Kitchen Table and Built-in

The kitchen was always a setup a bit wonky. My wife wanted to move some storage around and set up a computer desk so our son could do his homework where we could monitor what he was doing. So, she designed this built in for the kitchen and I went out and built it.

I used Baltic Birch plywood for all the wide areas and hard maple for the face frames and cabinet rails and stiles. I made it in 4 sections so I could fit it all through the front door. I don’t have a router table (yet), so I stuck with easy flat panel cabinet doors. My wife really seemed to like them.

The real time and effort was in the finishing. I sanded to 320 grit then put on a water based dye. Sand 320 again. Put on a coat of 100% de-waxed shellac (sanding sealer). Sand 320 again. Put on a gel stain and wipe off. No sanding after that, but another coat of sanding sealer. Then another 320 sanding. Then 3 coats of water based polyurethane with 400 grit sanding after the 1st and 2nd coat.

My wife loved it so much, she decided that she wanted a matching table in the kitchen. I went to the lumber yard and got some big 2×2 maple legs and used some 1x hard maple for the apron. It was starting to get cold by the time I finished the table so I made an easy top out of leftover BB plywood and hard maple edge banding. It didn’t go so well. I had 3 panels and they weren’t flush, so I went at it with my belt sander. It’s flush, but it doesn’t look so good. I’ll build a real top for it next year. Until then we put a runner to cover up the plywood joint lines.

The table is 37” high. Both my wife and I are over 6ft and we love that height. She’s already working on drawings of a kitchen with counters at that height. So I have a lot of work ahead of me.

This was the first time I took on anything even approaching this scale. I think I did pretty good. I learned a LOT and made some mistakes that I will never repeat again.

-- Tony, SW Chicago Suburbs