Bar Built-in: Day 13 (poly shelves and cabinet frames)

This week, I'm back to work at my job and I work on the cabinets at night. I have quickly found out that after a whole day of work, I have very little time or energy to work on the built in. Thank god I'm in the final stretch. I through on another coat of poly on the cabinet frame moldings and shelves and went back to helping clean the house.

Bar Built-in: Day 12 (cabinet frame and more staining)

With the towers in place and the shelves stained and drying, I began working on the cabinet frame moldings.

I'm using solid red oak, I bought four 2" x 1/2" - 8' pieces. I originally was going to go with 1" thick pieces, but I found the 1/2" pieces looked better. Unfortunately the 1" pieces are all on sale, bu the 1/2" pieces aren't, so its a wash between the 2.

Using a miter saw and cut the pieces to length and dry fitted them in place. I'm not using any mitered cuts but going for the more craftsman style of framing. All the pieces are cut and I drill pocket holes into each one.

And yes, the boards don't come pre-stained, so I lay them next to the shelves and put the stain coat on. I'm glad that I am only doing one coat of stain. I wish I got the poly stain in one, but I really like the way this stain is looking.

Bar Built-in: Day 11 (installing towers and running lights)

With the backs of the towers dried I put 2 coats of polyurethane on throughout the night. This let me tack it in place this morning. Now you should let poly dry for ~24 hours before normal wear and tear, but seeing that its the backs I I won't be touching it for another 24 hours, I thought it would be okay.

To apply the backs we check the squareness again of the towers. With the back in place we tack one corner, adjust the squareness of the tower and tack the other corners of the back in place. By now, not only should the tower be square, but it should be pretty damn sturdy too boot.

I place the towers on the toe kick and plumb it up with a level. Once I have it in place I use drywall screws to hold the towers in place. With a screw going through the back into the stud, and a screw going through the side and into a stud, it should not move.

With it in place, I measure the shelf length and depth that spans across the towers and cut the bored from left over stock (you could get away by buying a 2' x 4' 3/4" MDF oak veneer). With the shelf, I put the right support on the right tower for the shelf that spans the two towers. I check its level and tack it down with 6 nails (I switch out the 1 1/4" nails for 1" nails seeing that the support is 1/2" and the tower is 3/4" and that is too close for comfort.). With that in place I put the shelf on the right support and set a level on top of the shelf. Now I can adjust the shelf to make it level. With it in place I mark on the left side to see where the support goes. I then tack that as well. The shelf is level. I do the same with the 2nd shelf.

If you noticed, the shelves in the above picture are not stained. So back to the gloves, stain and brushes.

I've learned when you build two towers that have a shelf connecting the two and put them independently in a basement poured in the 50s, on a rec room constructed in the 60s, nothing will be level without double checking it. I get to quadruple check it because I need to take the towers down to run the lighting cable behind the shelf.

With all the wires ran now to the center, I attach them and zip tie it together and plug it into the outlet that the wine cooler will use.

Bar Built-in: Day 10 (cunstruction)

Well the day I've been looking for is here, the day I get to assemble the pieces and see it come together (that and the day I get to try out the finished product). The big pieces are cut, sanded, stained and coated with polyurethane.

I attach the top and bottom of the main towers to one side. With them secure with the pocket screws, I flip the side onto the other long side and attach it forming the main tower. I do the same for the second tower.

I then take the middle shelf measure out where the wine rack dividers go. Putting the shelf face down, I then take the dividers in place and screw them in with the pocket hole screw. This gives it both a secure connection, and you will not see the fastner. If I were to nail it to the shelf you would see the heads. Even if I sunk them puttied them, I think they would still show. When both are in place, I take a 2x4 cut to the width of of the middle wine space and clamp it to the wine rack as a support.

I then take the main tower and lay it face down on a table and slide in the wine rack with the shelf. Using shims I get the wine rack at the right height (I want it set in at 1/4" to give it a better look). I square up the tower by shifting it properly. To see if its square I measure the tower from corner to kiddie corner. If the two measurements are the same, it is square.

I then use my nail gun and nail 1 1/4" nails into the wine rack and shelves.

I took several pictures showing the details of pocket screws and assembling. The pictures looked cluttered on the blog so I tried the video slide show feature on Picasa.

As careful as you are and no mater how well I lined it up, I still missed quite a few nails and they shot through to the other side, missing its target. This happened because 1, I wasn't use to where the nail came out of the gun, I used the free nails that came with the gun which were softer (so the first flaw they hit, they bend into another direction).

Once it is secured, the towers are done.

With the towers finished I can measure the 1/4 oak veneer plywood for the backs. I had enough left over from my last project to do one of the towers, I then had to go to the store to get another piece of 1/4 to finish the other back. With both measured and cut to fit in the back grooves, its time for my second favorite thing to do...... stain. 15 minutes later, I wiped the excess and waited for them to dry.

While they are drying I begin to build the toe kicks. I then used 2x4's to make toe kick. With the 2x4's cut to 9 1/2" I then used shims where it was necessary to make the toe kicks level. Once they were level I used deck screws to drill them into the walls sole plate or stud.

One of the supports could only be drilled into the sole plate and did not hold onto well due to it being kind of rotted. It did hold though, but what I should have done is connect both to back 2x4 and then screwed that into the sole plate. The face of the toe kick will have a piece of 3/4" oak veneer nailed to the front when it is completed.