DIY Craftsman Style Built In Cabinets

New oak built-in cabinets accompany an updated mantle.

Just before our daughter was born in 2013, we used our last drops of nesting energy to complete a remodel of the fireplace. Since that project, we've slowed down a little on the remodeling front, as most of our energy goes to keeping kiddo from falling off dangerous precipices.

That being said, we still get the occasional bug to remodel.

B has suggested multiple times that we should add cabinets under the windows in our living room. I'd always thought there was not enough room, and the window were too low to incorporate anything meaningful — until we were at a neighbors house and saw theirs had the exact cabinets envisioned.

Sometimes you need is a good example of what's possible

The size and proportions worked perfectly for their house, so we got excited and decided to try a prototype for our house.

Before going to the trouble of buying materials and cutting lumber, I decided to use an enormous Amazon box to make a prototype in the space. Mostly I was curious to see how far the box should protrude from the walls, and how thick to make the frame and doors (visual balance, etc).

I'd recommend trying out a cardboard version of your built in idea before committing to a project. It only takes a few minutes and could potentially give you an idea to make your final version even better (stealing this trick from software development). We learned the perfect depth of our box was around 13" deep, where originally we were thinking a little smaller.

Cardboard prototype with drawn lines to indicate doors.

 Once we got our final measurements from the prototype, I made a list of everything I'd need to do to complete the project and put the steps into a logical order. Step one was to prepare the space, which required some removal of baseboard and other oak trimwork.

The Process

We always salvage the oak trim for future house projects.

We used a multiool blade to remove a section of baseboard. (Thanks Cole)

After finishing the box and counter, I made measurements for the doors.

One shelf was deemed better than two. Toddler for scale.

Cut some holes in the back of the box for cords.

Cords magically disappear under the bottom shelf of the box. This is my favorite feature.

We decided on sliding doors instead of swinging since the space is tight. I reused salvaged baseboard for a door.

We added glass to the doors and stained it all up in the last week. Overall cost was around $300 and took about 30 hours to complete. The final results below.

The left cabinet is 1/2 in wider than the right cabinet.

View from across the room at night.

Fireplace Oak Mantel and Marble Tile Remodel - Before & After

We started working on the mantel remodel in December after Ivy was born. Since then we've been busy with raising a newborn and everything that comes with that. 

On the weekends, I've been slowly chipping away the tiling portion of this job. Admittedly, the project took longer than I'd like, but I took my time getting everything updated since I'd never tiled before.

We started with refinishing the hearth. The old bricks tiles popped out fairly easily and I didn't have to cut too much tile for the job. I also spent a lot of time preparing the different brick surfaces for tile by coating them in thin set, which was a lot like floating joint compound.

Photos below document my progress from mantel pre and post tile.

Finished mantel before we tiled. Looks pretty good, probably could have stopped here if we had to.

Hearth was step one. You can see I dry fitted everything before laying the tile. The bricks are white from thin set.

The top row was a skinny long cut, so I just had Lowe's make a bunch of these tiles to save me the work.

This Old House recommended starting the vertical tiles across the top, with a ledger strip to guide the tiles across.

Pulled off the ledger guide and ready for the verticals strips.

I taped together my sections so the tiles stayed together.

Labeling helps keep things in order (A,B,C)

Tiles glued to wall, after grout.

Detail of finished job.

I repainted the cavity black - it has this empty clean feel now. 

Becca found the perfect side table and bird to complete the design.

Viola! Job is done - 4 months later - yikes. What do you think?

Refinishing the Basement Stairs

When Chris told me he would get three weeks paternity leave when Ivy was born, I had a feeling this could spell trouble. While it was great having him home so long, I haven't seen him sit still for more than 10 minutes at a time during our 5+ years of marriage (except when he sleeps through the BBC Pride & Prejudice, which I believe every husband should be required to watch once a year).

Well, it turns out my suspicions were correct! The day after we brought home our newborn, our house rung out with the sounds of random orbital sanding and nail gunning. He had decided to attack our gross basement stairs, which run off the kitchen.

During our kitchen remodel, our nasty old water-damaged kitchen floor was replaced with new hardwoods. The new boards stop under the basement door, and from that point on the floor is covered with original, very roughed-up hardwoods that were painted white at some point.

Before: gross stairs and landing.

Public service announcement: White painted floors do not wear well, and look dirty all the time.

Ok, back to business here. So, from the kitchen door there are three steps down to a landing, where the stairs turn and continue down to the basement. Chris decided to tackle from the kitchen door to the landing, as this portion of the stairs is actually visible from the kitchen when we open the door. We'll probably get to the remaining stairs someday, but they're much less of a priority.

Based on our usual mindset that we like to reuse materials whenever it makes sense, the original plan was to refinish flooring by the kitchen door and on the landing, and replace the old stair treads with new ones. However, as Chris got the boards stripped and sanded, the boards at the top of the steps were pretty rough underneath.

The old, stripped boards just can't keep up with the pretty kitchen floor.

These beaten up, gaping boards looks especially bad next to the kitchen floorboards, which were installed and finished just two years ago. Fortunately, we had just enough board left over from the remodel to replace board in the area, which looked much better. He purchased a few new red oak treads at our local home improvement store and replaced the three stair treads, and stuck with our original plan to strip and sand down the original oak floorboards on the landing to prepare these boards to be restained and finished.

The newly installed floorboards blend into the kitchen flooring. 

Old stair treads are removed (giving a lovely view of the water heater) and Chris sized new treads prior to installing.

Chris is a big fan of Citristrip - a non toxic and minimally stinky way to remove gooey paint. He paints it on, lets it sit overnight and scrapes it off with a putty knife.

The project drug on a while because we needed access to the basement from time to time, so he could not just keep applying stain and polyurethane over and over. We had to take the occasional break between coats to do laundry and get groceries from our deep freeze, so this really was a great project to tackle while we were both home from work.

Plus, we figured while we had the area all torn up, we needed to do some work to the trim and walls in order to really get full payoff for the hard work. Chris capped the existing baseboards for a more finished look, and installed new shoe molding. We caulked and painted all the trim, and I painted the walls using leftover Sherwin Williams Dorian Gray from Ivy's nursery.

Once the work was all done, the area was quickly transformed.

   

The old trim got a major facelift with some sanding and caulking, and a new cap piece attached.

The landing flooring is a bit more rustic than the rest of our wood floors, but we decided we are good with that and chose not to replace all the floorboards. We'll look for a nice doormat to put inside the door anyway, which will cover all that you see from the kitchen. And while distressed looking, the boards are perfectly smooth underfoot - which is the most important part for us!

While some may find it strange to invest this much time in basement stairs, we are thrilled with the improvement! Even if no one sees it but us we feel it was a very worthwhile effort, improving an area that we use every day for very little cost.

Our Fireplace Mantel Remodel

With three weeks off this Christmas break, I decided to update our mantel with some additional woodwork. We've been meaning to tackle this for a while, and a cold winter break served as the perfect motivation to get started.

This is what our fireplace looked like originally. Lots of brick, not much visual interest or style in my opinion.

Here was my initial idea for the design and future tilework.

A little more design tweaks with regards to trimwork and future fire source. Planning on red oak to match the top part, and stain it all chocolatey brown.

Notching inside face of wood to make room for bricks at bottom of fireplace. The bricks stuck out 1/2'' at the bottom, and I'd rather notch the wood than grind the brick.

Chisel knocks out the wood.

Sanded smooth, and fits.

Placed them over the bricks to confirm fit. I was able to find some nice 1 x 10" red oak that had an interesting grain pattern for the dominant leg/column pieces.

Wood on sides of fireplace needed special fitting to work around baseboards. I used a trim profile tool to trace the profile, and a jigsaw to cut it out. This was a pain in the butt, but working around existing trimwork is a skill I'm having to learn as a remodeler. I think getting a multi-tool would make my life easier.

Adding cross piece and more test fitting. I used tongue and groove joinery to make the pieces fit together.

Panel boards added for final test. Plus Jeopardy.

Stain added, pretty happy with overall look.

Next up, tile work.