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.