Well, it's been almost a year and a half since Nancy and I sold our Central New York farm and retired (allegedly...) to our place in northwest North Carolina. My, my how time flies.
We both cook and bake and at our farmhouse we were spoiled by our preferred combination of a gas cook top and double electric wall ovens. The NC house however was all electric when we bought it so it had an electric range so only one oven and we don't like electric stove tops. And we were using one of the large closets in a guest bedroom down the hall for storing things like her 6.5 quart stand mixer, the vacuum sealer and most of the bigger pots and bowls.
Now, one of the hazards of being a former finish and trim carpenter, stair builder and sometime furniture maker and having been a custom homebuilder is that I can't keep a straight face and tell her "I don't know how to do that." So when one of us thinks up a project the "Honey-do list" gets longer and my "free time" gets shorter.
Our main level floor has 24" tall clear span trusses under it and combined with the 8' basement ceiling height that meant that there is over 18' of headroom at the foot of the nearly 4' wide basement stairwell. One side of of the stairwell faced a clear wall in the kitchen and the other side faces the garage. Sooo... A while back Lance opens his big mouth and says something like "Gee Honey. There's enough room behind that kitchen wall for a big double wall oven....and a big and very deep pantry cabinet." The rest, as they say, is history. And the Honey-Do list got longer.
A few weeks later we're walking through Lowes and they are pulling a $2200 dollar double wall oven out of a display. It had already been marked down to $1950. After a little dickering with the store manager, more discounts because the manual and a temperature probe are missing and after my 10% military discount we leave with the oven for $880 including the tax.
When we bought our home the only propane appliance was a fireplace. But since we like gas stoves and dryers I had a bigger propane tank installed, pulled out the pipe threader and pipe stand and got to work. I piped gas to the stove, tossed the electric range and we put in a good gas range with a true convection oven. And I piped gas to the laundry for a new stacking full sized washer and gas dryer.
Now I think that maybe I can get back to the oven and and maybe someday the pantry cabinet....
Not wanting to work on a ladder in the stairwell I built a temporary work platform in the tall end of the stairwell, pulled the drywall off on the stair side of the kitchen wall, carefully cut the studs while leaving the kitchen side drywall (to keep the mess out of the kitchen), rerouted a few electrical wires, framed for the oven and and got ready to run a new 50 amp circuit to the new oven location.
But since you can't just do a project without doing another project first I have an electrical issue to deal with. Umm, make that two issues.
I'll need my shop tools and I had to run 240 volt circuit in the basement since I hadn't even reassembled my big table saw after the move. But wait! There's more! The house is only 12 years old but the builder went with cheap electrical panel. It only has 30 breaker spaces and as the house was all electric the panel is full.
So I added a new sub-panel in the basement. Now I can wire up for the saw. And the planer. And the 6.5 horsepower air compressor I brought from the farm. And the...
Back when I opened up the walls in the stairwell I saw that the only wall receptacles in the garage were tapped off the living room plug circuit. By now I'm having daydreams of going back in time a "dope slapping" the builder (and maybe the original homeowner). Like I said you can't just do something without doing something else first and I still need a 50 amp circuit for the new ovens. So now I run a new 100 amp sub-panel for the garage. And I added a fused disconnect and 60 amp receptacle for my welder. And re-wire the garage receptacles while can get to some of them from the stair side.
And I pause to add two new convenience receptacle circuits I had promised Nancy a while ago for the kitchen island. You know, I'm seeing a pattern here with me and my big mouth.
So after 3-4 weeks I finally cut the drywall on the kitchen side, slide the oven in and made the electrical connections (from the new garage panel). After a quick test run to check the calibration of the temperature settings in the ovens she's baking cookies before I have my tools cleaned and put away.
After determining the cabinet dimensions I framed for it and I used the same technique of leaving the kitchen side drywall in place to keep the mess out of the house proper. Then I got to work on turning part of the basement into a workshop and finishing area.
Finally, I'm now on to the actual pantry cabinet. I have almost 4' of depth behind the wall. The goals for the cabinet are to make it as large as possible, not hit the chairs at the island with a drawer, to have doors that open as far out of the way as possible so it's easy to reach into the back of the drawers and to build the cabinet so we never have to worry about how much weight is in it.
But I have to be sure to keep enough head room over the basement stairs. I figure that I can fit in a 30" wide cabinet but that I'll have to raise the bottom of it a few inches above the bottom of the ovens. By the time the ovens and cabinet go in I'm almost 7' into the stairwell. I'm 6'4" and our sons run up to 6'6" and I wanted to keep more room over the stairs than the building code requires.
The cabinet interior is 30" wide, 45" deep and 48-1/2" tall. The sides, top and bottom of the cabinet are 3/4" pre-finished maple plywood. The drawers are 28-3/8" wide and 44" deep, made of maple sides and 1/2" birch plywood bottoms and I dovetailed the corners. There's a space under the bottom drawer for full size sheet pans, cooling racks, cutting boards and commercial style 18" rolls of aluminum foil and plastic wrap. The doors will be solid raised panel red oak and the cabinet face frame is the same oak.
Since we'll be putting a lot of weight in the drawers and the drawers will be 44" deep I order up some 36" full extension 500 pound capacity drawer slides as they are the longest I can use that still clear the chairs by an inch or two. These things are beasts. They're over 20 pounds a set. I lay out the drawer dimensions and dovetails so the drawer bottom groove is hidden and the screws holding the drawer sides to the slides are under the drawer bottoms. That way the weight is being supported on the slides and not suspended on the bit of drawer side under the drawer bottom.
I need to give a big shout out to Guy Schneider at Pilot Cabinet Works in Siloam, NC. Guy and his crew made the doors for me. And he provided all the wood and plywood, ordered spray stain and pre-catalized lacquer for me and had the 170 degree opening hinges I needed. He went above and beyond the kind of customer service most places would have provided. Thanks, Guy!
With all the interruptions it took over two months to get the cabinet built, finished and installed. I've never sprayed stain or used a pre-catalized lacquer so I did a fair bit of testing on scrap to settle on gun settings and technique along the way.
The doors and face frame got a good coat of stain that was rubbed out. I like this spray stain a LOT. Then, after cutting the dovetails and drawer bottom grooves, I masked the drawer sides where the dovetails would be glued and shot all the parts with 2-4 coats of lacquer. High wear parts like the doors and drawer fronts got more coats, the underside of drawer bottoms etc got less coats. I glued up the drawers and shot lacquer at the little spots that had been previously masked.
Because of the sheer size and weight of the cabinet I glued up the actual cabinet carcass up in the family room a few feet from its new home and then slid it over to the opening on a blanket so I didn't scratch the oak floors.
With the 3/4" sides, killer drawer slides etc the cabinet was pretty darn heavy so after cutting the kitchen side of the drywall out a friend helped me slide the cabinet in. The cabinet got screwed in and I installed the drawers. These drawer slides are really made for the pull out under-floor storage trays on high end RVs and they don't disassemble for screwing them to the drawer sides. I cut spacing blocks and used clamps to hold them onto the drawers so I could install the drawers.
I finally hung the doors today so enough of this rambling and on to the pics. I don't know how many I can attach at once so I'll post them in a couple of posts.
Here's the new 30" ovens and pantry cabinet.
The oven interiors.
The pantry cabinet with the doors open. Note how far they fold back to the wall. So far it looks pretty normal. You can see the short edge of a 20" by 30" cherry cutting board on the bottom of the cabinet along with some full sized sheet pans.
And with the drawer pulled out. That's 34" of drawer pulled out into the kitchen.
We both cook and bake and at our farmhouse we were spoiled by our preferred combination of a gas cook top and double electric wall ovens. The NC house however was all electric when we bought it so it had an electric range so only one oven and we don't like electric stove tops. And we were using one of the large closets in a guest bedroom down the hall for storing things like her 6.5 quart stand mixer, the vacuum sealer and most of the bigger pots and bowls.
Now, one of the hazards of being a former finish and trim carpenter, stair builder and sometime furniture maker and having been a custom homebuilder is that I can't keep a straight face and tell her "I don't know how to do that." So when one of us thinks up a project the "Honey-do list" gets longer and my "free time" gets shorter.
Our main level floor has 24" tall clear span trusses under it and combined with the 8' basement ceiling height that meant that there is over 18' of headroom at the foot of the nearly 4' wide basement stairwell. One side of of the stairwell faced a clear wall in the kitchen and the other side faces the garage. Sooo... A while back Lance opens his big mouth and says something like "Gee Honey. There's enough room behind that kitchen wall for a big double wall oven....and a big and very deep pantry cabinet." The rest, as they say, is history. And the Honey-Do list got longer.
A few weeks later we're walking through Lowes and they are pulling a $2200 dollar double wall oven out of a display. It had already been marked down to $1950. After a little dickering with the store manager, more discounts because the manual and a temperature probe are missing and after my 10% military discount we leave with the oven for $880 including the tax.
When we bought our home the only propane appliance was a fireplace. But since we like gas stoves and dryers I had a bigger propane tank installed, pulled out the pipe threader and pipe stand and got to work. I piped gas to the stove, tossed the electric range and we put in a good gas range with a true convection oven. And I piped gas to the laundry for a new stacking full sized washer and gas dryer.
Now I think that maybe I can get back to the oven and and maybe someday the pantry cabinet....
Not wanting to work on a ladder in the stairwell I built a temporary work platform in the tall end of the stairwell, pulled the drywall off on the stair side of the kitchen wall, carefully cut the studs while leaving the kitchen side drywall (to keep the mess out of the kitchen), rerouted a few electrical wires, framed for the oven and and got ready to run a new 50 amp circuit to the new oven location.
But since you can't just do a project without doing another project first I have an electrical issue to deal with. Umm, make that two issues.
I'll need my shop tools and I had to run 240 volt circuit in the basement since I hadn't even reassembled my big table saw after the move. But wait! There's more! The house is only 12 years old but the builder went with cheap electrical panel. It only has 30 breaker spaces and as the house was all electric the panel is full.
So I added a new sub-panel in the basement. Now I can wire up for the saw. And the planer. And the 6.5 horsepower air compressor I brought from the farm. And the...
Back when I opened up the walls in the stairwell I saw that the only wall receptacles in the garage were tapped off the living room plug circuit. By now I'm having daydreams of going back in time a "dope slapping" the builder (and maybe the original homeowner). Like I said you can't just do something without doing something else first and I still need a 50 amp circuit for the new ovens. So now I run a new 100 amp sub-panel for the garage. And I added a fused disconnect and 60 amp receptacle for my welder. And re-wire the garage receptacles while can get to some of them from the stair side.
And I pause to add two new convenience receptacle circuits I had promised Nancy a while ago for the kitchen island. You know, I'm seeing a pattern here with me and my big mouth.
So after 3-4 weeks I finally cut the drywall on the kitchen side, slide the oven in and made the electrical connections (from the new garage panel). After a quick test run to check the calibration of the temperature settings in the ovens she's baking cookies before I have my tools cleaned and put away.
After determining the cabinet dimensions I framed for it and I used the same technique of leaving the kitchen side drywall in place to keep the mess out of the house proper. Then I got to work on turning part of the basement into a workshop and finishing area.
Finally, I'm now on to the actual pantry cabinet. I have almost 4' of depth behind the wall. The goals for the cabinet are to make it as large as possible, not hit the chairs at the island with a drawer, to have doors that open as far out of the way as possible so it's easy to reach into the back of the drawers and to build the cabinet so we never have to worry about how much weight is in it.
But I have to be sure to keep enough head room over the basement stairs. I figure that I can fit in a 30" wide cabinet but that I'll have to raise the bottom of it a few inches above the bottom of the ovens. By the time the ovens and cabinet go in I'm almost 7' into the stairwell. I'm 6'4" and our sons run up to 6'6" and I wanted to keep more room over the stairs than the building code requires.
The cabinet interior is 30" wide, 45" deep and 48-1/2" tall. The sides, top and bottom of the cabinet are 3/4" pre-finished maple plywood. The drawers are 28-3/8" wide and 44" deep, made of maple sides and 1/2" birch plywood bottoms and I dovetailed the corners. There's a space under the bottom drawer for full size sheet pans, cooling racks, cutting boards and commercial style 18" rolls of aluminum foil and plastic wrap. The doors will be solid raised panel red oak and the cabinet face frame is the same oak.
Since we'll be putting a lot of weight in the drawers and the drawers will be 44" deep I order up some 36" full extension 500 pound capacity drawer slides as they are the longest I can use that still clear the chairs by an inch or two. These things are beasts. They're over 20 pounds a set. I lay out the drawer dimensions and dovetails so the drawer bottom groove is hidden and the screws holding the drawer sides to the slides are under the drawer bottoms. That way the weight is being supported on the slides and not suspended on the bit of drawer side under the drawer bottom.
I need to give a big shout out to Guy Schneider at Pilot Cabinet Works in Siloam, NC. Guy and his crew made the doors for me. And he provided all the wood and plywood, ordered spray stain and pre-catalized lacquer for me and had the 170 degree opening hinges I needed. He went above and beyond the kind of customer service most places would have provided. Thanks, Guy!
With all the interruptions it took over two months to get the cabinet built, finished and installed. I've never sprayed stain or used a pre-catalized lacquer so I did a fair bit of testing on scrap to settle on gun settings and technique along the way.
The doors and face frame got a good coat of stain that was rubbed out. I like this spray stain a LOT. Then, after cutting the dovetails and drawer bottom grooves, I masked the drawer sides where the dovetails would be glued and shot all the parts with 2-4 coats of lacquer. High wear parts like the doors and drawer fronts got more coats, the underside of drawer bottoms etc got less coats. I glued up the drawers and shot lacquer at the little spots that had been previously masked.
Because of the sheer size and weight of the cabinet I glued up the actual cabinet carcass up in the family room a few feet from its new home and then slid it over to the opening on a blanket so I didn't scratch the oak floors.
With the 3/4" sides, killer drawer slides etc the cabinet was pretty darn heavy so after cutting the kitchen side of the drywall out a friend helped me slide the cabinet in. The cabinet got screwed in and I installed the drawers. These drawer slides are really made for the pull out under-floor storage trays on high end RVs and they don't disassemble for screwing them to the drawer sides. I cut spacing blocks and used clamps to hold them onto the drawers so I could install the drawers.
I finally hung the doors today so enough of this rambling and on to the pics. I don't know how many I can attach at once so I'll post them in a couple of posts.
Here's the new 30" ovens and pantry cabinet.
The oven interiors.
The pantry cabinet with the doors open. Note how far they fold back to the wall. So far it looks pretty normal. You can see the short edge of a 20" by 30" cherry cutting board on the bottom of the cabinet along with some full sized sheet pans.
And with the drawer pulled out. That's 34" of drawer pulled out into the kitchen.
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