The long awaited Kitchen Island... Phase 1

So I have received a lot of questions lately about what is my newest project.  Kathryn and I have spoken for 3 years about building a new kitchen island that suits our home,  we are still using the island that I built in 2004  when we didn't have 2 children.   It is an oak workhorse. 

So we drew up some new plans using the high school drafting scale ( I knew it could come in handy).  Off to home depot to get some materials

Our island is going to have 4 posts on the corners so we started by cutting and fabricating those posts in 2 stages.

The Cabinets are being formed on the dado blades of the table saw. Then each of the cabinets is assembled with brad nails and glue received into the dado joints that will make the cabinets very strong.   You can see the posts under the cabinet that we are assembling in the garage below, and on the left the dado joint that supports the bottom shelf of the cabinet.

Carpenters glue will make the joint stronger than the actual material of the cabinets.  And below we use brad pin nails to hold the cabinet together while the glue is drying.

 Here is another better shot of the dado shelf inserted into the cabinet side (which is lying flat on the top). 

 These two cabinets will be back to back at one end of our island the other end will have a freestanding table which extends off the top of these two cabinets.

 Luke decided that he wanted to learn how to make dados with me on the router.  The router is good for more specific angled dadoes that are concealed such as the ones here.  So Luke helped me on the router jig that we created by clamping straight edges at the appropriate distance from the actual dado cut,  that the router side will rest against while cutting the dado.

 You can see the straight edge pattern clamped on as a jig in the picture below.  The finished cabinet side slides underneath the straight edge to align it and complete each dado sequentially at the exact same angle.  This cabinet side will be used for the 4.5 inch deep cabinet with magazine rack shelves at a 70 degree angle.  This shallow cabinet will sit at the end of the island and hold mail and magazines behind closed cabinet doors.   MOM will LOVE that!

 Here you can see the dados are cut at exactly the same angle by sliding the bottom piece under the straight edge and then using that router along the guided straight fence jig, that is clamped down

Well I got itchy and needed to start spraying paint while the weather was nice 2 weeks ago,  so I started spraying the magazine rack cabinet, as it will be too difficult to spray after it is assembled.   here is the first coat of primer.

I spent most of the past few weekends applying 3 coats of primer to give a good finish protective base to this island.

 Here are the posts before

And here after the first coat of primer on top and on the ends.    The first coat really gets sucked up by the wood so  it doesn't look like much.

 Here is one of the drawers that will be used on the left side of the island. First the corners get primed as they are harder to reach down into

 Then we can continue spraying the whole drawer.

 Next the cabinets get primed.  First the before shots and then the after.

 The edges of the drawers receive filler where the nail holes show.  Once covered the nail holes will be flat and under 5 coats of paint with a smooth finish.   Here you can see where the holes are being filled along the back of the drawer and then the filler gets sanded off flush.  

The magazine rack cabinet is on its side here being tested for fit.  The dados at the right will recive the cabinet bottom. We just wanted to test the fit of the 70 degree magazine shelves before we started painting them.  Since the fit is a little tight as we expected given that we are using 1/4 shelves and exactly a 1/4 inch flute bit to cut the dado,  we removed a mm of the shelf stock on the router table to allow them to fit together better.  You can see the shelf rabbeted below.

Now Comes the fun part

 The back of the magazine cabinet has to receive the slanted shelves at a 20 degree angle which is the inverse of the 70 degree angle in a 90 degree frame.  So we used the dado blades in the table saw above to cut a recess in  back cabinet wall  which is shown below.  These recesses will hold the shelves from bending out at the bottom when they get loaded with magazines and books.

Well we picked up the doors from http://www.allstyle.ca  2 weeks ago and they need to be primed.  I considered making the doors ourselves but considering we want to use the island within the next year its sometimes good to outsource some of the work when you only have so much time. 

Drew and Alex at Allstyle have done a great job making the maple shaker cabinet doors (click) for my last project,  so I went back to get a slightly fancier shaker door this time.  Here you can see the doors that will wrap my end posts (6 inches wide) getting a coat of primer.  Eventually they will all be painted a very nice custom colour from Benjamin Moore with my HVLP sprayer.  But first we  have to lay down 4 coats of primer for this particular project. 

Here is one of the cabinet doors laying on the bench after being sprayed the first coat.

 Now the doors that wrap the post must be mitred so that they can meet properly a the corner of the post.  So we cut the corner on the table saw being careful to leave the 1/8" reveal that sits at the corner of these doors.  ( you can see it along the edge of the right side that sits along the blades here) 

The style of door is Cordoba Shaker and you can see that the edge has a rabbet which serves to soften the touch on the fingers.  Its a really cool design feature rather than having a sharp corner to bang your fingers on as with most shaker doors.  However it does make for some additional complexity in the design of the cabinet building that must be accounted for.

Here are most all the doors sitting on top of the island being dryed and getting ready for the next coat of primer.

 This is a good shot of the second coat of primer that went on the next day and how it levels itself after 5 minutes time.   Very thin coats but because the primer is thinned 10% to spray it through hvlp,  it allows the paint to flow and level.  That helps to make a nice finish.

Some of the post doors needed to be standing up along the wall in the hallway.

 And here is the second coat after applied and drying.  (about as exciting as watching paint dry I know,  but its pretty exciting for me to achieve this smooth of a finish after thirty years of painting by brush and roller)  HVLP spraying rocks!

Below is the first coat of test final colour that will be used for finish paint (on the left) .  It is called Acadia White, and is a warm style of antique white paint that the colour consultant helped me to match to our tiles and existing dark brown cabinetry.  
http://www.benjaminmoore.com/en-us/paint-color/oc-38
The pure white primer is on the right.

It is very important to match the same colour hues that you want to bring out of the tiles and we want to stay on the warm end of the colour hues and not the cool colours.

 My camera lense was getting quite a bit of dirt on it in the above picture so I had to clean it.

At this point I realized that the back of the doors was too sharp for my liking so I wanted to take the corner off by chamfering a small 45 degree angle on the edge.  So we put the moving doors on the router table out in the backyard.  This prevented the dust from flying around in the garage while I was doing the painting.

 And there is the chamfer at the back of the doors completed.

Stay tuned for the frames that are being built for the free standing part of the island next, and the finish paint coating.  The paint we are choosing is highly recommended for  spraying kitchen cabinets with a beautiful pearl finish.   It dries very slowly and takes 24 days to cure,  but leaves a professional hard finish in the end.
 http://www.benjaminmoore.com/en-ca/for-your-home/paint-products/advance-waterborne-interior-alkyd-paint#advs=0&tab=2