Looking more like furniture...

And so, the drawers are mounted! It is now starting to look like an actual piece of furniture.The holes for the handles went through both the drawer front and the box front. Attaching the handle and tightening the screws sufficiently gave me enough pressure to align the drawer front. I then drilled countersunk holes from inside the drawer box to screw the fronts to the boxes.

Drawer front stained and poly'd

I finally finished the drawer fronts. Two coats of stain, and two coats of polyurethane. Jen picked out the drawer pulls this morning (see below).

All the drawer boxes are now mounted in the cabinet, and my goal is to mount fronts and pulls tonight!

Aaron holds his cup for the first time!

It may seem like a dumb thing to post about, but for those of you that are
parents, these kinds of events are significant. Besides signaling the progress of your child, they bring you gradually closer to freedom...

One side of drawers done

Alright, progress continues! I've mounted one side's worth of drawer
boxes. Full extension, 100 lb drawer sliders. I've cut the drawer
fronts out of maple already and routed the edges of one. After the
rest are routed and sanded, stain is next...

Weston's in the army now!

We're hunting wabbits...

Update on JJ's broken leg

JJ has had his cast off for about 3 weeks now, and he's doing great! He still couldn't walk for about the first week, but he's walking very well now, even though he still has a limp (which the doctor told us to expect). I'm sure in the next month or so, he'll be back to his old young self.

The base cabinet lives!

So, I've been working feverishly to build a base cabinet so I can watch my new TV! Here's how the progression went:

The box is assembled. In the photo on the left it's sitting on it face. Everything but the top is constructed of factory-finished plywood: natural finish with a UV cured top coat. It's great to work with and the finish is tough. The top is raw maple plywood, which will be stained.

Here is the solid maple face frame all clamped up to the carcass. I made the face frame from rough-sawn maple, planed and jointed it flat and straight, and assembled the frame with pocket screws. It's attached with glue and biscuits. You can also see a little support I attached to the bottom. Since the whole thing is 70" wide, it'll want to sag over time.

The face frame with clamps off! Needs to be trimmed a bit and sanded, then stained. The top part of the frame will also be rounded over with the router.

After sanding both top and face frame, here is the stain job.

A close up of the solid maple face frame with stain applied. Turned out pretty nice...

Once the polyurethane was cured (2 coats), I couldn't wait to get it in place so we could finally fire up the new TV! The Media Center computer has its own special spot, as you can see. Looks dang good! Clearly, there are four drawers to make.

I started making drawer boxes last night using dovetails. They turned out pretty good, I think. I've got three all assembled and glued up, just one left. Once they're all done, I need to add a couple of strips inside the base cabinet on to which I can mount the full extension drawer sliders. After that, I have one more maple board from which I'll make the drawer box fronts. They'll have the same stain and finish.

One of the drawers in it's entirety.