Kitchen Cabinet Drawers

The drawer fronts are made of plywood edged with solid Cherry and slip-matched cherry veneer on the fronts and maple veneer on the backs. The decorative diamond inlays were salvaged from an old table I made for an exhibition ten years ago. They will be used for a few other decorative kitchen details and on some of the window trim throughout the rest of the house. Stay tuned!

Kitchen Cabinet Doors

All of the lower kitchen cabinet doors have now been completed, finish applied and successfully installed. The frames are 3/4" x 1-3/4" cherry and the visible panels are MDF painted with 'Cancun Sand' semi-gloss. There is also a 1/4" thick maple ply backing to give the black backing to the diamonds. We hung the doors to the cabinets with soft-close hinges so no matter how heated things get in the kitchen, it is impossible to slam a door or drawer.

Can't Stop Making Cutting Boards

We have now been using the kitchen for the month that we've lived in the house and everything is functioning beautifully. Our plan all along in the kitchen was to get the lower cabinets finished, then just live with it for the summer (switching to outdoor activities), and resume the upper kitchen cabinets in the fall.

One of the final details for the lower cabinets that had been planned in was a series of small cutting boards that tuck in a holder immediately above the Yam-Onion-Potato baskets. I made four cutting boards out of Beech about 12" wide and 8" deep and carved letters into the front edge to specify their uses. No more garlic tasting breakfast toast!

Crows vs. Robins

Last spring, Karen had an ongoing battle with Mama Robin who persistently tried and tried to build a nest in the rafters of the roof over our bedroom balcony. Wanting to avoid the mess, Karen would knock down the new nest and the Robin would rebuild - again and again.

I simply couldn't face another confrontation this spring, so I set aside kitchen cabinet doors and drawers for a few hours and built a couple of decoy crows. My plan was to mount the crows near the potential nesting site and hope that Mama Robin would consider building elsewhere. The crow bodies were rough bandsawn, textured with a carving gouge and painted black over a few evenings. I purchased 4 forks at the nearby Salvation Army Thrift store ($.29 ea.) which made perfect "crows feet".

All was well for a couple of days but in the middle picture you can see the beginning of a Robin's nest in the background. This leads me to wonder, are Robins so smart that they can recognize the Crows are fake, or so dumb they haven't noticed a predator 5 feet away? Next year.....Eagles!