A Diamond in the Rough: Using Salvaged wood for Custom Cabinets

stu,

i see what you mean. thanks for the warning. luckily my mom doesn't have garage sales at her house, at least not in 20 or so years. if they did, my mom would make sure that shop door was closed. she's kinda paranoid!

this one it at my in-laws and my tools are far far away!!

thanks
chris


ps. sorry to hear about the loss of your tools. no matter what it is that is never a good thing

here are a few pics to give you an idea of what the interior of the house looks like right now during the remodel. all the walls will be covered in the rough sawn cypress. it will not be planed like the stuff i showed you. everything in this house is wood. walls, floors and ceiling. first 3 are the kitchen area. the others are the bathroom.

thanks for lookin
chris

well, it's been awhile since i posted any updates on this project. that is mainly because we hit a little snag with the progress. as i was planing some of the wood one night (first 4 boards or so) i thought to myself...self...i wonder if the paint that is on the majority of these boards is lead paint. seeing as the house was built over 100 years ago and it had probably been painted numerous times since then I concluded that it most likely was and I stopped immediately. after consulting my dad who is a retired refinery worker who spent the last 15 years of his career in health and safety...I decided that even though I could get good enough respirators to protect my lungs from the airbone lead, i would have to deal with the dust being on my clothes and bringing it home to my wife was not an option, nor was wearing a protective suit everytime i planed the wood.

so i made a call to the homeowner who had supplied the wood and told him of my dilema, he agreed and said he would take care of it. now, what that meant i am not sure. but he agreed to have all the paint planed off when he returned the wood to me.

one week later I got a call that he was done and i could once again make the trip to pick up the wood. so i did. well this was right before Thanksgiving which happened to be a busy week with family in town so I postponed the work for a little while longer. oh, almost forgot, i also had to help my dad finish his workshop which is not completely closed in and awaiting electrical installation.

now for the actual work update.....

all of the wood has been planed to 13/16" (from about 1" to 1-1/8"). last night i began ripping wood for my face frames. then i planed the saw marks off each edge bringing me to my final width. (this caused 7 giant sized garbage bags to be filled with saw wood chips)

tonight i plan to rip more wood for the painted cabinets in the bath and plane those as well. then i will begin crosscutting my pieces for the face frames. if by some chance i finish that i will move on to drilling pocket holes with my Kreg pocket jig and my trusty dewalt drill.

i know i know, i need to get some pictures. i will try tonight, it's tough because my camera is at my house and i have to drive to my dad's to do the work. but i will try to remember to bring it tonight.

by the way, this wood is incredible. i can't wait to see these cabinets completed.

thanks for following, sorry for the long post.
chris

Marty Walsh said:

Chris,

First off, congrats on the kewl project. I can't wait to see some of that lumber once you have it cleaned up.

Second, on your drawings, if you don't want to 'pdf' them, you can just take screen shots and save them into Word or some graphics program so you can post them here as images.

Oh, and by the way, have you considered using Sketchup instead of Autocad? Let's you play in 3-d and the clients would like that way better.

Just a thought...
- Marty -

Click to expand...

marty,

sorry i don't think i ever saw this post. anyway, thanks

i have thought about sketchup but until recently i thought it wasn't capable of doing what i wanted and i didn't wanna draw the stuff twice. but this past weekend I finally downloaded the free version and was very surprised after the tutorials at just how easy it was to use. i modeled a crude version of the house i have been designing for myself so i could see it in 3-d.....i'll try and post it tonight in the design forum. I still have alot to learn about sketchup though, i felt like i was always figuring out a way to do stuff instead of just doing it the way it was supposed to be done. i will continue to work at it and see if i can get the use i want out of it.

thanks for the idea

chris

Chris,

I opened your pics in Preview (Mac viewer), and then saved them in jpeg. Resized them to fit the Attachment specs and here they are.

View attachment 1606

View attachment 1607

It's a very interesting project, and I look forward to seeing more of your progress.

Greg

Good to see things are moving again on the project, Chris.

BTW, if you didn't know it already, you'll run into Dave Richards over at the Design forum, and he's a great Sketchup coach. Once you get a few basics down you'll be flying. (Especially if you can drive Autocad.)

Nice going cris...ditto tod....I think this will be something to see....
Now this is vintage Family Woodworking at its finest.......going for a chair bag of popcorn chips and hot saulsa.and note pad....OK CHRIS....ROLL EM
Reg
Funny how outcasts given the reighns will always shine in the long run

i wanna see the wood chris!.........please

yesterday was not a great day. but in light of steve's recent misfortunes, i really have nothing to complain about. my truck was cranking kinda funny the past 2 days and i knew i was low on coolant and it was time for an oil change so off to the big blue world of wally i went. got my oil but no coolant, was out in 10 min tops, get in truck, turn key......click click click click. stop...think...open hood to pretend i know what to look for....get frustrated...go sit in truck and feel really stupid with hood open in parking lot. wife calls, tell her how aggravated you are because you just paid this thing off 2 days ago and now it's broke!! hang up call dad to get him to come help
i know the basics of engines but don't know how to tell what the problem is. i figured it was the battery but i wasn't sure. dad said battery when i told him about the clicks.

long story shorter, got a new battery and my coolant and by 5:30 i was on my way to dad's to get some work done. i remember to bring my camera just as i said i would. i get there and before the shop gets too dusty i wanna take some pics. open camera case, pull out camera, turn on camera, camera beeps and flashes "change batteries" message. i don't have any batteries and my house is 10 min away and i've already wasted most of the day.

so, as far as wood work goes. i actually got a few things done. i went pick up some poplar from my friends shop where i had been storing it. i got it ripped up and planed down to final thickness. i also cut 4 more boards i had forgotten about for my cypress frames. they are some wide pieces (7-3/4") that will go behind the 4x4 posts on the sink cabinet and the cabinets that flank the range.

lastly i was able to get my miter saw placed back into my miter saw station, i had to remove it for a recent install i did. so i got it back in and my fence had been kinda outta wack so me and dad used a string line to line the 2 fences up with each other and make sure they were parallel. then i squared the saw to the fences. so tonight when i get there i should be able to easily cut out my frame pieces and pocket drill most of them. if i have time i will start assembling them.

sorry no pics again. tonight i'll get some. and post them when i get home. i'll even try to post some pics of my dad's cramped and totally unorganized 20x20 shop that i somehow manage to build things in without totally going insane.

thanks for looking...er following

chris

greg, thanks that makes them easier for anyone to view. i appreciate it.

vaughn, i am glad to be working on it as well. as for SU, i think i have alot to learn. but i can fumble my way through it. i had some issues on the model i drew, SU kept doing things that were confusing me. i am gonna try and post something soon so maybe someone can tell me what i did wrong.


reg, thanks for checkin in. hopefully i can make it worth watching.

chris

ok, here are some pics of the wood now that it is all planed. the bad lighting in the shop doesn't do the wood justice.









here are the different widths i ripped and planed for the frame pieces last night.





then the last few are of my big bad 12" shopmaster planer that did a job on this old cypress. it took 1-1/2 sets of blades to do it though. i say half because they are reversable. so actually i used 3 sides of 2 sets.





loml says it's time to get off the pc. she just got home from work so i'll try to add pics from tonight later.

thanks for checkin in
chris

thanks for the wood pics chris! i can see the closely spaced growth rings....how `bout letting folks know the density of that ol` growth stuff?
my experience of old growth syp is that it`s darn near as heavy as oak and will gum up cutters in the blink of an eye.....tod

tod, not dense at all, i would have to say less dense than regular cypress. this may be because of it's age...over 100 years old....and partly could be because of it's exposure to the elements for so long. I really am not sure. to give you an idea. that little planer i have can easily plow through those 12" wide boards as long as the knives are somewhat sharp. when i ripped my frame pieces, i used a saw blade that i considered dull when ripping poplar, and it went through like butter. now i will say some of it is tougher than others, mostly when i get into the stuff that is thicker, like the 2x6s and the 4x4s. those are a little tougher and the growth rings are super tight on those. but you are right, this stuff gummed up my planer blades like crazy. this is one time i was glad my planer and it's blades are cheap!!

chris

chris, try slatherin` some wax on your blades before cutting....if the pitch is building up it`ll cause the cutters to dull prematurely...on my planer i just coat the entire head, knifes-n-all, for tablesaw blades just the outside 1-2" ..tod

spent some time last night cross cutting all my frame pieces to size. i break my frames down to individual cabinets from my elevation drawings i posted earlier. then i make a list besides each one with the pieces for that frame.

then i start cutting with the longest piece. working my way down to the smaller pieces. I used to cut each frame one at a time but in the end I would end up with so many offcuts that were too small to use. this way towards the end all I have is small stuff left and I can use up most of those.

I got both the cypress and poplar frames cutout. then i had to unload of bunch of cypress that was sitting on my dad's trailer. he's going to go and get my plywood today while i am at work. it pays to have a dad who is retired

here are some pics of all the frame pieces cut up and ready to be drilled.





here is a shot showing proof of the 7 or 8 bags of cypress sawdust that came from planing all that wood.



i have a bunch more pics of the wood. i'll try to post them a little later.

thanks
chris

a few more pics of the wood.












you can see in that last pic, the piece that has all the holes in it, they call that pecky cypress. and people around here go crazy for that stuff. not sure why.


chris

tod, thanks for the tip....any special type of wax you use for that?

thanks
chris

Chris, great looking wood. I recently made the cabinets for my house using cypress. It wasn't old growth however. I really liked working with the stuff. Like Tod said it's kind of gummy. Here's a couple of in progress pics.

This is a great thread.... What a fantastic project!

Very nice looking cabinets, John.

Greg

john,

nice looking cabinets. me and some friends just recently finished an entire kitchen in cypress. and i did another one before that. it is one of the hottest woods going in these parts. i guess because it is native to our area and it gives the sense of the older houses here, which is a huge trend right now, making new look old.

greg,
thanks, i am glad you are enjoying it. hopefully from here on out it will get much better. assembly started last night.

thanks for lookin
chris