Deconstruction of the sideboard progressed quickly (despite the delay in posting about it) though there were an awful lot of swear words involved in taking this thing apart. Chris said it was like someone's extremely skilled Grandfather cut all the pieces and began assembly, passed away, and the Great-Grandkid, who once read a book on furniture construction, decided to put it all together. With as many nails as humanly possible. But Chris got it apart with minimal damage and did the work necessary to put it back together.
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| Perfectly fit sink water pipe |
Next up was cutting the hole for the sink. Why don't sinks come with full size templates? They very kindly included a page with the hole template but since they didn't bother to depict the entire sink area we had fiddle around to figure out the reveal. I finally just drew the outer dimensions on the same page and cut that out first. Placed it with the desired amount of cabinet showing all around, tacked the corners, and drew in the sink cutout. Then I left while Chris cut through the antique top with the unmatchable layered paint. I just couldn't watch.
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| Of course he did it perfect. |
The nails in this old cabinet had gone through a lot of weathering. I'm quite sure it got stored in a barn or two along the way. Which means the wood got wet, got dry, swelled and shrank, and had a very tight grip on those rusted bits of metal. So removing them resulted in some tear-outs and many holes (note they had to be removed to retro fit this for the sink and plumbing and whatnot. Plus they were ugly). I decided to try to touch up the bare wood since they were small spots but glaringly obvious against the green/black patina.
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| Holes and tear-outs left bare wood |
Acrylic craft paint in flat green and satin black, dabbed onto the brush as I painted, worked surprisingly well.
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| Imperfect mixing was the key |
Chris got it plumbed and then went to work on figuring out the drawer configuration.
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| No drips! |
The drawers were cool. Dowel joints and grooved bottoms (that Grandpa knew his stuff) were strong and Chris wanted to preserve them despite the fact that we needed to significantly alter the depth of the drawer in order to accommodate the plumbing. To keep the dowel joints front and back but still remove a good 12 inches from the drawer depth he had to take the drawer apart, cut out the center section of the side, rejoin the cut pieces and keep that groove perfectly straight. I just wish we had a picture of that join! This is the best I could do - see a join? Nope, me neither (Chris knows his stuff too).
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| Fitting it all back together |
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| Curved the back to fit the sink bowl |
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| Just deep enough to be useful |
The rest of the cabinet is done and we're using the space (hooray!) while we figure out how to best use that itty-bitty closet area. More pics soon!
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