Cabinet Project: Laying out the Plan
This afternoon I spent some time thinking about the cabinet and came up with a rough idea of how I want to approach it. What that usually means is that I either bust out the graph paper, start drafting, and making note of precise measurements or… jot down some chicken scratch numbers and sketch out what I want the thing to look like. In this case I went with the latter and came up with this:
It’s fairly straightforward and combines a few different ideas I got out of the decorating catalogues we get. Overall dimensions will be apx. 36″H x 42″W x 14″D (inside depth). The main cabinet carcass and facade will be painted an earthy green color and the top will be stained a shade of oak. Even though I’m going to paint most of it, I’m going to attempt to use as few mechanical fasteners as I can, and stick with traditional joinery and glue, just to try and challenge myself a bit. I used biscuit joints on my last cabinet’s face frame for example, but then nailed it to the carcass with brads. I’ll try to use the biscuits in this case again, but I may have to combine that with using lap joints to join the 1×2 rails with the 1×3′s stiles and mid-stile. Either that or possibly do a series of through mortiseses and tenons – I’m just not sure about doing that on such narrow stock.
