Custom built in cabinets, floating shelves and fireplace mantel

a Mike Farrington welcome back to my shop aka the boardroom in this video I'm going to build a couple built-in cabinets with raised panel doors some floating shelves with LED lighting and a fireplace mantel so stick around and see how I get it done shop apprentice and I agree that the wide belt sander is the coolest tool in the boardroom over the years I've picked up a few tips on how to deal with raw materials both hardwood and plywood first when I order my materials I ask that the plywood goes in first and the hardwood goes in second and when unloading the hardwood I like to stack similar size boards together in second unload your plywood onto some sort of a cart with wheels and if you don't have a full-size truck or van get yourself a circular saw and cut down your sheet goods in the parking lot of wherever you purchase the materials for cabinet projects I use a design software called eat cabinets and it helps me produce drawings as well as this here which is called an S diagram and this is really just a road map to help me break down the sheet goods as efficiently as possible that's the boulder Turnpike above downtown Denver during morning commute let's take a closer look at my sliding table saw this saw is equipped with a scoring blade that's the smaller saw blade in front of the main saw blade and it is designed to cut the bottom of a panel before the main saw blade it comes through and cuts it and this creates a real clean cut top and bottom and a sliding table saw is very much like a regular table saw except it has this carriage attached to the side of it that slides forwards and backwards and the main benefit of this carriage is that it is very easy to break down four by eight sheets of plywood one of the things I like most about this saw is that the fence has to flip stops and this is really nice because I can cut a piece to both length and width by just lifting or lowering the appropriate flip stop with all the panel's cut out it's time to do some edge banding and for this project I have chosen to use fast cap speed tape and PVC edge banding and a fast cap speed tape is really just double sided tape that's designed for the application of edge banding and I chose to use PVC edge banding because I had a roll of it laying round and it's a little more durable than the iron-on melamine edge banding so I think one of the coolest things about this method is it really doesn't require too many tools you just need an end trimmer j-roller that I'm using here and a side trimmer and a mil file and you can really get some excellent results and these end trimmers work great just about perfect results every single time these side trimmers on the other hand work really well on PVC or melamine edge banding but if you're using real wood edge banding sometimes they can cause a little tear out and next I like to break the sharp corner with a mil file and if you just kind of move the file side-to-side it creates more of a slicing cut and this leaves a nice smooth edge and the final step is just to clean off any extra adhesive with some denatured alcohol pretty nice result if I do say so myself and next I move on to drilling shelf pinholes this is known as a line boring machine it drills 23 5 millimeter holes in each pass the holes are drilled at thirty two millimeter centers and as you can imagine this makes quick work of shelf pinholes next I move on to assembling the cabinet boxes and I start with some staples and I finish off by screwing all the parts together I use inch and 3/4 screws to hold the cabinet together and I make sure to use the appropriate size countersink er all right here's the game you get one pinch to pull out the right amount of screws for whatever it is that you're putting together and of course I didn't get the right amount I missed by two I'm horrible at this game here I'm just cranking out a toe kick so during this build I heard the song land of confusion by Genesis which is great song but then later the same day I heard the same song covered by the band disturbed and I thought they did a pretty good job time for a coffee break so I thought I'd ask you viewer what are your favorite cover songs where the original and the covered version are both very good let me know your pics in the comment section below alright in here I'm just adding some strips of plywood that eventually the left and right fillers will be attached to and I'm setting these back from the front edge the thickness of the plywood and next I summon the mighty lamella biscuit joiner from the cave that it lives in and by cave I just mean the drawer I keep it in and I drill a series of biscuit slots in a second piece of plywood and then I staple this second piece on to the original one neat feature of this biscuit joiner is the cutter can be adjusted up and down very accurately and repeatedly so I adjust the cutter down by half a millimeter and I proceed to drill some biscuit slots in the fillers and by adjusting the cutter down slightly it actually allows the filler to overlap to edge the cabinet just a tiny bit and this ensures that there's not an ugly gap between the edge of the cabinet and the filler and this is one area where biscuits really shine because there's a little up-and-down play and I use this play during installation to get the filler exactly where I want it and lastly I put an edge detail on the fillers and this is the same edge detail that I'm going to put on the edge of the doors and one last detail I'd like to point out I cut the fillers to the same height as the doors and I think this looks real nice when the fillers and the doors line up perfectly alright next I make the countertops and this is just a single sheet of 3/4 playa attached an inch and a half wide solid lipping and of course biscuits and glue best way to get that done and I also add some 3/4 inch strips to the bottom of this sheet of plywood just so the whole countertop is an inch and a half thick so switching gears back to the topic of awesome cover songs Bob Seger has a song called turn the page and Metallica covered that song both versions awesome and now it's time to make a really cool modern and sleek fireplace mantel this mantel really is just a bunch of bevel joints glued together and anytime you're going to cut long bevels on the table saw how our feet are really makes this easy the two challenges when cutting long bevels on the table saw are consistent feed rate to avoid burning and also consistent downward pressure and the power feeder takes care of both of these nicely I don't know if you can tell or not but this piece is slightly warped and even still I get really nice bevels because right at the point where the saw blade is cutting is nice consistent downward pressure oh hey look at that I'm wearing my safety glasses finally and the ends of the long pieces are cut on the sliding table saw and this operation is just one of a thousand little tricks you can do with a sliding table saw it makes life real easy after all the parts are beveled properly I taped the bevels together with good old-fashioned blue painters tape and I used to do this with one long piece of tape and now I like to use chunks of tape because it gives a little window just to make sure you can see that that bevel is coming together and gluing up nicely I'd like to take just a second to talk about wood movement as you may or may not know one of the first rules of woodworking is you never glue wood together where the grain is perpendicular and specifically what I'm talking about is the short end piece versus the two longer pieces you see standing vertically here so right about now I imagine you are asking yourself what in fornication is going on I can see that in this glue up there is grain that's perpendicular to each other and the simple answer is the cross grain section of this is only going to be six inches total and that's just not really enough to cause wood movement problems over the life of this mantle now in no way am I giving any sort of permission to go ahead and glue up your projects with cross grain orientation this is just one of those things I've done this enough times over the years and I know that type on three which is what I'm using here has enough stretch in it to accommodate slight amounts of wood movement the first one of these I built was in the late 90s I've probably built 50 or more since and I haven't had one split open on me yet so hopefully that's enough proof so I let the glue dry overnight the next day I come back it's time to pull the clamps off and remove all the tape after all the tapes pulled off I hit it with the random orbit sander and it's ready for staining not too bad next I move on to building the floating shelves so I get started by cutting a groove with my biscuit joiner this is one of my favorite tricks one of the cool things about this trick is in the mating piece there's no measuring or marking where the biscuit slots will be cut you just kind of cut them at random and they're sure to have a home in this slot one of the most common questions I get is what biscuit joiner are you using so as you can see here it's the lamella top 20 and what sets this biscuit joiner apart is the cutter can be moved up and down in the opening as I showed earlier and the adjustment knob has detents at 1/10 of a millimeter increments so it's very accurate so after cutting the grooves in the shelves I work on the front face piece and as you can see I just cut a whole bunch of biscuit slots and I have offset the bottom biscuits to accommodate the LED tape light that I'm gonna be installing shortly and here I'm just cutting a rebate to house the LED tape light I'm going to install and I prefer to cut a rebate versus a rabbet unless the rabbit has it coming all right let's take a closer look at this LED tape light this stuff comes in different intensities I buy it by like the 15 or 20 foot roll and it's typically measured by watts per foot and in this case I'm using a 1.5 watt per foot tape and this stuff is pretty cool you can cut it at either an inch or inch and a half increments and it's all 12 volt just plugs into a regular outlet and then it stepped down to 12 volts from there so it's real safe and easy to work with and as a quick side note I'm just showing this cover here I actually didn't install in the finished product because it does reduce the amount of light output by a fair amount so here's a detail shot of how the front edge of this shelf covers up the LED lights and here's a quick shot of how the whole shelf goes together you can see I have some cleats that attach to the wall the cleats hold the bottom of the shelf with pocket screws the top goes on with nails and the front is glued on with biscuits next it's time to move on to making the raised panel doors check out those sophisticated plans I like to cut my parts a few days ahead of time and let them sit like this to allow them to acclimate to their new size anytime you're cutting smaller parts out of a larger board most of the wood movement that's going to occur is gonna happen within the first couple of days after cutting it up into the smaller pieces that's the reason I like to let my parts sit around for a couple days before doing my final milling if you have the space in your shop a dedicated chop saw station with a flip stop can be a really useful tool and the last step in the milling process is to rip all the parts to final width so for this particular project the customer requested that I match the door style of their kitchen as close as possible and it just so happens that this set from Freud matched pretty darn close overall I think these router bit sets are very good one thing I don't like is that they're not calibrated from the factory so you have to sit there and adjust all the shims until the fit is just right between the three bits here's a quick pro tip I like to use a ruler touching the bearing of the router bit and scooch the fence forward slowly until the fence and the bearing are in plane I don't always do it this way but typically I prefer to do the cope cut first a little while back I built this router table and I put a build video up on my youtube channel so if you're interested in how I built this router table a go to my channel and have a look it's titled very good router table and after using this router table on a couple of projects I can assure you it is a very good router table I set up the stick cutter by having one of the edges of the teeth touch the top of that tongue this is a 1/8 horsepower power feeder I believe they're affectionately nicknamed a baby power feeder they're perfect for router tables they have a nice and low slow speed which is good because it leaves a really nice final surface and it won't bog down your router motor now it's time to raise both the roof and some door panels and I decided to not use the power feeder just to show that you can get great results by feeding parts through by hand and if at this point you're wondering why I used MDF for the center panels for two reasons one it paints better than solid wood and two it is more stable than solid wood however I don't think MDF is as strong as solid wood so I decided to make the frame out of solid poplar after glue up I let the doors dry for a day and then it was time to take them over to the wide belt sander so this sander uses a belt that is 75 inches long and 43 inches wide runs on a 20 horse paramotor I think it weighs about 2,400 pounds and it's not a particularly high-end model but it works really well and for my needs I'm very lucky to have it I bought it off a shop that was going out of business in Utah and I drove 10 hours each way to buy this thing and fortunately the guy selling it had a forklift and also my neighbor has a forklift so loading and unloading it was actually pretty easy one of the coolest things about this wide belt sander is the fact that the belt oscillates back and forth and this is achieved through two pneumatic Rams that are triggered by electronic eyes so as the belt gets to one side ram pushes it back to the other and vice versa and this makes the scratch pattern much softer and less visible so I use the standard of flattened door space frames veneers glue ups and all kinds of other things really useful tool here I'm just squaring up the doors I make them maybe a sixteenth oversize and I'm just doing skim cut on all four sides to make sure the door is nice and square same edge treatment goes on the doors as went on the fillers and the final operation performed on the doors is drilling the hinge cups and these inserted hinges are great they clip in and out really easily so you can clip them in mock everything up and you can clip them out and do your final sanding and paint all right now let's take a look at how all of this goes together I start by pressing the fillers in place and then I move on to clicking the doors in place once the doors are in place I think the cabinet really comes alive you can see here how the filler and the doors are set at the same height and the gap between the door and the filler is set at about 1/8 of an inch and it's nice and even and here's a protip bordering on trade-secret make the doors 1/16 of an inch thinner than your fillers so that the faces line up perfectly when a small gap is left for hinge clearance and here's an embarrassing pro tip I like to use an old sock to apply stain a fondant being able to use my whole hand allows me to apply a nice even coat and you can see the white paint in the background drying having to switch between two types of finishes really slows things down after the stain is dry I apply a few layers of a satin clear coat while the finish was drying I made some cutouts in the back edge of the adjustable shelves and this allows wires to be run easily from shelf to shelf next I add a small chamfer to the outside edge of the shelf and this will cut off any chip out and also makes it nice on your hands for delivery after everything was nice and dry for a few days I load it up and headed over to the job site and the blue tape is actually there for design purposes I did the layout in blue tape to help the customer envision what the final product will look like and I get started by marking some level lines for the cleats that get attached first and then I mark the location of the studs and the stud finder is just a magnet it finds the head of the steel screw or nail used to hang the drywall next I'm mark and pre-drill the cleats with a generous pilot hole and when selecting a screw length I like to do the calculation so that the screw doesn't penetrate into the stud more than one inch and if the house was built to code you'll have no problems running into plumbing or electrical if your screw only penetrates the stud 1-inch and please note that I said if the house was built to code and because the shelves are only about twelve and a half inches deep I was unable to get the side cleats attached to a stud so I hold the cleat in place I drill through the cleat and into the drywall this marks the location for one of the screw and type drywall anchors I like to use and I was able to get a screw into a stud in the back corner once the cleats are in place I move on to fitting the lower portion of each of the shelves and I do this by measuring front middle and back I check the widths I also use a square to see how far out of square each corner is and I transfer all this onto the piece and I cut it with either a track saw or a jig saw and this lower piece is attached with pocket screws next I cut the tops and I just have those sitting there and then I drill a hole and this hole is going to be where I run the wire for that LED lights once the wires been run down to where the switch will be I proceed to stick the tape light in place there's a few close-ups of the finished product and this is a pretty slick way of putting lights in cabinetry or shelves so the lights are pretty cool the dimmer works good but the real item of note in this shot is look at the shine on that guy's head that couldn't possibly be my head right all right enough comedy jokes back to work and here's where all that biscuiting earlier pays off I just simply cut this piece to length I put some biscuits and glue on I taped the front edge in place and that's all that's needed to hold this together no nail holes to fill and a nice sleek look all right now that all the shelves have been put together it's time to hang the fireplace mantel so after eating french fries for lunch I hang this French cleat on the wall with a few screws so the mantle slips right on and hooks in place and I just use about four nails to hold this in place permanently next it's time to install the lower cabinets I start by marking and cutting the baseboards and I do this to make clearance for the baseboard that I'm going to install after that I level and set the toe kick and if I take my time and do this right I don't even need to check the cabinet for level because I know it's sitting on a perfectly level surface once the cabinet is set in place I mark the locations of a couple of studs and I screw the cabinet to the wall and when attaching the cabinet to the wall I make sure not to pull it out of level if there is a small gap behind the cabinet and as you tighten the screw down it pinches the cabinet towards the wall I like to put a couple shims behind the cabinet to hold it in place and next I install the baseboard and I just do that with construction adhesive again so there's no nail holes to fill and in this particular case on one side there's baseboards and on the other side they're stonework so I have to slide the baseboard down in from the top and then I reinstall this little piece of the original baseboard and it kind of helps clamp the baseboard that's attached at the front of the cabinet in place and next I move on to installing the left and right side fillers and as you can see I made them intentionally wide I measure in a few places then I mark and scribe and cut them to fit gluing biscuits to hold everything in place and a nice friction fit between the cabinet and the wall holds everything until the glue dries once the fillers are installed I cut and fit the countertops the same way that I did the shelves and after that I click the doors in place and I adjust him until the gaps are nice and even and once the doors are adjusted I install the knobs and I clean up any of the wiring and cover plates and things like that inside the cabinets then it's time to clean up and take some finished photos so overall I'm pretty pleased with how this project turned out I think with the space given this is a pretty nice fit I also like the look of the white paint versus the dark stain I think it creates a nice contrast I also like the LED lights I think they make the installation more elegant and the near-invisible install is slick as snot lastly I know this video covered a lot of ground if you have any questions about any of the processes that I did in this video please feel free to ask your question in the comment section below thanks for watching till next time

Channel: Mike Farrington

Views: 161,727

Rating: 4.9379525 out of 5

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Id: tn1LKhqDfl4

Length: 24min 23sec (1463 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 02 2018