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Leo G
February 18th, 2010, 10:34 PM
This is about the Cherry kitchen I am installing. I am at the end of the job, last couple of cabinets/shelves and then the crown. Because the ceilings are so far out we decided to keep the crown away from the ceiling.

So I am installing the small corner cabinet next to the refrigerator cabinet. I get it leveled and scribed in. I get the top scribed in. Then I put the corner shelf on top. I put it up against the refer and the other side is a 1/2" from the wall. No way to twist the cabinet to make it comply. So I take the refrigerator cabinet that is flat against the wall and pull the left side out about 1/2". This fixes everything except for the vertical wow in the wall. It'll have to do. Not my wall.

Then we go to case the 6" x 7" beam that goes across the kitchen, dividing the kitchen from the dining area. I have some 1/4" Cherry that have some solid glued on to form a dado and cove. This will form a shadow box. Put up the plywood and the ceiling has a 1/2" smile in it. We just deal with it.

The the next thing is another corner cabinet to go up against an upper cab and the wall. I already know this wall is out about 3/8" over the 40" upper, so I expect there to be a tapered gap. Put it up and low and behold, there it is. Don't want to put it flush to the wall because you will see the edge of the cabinet front taper to front of the corner shelf. My helper argues with me and wants me to modify the cabinet. BS, I am sick of this house and it's whacked out walls, it is a 1950's house, walls should be reasonable. I win, the tapered gap stays.

So all the cabs and the beam are up, time for the crown. Set up the indexed 45º blocks on the cabinet And go to put up the first pc of crown. It is a cabinet to the right of the window and will reach over to the cabinet on the left of the window. I forgot the valance (whoops) so it will be installed later. I notice that the crown is falling naturally about 1/2" in front of the other cabinet. I also remember that this cabinet (right of the window) was on a big hump in the wall. I had scribes on both sides and they weren't quite enough to get a constant contact and keep the cabinet plumb. So this hump in the wall screwed up the alignment in the crown. We couldn't force it to comply.

So I decide to pull the right side of the cabinet from the wall to correct the error. Pull out the two right screws and the cabinet won't budge. Loosen the two left screws and the cabinet won't budge. Then it dawns on me. We put a few screws in through the cherry plywood on the beam into the cabinet. There is no option, take the beam surround off. At this point it wasn't bad. 3 screws and the polyurethane construction adhesive hadn't set up yet. So we remove the screws and the cabinet moves easily. Shim it back up and put the screws back in through the beam plywood and the back of the cabinet. The crown falls in place easily.

The rest of the crown in the kitchen goes pretty smooth. But I am pretty pissed. I had to move two cabinets to get this stuff to work right. Things that I should be able to take for granted, that the walls are pretty straight and pretty plumb. Neither which occurred here.

Now the only issue I can see is that because of the floor ceiling relationship the reveal of the crown to the ceiling varies substantially. at it's closest it is 1/2" and at its furthers it is about 1 1/2" If I tried to put the crown up to the ceiling this would have been even more of a nightmare. So many compound angles, I would have gone insane.



So, how was your day?:smash:

scctrim
February 18th, 2010, 10:47 PM
I've been awake since 3 am...not sure why. Looked at 2 jobs today, 1 very small handyman type thing and the other a whole house with paneled walls where they want to remove it and skim coat the wallboard behind it...ya know..that's easy right. :)

It of course is glued and nailed..an hour after I got there I was leaving. She was in the car waiting for me, hungry as all hell...and not impressed at the length of time I was there. We went to olive garden for dinner, and then home.

On the bright side we are going to spend the weekend away with friends. Cant wait, its been too long.

ChrWright
February 18th, 2010, 10:54 PM
Sounds like a day of challenges. Nothing like construction adhesive on your hands...clothes... parts... etc.

Leo G
February 18th, 2010, 11:00 PM
Didn't get any construction adhesive on my hands or any place else it shouldn't have been. I guess I was lucky in that aspect. :rolleyes:

Bodger
February 18th, 2010, 11:31 PM
PITA.
But imagine how hard it would have been if you weren't good at this.

I've had stuff like that happen at a time when I was less experienced. Not fun.

I'm so rusty right now if this continues, I'm going to have to re-learn this stuff to be able to do it effectively.
Too long idle.

naptownCr
February 19th, 2010, 01:59 AM
Leo
welcome to the wonderful world of remodeling.
If it was easy anyone could do it.

Leo G
February 19th, 2010, 07:54 AM
PITA.
But imagine how hard it would have been if you weren't good at this.

I've had stuff like that happen at a time when I was less experienced. Not fun.

I'm so rusty right now if this continues, I'm going to have to re-learn this stuff to be able to do it effectively.
Too long idle.

Leo
welcome to the wonderful world of remodeling.
If it was easy anyone could do it.

It is not that I can't handle it or I am not use to it. I started installing on 18th century homes where nothing is straight, flat, square, in plane, level, plumb or true. There are no references other than your eye.

This is a house built in the 50's. I found some of the unplumb walls when I was getting my cabinet lists and accounted for them with scribes. But what these walls are is utterly ridiculous. Swoops, bows, straights with hard bends. The floor rises, the ceiling sinks and smiles. All at the same time.

I am truly sick of this house. If I ever have to do another install in this house I will be charging by the hour for the install or triple my thoughts of how long if he wants a bid.:censored:

kornerking
February 19th, 2010, 08:31 AM
Leo, "SNAFU". This is a bitch. Question? What are indexed 45 deg blocks? Something new to me.

Allrounder
February 19th, 2010, 08:58 AM
Gotta love those old plaster walls. We did a tile shower/wainscot job last year where we had to grind some humps off of the plaster, and then skim the dips with thinset in order to get the walls somewhat flat. Lots of fun!

neolitic
February 19th, 2010, 09:20 AM
Lots of early '50s houses here with
original site built cabinets, that
laugh at boxes.....or more to the point,
the poor schlub who is installing boxes.
Hard for HOs to get why it can be so tough
to replace what's already there.....

WarnerConstInc.
February 19th, 2010, 09:53 AM
I've worked on 7 year old houses that were that far off, if not worse.

scctrim
February 19th, 2010, 10:07 AM
I'll second that..hell I've worked on new stuff that is that bad or worse. But thats my job...food service. I make chicken salad out of chicken crap.

Silvertree
February 19th, 2010, 10:18 AM
I'll second that..hell I've worked on new stuff that is that bad or worse. But thats my job...food service. I make chicken salad out of chicken crap.

That must be one hell of a lunch:grin:

scctrim
February 19th, 2010, 11:51 AM
It is all of our lunches...

a sad..but true statement

afkama
February 19th, 2010, 01:19 PM
I started installing on 18th century homes where nothing is straight, flat, square, in plane, level, plumb or true. There are no references other than your eye.


One of the more difficult things to teach someone when they move from new construction to remodeling is to quit relying so much on their level and use their eye instead. We spend the majority of our time splitting differences.

Leo G
February 19th, 2010, 07:47 PM
Leo, "SNAFU". This is a bitch. Question? What are indexed 45 deg blocks? Something new to me.

Because the crown isn't going to the ceiling I needed blocks to mount the crown to. For the walls they were just a triangle with a hole drilled in it with a Kreg pocket hole drill bit.

For the cabinets I made the triangular blocks with a flat that went on top of the cabinet to index the depth the triangle block would hang down.

http://fototime.com/FB77C3003C9103D/orig.jpg

paulie
February 19th, 2010, 09:28 PM
The hard part is bidding the labor hours for a job like that. You figure your time to hang 'em and maybe a little wiggle room but along comes the snafu's and your labor goes to $5/hr.

Been there Leo

Hope it goes better next time.:2thumbsup:

Leo G
February 19th, 2010, 09:31 PM
Just about every cabinet job I do there is scribing. I put the scribe on the cabinet, and whether or not the wall is curved it needs to be taken off to make the cabinet lie flat on the wall. So my times are almost always the same. In this case it was not. This was f'ed up.

WarnerConstInc.
February 19th, 2010, 11:07 PM
If you do that to every cabinet, you need to get a ts-55 and a rotex leo. It would save you so much time.

Plus breaking down your sheet goods.

Leo G
February 19th, 2010, 11:12 PM
Dream on Festool boy.

I have a Bosch jigsaw and a PC mini belt sander. I break my sheet goods down on my TS. My scribes make my cabinets look like they grew on the wall.

WarnerConstInc.
February 20th, 2010, 03:30 PM
Fine caveman!!