cabinets that I had already made rather than make new ones. The hardware consisted of some treaded nuts can be inserted into the cabinet sides without going all the way through and some bolts with a big head that can be threaded into these nuts. I conducted a small experiment:
Cabinets for the Harris family 19 -Testing some hardware to be used to join adjacent panels -sma.JPG

and was happy with the results. The small piece of joining plywood does protrude quite a bit, but I will be placing these parallel joiner thingys on the inside of the cabinets and, because of the nature of these cabinets, they will not get in the way. I will refer to the wooden part of a parallel joiner thingy as a wooden spanner.

Somewhat nervously, I cut into one of the cabinets, and, soon, the cabinet was in two pieces:
Cabinets for the Harris family 20 -Starting to cut appart a cabinet -small.JPG Cabinets for the Harris family 21 -The cabinet has been cut in 2 -small.JPG

I used a spare wooden spanner and some centre punches to mark the positions where holes were to be drilled.
Cabinets for the Harris family 22 -Marking the positions to drill holes for the first connector .JPG

The collar on the shaft of the drill bit coupled with the wooden block with the hole in the middle assured that the holes were not too deep.

Flanged nuts were screwed into the holes, a wooden spanner was placed in position, and the bolts were screwed into the holes:
Cabinets for the Harris family 23 -Screwing the flanged nuts into the holes -small.JPG Cabinets for the Harris family 24 -Shoulder bolts have been screwed through the plywood connecxt.JPG

Two parallel joiner thingys were used on each of the top and bottom sides and one on the back side.
Cabinets for the Harris family 25 -Drilling a hole to be used for another connector -small.JPG

Exactly when I thought things were going well and that I could coast to completion, I goofed! :eek:
Cabinets for the Harris family 26 -I didn't messure twice before cutting -small.JPG

The cut shown above is obviously not straight. That's because, at one end, I measured it 522 millimetres from the edge rather than 502 millimetres. I made the correct cut, taped the kerf open at

1/8 inch and filled the gap with Bondo. Once sanded, this did not look too bad:
Cabinets for the Harris family 27 -Bondo to the rescue (again) -small.JPG Cabinets for the Harris family 28 -View of the repait from inside the cabinet -small.JPG

I'm lucky that the bad cut was on the back panel of the cabinet.
 
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(part 6 of 8)

Jan 17, 2010:

On Monday, I took the cabinets to Kathleen's place. Of course, this time they fit down the stairs. I also made a frame to be used to level the cabinets and took it with me.

But, I did not immediately install the cabinets because they had taken somewhat of a beating with all the trips that they took in my trailer. So, I sanded the outsides of the cabinets lightly and put another coat of wipe on poly on them and left them to dry overnight.
Cabinets for the Harris family 29 -Cabinets are now in Kathleen's basement -small.JPG Cabinets for the Harris family 30 -Exteriors have been lightly sanded and another coat of rub-on.JPG

This meant that, for a while, the mess in the Harris basement was even worse.

I didn't get back to the job until Wednesday. I first put down the bases that I had made and leveled them using cedar shims. The floor is very very uneven but, after some trial and error, the bases were leveled. I did not permanently attach anything.
Cabinets for the Harris family 31 -Creating a level base for the cabinets on a very unlevel floo.JPG

Here the cabinets are in place and I have started to install the lazy susans:
Cabinets for the Harris family 32 -Cabinets are in place and lazy susans are being installed -sm.JPG

And, this picture shows that everything that I have built so far has been installed:
Cabinets for the Harris family 33 -Everything built so far has been installed -small.JPG

I will build the drawers within the next week or so and put them into the cabinet with the black interior. By the time of Kathleen?s birthday in May, or perhaps earlier, I will build two more cabinets to sit on the unused portion of the base.

Two of the drawers have now been completed and I will install them tomorrow when we go early to the party to celebrate Isla's 10th birthday. I asked Isla what colour she wanted the drawers to be thinking that she would pick something like green. But she replied that she wanted lots of colours like a rainbow. I went her one better and purchased 10 different colours of spray paint to use on the 10 different false fronts. In the picture below, the fronts and handles have just been sprayed with the first coat of paint:
Cabinets for the Harris family 34 -small.JPG

I applied two coats with a light sanding between:
Cabinets for the Harris family 35 -Light sanding between coats -small.JPG

The two completed drawers are shown below:
Cabinets for the Harris family 36 -Two drawers have been completed -small.JPG
 
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(part 7 of 8)

2010, Jan 31:

I started to make the two remaining cabinets for Kathleen's basement. I will give them to her as an early birthday present.

One thing that I tried that I will not try again was to route dados using my Veritas straight edge rather than with a Festool guide rail.
Cabinets for the Harris family 38 -Routing a dado in cabinet side suing veritas straight edge as.JPG

The bit was already set in the router to the correct depth, so it was faster to cut the dados this way. But, I found that I had problems holding the router absolutely tight to the rail, so there was a bit of wobble that I had to clean up afterwards with hand tools.

Most of the parts have now been cut but nothing has been assembled.
Cabinets for the Harris family 39 -Parts have been cut for two additional cabinets -small.JPG

Notice the four filled holes in the part on the bottom right of the photo. They cover up pocket hole screws used to join two sections of the part. I goofed and cut the part too narrow. Since, I am almost out of plywood of that thickness, I glued and screwed on a piece of scrap. This part will be on the bottom of the cabinet and will not be seen.

2010, Feb 7:

The cabinets and drawers for Kathleen's early birthday present have been built. All that remains is to apply a finish and to install the drawers. I checked and a cabinet will fit into our new Subaru Forrester with the seats down. I plan to take one of them down to Kathleen?s place on Wednesday next week and surprise her. Having the Subaru for this type of task is going to be a big help. I expect that the trailer will get less than half as much use as it used to get.

I used a shop-built jig to drill holes for shelf supports. The type of supports that I am using the same type of supports (Lee Valley brass sleeves (63Z06.06) and paddle supports (63Z06.04)) that I have been very happy with in the past.
Cabinets for the Harris family 40 -Drilling holes for shelf supports -small.JPG

Unfortunately, I got a little sloppy and did not notice that the stop collar on the drill had slipped up the drill bit until after I had drilled tree holes right through the plywood. Here the holes are being patched with wood filler:
Cabinets for the Harris family 41 -Patching the 3 holes that I drilled too deaply when the stop .JPG

Another thing that I did not notice until after partial glue-up was that the sheets of Baltic Birch that I used to for the cabinet sides were slightly longer than 5 feet. The sheet that I used for the backs was exactly 5 feet long. Thus, I had to trim a bit off the sides with this tricky operation:
Cabinets for the Harris family 42 -Trimming sides because the plywood sheet were not all exactly.JPG

I have two 5 foot + long Gros Stabil clamps that I don?t use often but when I do make use of them I am very happy that they are in my repertoire:
Cabinets for the Harris family 43 -Long Groos Stabil clamps called into use for a glue-up -small.JPG
 
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(part 8 of 8)

2010, Feb 14::

I installed one of the cabinets additional at Kathleen's place. They are an early birthday present and are much appreciated I am sure. It was great to be able to take the cabinet down in the back of the Subaru, where it, just fit.
Cabinet (5 feet high) in the back of our Subaru -small.JPG

I expect that the use of my trailer and/or roof rack will be very much reduced in the future. Probably 75% of the stuff that I had to use that trailer for will now fit into the vehicle. I did use the roof rack on the Subaru to transport my dolly on the way down to Kathleen's. It fit in the back coming home.

Here is a photo of the cabinet in place:
Cabinets for the Harris family 44 -Another cabinet has been installed in the Harris basement -sm.JPG

2010, Feb 21:

The remaining cabinet was installed at Kathleen's place this week:
Cabinets for the Harris family 46 -Compete and installed -CROPPED -small.JPG

There is certainly lots of colour there.

Before putting the cabinet in place, I had to move a couple of electrical boxes and moved some wires. There were a couple of glitches so that job took about three hours instead of the 45 minutes that I had expected it to take.

Now, I need to start thinking about installing a drop ceiling, improving the lighting, and putting something on the walls (probably plywood covered with cork wall tiles).
 
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My solution to the problem

I have added a description of my solution to the problem. See (part 5 of 8) above.

Note that I have also requested information from anyone who can tell me of hardware that could have done the job better.
 
And here I've been waiting for parts 6 through 8. :) Looks like you made a couple nice saves there, Frank. :thumb:

I don't know of a better hardware solution than the one you came up with. I had to do something similar a few months ago when LOML decided she wanted a hand-me-down entertainment center in one of our bedrooms. The only way to fit it through the door was to cut the entire cabinet in half, midway up from the floor on the horizontal plane. I just ended up attaching oak trim strips over my cuts to hide them and hold the two halves together. A little dressing up with a Roman ogee bit on the router table and contrasting wooden plugs to hide the screw holes, and it all looks like it was meant to be that way. One of these days I'll go through my pics of that project and post something about it.
 
And here I've been waiting for parts 6 through 8. :) Looks like you made a couple nice saves there, Frank. :thumb:

I don't know of a better hardware solution than the one you came up with. I had to do something similar a few months ago when LOML decided she wanted a hand-me-down entertainment center in one of our bedrooms. The only way to fit it through the door was to cut the entire cabinet in half, midway up from the floor on the horizontal plane. I just ended up attaching oak trim strips over my cuts to hide them and hold the two halves together. A little dressing up with a Roman ogee bit on the router table and contrasting wooden plugs to hide the screw holes, and it all looks like it was meant to be that way. One of these days I'll go through my pics of that project and post something about it.
Thanks Vaughn.

As for 6 through 8, there will be follow-up posted in about a week showing the rest of the project.
 
Frank, all in all, nice save!

I've yet to build something that will not come out of the Dungeon, but I build mainly small stuff, as it is a small space challenged place I live.

What about >> THESE << counter top connectors...?

51AF4JD6DEL._SS400_.jpg

Might work :dunno:
 
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