The Pastor's Study

This daylight basement serves as the Pastor's office. It originally had a set of twelve mahogany plywood doors that opened to reveal a long damp and poorly finished storage area.

We were able to reuse those plywood doors to build these beautiful self-cased bookshelves. The solid lumber in the face frames and shelf edges is reclaimed lumber from a deconstructed building owned by the same church.

This project is pretty unusual because we used douglas fir and mahogany together. We overcame the differences in grain and color characteristics by using a stain and glaze finish process with conversion varnish.

Overall this project contained over 80% reused material (by weight). Even the glaze was saved from the Hazardous waste stream.

In the Process

I thought it might be fun to do a series on something that I'm building as I'm building it.

I collect pictures of built-in hutches from real estate ads...they help me with inspiration, and they help me to get the proportions and details right. Those old-timers built neat stuff, and I'm trying to learn from them.

So here's the project. I'm building the hutch in the picture using the reclaimed fir lumber pictured at the left. The hutch is white, but I'm building it to be stained. I'm going to use traditional construction methods, that is, I'm not using plywood, except in the drawer bottoms where solid lumber is completely impractical.

The second picture of lumber is the "after" picture. It's the same lumber after it's been metal detected and run through the planer.

I'll show some of the construction techniques as I go along. The final product will be for sale. I hope it takes me a long time to finish, because I hope I'm interrupted with paying jobs in the meantime.

The Melameaning of Life

I've had a distaste for melamine for a long time.  Long before evil people in a large country in Asia started using it in pet food and baby formula, cabinet makers in our country started putting it in our kitchen cabinets.  It's a shortcut product and it's great for the cabinetmaker's profit margins, but it isn't good for the homeowner.

My lumber delivery driver told me this week that I'm the only shop he knows of that doesn't always use melamine for their cabinet boxes.  And he asked me if people complain that I don't use melamine.  Wow.  I wasn't aware that people still think of melamine as a good thing...especially here in Portland where we pay special attention to environmental concerns.

I have three main gripes about melamine. 

First, it isn't a 100 year product.  It's particle board with a thin layer of plastic bonded to it.  Fasteners tend to pull out of particle board, and it swells horribly when and if it gets wet.  You can't repair it either.  It either looks ugly when you chip/crack/soak it, or you replace it.

Second, that thin layer of plastic disqualifies the waste from being recycled with other wood products.  Also, more waste is generated within the shop because the offall isn't as versatile for use in the cabinetmaking process.

Finally, there's the chemical thing.  There's the melamine and the formaldehyde.  I can source a no-added-formaldehyde melamine product, but it's about twice the cost of standard melamine.

Saratoga Woodworks' standard materials include formaldehyde free (NAUF/CARB compliant) plywood products with water based and low VOC finishes.

We have the capability to use many Green products you may beinterested in, from wheat board to reclaimed material to Paperstone countertops.

"Reclaimed!" he exclaimed.

This Kitchen is shaping up to be really cool...and green.

All of the lumber on this project is reclaimed fir. Even the top on the cabinet to the left is glued up from strips of reclaimed fir.

These cabinets are destined for a 1917 bungalow and are designed to look period appropriate...and cabinets from that era didn't have toekicks. We overcame the inconvenience of not having that space for your toes by providing an overhang on one cabinet and a recessed section under the sink. A counter height eating bar can also be used as a workstation.

This kitchen has some unusual features:
-The counter height is 38" (The homeowners are tall).
-A pull-out step under the sink cabinet gives the kids better access to help with the dishes.
-A blind corner is accessed by pulling a section of cabinetry(mounted on casters) out of its home. Moving this rolling workstation gives excellent access to an area that is usually occupied by a space-inefficient lazy susan or a deep, dark hole where small appliances get lost.
-a small (18" wide x 33" tall) dishwasher will occupy the space to the left of the sink.

The upper cabinets will be featured in an upcoming post.