Building the Linen Cabinet

Things have been moving very slowly since my last post. I've put up some more wallboard in the main room, but since the room is so cluttered with basement-stuff, I can't get good pictures.

This past weekend, though, was fairly productive. The biggest thing was installation of the linen cabinet carcass. The linen cabinet is built much like a regular cabinet, but is three feet wide, one foot deep, and seven feet high. So it doesn't LOOK much like a kitchen cabinet.
The cabinet consists of a plywood box mounted on a low plywood base. A face frame will be attached to the front, and doors will be mounted to the face frame. Also, a trim panel will cover the one exposed side.

Here is the space where the cabinet is going. Note that I left a space in the flooring.


The base is made of 3 1/2" wide pieces of plywood, the same dimensions as the cabinet. If I wanted a toe kick, I would simply have made the base a few inches narrower. The base is leveled with shims, and attached to the wall.



Next, the cabinet goes in. First a note on the cabinet construction. The cabinet is a very simple affair: four sides and one middle shelf, assembled with biscuits. No dado or rabbet joints. Just straight cuts. After cutting the slots with the biscuit saw (plate joiner)the joints are test fitted, then glued up, assembled, and fastened together with screws. The screws eliminate the need for lots of big clamps. Quarter-inch plywood is glued and nailed to the back. Just cover the whole back, don't cut rabbets or anything. The theme here is to keep it simple. The simpler the construction, the less chance of screwing up!!



"Aren't the black drywall screws on the side of the cabinet butt-ugly?" you might ask. "And that plywood back will show, won't it?"
Well, yes that would be ugly. But they will be hidden. In this case, the right side is covered by that short wall. The left side (facing the camera) will be covered by a decorative panel that will extend back to cover the end of the wall behind, and be trimmed along with the molding around the shower.

The face frame will come out flush with the end of the wall on the right. It will extend up to the ceiling, hiding that gap at the top, and extend down to the floor, covering the gap between the base and the flooring.

The end panel and the doors will be constructed just like the doors I will build for the laundry room cabinets. They will be frame-and-panel doors, with very simple mission-style frames.
I'll be ordering these router bits soon to make the doors and the end panel:


STOP PRESS!
I didn't end up using those fancy router bits, but here is how it came out:

Laundry Room Progress

Last weekend we put in floors in the Laundry/Bath room!
Several weeks ago I installed the countertops:

The walls were primed quite a whiel ago, but the cement floor was still bare.

We used engineered bamboo flooring, which the salesman assured us would work well in the bath/laundry room. We'll see! Regardless, it was pretty easy to install. The biggest part of the flooring job was that I ended up doing all the PAINTING first! But that means we made a LOT of progress in one weekend: from primed but unpainted walls and cement floor, to finished walls and floor in 48 hours.



You can see we also painted (three different colors, not all visible in these photos).



Still to do is all the baseboard, the door, and build in linen closet. And finish the cabinets. And the vanity. And the toilet and plumbing hook ups.
But other than that, we're nearly done!

Back in Action

Well its good to be back.
For the last several months I have not done ANY work on the basement. Instead, I was running for School Committee.
Unfortunately, I did not win.

But that was DAYS ago, so now I am back at work in the basement. Next on the list (I won't call it a "schedule", because that implies specific time frames, and clearly I have NO idea what time frames are involved here) is the laundry room counters. In recent (well, previous, but not so recent) posts I wrote about making the cabinets for the laundry room. Today I bought the counter tops and prep'ed the walls to install them (the counters).
The main counter is a right-angel seven feet long on one side, and five feet long on the other. There is another two foot section in another corner. The challenge with this installation is that there is not a continuous run of cabinets on to which the counters will be installed. There is a base cabinet under the five foot section, but no cabinets under the longer section. In that space will be laundry sorting baskets on wheels which will roll out from under the counter. Additional carts on wheels will roll under the counter into the corners at each end of the counter. A picture would probably help here. I'll work on that!

Today's task was to nail 2x3's to the walls, and attach 1x3's to the tops of the 2x4a.

The counter will rest on top of the 1x3's, and be fastened to them with screws driven up through the wood into the counters.

Tomorrow I hope to start installing the counter tops.