Delivery and Installation of the Hutch Lower Unit

I drove to my Mom's camp on Friday evening with the back end of my truck filled with the newly built hutch lower unit. On saturday morning, with the help of a friend, I put the hutch into its new home:











The new unit looks really nice and has lots of storage space. Once I get the upper unit completed, I can call the camp kitchen done, except for floor and ceiling moldings.

Moldings

Today I made the moldings which finish the top of the hutch upper unit. Later in the day I cut and installed them on the cabinet. The molding is actually comprised of two moldings. The lower one is attached first, then the upper one is glued and nailed to the lower one.



In the next photo you can see glue oozing out of the miter joint. I like to use polyurethane glue for the miter joints. It's better than regular woodworker's glue at filling slight gaps, sands nicely, and doesn't seem to cause problems with the finish.

Spalted Sycamore

I'm preparing to make some moldings for the upper hutch unit tonite, but I did take some time to plane some spalted sycamore. I found this wood over the summer, in the southerntier of New York State. I've used spalted wood before, but never spalted sycamore. It's very similar to spalted maple in appearance, but is a little less dense. Here are some pictures of spalted sycamore:

How could you not make a beautiful piece of furniture with lumber like this?

Hutch, Upper Unit

It's funny how life gets in the way of one's hobbies. I had to take a few days off my workshop activities to deal with a 13 year old vehicle that suddenly lost its
brakes. In between making brake lines, I was able to build the end panels, interior partitions, top and bottom of the hutch upper unit. Tonight, I glued the pieces up. It took several clamps to assemble the face frame to the rest of the carcass. Here's a side view, showing the framed panel. You can also see that I still need to put the back onto the carcass. This will get done by cutting two pieces of 1/4" oak plywood. Since the overall width of the carcass is 60" and the grain needs to run vertically, I'll cut one piece to cover two of the three openings, and one to cover just one of the openings. The seams will fall behind on of the interior partitions. I also cut a dado into the back of the side panels, so the plywood will fit flush with the back of the carcass.

Hutch, Lower Unit

Yesterday I put the top on the lower unit of the hutch, so at that point it was ready to leave the shop. We tied it to a hand truck and brought it up, a stair at a time. Once I got it in the living room, I then attached the hinges and the doors. This cabinet uses Blum European style hinges. They're nice, because they can be adjusted in three directions -- this makes it easier to align the doors to each other.

Notice the vertical opening between the left and center doors. I did that purposefully; I didn't want to place a stile between the doors, it would just be an obstacle to putting things in and out of the cabinet. What I'll do is take a 1/2" thick strip of oak and attach it to the backside of the leftmost door so that it will look like there is a stile there.

Now it's back to working on the upper unit...