Mike's Woodworking Projects

Kitchen Cabinets 441 Belmont #2

Year built: 2005
Plan: My Design - replaced old

In 2004 we bought two, four unit, apartment buildings in Elgin almost right next to each other and about 20 minutes from our house.

The second building had one tenant the was terrible filthy and that unit was infested with roaches. Very gross. I hired an exterminator right away but, the infestation was bad and he advised unless they change their living behavior they would never go away. Also, they were starting to get into some of the other units. Fortunately, I was able to get that family to move out in a couple of months (without the painful eviction process).

The kitchen was the main habitat but I basically gutted the entire apartment. Carpeting, vinyl flooring, all the baseboards, and removed all of the kitchen cabinets both the floor cabinets and the upper cabinets...sink, countertop, appliances.... the apartment was down to the bard bones.

Used the exterminator and spread a roach powder along all the baseboards as the exterminator said they live in the walls. Then came the nightmares thinking those things just rellocated to the other apartments. Fortunately, they pretty much disappeared once the poison was down for a while.

Now to the woodworking part of the story. Before I removed the kitchen cabinets and did all the measurements so I could replicate the original but with higher quality cabinets.

Even a modest kitchen has alot of cabinets. The build took over my garage for a month or so as I was building all the various pieces. I think I copied the construction from a cabinet I bought from Menards (and then returned...I am so cheap).

The cabinets were simple and cheap. Where the most work was in the cabinet doors. I decided to make these out of Oak and do standard tongue and groove frame with a floating inside panel. Again, lots of doors when all was said and done. Not looking at it right now but, I wanna say about 15 cabinets all in all.

Install went easier than expected. Only hard part was fitting the new counter tops to the not so square walls. I cannot believe I did all the myself. Since, I have gotten smarter (or lazier) and hire stuff out at the apartments. But, back in the early days, it was all me, all the time.

End result turned out nice but, I probably did not really have to gut the entire kitchen. Like I mentioned, I was ambitious back in those days.