Another Bath Cabinet

[jteneyck]

I started this cabinet for our bathroom before Christmas.  I got the two boxes built and the doors veneered with shop sawn white ash, but then other jobs got in the way and it all just sat in a corner.  I finally got back to it last week and finished it today, except for the pulls. 



I spent a lot of time trying to get a gray color I liked.  I wanted the color to be opaque but I wanted the grain to show through.  The bath has a light gray on the left wall above the door and a darker gray on the right wall.  I wanted something in between but in the same tint.  I tried lots of different approaches, even had SW's custom mix a couple of WB stains.  I finally got what I wanted by starting with MinWax WB white base stain, to which I added a small amount of GF's Weathered Gray WB stain and an even smaller amount of GF's WB Pewter dye stain.  I wiped the first coat on, but realized I would never get it to be opaque doing that, so I modified the next coat by adding 25% or my GF Enduro Clear Poly topcoat to the stain and spraying it on as a spray no wipe stain.  Call it paint if you like.  It gave me just what I wanted; nice uniform color with the grain still showing through.  The final finish was two coats of Enduro Clear Poly, satin.  I love spraying this stuff; as easy as HP Poly but a lot more durable.  



The inside is Melamine and the backs are a white V-groove panel from HD. 



The cabinet is actually two cabinets stacked on top of each other.  There would have been no way to get the full sized cabinet through the door and stood up.  I made a single face frame.  I scribed the stiles to the walls and top rail to the ceiling before assembling the face frame - with loose tenons.  It's held to the cabinets with biscuits and glue and just a few nails that don't show because they are covered by the overlay of the doors.  The doors and drawer fronts are 3/4" MDF, edged with white ash all around and then veneered with shop sawn white ash.  The hinges are Blum Blu Motion, 3 on the top doors and 2 on the bottom ones.  The doors have shallow grooves cut in them with a small, narrow kerf circular saw blade, using my table saw. 

There are four drawers in the middle.  They are finger jointed Baltic birch riding on 12" Blum Tandem Blu Motion slides.



Lots of fussing to get the reveals all equal and aligned.  I used the standard Blum drawer connectors - and regretted not spending the money for the three way adjustable ones instead.  But I got there. 



Just need to decide on drawer pulls now.

Thanks for looking.

John

[Tapper]

Beautiful job, John - nice work on the installation!
 

Doug

[michaelwoodham]

This is pretty awesome storage cabinets project.

Great job.

Keep it up!!!

[Ken Vick]

Beautiful cabinet.  I look forward to seeing how it blends with the other grays in the room.  Did you dry assemble the face frame in the bathroom before scribing the 2 sides and how did you get the assembled face frame in the room?  Ken

[jteneyck]

Beautiful cabinet.  I look forward to seeing how it blends with the other grays in the room.  Did you dry assemble the face frame in the bathroom before scribing the 2 sides and how did you get the assembled face frame in the room?  Ken

First, a correction.  The gray of the cabinet is actually lighter than either of the two paints on the walls; somehow I got confused when I wrote it up.  So if you thought the cabinet looked lighter than the walls in the photos you thought right. 

I learned a trick about scribing a few years ago; maybe from a FWW article, yes, I think that's where it was.  Anyway, it's obvious you can't fit a pre-assembled faceframe into place to scribe it when it's trapped between two walls, so you have to do the stiles and anything else before gluing up the faceframe.  To do that I cut biscuit slots in the back of the stiles and in the cabinet sides.  The stiles are oversized in width by an amount just a little less than the distance from the inside of cabinet side to the biscuit slot.  To scribe it you set your compass to that distance.  Put biscuits in the slots in the stile and hold the stile up to the wall with the biscuits against the inside of the cabinet side.  Now scribe the line, cut/plane, sand to the line and it will fit perfectly.  There are variations on this for other situations, but they all involve referencing off something to eliminate guesswork. 

I scribed the two stiles, put them in place with dry biscuits, then cut the rails to fit.  When it all fit I took it down to the shop to glue it up.  After I had everything finished I had a moment of panic when I brought it upstairs.  I thought I wasn't going to be get it turned upright because the bath is so small.  Fortunately, there was enough space and it went in with no problem.  Disaster averted, but it was luck not great planning. 

John

[Ken Vick]

Yes, the second part of my comment related to getting the glued up frame into the bath and turned upright to attach it.  Glad it worked out that you had enough room.  I am still amazed that you were able to do it knowing the size of that room.  Ken

[Stwood_]

 

Be sure and put a condom on your entry door knob

[jteneyck]

 

Be sure and put a condom on your entry door knob

If you meant that the door knob will hit the cabinet, it doesn't.  I have a swing restrictor on the top hinge to prevent that, which you can see in the first couple of photos.  This cabinet replaces an older one that I installed as part of the major bath remodel I did some 20 years ago.  

John

[Stwood_]

Yes, I see your restricter.

[joe1086]

Like how you maintained grain matching....even on a painted project!