The cabinet that was an inch too wide

[John TenEyck]

You may remember a post I made recently where I talked about making two cabinets for a built in nook and one of them was an inch too wide. Well, I managed to cut it down and put it back together successfully and finished the basic installation today.








Baltic birch with shop sawn walnut veneer. Adjustable shelves in the cubbies. Storage in the large cubby under the bench seat, and more underneath out of sight. Just a little paint touch up to do on the walls and a lid stay to install and it'll be really done.

John

[julian abram]

Very nice, the contrast is stunning. What is the interior finish? Maple veneer maybe? Walnut looks so uniform in color, how was it finished?

[Frederick Skelly]

Looks great!
How did you cut off the extra inch?

[Jim Becker]

Beautiful work and great recovery! I like that hidden storage idea...it keeps things reasonable depth on the visible front while not sacrificing usable space to the back. Nice!

[George Bokros]

Beautiful work as always John. Great design and wonderful recovery.

[John TenEyck]

Thanks for the kind words, all. If you look carefully you'll see that the right cubbies are not as wide (by an inch) as the others. I used a router to cut the face frame rails away from the right hand stile. Then I took the back off and sat the cabinet on my TS and cut an inch off the bottom. I cut the top stretchers by hand. Then I carefully removed the stubs of the rails and bottom from the side. I recut the pocket hole slots in the top stretchers, the biscuit slots for the bottom to side joint, and used a single dowel at each stile/rail joint, then glued/screwed it back together. It was about as "new" looking as possible and all I needed was a little finish with an artist's brush over the stile/rail joints.

The finish on the walnut was a sprayed coat of Transtint dark walnut, followed by a custom Chestnut color of BAC wiping stain by SW's (left over from another project). Then everything got a coat of Sealcoat shellac. The walnut next got a toner of Transtint brown mahogany dye in my first two coats of Enduro Clear Poly, followed by a straight coat. The Baltic birch just got clear Enduro Clear Poly over the Sealcoat. As you might imagine, I had to get creative with the finishing process. I finished as much of the walnut and birch pieces separately as possible before glue up, then masked off whatever needed to be in order to complete the finishing process. Not a process I care to repeat too often.

Julian the interior is Baltic birch plywood, no extra veneering on my part. Only the edges of the adjustable shelves are maple. The right side panel on the bench cabinet and the left side panel on the cubby are veneered with walnut on the outside faces. I posted about doing this several weeks ago. To minimize any chance of warping, I drum sanded off one birch ply on each of them and used epoxy to glue on the walnut veneer that replaced it. They stayed flat right out of the vacuum bag and gave me no trouble after, so this seems like a good approach when you want to have plywood panel with a different wood on one side.


John

[Jim Becker]

Most people will never notice that the right side cubbies are slightly narrower. I sure didn't until you called it out.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Great recovery John!

[Andrew Hughes]

Nice save it looks great.