The After Shot

All of the remaining details were finished on Thursday.  The remaining door was mounted, the hardware was attached, the half walls on either side of the upper fireplace stonework were installed, as were the two upper horizontal trim pieces and the far right vertical column, and the fabric frames were installed in the upper door frames.

A close-up shot of the stonework, mantle, and the fabric paneled frames.

A shot of the lower portion of the entertainment center.

A parting shot of the mantle and the stonework.

Built-ins still cause me quite a bit of stress!  I have not yet installed enough of them for the process to have become second nature, so every detail is planned, second guessed, and double checked prior to the final day.

Here is a shot of three of the four boxes installed.  That is my brother, Colby, screwing the upper cabinet box onto the wall studs.

This project required dozens of tight fits and very little room for error, and thankfully, due to the Sketchup drawing, and careful planning, everything went in without a hitch.  Every hole drilled for the outlets, speaker wires, and TV wires lined up exactly as planned!  It was a very good feeling!

Another shot of Colby’s rear end as he attaches the final cabinet to the wall studs.

The entertainment center at the end of the first day of installation.  All four boxes are screwed to the wall studs, three of the four vertical trim pieces are up (the fourth one will be scribed at the shop and brought back), three of the four lower door panels are attached and adjusted (the fourth door is missing a hinge because I was shorted by my supplier), and the fabric paneled doors are awaiting the fabric panels (I picked up the fabric from the customers on the day of the install).

So, by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week the entire thing should be completed!

The desired look is seen below, and took a relatively small amount of time to re-work, which made me a very happy guy!  Especially since we were nearing the eleventh hour on the project as it was!

Here is the left tower sans door panels, but with the trim work clamped in place and two of the four shelves in the bottom cabinet.

Now we are getting somewhere!  Dry fitting the doors.

Just making sure everything swings open as it should.

Things were pretty straight forward. I needed 16 stiles (vertical pieces) at two different lengths and 16 rails (horizontal pieces) all the same length.

Here are all 32 pieces milled to 3″ wide and 3/4″ thick.

After milling them it was time to send them through the shaper. Initially I was going to show you a picture of all the parts milled and awaiting the glue-up process, but it was a super boring picture, so instead I will show you a picture of the profile and the shaper bit that was used. It is a three part bit, consisting of the “classical-style” cutter head, a bearing, and a straight cutter head.

Step 1: Install the bit into the shaper the same way it is seen in the picture. Run a test piece of wood through the shaper. Adjust the height until satisfied. Using a miter gauge, manually run one end of a rail through, remembering to place a sacrificial piece of wood behind the rail to prevent blowout. Repeat until each end has been profiled.

step 2: Remove the cutter head, set the bearing aside, flip over both the other cutter heads, sandwich the two together, leaving the profile cutter on the top, and re-install into the shaper. Manually run a test piece through and check the fit with the end of one of the rails. Once a snug fit is achieved, adjust the power feed rollers on the shaper, turn everything on, and send all 32 parts through.

After the stiles and rails are done, the panels are front and center. I already had four panels, each measuring roughly 2″ larger than necessary, milled, glued, and sanded smooth. It was time, now that the stiles and rails were profiled, to cut them to the correct width and height and profile them on the shaper as well.

P.S. The power feed that I mentioned previously is seen in this picture. It has three rubber wheels that run material along the fence, which allows the user to keep a safe distance from the cutter heads, and focus solely on feeding and removing stock from the shaper.

Below is the profile and cutter head used for the panels.

Here is a shot of the fabric paneled doors after the staining step. Just like the mantle, each door was sanded, distressed, sealed with one coat of lacquer, sanded, stained with a glaze, and sealed again.

We did run into one issue with the door panels though. It was about 93 degrees in the finishing room when we were wiping on the glaze, which meant that everything was drying in about half the time as normal. It was miserable trying to wipe off mostly dried glaze! We ended up thinning out the glaze with some mineral spirits, making it more like a traditional stain, in order to be able to stain and wipe the entire panel at once, without the glaze drying prematurely.

The result, after the last coat of lacquer, is what you see below. Absolutely beautiful Alder panels!

I milled up a trim piece for all the shelves, and glued and nailed them on with 23 gauge pin nails and clamped them for good measure.

While the shelves were drying I started sanding all of the box pieces using 220 grit sandpaper.  A light sand was all that was needed for most pieces.

Then it was time for the finishing!  As I mentioned in an earlier post, the finishing process I would be doing, a spray-on, no-wipe stain, would be a first for me.

I began by mixing up 16 parts xylene (solvent) to 4 parts N37 (brown color) to 1 part black.  I mixed up an entire gallon of that stuff, adjusted the flow rate and fan spread on the gun and sprayed away.

Xylene was used as the solvent, instead of mineral spirits, because the xylene dried much faster, which allowed me to spray on the stain with one gun, wait about a minute, and spray on a coat of pre-catalyzed lacquer with another gun right away.  It took a little more than three hours to pray on a coat of stain and a coat of lacquer to all the necessary surfaces.

The following day the first coat of lacquer was given a light sand and a second coat was added.

Observe all of the parts drying against the wall in the paint room.

After the finish had cured, which happened pretty fast given that the temperature in the finishing room was close to 85 degrees, it was time to build the boxes.

This project was the first time I had ever pre-finished all the parts prior to building the cabinet boxes but it won’t be the last.  It made life so much easier.  Sanding, staining, and finishing individual parts was so much easier than trying to sand, stain, and spray lacquer into a box!  Never again will I build first and finish second!  Well, maybe I shouldn’t say never.

below is a picture of the two base cabinets.  The backs are the glazed alder panels and all the other parts are the sprayed-on stained oak panels.  Some surfaces were not stained because they will be up against a wall and will not be seen.

Here is a picture of the upper right side cabinet with the flush mounted half-walls and middle vertical partition.

Construction on the two towers was next in line. Sorry for the lack of pictures. Refer to the previous paragraph for the reason why. Each tower was built in two parts, a lower cabinet box, and an upper box. Each one is a bit different from the other, forcing me to plan three times, measure twice, and cut once.

As you have seen from the previous posts I drew the entire project in Sketchup, each individual part was drawn to scale, and then brought together like a puzzle to form the finished product. This helped me so much in the construction phase, because every issue related to height and width was already resolved before I ever cut the first board.

This project is unique in two ways. Each box is going to be stained and clear coated prior to assembly. I have never done this before. It should actually work out much nicer because it is a ton easier to finish two dozen flat surfaces than it is to finish a 6′ tall, 4′ wide box. The finish is also a first for me. I usually spread on and wipe off stain, but in order to achieve the look the clients want, the stain on this project is going to be sprayed on only, no wiping necessary. This will also make my job easier, since half of the work of staining has been removed.

Anyway, back to the boxes. After cutting out all the shelves, sides, tops, and bases I laid each tower out, using the floor as a “wall”.

The tower below is the one on the left side. The base will have half-width adjustable shelves covered by cabinet doors, the middle will house a flat panel TV, and the top will have fabric-paneled cabinet doors. All pretty straight forward in the construction department.

The right hand side was a bit more complex. The look is very similar with cabinet doors at the base hiding full-width shelves, an open area in the center, and fabric-paneled doors on top. The main difference being the fact that the clients wanted the open area in the center to have walls flush with the edge of the trim, which meant I had to add small half-walls on each side that lined up with the inside edge of the trim work. Nothing to hard, but it did require a bit more planning and preparation.

After each tower was laid out, it was time to mill the trim work, cut it to length, lay it on the towers, and check spacings once again. Everything lined up perfectly! Not a huge surprise, but there are always issues that can be missed, even with extensive sketching and planning.

I glued the joints and nailed everything together with 16 gauge nails.  I used nails to connect everything, rather than skipping the nails and just using clamps, because the mantle is going to be distressed and have a glazed stain finish, so nailing everything together not only made this step much easier and go faster, but the nail holes also add to the distressed look.  Nothing like killing two birds with one stone…is that considered a politically incorrect statement?

With the entire mantle constructed, sanded, and distressed using an awl, chisel, and flat-head screwdriver, I sprayed on a coat of pre-catalyzed lacquer before I did anything else.

Before we go on I think a few clarifying descriptions are needed:

Glaze: Stain concentrate.  Fairly thick, like syrup.

Stain: Stain concentrate mixed with a solvent, usually mineral spirits.

Usually a piece is stained and then sealed with lacquer, but I am using a glaze rather than a stain on all of the Alder in this project, so I needed to spray on a coat of lacquer to seal up the pores in the wood in order to prevent to much absorption of the glaze.  By sealing the wood first, the glaze only slightly darkened the surface, yet made every dent and ding super dark, achieving the exact look that we wanted.

Observe the difference between the distressed marks and the solid surface.  Also notice how the edges are randomly sanded and knocked down, mimicking years of wear and abuse.

Once the glaze had a chance to dry I sprayed on two more protective coats of lacquer, and this mantle was ready for the fireplace.

Here is what the mantle looked like when I arrived…

…and here is what it looked like when I left!

More to come soon!

Here is a close up of the mantle…

…and another close up of the mantle removed from the hearth…with dimensions.

May 2008

I had a client call me up a couple of weeks ago wondering whether or not I could build them an entertainment center for their family room. I said yes. Built-ins are not my favorite projects, to many out of square walls, floors and ceilings to deal with, but the more I build and install the easier they get.

This one is actually going to be fairly complicated. Not only am I having to deal with the usual wavy and crooked walls, but I am also having to build the cabinet boxes around the fireplace and integrate them with the not-yet-completed stonework and with a mantle that I am building.

Below is the partially completed fireplace and the space where the entertainment center is going to fit.

Here is a SketchUp version of what the finished entertainment center is going to look like. All the tops, bottoms, and sides of the boxes will be cut from oak plywood and the backs will be cut from alder plywood. The shelves and divisions within each box will all be oak whereas the raised panel doors below and the fabric paneled doors above will be constructed from knotty alder. All the doors will be distressed and glazed and the entire unit will be stained.

The mantel between each unit will be constructed from knotty alder, will have two corbels, and just like the cabinet doors, will be distressed, glazed, and stained.