Sewing Cabinet with Inlaid Metal Tile Accents

Materials

I had originally planned to build the entire cabinet from solid maple, but high lumber prices (soft maple is $7.50 per board foot at my favorite supplier) pushed me to use plywood for the case and doors and solid maple for the face frame and trim. I was also a little worried about warping and expansion problems with using solid maple for the slab doors.

In the end, the plywood probably caused as many problems as it solved.

For starters, it was very difficult to find in my area. I had to wait for one of the local Home Depot stores to get it in stock, and its quality is just okay. Most of the sheets in the store had obvious flaws on the good face, and most were slightly warped. We selected the best of the lot and hoped for the best.

Another problem with the plywood is that its color didn't match that of the solid maple lumber, which caused us some angst related to finishing, which I'll discuss more in a separate post.

The last problem was that the door slabs aren't perfectly flat. One is slightly warped. I didn't find a solution for that, but I was able to tweak the Blum inset hinges to compensate, so the warping isn't too obvious on the finished cabinet.

I wanted the cabinet to have a 1/2" thick back panel, but I couldn't fine 1/2" maple plywood, and I didn't feel like buying a full sheet of birch (similar enough to the maple for the back). I ended up buying a sheet of 5.2mm Sande Plywood and laminated two pieces for the back. This plywood is absolute junk (soft and unattractive), but it was good enough for this use. I also used it as a filler panel for the cabinet top's underside to match the plywood inner panel's thickness to the trim's.

Case Construction

The case is a basic face frame cabinet.



I used pocket screws to build the face frame and dowels to attach the frame to the case.





To conserve material, I built a ladder brace to serve as the case's inner top from plywood.



I used my JessEm doweling jig a lot on this project. I used dowels to attach the case sides to the ladder brace and fixed bottom shelf. I also used it to drill the shelf pin holes in the sides. The jig's indexing pin makes it easy to drill evenly-spaced holes (1" apart in this case).



I used non-dowel joinery only for the back. I used rabbets to inset the back panel into the sides, and I used screws to attach the top and bottom edges of the back to the case.



I glued the side edges of the back to the case sides, but my clamps weren't long enough, so I had to improvise.



For the base trim, I planed 2" strips of maple down to 1/2" thickness and mitered the corners. To prevent the trim from sliding when I glued and clamped it, I hammered small nails into the case, cut off the nail heads, and pressed the trim onto the nails before applying the glue.





I didn't take any construction photos of the top panel. The top is composed of four pieces: an inner maple plywood panel, solid maple trim (approximately 1" thick) on the front and sides, and a Sande Plywood filler panel under the maple plywood to increase its thickness. I used a 1/2" chamfer bit to bevel the underside of the trim. I predrilled screw holes through the ladder brace into the underside of the top so I could easily attach it after applying the finish.

RonStewart said:

Case Construction

The case is a basic face frame cabinet.

I used pocket screws to build the face frame and dowels to attach the frame to the case.

To conserve material, I built a ladder brace to serve as the case's inner top from plywood.

I used my JessEm doweling jig a lot on this project. I used dowels to attach the case sides to the ladder brace and fixed bottom shelf. I also used it to drill the shelf pin holes in the sides. The jig's indexing pin makes it easy to drill evenly-spaced holes (1" apart in this case).

I used non-dowel joinery only for the back. I used rabbets to inset the back panel into the sides, and I used screws to attach the top and bottom edges of the back to the case.

I glued the side edges of the back to the case sides, but my clamps weren't long enough, so I had to improvise.

For the base trim, I planed 2" strips of maple down to 1/2" thickness and mitered the corners. To prevent the trim from sliding when I glued and clamped it, I hammered small nails into the case, cut off the nail heads, and pressed the trim onto the nails before applying the glue.

I didn't take any construction photos of the top panel. The top is composed of four pieces: an inner maple plywood panel, solid maple trim (approximately 1" thick) on the front and sides, and a Sande Plywood filler panel under the maple plywood to increase its thickness. I used a 1/2" chamfer bit to bevel the underside of the trim. I predrilled screw holes through the ladder brace into the underside of the top so I could easily attach it after applying the finish.

Click to expand...

That's a very nice looking cabinet Ron! It could work as a bookcase too. Are you finishing it natural or are you going to tint/stain it?

RonStewart said:

Case Construction

The case is a basic face frame cabinet.

I used pocket screws to build the face frame and dowels to attach the frame to the case.

To conserve material, I built a ladder brace to serve as the case's inner top from plywood.

I used my JessEm doweling jig a lot on this project. I used dowels to attach the case sides to the ladder brace and fixed bottom shelf. I also used it to drill the shelf pin holes in the sides. The jig's indexing pin makes it easy to drill evenly-spaced holes (1" apart in this case).

I used non-dowel joinery only for the back. I used rabbets to inset the back panel into the sides, and I used screws to attach the top and bottom edges of the back to the case.

I glued the side edges of the back to the case sides, but my clamps weren't long enough, so I had to improvise.

For the base trim, I planed 2" strips of maple down to 1/2" thickness and mitered the corners. To prevent the trim from sliding when I glued and clamped it, I hammered small nails into the case, cut off the nail heads, and pressed the trim onto the nails before applying the glue.

I didn't take any construction photos of the top panel. The top is composed of four pieces: an inner maple plywood panel, solid maple trim (approximately 1" thick) on the front and sides, and a Sande Plywood filler panel under the maple plywood to increase its thickness. I used a 1/2" chamfer bit to bevel the underside of the trim. I predrilled screw holes through the ladder brace into the underside of the top so I could easily attach it after applying the finish.

Click to expand...

Thanks, Tom! I'm actually done. You can see the finished cabinet here. My wife wanted it to be very blond, so I ended up finishing it with clear water-based poly tinted with white wash stain.

RonStewart said:

Case Construction

The case is a basic face frame cabinet.

I used pocket screws to build the face frame and dowels to attach the frame to the case.

To conserve material, I built a ladder brace to serve as the case's inner top from plywood.

I used my JessEm doweling jig a lot on this project. I used dowels to attach the case sides to the ladder brace and fixed bottom shelf. I also used it to drill the shelf pin holes in the sides. The jig's indexing pin makes it easy to drill evenly-spaced holes (1" apart in this case).

I used non-dowel joinery only for the back. I used rabbets to inset the back panel into the sides, and I used screws to attach the top and bottom edges of the back to the case.

I glued the side edges of the back to the case sides, but my clamps weren't long enough, so I had to improvise.

For the base trim, I planed 2" strips of maple down to 1/2" thickness and mitered the corners. To prevent the trim from sliding when I glued and clamped it, I hammered small nails into the case, cut off the nail heads, and pressed the trim onto the nails before applying the glue.

I didn't take any construction photos of the top panel. The top is composed of four pieces: an inner maple plywood panel, solid maple trim (approximately 1" thick) on the front and sides, and a Sande Plywood filler panel under the maple plywood to increase its thickness. I used a 1/2" chamfer bit to bevel the underside of the trim. I predrilled screw holes through the ladder brace into the underside of the top so I could easily attach it after applying the finish.

Click to expand...

It seems my email notifications of your blog were somehow out of order or something. I made that post before seeing the others that showed it finished… It really turned out beautiful!

RonStewart said:

Case Construction

The case is a basic face frame cabinet.

I used pocket screws to build the face frame and dowels to attach the frame to the case.

To conserve material, I built a ladder brace to serve as the case's inner top from plywood.

I used my JessEm doweling jig a lot on this project. I used dowels to attach the case sides to the ladder brace and fixed bottom shelf. I also used it to drill the shelf pin holes in the sides. The jig's indexing pin makes it easy to drill evenly-spaced holes (1" apart in this case).

I used non-dowel joinery only for the back. I used rabbets to inset the back panel into the sides, and I used screws to attach the top and bottom edges of the back to the case.

I glued the side edges of the back to the case sides, but my clamps weren't long enough, so I had to improvise.

For the base trim, I planed 2" strips of maple down to 1/2" thickness and mitered the corners. To prevent the trim from sliding when I glued and clamped it, I hammered small nails into the case, cut off the nail heads, and pressed the trim onto the nails before applying the glue.

I didn't take any construction photos of the top panel. The top is composed of four pieces: an inner maple plywood panel, solid maple trim (approximately 1" thick) on the front and sides, and a Sande Plywood filler panel under the maple plywood to increase its thickness. I used a 1/2" chamfer bit to bevel the underside of the trim. I predrilled screw holes through the ladder brace into the underside of the top so I could easily attach it after applying the finish.

Click to expand...

Thanks again, Tom!

Door Construction

The doors are 3/4" maple plywood slabs with 1/2" wide solid maple trim and inlaid tiles and accent strips. They were by far the most difficult part of the project, mainly because they required a lot of careful routing for the inlays. Finishing concerns added to the complexity. I wanted to paint the trim and accent strips before assembly and attach them after applying finish to the slabs. That meant I needed to be very careful with clamping (to avoid marring the paint or finish) and that I couldn't sand the trim after assembly to make sure it was flush with the slabs.

I used dowels to attach the trim to the door slab edges. I drilled the holes first into the slab edges and mating trim sides, leaving the trim pieces long. After that, I dry mounted each trim piece to the slab before marking and cutting the mitered ends. The dowels ensured that the front faces of the trim were flush with the slab faces and helped align the trim during subsequent gluing. I didn't take many construction photos of this part of the project.



With the trim pieces cut, I turned my attention to the routing for the inlay, starting with laying out the routing lines.



The first channels I routed were for the 1/2" wide center divider strips. I don't have a dado jig, so I just carefully aligned and clamped two guide boards to the door slab and used a 1/2" pattern bit to route the channel.



Then I turned my attention to the 1/4" wide channels for the 'X' inlay strips. I built a template for my 1/2" diameter router guide bushing. It's just two straight pieces of plywood spaced 1/2" apart and screwed to an L-shaped corner fence. (I should have built this jig first because I could have used it for the center divider strips too.)



I used a 1/4" spiral upcut straight bit to route the channels. It yielded nice clean edges on one side of each channel and furry edges on the opposite sides. I cleaned up the furry edges with a chisel and some sandpaper.







I got some minor chip-out at the ends of two of the channels.



I attempted to fix it with a sawdust and white glue paste.



The result isn't perfect, but good enough not to draw attention to the problem areas.



Now all that remained was routing the tile recesses. To help with that, I made another jig by gluing four pieces of scrap plywood around a tile. (I trimmed the protruding bottom left edge after I took the photo below so the template's width matched that of the door slab. That made it easy to position the template.)



Then I used my 1/2" pattern bit to rout the recesses. I took three shallow passes, starting with the perimeter each time and then hogging out the interior.



After routing, I had to use my chisel as a scraper, followed by some sanding, to remove a tiny bit of material along each edge before the tile would drop into the recess.


I used the tile routing template to mark the inside edges of the accent strips.





The channels for the 'X' accent strips weren't all perfectly aligned with the corners of the slab or with the corners of the tiles. They were close, but with such a narrow (1/4") channel, any error is noticeable. It wasn't bad, but it meant that I needed to custom cut every accent strip (and carefully label everything so I could put the strips in the correct channels during final assembly).

I cut the notches on the tile ends of the strips with an old X-Acto saw I've owned since I was a kid building plastic models.



To cut the opposite (pointed) ends, I place the strips in the channels and flush-trimmed them with the same saw. With that done, the doors were ready to finish and then assemble.

(Adventures in) Finishing

My wife wanted a light/whitish finish for the cabinet. Maple is pretty light toned, so my first thought was to use a clear water-based poly finish. When I made the cabinet top, I also made a small test piece. I applied two coats of General Finishes' High Performance Water Based Polyurethane (flat sheen) to it, and that's when we ran into our first big problem. In the unfinished sample piece, the solid maple was lighter and brighter than the plywood, which had a darker, pinkish cast. The poly didn't change the solid maple much, but it darkened the plywood a bit.

From some viewing angles, the discrepancy wasn't too terrible to me.



From other angles, the difference was very prominent and, to my wife, unacceptable.



She didn't want a painted finish, so my next idea was to try a stain to reduce the color discrepancy. I really liked the GF water-based poly, so we looked at GF's water-based stain. The lightest color was Antique Oak, so I ordered a pint and tested it on scraps sanded to 150- and 180-grit. I tried both one and two coats (topcoated with the poly).

The results weren't too bad for a pigment stain on the close-grained maple. It resembled leather to me. To my wife, it looked a dirty because of the pigment particles in some of the grain, so the stain wasn't the answer either.



I've never tried toning/tinting clear finishes before, but I had always wondered how well it worked. I had nothing to lose, so I tried a roughly 10% solution of 1 part stain to 10 parts poly on wood sanded to 220-grit. It looked much better than the stain, but slightly uneven (because of sloppy brushwork on my part). So I tried two coats of a weaker 2.5% solution of 1/4 part stain to 10 parts poly). The latter was very promising-more even and slightly paler. It didn't mask the differences between the solid wood and plywood, but it somehow made them more acceptable.

In the photo below, the 10% solution is at the top, and the doubled 2.5% solution is at the lower left and lower right. The other parts are the raw wood.



I was pretty sold on the 2.5% solution, but it was still too honey-colored for my wife.

At this point, I started reading about bleaching wood. It sounds like a two-part peroxide solution yields good results, but I wasn't sure how it would affect the plywood (like separating the face veneer, etc.), and my wife was concerned about the noxious chemicals, so I didn't pursue the idea. I did try household bleach on a sample. It actually darkened the wood very slightly, so that was out too.

Now I was starting to run out of options (and scrap pieces for testing), but I had been reading and watching videos about whitewashing. I thought it might produce too much of a rustic/weathered/shabby-chic finish, but I saw that GF sold a water-based whitewash stain. I thought it was worth one last try.

I tried the whitewash stain as intended (as a stain, although it goes on like a very thin paint), and also as a toner for the poly.

In the photo below, the stain (topcoated) is on the left, and the toned poly is on the right. When I showed the samples to my wife, I finally saw her face light up-the toned poly was finally the finish she had in mind, very pale and even while still letting some grain show through.



What a relief! I was finally ready to finish the actual cabinet. I mixed larger quantities of the 2.5% solution and applied two coats (sanding with 600-grit paper in between), intending to follow up with one last clear coat. But, for reasons that aren't clear to me, the color was too weak, not as white/pale as the sample. To solve that problem, I used a 10% solution of the toned poly as the final coat, and all was well (slightly whiter than the sample board, which was okay).

My wife is beyond happy with the final color (even though the plywood and solid wood on the cabinet top are still mismatched a bit). That makes all of the experimentation worthwhile.

When I finished the cabinet and decided to document these finishing experiments, I took a "family portrait" of all of the iterations.



Even if this saga doesn't help anyone else, I'll refer to it myself the next time I attempt a toned finish.

The other finishing step was painting the black trim pieces. Thankfully, that was uneventful. I just sanded the pieces to 220-grit, applied a shellac seal coat, sanded again, and sprayed on four light coats of Rust-Oleum Painter's Touch 2x Flat Black spray paint (from a rattle can). I even passed the stringent inspection from a local QA expert who dropped in. (I had to shoo it away once it climbed onto one of the pieces and started probing with its proboscis.)



With all of the finish applied, I had one last job-assembling and mounting the doors.

Final Door Assembly and Mounting

Few parts of this project went smoothly, and the final door assembly was no exception.

It started well enough. Attaching the outer trim wasn't too bad because I had pre-drilled all of the dowel holes and pre-cut the mitered corners. I just tried to use as little glue as possible (to avoid squeeze out on the finished surfaces) and use a light touch on the clamps.

When I started test fitting the final set of tiles into the now almost-completed doors, I discovered that three of the tiles were slightly larger than the test tile I had used to create the template for the recesses. The difference was probably not more than about 1/32", but that was enough to keep them from fitting.

I had to enlarge the holes again by scraping the edges with a chisel and sanding with 150-grit sandpaper wrapped around a scrap block of wood. Eventually, I got all of the tiles to fit (at one specific orientation because none of them were perfectly square).

That was good, but much to my chagrin and disgust, I had managed to scuff parts of both doors when the sanding block slipped out of the shallow recesses. I tried buffing the scuffs out with a Scotch-Brite pad, but that didn't work. I had to sand off the top layer of finish, and apply one last coat of 2.5% toned topcoat to add back any color I had sanded off. That still didn't hide the scuffs, so I had to add a fourth coat.

I let the final coat dry overnight and then glued the tiles and accent strips (which I also had to shorten to account for the tile size differences). For the first door, I used Titebond wood glue for the tiles. One of the tiles sat slightly low in the recess, so I used high-tech cardboard shims to raise it.



I had to add a lot of glue to fill in the gap between the tile and the recess, and that was a mistake. I left the door on its back for an hour or two to let the glue set before tilting it upright to clean up the glue squeeze out on the back side. That's when my wife asked me if the glue dried clear. I was confused; I had removed any squeeze out between the door slab and trim, and there wasn't any squeeze out around the tiles. (I didn't use that much glue.) Then she pointed out the glue seeping from the gap at the bottom of one tile. The glue hadn't set, and it was sagging and seeping out. I quickly put the door on its back again and carefully cleaned up the seeping glue.

For the other door, I found a tube of adhesive caulk and decided to try it. It was thick enough to avoid the need for shims, and I knew it wouldn't run. The caulk worked much better, and I wished I had used it for the other door too.



I brought both doors inside (on their backs) and had a sleepless night with many fears that the excess Titebond behind that problem tile wasn't ever going to set. I didn't want to have to drill a drain hole on the back of the door.



Fortunately, the glue dried overnight. The next day, all I had to do was install the hinge cups on the doors (I had drilled them before applying finish to the doors, so I just had to screw them in place) and connect them to the mounting plates inside the cabinet. The Blum inset hinges I used are great, and the doors installed easily.

I mentioned before that the doors aren't perfectly flat. They lined up at the tops, but they were misaligned by about 1/16" to 1/32" at the bottom. I was able to adjust the hinges (moving the bottom of one door out, the top of the other door in, etc.) to make everything look respectable. (The black door trim helps with that.)

With that, the project was finally complete. Thanks for reading!

RonStewart said:

Final Door Assembly and Mounting

Few parts of this project went smoothly, and the final door assembly was no exception.

It started well enough. Attaching the outer trim wasn't too bad because I had pre-drilled all of the dowel holes and pre-cut the mitered corners. I just tried to use as little glue as possible (to avoid squeeze out on the finished surfaces) and use a light touch on the clamps.

When I started test fitting the final set of tiles into the now almost-completed doors, I discovered that three of the tiles were slightly larger than the test tile I had used to create the template for the recesses. The difference was probably not more than about 1/32", but that was enough to keep them from fitting.

I had to enlarge the holes again by scraping the edges with a chisel and sanding with 150-grit sandpaper wrapped around a scrap block of wood. Eventually, I got all of the tiles to fit (at one specific orientation because none of them were perfectly square).

That was good, but much to my chagrin and disgust, I had managed to scuff parts of both doors when the sanding block slipped out of the shallow recesses. I tried buffing the scuffs out with a Scotch-Brite pad, but that didn't work. I had to sand off the top layer of finish, and apply one last coat of 2.5% toned topcoat to add back any color I had sanded off. That still didn't hide the scuffs, so I had to add a fourth coat.

I let the final coat dry overnight and then glued the tiles and accent strips (which I also had to shorten to account for the tile size differences). For the first door, I used Titebond wood glue for the tiles. One of the tiles sat slightly low in the recess, so I used high-tech cardboard shims to raise it.

I had to add a lot of glue to fill in the gap between the tile and the recess, and that was a mistake. I left the door on its back for an hour or two to let the glue set before tilting it upright to clean up the glue squeeze out on the back side. That's when my wife asked me if the glue dried clear. I was confused; I had removed any squeeze out between the door slab and trim, and there wasn't any squeeze out around the tiles. (I didn't use that much glue.) Then she pointed out the glue seeping from the gap at the bottom of one tile. The glue hadn't set, and it was sagging and seeping out. I quickly put the door on its back again and carefully cleaned up the seeping glue.

For the other door, I found a tube of adhesive caulk and decided to try it. It was thick enough to avoid the need for shims, and I knew it wouldn't run. The caulk worked much better, and I wished I had used it for the other door too.

I brought both doors inside (on their backs) and had a sleepless night with many fears that the excess Titebond behind that problem tile wasn't ever going to set. I didn't want to have to drill a drain hole on the back of the door.

Fortunately, the glue dried overnight. The next day, all I had to do was install the hinge cups on the doors (I had drilled them before applying finish to the doors, so I just had to screw them in place) and connect them to the mounting plates inside the cabinet. The Blum inset hinges I used are great, and the doors installed easily.

I mentioned before that the doors aren't perfectly flat. They lined up at the tops, but they were misaligned by about 1/16" to 1/32" at the bottom. I was able to adjust the hinges (moving the bottom of one door out, the top of the other door in, etc.) to make everything look respectable. (The black door trim helps with that.)

With that, the project was finally complete. Thanks for reading!

Click to expand...

Nice recovery, Ron. The finished cabinet looks great!