Blair's Blog

For a guy that didn’t really care for coffee about a year ago, I seem to have come a long way! Not sure if “progress” is exactly the right word, but we now have a 5 appliance kitchen. Yep, the frou-frou coffee/espresso machine that served as payment for my final invoice from my previous client is now a built-in appliance in our kitchen. On Wednesday, a friend with a table saw gave me a hand cutting down a white melamine vanity cabinet to fit in the space between the counter top and the microwave shelf.

The idea was to maintain the basic structure of the vanity cabinet in order to keep things square and to avoid the need to do any edge banding. It almost worked. We worked slowly and steadily double checking all the cuts along the way – until the very end when we lost focus. The problem was that I needed to raise the microwave shelf about 1-⁵⁄₈ inches, but when we cut the top off the cabinet we forgot that meant notching each side. The front 7 inches of each side panel of the cabinet needed to be 1-⁵⁄₈ inches taller than the back. Oops! It took a bit of effort, but I ended up patching in a small rectangular piece into each side below the shelf. So I ended up having to dowel and edge band the new box before I was done. There is a kerf line that will need to be touched up with a little paint as well.

The under cabinet lighting was also an interesting twist to work around. The light is a fluorescent, so not too hot. Since the installation instructions for the coffee machine suggested a ventilation gap at the back of the cabinet, I decided to cut the microwave shelf about an inch short to allow air circulation. The microwave is now back-lit, it looks a little odd so we might have to figure out something else, but for now it all works.

It really does make a nice cup of coffee – come on over and I’ll make you one!