DIYoneer Living Blog

Back when our two story house was a just a one story pavilion outdoor kitchen we ran across our local Habitat for Humanity Restore was having a moving sale and everything was 75% off. So I jumped at the opportunity and braved the crowds to grab the tags off of every cabinet that I could get my hands on. About 8 months later, after sitting not so smartly under and on tarps at the top of the hill, they were finally dragged under the house. Another month later, the bottom cabinets have been dragged into the house to start the process of building the kitchen.

I would assume that in the normal progression of building a house, the kitchen appliances and cabinets would be the dead last thing to go into the house. But, with our present financial circumstances, being limited to inside work for the most part, and winter having actually showed up this year, it was the ideal time to start this tricky task.

The reason it was tricky is that, despite my best intentions at the restore, I didn’t realize that I had actually purchased only two proper kitchen cabinets, 24” deep and 35ish inches high. The rest were bathroom vanities, for midgets. They are only 21” deep and feel like they are about 18” off then ground (actually in the 28” range). This is tiny, so short, I would have to bend fully at the waist to properly wash my face and Luke would have to get on his knees. So, as I said before, despite my good intentions, I was in a pickle as to how make all these cabinets fit, and not spend anymore non-existent money.

So here was my solution:

(Pictured 12’ stretch of cabinets using vanities, kitchen cabinets  and lots of 2x4’s.

So I decided that instead of putting the addition to the vanities at the bottom, I would add it to the top so that it could eventually act as more drawers. I had to stack two layers of two by fours to securely brace the cabinet away from the wall and get it to the proper 24” depth.

I then made the height addition “platform” to the vanity, using the ends of the cabinet section to provide perpendicular support for the counter above and to make the whole structure stronger when I nailed it together (because I have learned the hard way that a regular square (just four pieces of wood) nailed together with a nail gun in the corners will fall apart as soon as you sneeze). I made the whole things with 2x8 scraps that we had left over. The back (parallel parts to the wall) was secured with two 2x4’s with a notch cut out to let some wiring go through, the front with ¾”x1/2” pieces so that a drawer could fit there in the future.

Because I didn’t want to rip the 2x8, this made the platform rise about ½” higher than the existing kitchen cabinets. The easy solution was to take some more of that ¾”x1/2” wood** from above and tack that onto to rim of the kitchen cabinets (the ones that were already to height). This was good because I am 5’10”, Luke is 6’4”, we need high cabinets, we are aiming for 37.5”, cabinet height. Typical height is 36” counter top and all.

We then added ¾” MDF board to the top to be the bottom layer of the counter. MDF board looks a lot like sawdust glued together. It cuts really well, it very dense and just right for this purpose. A 2’ x 4’ board is $10 at your local home improvement store and fits perfectly as a standard depth counter top. We will eventually finish the counter with some really thick cherry that we had slab cut at our local saw mill. Cherry is NOT a good counter top wood because it isn’t hard enough and has some absorptive qualities. Oh well, it is what we have and will hopefully be beautiful.

**Funny reason we have that is when we were originally going to put the siding on we were going to use those small furring strips to separate the siding from the OSB sheathing board/vapor barrier layer, in order to stop the heat from conducting in or out depending on the seasons (wood has some insulating properties and some conductive properties, just like a lot of materials). We are still planning on it, whenever we get to the siding point when we get some more money, but I have been robbing that stash for months now for all sorts of little projects.