Cabinets are finished!

The cabinets are finished and ready to install! It's been a long time coming. I ended up with about 50 hours in the finishing work. Had about 40 in the sanding. So, a total of 90 hours of work. Since I figure buying unfinished cabinets saved about $1200, that makes my time worth about $13/hour. Not bad.

In the last post I mentioned adhering the end panels to the cabinet sides... That was a bigger chore than I had imagined!

After much reading on the internet and asking friends with construction experience, I found no clear answer as to what adhesive to use. I've heard of liquid nails, plain yellow carpenters glue, gorilla glue, contact cement, and even epoxy being used. Well, I have never been very impressed with liquid nails, so I crossed that one off the list. I did try yellow glue on one wall cabinet that had a panel on both sides and it achieved a great bond, but was a horrible mess to work with. Since I had over 50 square feet of panels to bond, gorilla glue was out simply on cost. So, that left contact cement. I did the rest with it.

I have never worked with contact cement before and man is it a pain. I coated both the panel surface and cabinet surface before adhering. Twice. Then you have one chance to lay them together right or you have to break the panel into tiny splinters to get it off. So I put them on, pushed down on the surface (every bit of it) and figured all was good. Wrong. The next day the edges of the panels were curling up; the cement stretching between like bubble gum on the sole of your shoe. Guess I should've clamped them up with ratchet straps or something....but the instructions on the can (all 5 quarts that I used) say "no clamping necessary". Riiiiiight.

So.....it's old school time. When fancy adhesive chemistry fails, use mechanical fasteners. I ended up tacking all the way around the edges of each panel with wire brads and putting filler over the heads before staining.

Anyway, once they were bonded (and fastened), I stained them and did my 3 coats of poly and they are pretty! I finished all the cabinet rails and stiles at the same time. Yesterday, we also painted the bottom surface of the wall cabinets. Makes for a more sanitary and cleanable surface than bare particle board. Gave them a coat of Kilz oil-based primer, then over the top with white semi-gloss. The white will help reflect light from the undercabinet lights I hope to put in at some point as well.

So, now the easy part is over and the hard part begins....the actual work in the house. First up is some wiring and plumbing. That always requires working int he crawlspace and/or attic. Yay.

Still going....

Well, I haven't succumbed to the urethane fumes...yet...

Since my last blog post I have been working on finishing the cabinet doors. They are done! It took a little trial and error to figure out the best finishing technique for what I have to work with, but I'm pretty happy with the result.

Observations so far:

• Minwax oil-base polyurethane is unusable out of the can if you want a smooth finish. It's way too thick. Even though its instructions say to not thin it, most accomplished woodworkers do. Add me to those ranks. I found that thinning it 25-33% with naptha gave me the best results. White mineral spirits work too, but take longer to dry. In a dusty Kansas farm shop, faster is better.
• Many woodworkers claim that poly should be double brushed. Many initially lay down poly against the grain, then shortly tip it off with the grain. This is a bad idea...at least with oak. Brushing across the open grain of oak puts bubbles in the finish. I got more bubbles with this method than a single brushing with the grain and not tipping off!
• Use a cheap disposable foam brush. I bought an expensive natural bristle varnish brush at Home Depot but it just plain and simple puts down too thick a coat. You can only dip it in the finish maybe a quarter inch, then brush maybe a foot of board per stroke. Cheap foam brushes lay a lighter coat but can hold more for longer strokes. Even on the pantry doors I was able to load up the brush and make a single stroke the full length of the door. Oh yeah, all cheap foam brushes aren't equal either. The wood handled ones from Walmart are actually pretty good. I had a bunch I got at Harbor Freight or somewhere that had a more open, less dense foam than the Walmart ones and they were more bubbly.
• Sanding between coats is really worth the effort! I've been using 3M "Sandblaster" 320 grit sponges (they're the yellow ones) between each coat and it works really well! I used to use 000 steel wool, but after using these sponges I won't be using wool anymore! After sanding, I blow the dust out of the grain with compressed air, then wipe the surface with a towel dampened in mineral spirits before recoating.
• Even thinned 25%, 3 coats is enough. On a table top I might put on more, but I like the balance of appearance and protection I'm getting with three. I think going for 5 or more like you hear some guys talk about would start making a dipped in plastic and much less natural look.
  
• Stir the can of finish frequently while brushing! The flattener (the stuff that makes mine semi-gloss rather than poly's natural high-gloss state) rapidly settles out of the thinned polyurethane. I just keep the handle from a used foam brush in the can and stir it a few strokes every few minutes while brushing to keep the finish sheen even.
  

Anyway, tomorrow I should finish up putting the end panels on the cabinet carcasses. (This is a chore to address in another post.) Then hopefully around the end of this week the cabinets will all be finished and it will be time to demo the kitchen.

Here are some pics of the current status in the shop:

Meet my pit: Brinkmann Smoke 'N Pit (Basic)

My Christmas vacation took me deep into the heart of eastern Texas, which it would seem is big time BBQ country. Every little tiny town as a BBQ joint and the air often smells of wood fire. I was appalled to see lakeside vendors selling seasoned split white oak as campfire wood! That's cooking wood man!

Unfortunately, I was unable to take the time to sample any of the local BBQ fare. Although I admit it was hard to pass up a place called Big Fatty's BBQ (don't ask where it is...after a 1600 mile round trip I really don't have any idea!) But it was a little easier to pass up the converted trailer house boasting "BBQ-Mexican-Catfish" in big yellow letters on a sign nearly as big as the building.

Anyway, since vacation had my remodeling project and BBQ temporarily on hold, I decided to post a review of my pit.

My pit is a 2005 model Brinkmann Smoke 'N Pit. It's the basic model from Walmart. Dimensionally, it is nearly identical to the current model (which is the Smoke 'N Pit Pitmaster Deluxe), but the air vent and smokestack are different.

For the price I think this is a great pit. It's not perfect, but isn't bad. It's much better than a vertical smoker; that's for sure! I have only found a few weaknesses:

1) the firebox door hinges warp in time and it doesn't close flat. Even with the vent closed, it's like having it half open because of all the air sucking around the door.

2) the firebox isn't deep enough. It can only burn for 2-3 hours before filling up with ash and starting to bury the airflow. It only has maybe 4 inches under the firebox grate...I think 8 should be a minimum.

3) It's hard to get the right temperature for smoking. It seems it is easy to get a 180-200 degree fire going, but it makes thick heavy sooty white smoke. So you put the air and fuel to it until the smoke goes blue and now it's 250-300 degrees. I think it is an airflow problem and possibly related to the size of the opening between the firebox and smoking chamber. I think it needs to either be smaller, or moved over with 6-12" of dead space between the firebox and smoke chamber.

4) The warming/holding rack is nearly useless if you're smoking large cuts of meat or poultry. With the rack installed, you can't close the lid on a 12# turkey. I work without the rack even installed.

One of the best features of this pit is that it can be used as a plain grill too. Rather than building a fire in the firebox, it has a charcoal pan that hangs in the bottom of the smoking chamber. It's adjustable for height (although, like the firebox, the smoking chamber should be deeper too). Just load in up with charcoal and wood chunks and you've got a grill.

Overall I'd give my pit 4 out of 5 stars. If it was $50 higher price I'd give it 3. Pretty good equipment for the price.

Cabinet progress

I'm still here. Somehow, among the delays and frustrations of harvest, I was able to slowly keep working on sanding the kitchen cabinets. Mercifully, harvest is over now. Harvest was to this season what shooting a wounded horse is to it.

On Wednesday, I got done with the sanding! It only took 38 hours to do it :P

The cabinet face frames and door frames were a mess. Some were sanded, but only to what looks to have been 60 grit. Others still bore the marks from a thickness planer. The door panels are oak faced plywood that appears to have been factory sanded to 100 grit.

So, I sanded all the frame members with 80 grit. Then I did everything with 120 grit. Then finished off with 220 grit. Much of the sanding of the door frames was done by hand. Just too many nooks and crannies for a power sander, but I am very thankful to have a good power sander for where it worked!

Since the sanding is done, I have gotten started on the rest of the finishing. The staining is going very fast. I have already stained all the drawer fronts and all but 5 of the doors.



I have also topcoated the drawer fronts with polyurethane. I decided to use aerosols for that since they are small, intricate, and well suited for spraying. They got 3 coats of semi-gloss.

I still have a can left and will use it on a couple of the small cabinet doors. Other than that I'm planning on brushing the poly on....probably 2 coats. Oh boy that might be a long ordeal; dunno if I could endure 3 coats. We'll see...

BBQ in the Bible?!

"Do not eat the meat raw or cooked in water, but roast it over the fire..." Exodus 12:9a (NIV)

And the cabinet color is....

Well, the stain color testing is over. We're going custom mix. I think I'll call it "Cinnamon Pecan".

There are 3 color samples on the trim piece in this photo. The one on the right is Red Chestnut (way too dark). The one in the middle is a mix 1:1 Red Chestnut:Golden Pecan (a little too red).

The one on the left is the one we are going with. It's a 2:3 mix of Red Chestnut:Golden Pecan.

So that means I have tons of stain. Can't get Red Chestnut in Colby, so I bought 4 quarts of it in Hays in case I needed it. Fortunately, I can get Golden Pecan here though.



This second picture shows the test piece up against an existing trim piece in our kitchen that Amber said she liked. It's one of the few things that can stay in the kitchen, so we matched it. The color I concocted is the bottom one...looks pretty close to the existing panel!

What have I gotten myself into!?

Wow, all the cabinets for the kitchen remodel look like a huge job!

Finishing the cabinets is the first step in the process. The cabinet faces and frames will all have to be sanded. Then stained. Then polyurethaned.

I originally thought I'd work all the cabinets together. Like sand them all, then stain them all, etc. But that is too much. There wouldn't be time to stain them all before the stain on the first one was dry. So, I'll just do a few at once I guess.

Anyway, first things first. Today I'm going to experiment with stain color on a piece of toekick. First try will be Minwax Red Chestnut with three topcoats of semi-gloss poly. On the cabinets I put in my office a couple years ago, I used Golden Pecan but had difficulty getting it dark enough on the veneered parts. So I'm trying a darker stain hoping I won't have to do a custom mix.

Will post pics when the stain samle is dry...