Progress Not Perfection

I just noticed that it's been a long time since I blogged. I've been pretty busy with school work. I have been plugging away at the kitchen though, small bits at a time. So here are some pictures:


Here is the finished end panel for the peninsula. I used a combination of drilling holes in the corners and threading the coping saw blade through the holes to cut the outlet. The far side is the cut side. I reclaimed the veneer off one of the cut pieces for that side by cutting as close as possible with the table saw and then sanding away the excess. I tried a couple other tactics for getting the veneer off, but they all damaged the veneer, so this is the one I went with. By far it was the easiest as well. I used titebond wood glue, a couple 1 inch wide scraps along the edges, and the band clamps that I bought for joining the counter tops. I glued it up, wiped off the excess with damp rag, and ended up letting it cure for a couple days because it took me that long to get back to it.


Here are the drawers installed under the sink. I think technically the larger drawer is supposed to be on the bottom, but to be honest I didn't notice that they were different sizes until I measured to center the handles. I think it works out better this way though because it means there is more room in the upper drawer. It does mean however that I'm going to have to make sure that the other drawers around the kitchen match so that there is uniformity. In this picture you can also see that the vertical part of the back splash has been installed.


Here's a picture of the inside of the top drawer under the sink. You can see that I cut out the back of the drawer in the middle to accommodate the plumbing under the sink. I ended up just using a hacksaw that I forgot I owned to cut down the sides from the top and then used a small drill bit to perforate the horizontal so that I could bend it with my bare hands. Then I used a metal file to smooth away the burr and some of the roughness. It's still not very smooth but it's not sharp enough to cut skin, and I plan to get some padded tape to fold over the cut edges. I also installed vertical dividers. I used a strip of the leftover end panel from the peninsula that still had the veneered edge attached. I drilled holes through the particle board bottom and used 2-1/2 inch cabinet screws from the bottom up and 1/2 inch cabinet screws through the metal drawer back. I wanted to make sure that the drawer could be opened and closed without the contents shifting and getting in the way of the plumbing.