Kitchen Cabinets: from
WoodCentral
"As a cost-saving measure only, we have decided that my woodworking skills are adequate enough to build our own kitchen cabinets. For the prices we have been quoted, I can make a lot of firewood out of cherry and still save a ton of money. I would like a good book on the subject. Do you have a good book or books that you would recommend?" – Terry
"Check out books by Jim Tolpin, Danny Proulx, and Robert Lang. Another that is good is
Cabinetmaking Procedures for the Small Shop by Kevin Fristad and John Ward." – Ellis
"I'll recommend
Building Traditional Kitchen Cabinets by Jim Tolpin if you are into face-frame cabinets. The book runs the gamut: planning, layout, construction and installation." – Dave
"When I did our kitchen six years ago, I had on hand the books by Tolpin, Proulx, and Paul Levine. Tolpin's book covered traditional faceframe cabinets, Proulx covers a hybrid approach, and Levine sticks with the European style. All were very helpful, especially Proulx and Levin.
I discovered that building a kitchen is a fantastic woodworking learning experience, but is a BIG undertaking not just from a woodworking standpoint, but from an organizational one as well. I never realized a kitchen could have so many parts! And by the 20th door, the job does get rather tiresome. But the reward is a huge increase in one's confidence, not to mention paying off all those woodworking tools at once." – Jim
Editor's Note: Woodworker's Journal also covered building kitchen cabinets in a two-part series in the April 2008 (lower kitchen cabinets) and June 2008 (upper cabinets) issues. That series, in fact, recently won first place in the Best Service Package category of a Society of Professional Journalists contest.
If you're interested in the kitchen cabinet article, or the torsion box shelf referred to in the discussion below, click here.
Workstation Desk: from
WoodCentral
"I'm moving to a new house. The office room is narrow so I am looking for plans, photos, or ideas that you may have for a wall-long workstation computer desk. It needs to fit two 22-inch wide monitors side by side, laser printer, all-in-one fax printer and other normal desktop crap. The computer tower will be on the floor below the desk. I would like a slide-out keyboard mouse tray. I need design ideas or photos and also need mounting ideas on how to mount to the wall to keep most space below free for leg room and a couple of two drawer file cabinets." – Ricc
"I did not build one for my old house. The LOML and I went down to the Container Store and got the wall track system from Elfa. We hung shelves and a desk space from the tracks. It worked quite well. They even had a keyboard tray. If you wanted to make your own shelving material and use their tracks, that would certainly work." – JL
"The June 2007 issue of
Woodworker's Journal has a torsion box shelf plan that you could easily adapt for your needs. Additionally, a search of torsion box shelves and floating shelves should give you as many ideas as you want." – Curly
"You could make your desk the way I made my kitchenette table. It is essentially a glued-up eight quarter top with two 2x4 braces/rails across the width underneath to keep it flat. Each brace has a leg bolted to it on the outboard side. The wall side of the slab is bolted to a 1x6 that in turn is screwed to the wall studs. Solid as a rock, simple to build, pretty nice looking. Here's a
rough sketch that might help." – Ellis