The Den of Slack

The kitchen sink cabinet I’m making from two Cassidy Creations Oak Washstand kits has decorative trim under the center cabinets (lined up under the sink). At the bottom of the left and right sides, I’d planned to put a plain piece of wood flush with the front of the cabinet.

But this looks weird to me. My brain is asking, “Why isn’t that another drawer?”

I tried setting it back to make it a toe-kick, but this also looks weird. Seems too tall for a toe-kick.

Okay, so why not use that space for another drawer?

But now I have another problem: I’d planned to use thin 1/32″ dividers between the drawers because the drawers would fit perfectly without sanding. I also think they look nice and proportional compared to the 1/16″ cabinet frame. But if that bottom space has a drawer in it, there are now two 1/32″ dividers and one 1/16″ divider. My perfectionist brain couldn’t stand it.

Instead I’ll use 1/16″ dividers between the drawers, and a thin 1/32″ piece at the very bottom. (If I had used 1/16″ there, the space I was left with would have been smaller than the drawers above it, and a smaller drawer at the bottom also would have looked weird.)

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Let’s get back to the sink cabinet bashed out of two Cassidy Creations washstands. Here’s where I left off:

Normally, the sides of the washstand are made by attaching long skinny pieces to thin rectangles.

I had planned to use the thin rectangles for the cabinet doors, but since they’re slightly too long, I decided to hold on to those pieces and cut my own doors. I have something in mind for the leftover washstand pieces. I’ll leave you guessing for now.

I have two of these washstands that I bought assembled, and in both of them the pin hinges split the wood when they were inserted into the wood. I used thicker wood for the doors to avoid this (1/16″ rather than 1/32″).

Here are the options I had on hand for the slats on the doors: 1/8″ x 1/32″, 3/32″ x 1/16″, and 3/16″ x 1/32″. The 3/16″ is what I used on the other lower kitchen cabinets, but these doors are narrower — the slats would have taken up most of the door. The 3/32″ looks perfect, but the 1/16″ depth would have been too bulky on the doors. What to do?

Rather than buy some 3/32″ x 1/32″ strip wood (and pay more for shipping than for the wood itself), I decided to cut down the 3/16″ strip wood. I used a piece of the 3/32″ x 1/16″ wood as a template and cut off the excess with a utility knife.

I glued on the vertical slats with the utility-knife-cut edges facing out, so the lines forming the panel would be the straight “factory edges.” Then I measured and cut the horizontal slats to fit between them, again cutting down the 3/16″ strip wood.

Next I painted the cabinet, doors, drawer fronts, and decorative trim.

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