Built-in Alcove Cabinets

[moonjam]

Thanks TIODS! The fixings will all be hidden by the face frames/walls so glue and screws it is!

[shaneymack]

I would use screws, especially if it is not visible. As for the back panels, I normally like measuring the most parts I can directly off my project. You can adjust for slight errors along the way by doing this. So I would build and then measure for the panels. Sent from my XP7700 using Tapatalk

[moonjam]

Thanks!

Quick, potentially stupid, question... I'm planning on fitting a shelf inside each cabinet and I think I would be a fool not to make these adjustable. My question is, should I drill the holes for the shelf pegs before or after I assemble and square the cabinets? My instincts say that I should do it after, so I know it will line up, but my lack of experience also makes me panic that there could be a problem I'm not considering.

I'm sorry to use this post as a general cry for assistance and help but I figured it's better than cluttering up other sections of the forum with my lack of knowledge.

Thanks in advance!

 

Edited August 4, 2015 by moonjam
I cannot type

[TerryMcK]

Great idea to repurpose the old saw as an outfeed table. As you are putting the sub woofer inside the cabinet how is the sound going to get out? Are you just going to simply open the door?

[moonjam]

Great idea to repurpose the old saw as an outfeed table. As you are putting the sub woofer inside the cabinet how is the sound going to get out? Are you just going to simply open the door?

I'm currently torn on this due to the power arrangement. I'm getting an electrician round to quote on adding a dedicated socket on the back wall of the alcove. If it's not too pricey or time consuming then I'll go ahead with my plan to put the sub woofer in the cabinet, cut a hole in the back panel for the plug socket and hope that this and 2mm gap around the doors will be enough to let the sound travel. If its not, then I'll try drilling some holes in the base of the unit as well. If that doesn't work then I'll probably just cry, admit defeat and try to find another place we can hide the speaker

[moonjam]

Ok! Some progress, not much, but some.

First up, I glued up both the boxes and everything went pretty well.





Very happy with how the rebating/rabbeting came out.

At this point, I tested that the cabinet carcasses and bases actually fit into the alcoves and they did! But before I level the bases I thought it best to get cracking with the shelves above them.

Battens





I've made alcove shelving in an 1930's building before so I'm pretty familiar with the whole process and, unfortunately, these were no different to the others. Lots of crumbling mortar and re-positioning holes for a tight fit into the brickwork. It ended up taking a whole day to get the all fixed to the walls. Also, I decided to drop the fourth top shelf from each alcove, not because I couldn't be bothered (there was definitely some of that!) but the resulting shelf would have been too close to the ceiling to be aesthetically pleasing and/or useful.

You'll notice that there's a shelf in the left alcove already, I did this last night. Whenever I've built alcove shelving, the one thing I've never gotten right is a good neat fit where the wood meets the wall, so I decided I should attempt to scribe these for the best results.

Here is my high-tech scribing tool



And here it is in action



After some trial and error with slightly thicker material (hardboard), which I found too 'fluffy' to hold a decent edge, I ended up using some decent cardboard. I used 2 separate pieces for the left and right sides, then overlapped them and held the together with some tape. Again, very high-tech.





I cut some test pieces first to make sure that the template I'd made actually worked and to figure out the best way of cutting the edge. In the end, I used my jigsaw with a fine tooth blade. With some patience, I was actually able to get >1mm away from the pencil line and just had to sand the edges a little to get the shelf to drop in.



Not perfect but much, much better than my previous efforts. I also cut the edges with a 5 degree tilt to the blade which made sanding the final fit much easier.



I am aware that when I paint these it will thicken up the surface and I might struggle to get them to fit back in, so I might need to take a little more off before I do that.

I'm currently waiting for my tulipwood/poplar to turn up, which it should do in the next few days. From that I'm going to make the face frames, shaker style doors and add a lip to the front of the shelves. 

I still don't know what I'm going to do for the top of the cabinets, either laminated furniture board or by some more birch ply and edge it. If I go the latter route it should leave me with enough material to make the shelves for inside the cabinets, but I've never edged plywood before so it's somewhat daunting!

Finally, I have a couple of questions if anyone can help? Some of them are almost definitely very, very stupid, so please humour me!

How would you attach the hardwood lip to the shelf fronts? I'm thinking I could glue and nail them? The shelves and fronts will be painted, so I'm not overly worried about recessing/filling nail holes but I wanted to get someone else's thoughts.

I'm planning on joining the face frames together with pocket screws but it has struck me that I have absolutely no plan on how I'm going to attach them to the plywood boxes. I could use pocket screws for this too I suppose but this feels like this could potentially cause more problems than it would solve. 

Edited August 19, 2015 by moonjam

[wtnhighlander]

Looking good, Moonjam! Built-ins are always a challenge to fit, but you're managing quite nicely.

[moonjam]

Small update. The poplar for the face frames, shelf fronts and doors finally turned up so I've made a tiny bit more progress.

I sanded, primed, sanded, primed and sanded all of the shelves as well as some 4mm ply for the underneath of the 'box', which I then attached with glue and panel pins.



Couple of annoying things. I wasn't paying attention at the timber yard (again) and the grain of the 4mm sheets ran long instead of short like the other 6mm & 18mm panels I've bought. In hindsight, this is obviously a sensible structural requirement as short grain on a sheet that thin would bend like crazy. Anyway, the long and short of it (oh!) is that, once again, the grain was going the wrong way for the cutting guide I prepared. For these shelves, I've had to add more struts on the underneath of the shelves to nail the thin material to but I'm not going to get away with that on the longer shelves in the other alcove, so I'll have to buy some more material and cut it correctly.

The other annoying thing is that I had to hammer about 20 panel pins by hand upside down and this is not as easy as I'd hoped. It was very difficult not to mark the walls, so I ended up wrapping the hammer in cloth and a thick polythene bag which helped a lot. I have now invested in a brad nailer, which should make the rest of the nailing much more straightforward.

After that, it was a case of cutting, sanding, priming, sanding...etc. the poplar strips for the front. I glued this to the shelf and then held it in place with edge clamps.



It's important to me that these shelves have the best finish I can muster with my meagre skills, so the first one I cut 1.5mm over sized with the intention of sanding it flush. I don't have an electric sander, nor a plane, unfortunately and it turns out that removing 1.5mm of stock by hand sanding alone takes a LOT longer than I anticipated. 



To help secure the fronts I drilled and nailed them to the ply shelf, sinking the nail and filling the hole.



By the way - I am very aware that the primer has been stripped off during these steps, I applied two more coats once everything was how I wanted it.

Once the primer was dry I did little test fit with a couple of books to see how they looked. 



If anything, they're a little too deep but I'm happy with the visual thickness of them and I'd rather have them too deep than too narrow!

While waiting for the primer to dry I thought I'd have a crack at drilling the holes for the adjustable shelves. I saw a video online with a very straightforward jig that consisted of two holes, an edge and a piece of dowel. 









It worked wonderfully, although I will re-drill the holes for the next cabinet as, understandably, the holes have gotten slightly larger as I've used it and I think this will cause me some headaches if I continue to use them.

I realise this is all a lot more DIY rather than fine woodworking but it's still a lot of fun!

Edited September 2, 2015 by moonjam

[..Kev]

Making progress!  Looks like it's time for a couple new tools!  Brad nailer and sander come to mind.  Shelf looks good.

[RichardA]

Thank you!

Oh trust me, there have been many points where I've nearly just downed tools and drowned my sorrows but I haven't quite been tipped over the edge (yet)!

Ok, after writing all that I remembered that I had some questions!

I'm planning on gluing and screwing the rabbet joints, is this sensible? Would I be better off gluing & nailing? Or would just glue be enough?

I'm going to pin a thin panel of plywood to the back of each box which I know should help square things up. I haven't bought this material yet, should get and cut this before I try assembling the boxes?

Thanks in advance for any help or input

I'd have all your parts completely at hand before any glue up, and always do a dry fit prior to glue, that way you can detect any errors before they become unrepairable!  Use screws if they'll not be seen,  and pre drill your holes to avoid any splits!

[moonjam]

Thanks Richard,

I've actually assembled the cabinets now but did exactly what you said, so that's a relief!

[moonjam]

Thanks Richard,

I've actually assembled the cabinets now but did exactly what you said, so that's a relief!

EDIT - I am still alive!

I work for myself and have had a couple of mad projects on the last couple of months that have given me very little time to work on the cabinets. I finished the shelves a while ago but I also got a new phone, so the photos for the final stages are sat on my old one for now.

Anyway, here is some progress!

Cutting the scribed portions of the face frame(s) with a jig saw.

Oh, and after torturing myself nailing the bottoms of the shelves by hand, I decided to invest in a brad nailer and compressor for the rest of the nailing in the project. It cut 2 hours of labour to about 15 minutes. Since I have it, and since everything is going to be painted, I decided to glue and nail section of the face frame where it wraps round the side.

For the rest of the faceframe I used pocket holes. A first for me, but after plenty of practise pieces, it all went smoothly

And here's a test fitting of the face frames. 

The cabinet boxes have their backs on (6mm ply), have been primed, sanded...etc. and screwed to the bases, which have also been secure to the floor with angle brackets.

(Labrador licking nose for scale)

Here you can also see the finished shelves, now loaded with lots of heavy books.

As well as being busy, I've also been scratching my head for the next major step in the cabinets build, namely the doors. It was originally my plan to use the table saw to cut the tongue and grooves for the door but after some consultation with TerryMcK and a frankly terrifying test run on some scrap, I decided never to take the safety gear off my saw ever again. This meant investing in a router/table so after saving some cash and talking myself into it, I finally got this:

I know that everyone on earth (well, the interent and books) advises that it's better to build your own table but I decided that the last thing I needed right now was another project, not to mention any problems with the table would be my own doing and my lack of experience would make this a huge headache. Anyway I got this up and running in a couple of hours plus I already had the featherboards and mitre gauge from my table saw, so it was a no brainer.

I opted to get a dedicated tongue and groove set of cutters to do the work, however I misjudged how much tolerance the 6mm plywood would need to fit in the groove of the doors (the cutters made a 6.35mm groove), so I ended up needing to make a couple of passes at different heights for the groove and then taking the tongue cutter apart and adding a couple of washers to find the perfect fit. It took a lot of trial and error but I was really happy with the results.

 

I know a lot of people advise cutting the grooves first, but since I knew I had to make way more passes to obtain the grooves, I decided to cut the tongues first and work off them as the reference point.

I really wish I'd had this thing when I did the rebates/rabbets for the boxes. Ah well! Next time

I cut the panels and did a test fit, there were a couple of problem areas, mainly where I'd been too hesitant pushing the wood through for the tongues and the cutter hadn't passed all the way through the stock and left a small ramp, but some delicate chiselling pared these flat. You can probably see in this picture where these problem areas are.

I decided against all advice to size and cut the doors to the exact final dimensions I need them (with a 2mm gap around each edge). I'm sure this will come back to bite me in the arse but for now I'm happy. This could of course simply mean ignorance is bliss!

I sanded/primed/sanded/primed the panels and glued & clamped the first door last night

I can only do one at a time because the only clamps I have are the enormous ones I bought for the box assembly and I literally don't have room for more than one! I did toy with the idea of leaving one in the house to dry but between the dog and our 3 yr old daughter I just know something bad would happen to them.

I took the door out of the clamps this morning and I'm really happy with it. There's a tiny gap between some of the joints but I can totally live with that. Hopefully when they're sanded and painted it won't be noticeable.

Anyway, expect more thrilling updates soon!

Edited November 2, 2015 by moonjam

[shaneymack]

Good to see you are alive and made progress! It looks great! You are doing really nice work for being so new at this.

[Bart]

Great journal Moonjam, hilarious! It reminds me very much of my first time with a router. Bought the biggest baddest Bosch there was, started it up enthusiastically, it bounced off my work piece, hit the floor and routed a bit of my flipflop off. I put it in a cupboard and didn't touch it for years. I'm still a little scared of it.

Excellent job otherwise!

[moonjam]

Bought the biggest baddest Bosch there was, started it up enthusiastically, it bounced off my work piece, hit the floor and routed a bit of my flipflop off. I put it in a cupboard and didn't touch it for years. I'm still a little scared of it.

 

This has made my day!

[moonjam]

Update!

First set of doors made, so time to cut the mortices for the hinges. I don't really have a good clamping solution for holding pieces this large so this was the best thing I could cobble together.
 

I rigged up a bespoke lighting solution.

 

Sharpening

Scoring the hinge mortices

Chiselling

Chopping

Mortice! 

After doing a couple of test pieces I decided to cut the mortices the full width of the door as the >2mm edge was just to fragile for my inexperienced chiselling and I was too worried about it splintering off and damaging the surface.

I finally bought a random orbital sander! After sanding all the shelves and pieces by hand it was an absolute revelation. I've never used one before, and frankly it's so quick it felt like cheating. It took me about 30 seconds to get the doors to a beautifully smooth finish. *joyful sobbing*

 

Making the doors for the other cabinet. Pretty much the same process EXCEPT the first set of doors I made exactly to size - i.e. with the 2mm gap I wanted between the face frame taken into account. It was only while their glue was drying I started to read/see people advising against this approach. Once I tried to hang them, I understood why. Despite my best efforts there was a great deal of corrections I needed to do and it took waaaay longer than I anticipated. For these doors I sized them to fit snugly in the face frame, then took the 2mm off each edge on the table saw with my panel cutting sled. 

Much more straight forward (no pun intended). I'm just using the hinges to visualize the gap here as the leaves are perfectly 2mm.

I was pretty happy with this!

[moonjam]

Sanding and priming the doors. I also cut a 5 degree bevel on the opening edge of the doors to stop the catching. Have I mentioned how incredible power sanders are? I wish I could go back in time and slap myself for not buying one.

Ok, time to install the face frames. As everything is going to be painted I glued and tacked them on with some brads.

Primed, sanded and waiting for some doors.

Hinges attached. This was by far the fiddliest part of the whole project. I used a self centring bit to make sure that everything was as precise as I could get it but I still ran into a lot of problems. Despite paying the hinges being reasonably expensive, I discovered (way too late) that some of them had shallower countersinks than the others. This meant that the screws sat proud of the plate and the doors wouldn't close. So in the end I had to take them all off and re-bore them with my cordless drill - not as easy as it sounds!

You can see the difference here. The centre holes are the original depth and the ones either side have been re-drilled. I also switched to steel screws as the brass ones that came with the hinges were 50% fudge.

I also discovered that despite my best efforts and constant checking and re-checking, one of the doors still wasn't square. So I took a few extra mm off with the sander. I thought I was being clever painting the doors before hanging them but I ended up making adjustments to all of them in the end, so had to do a fair bit of repainting.

Doors attached! Hanging these on my own was insanely difficult. Just transferring the hinge positions to the face frame was an enormous headache. I had to do a lot of micro adjustments but got there in the end!

I decided to hang the next set of doors before taking them off and painting them for the reasons listed above. They went on much better although trying to hold them in place was even harder as they are slightly bigger.

I f**ked up the placement on one of the hinges. It was out by 1mm but the difference was enough to screw up the alignment of the whole door, so I drilled out the hole and plugged it with a dowel. Fortunately it worked!

I put some metal sleeves in the peg holes to make it look a little neater. I regret not thinking more about the hole placement (the set at the top and bottom serve no useful purpose) but there's enough room to house three tiers of dvds/blu-rays/games and you can't see them when they're full, so I'm going to let myself off this one

Shelf test - they are flat! *more joyful sobbing noises*

Mounting a piece of wood for the door catches. I took reference from Jon Peter's video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOCDdAkGMGw.

Catch plate attached. 

Magnetic catches installed!

Now for the tops...

 

 

[moonjam]

After some deliberation I decided to buy some furniture board panels and use these for the top. I could have made them out of plywood and it would have been cheaper but the extra work needed to edge the plywood was enough to put me off at this stage. I also looked into laminated some boards together myself but I don't have the space, clamps, machinery or experience to do this to a level that I'd be happy with.

I scribed these using the same method as the shelves. It looks pretty primitive but it worked like a charm!

I ended up doing most of these cuts by hand as I was working pretty late into the evening and I didn't want our neighbours to come round with pitchforks to murder the idiot running a jigsaw at 10pm.

Fun fact! I didn't position the template correctly on the piece and the front stuck out 1cm too far. I could have taken that 1cm off the front but I didn't want to screw up the nice straight edge, so ended up manually cutting it off with a coping saw. FUN!

Not bad!

Sanding and priming the tops

Jumping back to the doors...

Handles attached!

Top primed and attached. I screwed it to the top of the cabinet box from the inside.

Other alcove. And a toy frog

You can probably see that the right hand door isn't quite right. The bottom is poking out by about 1mm more than it should. I could correct this (and I still might) but for now I just wanted to get these finished!

I'm getting a carpet fitter round to fix the carpet back down in front of them. Once I see how they look I'll decide if I'm going to add the skirting/baseboard to the bottom of them. Other than that, the unpainted interior shelves and some caulking around the edges they are done!

 

Thanks for all of the help I got from everyone here with the project. It feels really good to have made these myself and to have learned a LOT along the way. 

Fingers crossed they don't fall apart!

[wtnhighlander]

Moonjam, you did a very fine job with this. Your work should be a good example to those who may come here, read about all the incredible shop equipment some of us have, and get discouraged. All it really takes is some knowledge and determination. Nice tools just make it faster. And I agree 100% about the ROS!

[..Kev]

Nice job!  Looks sharp!

[shaneymack]

Looks amazing, you did a fantastic job!

[Eric.]

 Fantastic job, man.  For a beginner you knocked it out of the park.  Built-ins can be tricky for crusty old pros.  Well done.

 

 

I'm currently waiting for my tulipwood/poplar to turn up, which it should do in the next few days.
 

Sorry to quote such an old post...I just caught up on this thread.  FYI..."tulipwood" and "tulip poplar" are two VERY different things.

http://www.wood-database.com/lumber-identification/hardwoods/poplar/

http://www.wood-database.com/lumber-identification/hardwoods/tulipwood/

 

[moonjam]

Thanks guys! As for the tulipwood - that's actually what the timber yard called it when I asked them if they stocked US Poplar, so I yielded to their expertise. Thanks for the heads up!

[wdwerker]

Excellent results ! Frame & panel doors and inset on top of that ! 

Your journal is a great example of why built-in casework done right is so expensive. Lots of details need to be addressed to get a good appearance and be able to last.

[boelkers]

Excellent post and great looking cabinets.  Glad to see I'm not the only one that took on a build of built ins!