Day 92

Trim carpentry: Part III. More fronts were being put on the cabinets in recent days. Also, they started building out the drawers and adding the drawer guides.

This trim carpenter does something a little different than I’ve ever seen, and I like it. On some of the shelves, such at the pantry, he uses 1×3″ boards to cover the shelves. The reason you see people putting trim or something like this on shelving is because they are typically made out of plywood. Well, plywood is notorious for having voids inbetween the different plys, so it is ugly if left exposed. But the boards he put up are not plain, by any means. He takes a router and routes all of the edges of one side of the board. Then, he nails them on the ends of the shelves. Whe it is painted, it wiill have a nice detail to the edge of the shelf. What more is that many people get a similar effect from using multiple mouldings around the shelf edges and openings. There are a few problems, in my mind, with that:

1. It adds time to the project, because they have to do each step twice when putting on those mouldings

2. Sometimes, the really thin moulding will split as you’re nailing it up

3. It might not be as durable as this solution with one, solid board. As you’re using your pantry, and we will definitely be using ours, you might bump that moulding and knock part of it off.

 As you can see, they got even further in the kitchen. Most of the cabinets are filled in at this point…at least the skeleton of them is. They are just continuing to work on the drawers and guides. There are A LOT of drawers and cabinets, something that I don’t think we will soon regret.

The under-the-stairs desk area and cubbies at the back door/mud room are taking shape nicely. They are turning out to be everything that we wanted and more.

Most of the crown moulding is up in the house at this point, save for the kitchen. They have to finish building the cabinets before doing the crown in there, because some of the cabinets will tie in with the crown.

As you can see from one of the zoomed-in photos, there are some shelves that will be behind cabinet doors that got a small trim, just so it looked different. I like that he didn’t use the same thing for everything. It will help it look interesting. Again, this trim is just a small piece used to cover the ugly edge of plywood. Even though we are painting the cabinets, the plywood would not paint well on the edge.

Until next time…

Day 91

Trim carpentry: Part II. More of the cabinets were built out, when I visited the house site this weekend. They started putting in some of the supports and building more of the “headers.” The headers are those cabinets you see over toilets and sitting on top of the bathroom counters in some houses.

They also started building the fronts of each cabinet, out of 1x finger joint wood. They put them together, where they look like some sort of puzzle. Then, they just pop those on the front of the cabinet. These holes are the cabinet door holes and drawer holes.

They are making some good progress and say that they should be done by the end of the week.

Until next time…

 

Day 90

Trim carpentry: Part I. The trim carpentry has already begun. This part kind of excites me, because I used to be one. Back when Rebecca and I first met, I was a trim carpenter. Yep. Complete with a buzz cut and a shaggy beard.

Tuesday, the trim carpenter went to work. He has 4 or 5 guys working for him, so they are making quick work of a lot of trim work. The trim carpenter really has a tough job. He is tasked with covering up any mistakes or short-comings of any of the other previous contractors. He has to hide imperfections, so that when the house is painted and finished, it looks perfect. No pressure there at all.

This guy is really good. I can tell already, just from how he talked when we met with him about our likes and dislikes. In fact, he is good enough, our builder was willing to wait for 2 weeks to get him. Usually, you would just find another contractor that would do the work, and keep on trucking. Not with this guy. He’s that good.

They should be setup for about 2 weeks, so there will be multiple parts to the trim. Enjoy looking at the photos and let me know if you have questions about what you see.

Until next time…