Bathroom Cabinet Project

This project came about from mostly necessity. My condo bathroom is small and the only storage was under the sink. Unfortunately I've filled that area with all sorts of random things and I had nowhere to hide all the extra soap and TP and such. So I decided to hang a cabinet in the big empty space above the toilet.

Before:

As you can see, there's a ginormous empty wall space there. It made the whole bathroom look weird because it looked like something was missing.

So I went and checked out what scrap wood I had laying around and miraculously, I had enough wood to make myself a 2ft wide by 3ft tall cabinet + doors and shelf.

Let's do this, quick and dirty style. First you need to cut some wood. 3 pieces for the top, bottom and shelf, and 2 for the sides. Like I said earlier the dimensions were about 2ft and 3ft long with a depth of about 9 inches.

 Now start gluing and screwing things together to make...

A box! In this project I didn't worry about making a back for the cabinet. I may add one later with a thin sheet of MDF.

I jumped ahead of myself and mounted the permanent shelf before taking a picture, but it's self explanatory anyway. I screwed the shelf in about 1ft from the bottom and proceeded to cut the doors to cover the top portion.

Dry fitting the doors. They fit! After determining the fit I installed 2 standard flat hinges on each door. Not the best choice for a hinge but I had them laying around.

Take it all apart and paint it. I chose a satin brown called Funky Monkey which I also used to paint the bathroom walls when I moved in.

<--Door

You can see the type of brass hinge I used here.

<-- Frame

Screw a block to the wall for the cabinet to hang from and make sure it is level. Again, aesthetics was not a biggie for me and the doors will be closed most of the time anyway.

Set the frame on top of your mounting block and screw if from the top. Drill pilot holes so you don't end up breaking off the mounting position. Put the doors back on and tada!

It's wall mounted bathroom cabinet that you can do over a weekend or less! 

Note: Later I came back and covered the visible end grain on the front of the frame with stick-on wood veneer and painted to match.

Gate Leg Table Project

This project came about while I was building my bar(another project). I realized, what good is a nook to make drinks if there wasn't a place to sit down with people to drink them? Of course it may also be used as a dining table... but like I said, the bar brought up the question.

A gate leg table, is basically a morphed drop-leaf table. Rather than having a small permanent table with small "leaves" on either end to crate length, a gate leg table has a small center island with one or two really big leaves to create a large surface area. The term "gate leg" refers to the skinnier legs that support each leaf, because they swing out under the leaf like a gate to prop it up. With both leaves dropped down the center island's footprint is very compact and can be put away when there's no need for any table at all.

There are many variations on how to configure this type of table but for my purposes I chose a very small island with large leaves. It's just easier to store.

So lets begin with the materials. What? In case you haven't noticed this entry is a how to, or rather, how I built a gate leg table. You can make this however big or small you like so this time around I'll not focus on exact measurements.

Materials:

- 1 sheet 3/4" single side finished birch plywood(standard 4X8, cut into 4 equal pieces)

- box of 2" screws
- box of 1 1/4" screws
- 4 surface hinges for leaves
- 4 brass plain cabinet hinges for gate legs

- 1 qt black latex paint

- 1 qt polycrylic clear finish(whatever sheen you like but I used satin)

- small paint roller and pan and small sponge brushes

Tools:
- drill w/ 1/8" and 1/4" drill bits and a phillips head bit of course.
- saws. I used a power jigsaw and a manual Japanese pull saw. (wish I had a table saw...)
- some kind of powered sander with 100 and 300 grit papers. 300 grit sanding sponge for hand work.
- carpenter's square

If you were paying attention you'd remember that we have 4 equally cut pieces of ply from the single sheet. Take one piece and cut 4 equal planks for the center island. I want somewhere in the 8 1/2"in range if I remember correctly(probably not).

Now just screw those suckers together with the side sections sandwiched between the top and bottom. You want it that way so the sides can bear the load of peoples' drinks and elbows when the table is finished. And for the love of Bob remember to predrill your holes with the 1/8" bit so you don't go splitting ends. Make sure you get the finished sides on the outside. Now you roughly have a 4X4 cube for your island. Oh, did I mention this was meant to be pub height? Well I just did so there you go.

Now take one of the other pieces of ply and dry fit it over your square island thing. Make sure the siland is square as you do this. Trim it so the sides are flush to the sides of the island. Your going to need 2 of these so stack 2 pieces and cut them at the same time. This view is basically what you'll have with a leaf in the down position - except not laying down on the floor like that.

With your 2 leaves trimmed flip your island upside down and butt your leaves flush to the top of the island(remember we're upside down). Finished side down this time. Grab your 4 surface hinges and screw them in over where the leaf meets the island. Get the pin centered over the seam. Now you have your basic gate leg table without legs. YAY!

So now we need legs to hold up those leaves. measure the inside height of the island and translate that to you last piece of quarter sheet plywood. Mark out about 3" wide and cut 4 pieces. 2 will be for the outside legs and 2 will attached inside the island for the legs and hinges to attach to.

In hindsight, I should've made the gate legs like a 2 rung ladder but I skewed somewhere and... well I was forced to make it work. Really you should cut 6 of those out instead of 4^. You'll also cut the rungs as described in the next step.

You'll put together something like this(with 4 complete sides of course). Yeah... this just before I brain farted and rather than make things simple I sandwiched in 2 short legs between the 2 shorter pieces instead of just making a simple 2-rung ladder thing going. Guess I was thinking too hard there. But anyway, you do that and sort of ignore how my legs look.

That said, you'll have 2 complete legs that, when closed, will be half of the inside width of the island. Measure the 2 shorter "rungs" to acheive that length. The 2 remaining long pieces will be mounted in the island.

Like so-ish. I got excited and forgot to take pictures of the in-between steps. Pop those 2 long pieces in on either side, and using the completed gate legs, mount them in with screws so that the legs will fold completely flush with the front of the island and be  out of the way when the leaves are down. I can see you face but I know you'll get it! Take a look at this other angle with the leg in open position and hinges installed:

You may notice I had to notch out for the legs, but again, that was my brain farting. You don't have to do that if you followed my corrected advice.

EDIT: Well, fighting my urge to skip ahead some steps here is a view of a center support... painted.

...*cough*...So now it's time for us to paint! Pretty self explanatory here so just do it. It may be easier for you to take apart the leaves and paint them separate from the island. Slap on 2 coats of whatever color you choose and let dry overnight.

 

Make sure your paint coverage was even and coat again if not. If everything's ok you can start your clear coat. I used satin polycrilic and rolled on 4 or 5 coats. I had a sponge roller and that gave it a nice texture.

Last note: in the finished pictures you can see that I've added support beams inside the bottom of the island. They are the unpainted portions. This cleared up a bad wobble problem when the table was fully set up.

 Only 8 1/2" thick when collapsed.