a scary moment

Chris Mire

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945
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Southern Louisiana
picture this...

a young aspiring cabinet maker has been working feverishly on a set of cabinets. the time has come to install them. so he and his dad load up the cabinets and drive out to the house where they will find there home. he sees a lone van sitting in the driveway, he wonders what sub would be working on the house right now. he pulls up and goes in, and there to his disappointment is the paint crew, pouring paint into their sprayers. he asks them if they are about to spray the whole house. they say yes and he asks how long before it's dry, they say one hour. so he leaves and goes to a friends house to pick up a huge trailer so that he can borrow a tractor to do some work on his road. he does that and later his metal building arrives so he unloads it. he has time left so decides to go back and install the lowers in the house. he gets there and is greeted by his friend mike who got him the job. they unload all the cabinets and begin to set them into place. then mike asks a questions....."chris, where is the dishwasher?" chris thinks to himself, "oh my, i forgot to leave a space for the dishwasher" he looks around, luckily to his delight there is a space right between the sink and the fridge that is just 1-1/2" bigger than a normal dishwasher hole. so he decides he'll take that cabinet home for a nice beautiful alder shop cabinet and he'll remake a dishwasher section to fit. boy, that coulda have been alot worse, because he had originally planned to make that 70" wall all one cabinet. thankfully because he didn't want to carry it that big he made it in 3 pieces. whew, chris wipes his brow in relief. :eek:

the end
 
picture this... a young aspiring cabinet maker

Try this picture - a 55 yr old cabinetmaker with almost 40 yrs experience goes to measure a wall in an office for a set of fitted cabinets and bookshelves. He uses a pair of sliding battens to measure the width of the space from wall to wall - top & bottom. When transferring the width of the opening from battens to notepad, he sets his the 10" mark of his tape on the end of the piece - for greater accuracy.

5 weeks or so later he returns with another cabinetmaker to install the ensemble. Yup, 10" too wide for the opening.

It practically shattered him. He never trusted himself to measure up a another job. As far as I know, he never worked outside of the shop again.

If "measure twice - cut once" is the rule for cutting a board, then "measure umpty-five times and build once" should be the rule for built-ins.

No pressure, though, eh :rofl:
 
Best I remember... Go to a new school to pre-measure all the rooms for spec'd cabs. Four separate buildings... Find out later the reason why I didn't measure for any vanities in the one building... The architectual firm somehow managed to overlook bathrooms, none planned for, none drawn, walls go up... Twas not a good day in mudville when this was discovered.
 
wow, dropping to the 10" mark, i usually drop 1", never heard of dropping 10"...guess it's all the same anyway.

no bathrooms huh, i bet that was an interesting situation

i have more of these than i care to share. it seems there is always one on every job. sometimes 3 or 4, but usually small. this one had the potential to really mess up the whole job or at least half of it.

chris
 
Chris. I made a Oak pantry one time [along with all the other kitchen cabinets] 47" wide.
Had them all in the kitchen, unloading out of my trailer through the front door.
I was basically setting the lowers where they went.
Corner cabinet, sink cab, dishwasher space, big pantry, fridge side panels leaning against the wall. [End of cab run] There was a patio door there at the end.
Contractor was sitting there on the floor eating lunch.
I walked back in and He asked me where the frig was going.
I turned and pointed---then noticed:eek: :eek: --that the pantry was sitting by the edge of the patio door, not the frig panels.:eek: :huh: :( :eek:

Pantry was supposed to be 18" wide, not 47".:(
I went back over my paper work, showing a 18" pantry in my sketch.
I never did figure out where I came up with that 47".
 
steve,
great story. i hope i never create a repeat of it. i guess sometimes our brains are off in la la land, i know for this job my brain was more concerned about the special things i haven't done yet, like a cooktop with an angled wooden hood that sits on a wall that is 45'd, not to mention the framing was not square. so i was a little worried about that.

i think i learn something new on every job. once i built a cabinet for over a toilet in a "water closet" and the door to the room was on a angled wall, well i built the cabinet with my normal 3/8" over hang for a cabinet that meets a wall. well needless to say i couldn't get the cabinet into the room, i had to take it back and rebuild it, flushing the inside of the box with the inside of the frame. and the list goes on.

best of luck to all of us....:D
chris
 
...not to mention the framing was not square.

LOL... and it never will be !! Nor will the floors be level or the walls plumb (or flat). You have to go in with the idea that YOU have to create straight and square and level with your level and shims and scribing strips.

Building the boxes is probably the most enjoyable part of fitted cabinets, but it's done in a controlled setting. Installing can be a PITA, but I kind of like it. Every install presents its own challenges and it's very satisfying when you get everthing "just so".
 
Ian,
you're right, and i would never be so naive to think it would be, but this was a wall that was framed 45 degrees across a corner, creating a spot for the cooktop, and when i checked the framing of the corner, it was 1" out from top to bottom. to me, that is unexceptable. you can never get things perfect or even close with framing lumber, but it could have been better than that.

oh, and about 3 years ago i installed a set of cabinets in the squarest house i had ever been in. they were very close to being perfect. this framer is none in his area for taking his time to get things just about perfect. best framing job i've seen yet.

now if i could just get them to put studs on 16" centers like they are supposed to!!!

luckily in the end, my corner hood section fit just right. not sure how i got that lucky!!

chris
 
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