Jennie's Kitchen Cabinets

When Hurricane Harvey made his way through the gulf coast, Jennie's neighborhood saw something on the order of 60" of rain. She ended up with less than half an inch of water in the house, but half an inch can make a terrible mess. The water didn't make it all the way to the kitchen, but it caused enough damage that she was going to be out of the house for an extended period. Since the bathroom, which did get flooded, was going to be remodeled, she decided that remodeling the kitchen was also on the list. Since I taught her to appreciate quality woodwork, and I’m retired, and I work cheap, I volunteered to do the kitchen cabinets. Here is the final result.

This was, by far, the most ambitious retirement project to date. The original cabinets were "off-the-shelf" prefabricated units. The kitchen is U-shaped with 45 degree angles at the corners of the U, that resulted in huge void spaces where the cabinets met at the corners of the room. And the pantry was a framed closet space, also resulting in significant wasted volume. So a redesign was in order. This is the new layout. And this is the new elevation.

The new cabinets have solid red oak raised panel doors and the cabinet boxes are red oak plywood. All of the drawer boxes are fabricated with dovetail joints. All of the drawers are equipped with full extension slides. The pantry has pull out shelves with full extension slides. The cabinets are finished with MinWax stain and Sherwin Williams lacquer. The counter tops (installed by the remodeling contractor) are Blue Pearl granite.

The pictures below are part of the time-line from "Before" to "After".

These are pictures of some of the cabinets and the pantry from "Before" the remodel.

In the beginning there were the cabinet faces. (Some assembly required).

Cabinet boxes built to fit the corners of the room



Dividers for sheet pans

Pull out shelves

The pantry

The sink cabinet

The sink cabinet has a false front

And then the doors

And more doors

The boxes installed before the doors were installed

And finally, the "After"