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Art Mulder
09-07-2009, 9:32 PM
As some of you know, I write the occasional article for Canadian Home Workshop magazine (http://www.canadianhomeworkshop.com/). That's fun, and brings in a bit of tool-buying change. But the downside is that you need to send in your project for photographing, which means you can't actually use it for a while! :rolleyes:

My wife wanted this new spice rack. Wanted it bad. Our kitchen, like all of them, I'm beginning to think, is too small and doesn't have enough storage space. So we wanted a spice rack to get the spice jars out of the cupboard.

I came up with this design, using a tambour door kit from Lee Valley. Seemed to work pretty good... but then I had to drop it off at the magazine for them to pose and photograph and all that fun stuff. Which meant we had to wait another month before we could actually use it.

Ah well, it's in happy use now, and the issue even hit my mailbox, so here are some photos and notes.

I find sketchup to be more and more useful. In particular, I used it to find a 'sample' kitchen online in the 3d warehouse (even looked nicer than my kitchen) and place the project right there to see how it looked.
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It looked good, so I got busy. It was a bit fiddly, working with the tambour. For one thing, you absolutely must apply finish before you assemble it. I don't think I could have applied finish to the tambour otherwise!
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It's about 20" wide, and fills the space between the counter and the upper cabinet. This is enough for two tall shelves, and one shorter shelf, to hold our spices. The reason for the shorter shelf is the space used by the tambour.
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Jim Rimmer
09-07-2009, 9:41 PM
Really nice, Art. Nice work and good use of space.

Matt Meiser
09-07-2009, 10:20 PM
Neat idea.

So how did you finish it? Disassemble the tambour? Or ??? I've got an appliance garage to finish and I can't figure out how I'm going to do it.

John Keeton
09-08-2009, 6:18 AM
Interesting, and like Matt, I am curious of the finishing routine. My only experience with tambour used a piece of cloth as the "binder" and the pieces were not milled to interlock. How was this one made?

Brent Smith
09-08-2009, 7:12 AM
Good looking piece Art. I'll be looking for the issue on the newstand.

Art Mulder
09-08-2009, 7:28 AM
Neat idea.

So how did you finish it? Disassemble the tambour? Or ??? I've got an appliance garage to finish and I can't figure out how I'm going to do it.

Matt + John,

This tambour was a kit, and is the kind with the cloth (heavy canvas, I think) backing on the wood strips.

I used several coats of Minwax wipe-on poly. As for the tambour, I just finished the front of it, obviously. Once finished, you need to flex each joint in the tambour, to make sure they flex... Oh I forget. The instructions with the kit tell you how many degrees you need to flex them.

I also used a good application of wax on the inside of the case where the tambour rides in the runners.

John Thompson
09-08-2009, 11:01 AM
I really like it and as your wife.. mine is getting very tired of opening a cupboard to attempt to find a particular spice and having to dig after several fall onto the below counter after getting nudged. So.. in a month of so you just solved this problem for her at our house. The back wall under that current spice cupboard is ideal for what you made there.

Nice job...