Kitchen Cupboard is Finished, Now Back to Plane Making

It's been just a bit over a week since Julie and I discussed what we needed to make our kitchen storage more efficient and in that time I've designed and made the cupboard we decided would accomplish this task.

As it turns out this cupboard and my wife are exactly the height, about 63" tall.

The step back portion of the piece is a cupboard for glasses. It's near the refrigerator and that should be quite convenient.

The interior has been made a very contrasting colonial yellow color. Not only is this eye catching when you open the cupboard it also has the functional effect of illuminating the interior of the cupboard.

This is another piece in my exercise of designing pieces that can be made with simple construction methods, including the use of decorative nails as some of the primary fasteners. Note the corners of this piece are broken with the stopped chamfers that are a detail on all of the pieces in this exercise.

As typical I used Shaker knobs for the movable parts of the piece.

We have a television console that is made using similar construction methods and has a very similar finish. The finishing schedule is actually quite simple. I start by applying two coats of a solid exterior stain. In this case the color is Cape Cod red. I prefer solid exterior stain to milk paint. It's easier to work and stays in solution better than milk paint. When dry the end result is quite similar. I then sand and rub the red finish down with a maroon Scotchbrite pad. At this point you can do as much distressing as you like or none. I then actually stained the red color stain with a dark walnut wiping stain. This causes more of a color shift than you can imagine. This is subsequently sealed with a couple coats of flat or satin lacquer. One good coat of lacquer is actually enough. A heavy build top coat is not good for the overall look of this type piece.

On the television console I used black Acorn brand H hinges. They are flat black and so are the screws. I found some H hinges on Ebay and assumed they were just a smaller size of the Acorn hinges, and the price was reasonable.

There's an old adage that says, "you get what you pay for" and that held true for these hinges. They were not the Acorn brand hinges and were painted a terrible gloss black color as were the screws.

In order to use these hinges some changes had to be made. As you can see in the picture above I sanded a good bit of the paint off the hinges. Then I filed the edges and corners and distressed the surface just a bit using a punch and a hammer.  Julie chucked the screws in a drill chuck and sanded the paint off the heads while they were spinning.

I then placed the hinges and the screws in a gun bluing solution and the end result as you can see above is much better than the example of the gloss black hinge also show for comparison. When all was said and done I actually liked the modified hinges better than the Acorn hinges.

I'm finding furniture pieces more difficult to photograph as compared to planes. It also seems some colors are harder to shoot with actual color rendition. This red is one of those colors. Therefore I make apologies for the photo quality of the assembled piece.

We have a few other storage projects in mind but those will have to wait until I've completed some planes.

Ron

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