Retro Kitchen Restoration - 1950's Cabinet Restoration Before and After - Wood Glueru

Today I've got a simple project. We had a dishwasher that probably hasn't worked in a few decades. So we're going to take that space, build the cabinets back in. I'm going to build the cabinets in place, the countertops already in. Here's the before photo as you can see. I'm restoring it to a 1950s cabinet. G'day. I'm going to start now by putting the base in for this cabinet. I got my laser level set and I just need to get my height the same as the rest of the other cabinet. So the laser line, that's my level height there. As you can see, it's pretty much all the way around. So I've got a nice flat plain level surface. Seriously, don't do anything about the laser level. That's just a waste of time. So I got the base down. I used a two by six frame just because I had it. And now I'm going to put the base down the three quarter inch plywood. That's going to be the bottom of the cabinet. So I'm going to cut that and then I'm going to cut the sides. My track saw sits on a track. It's a straight line. It's really good for cutting pieces of plywood. You could do it on a table saw, but it's a lot easier with a track saw. The saw moves, the plywood doesn't. So the track can be clamped on for mitered or beveled cuts. That's what I would opt for, but this is just a straight cut. So it'll just stay with friction. You get a perfect factory cut. So now the base of the cabinet is in place, ready to do the sides and the back, which are optional, but I want to do it just because it's nasty. All right. So I've got a screw in the way where I need to put a sheet of plywood. So I've got to cut it gently and we want to make it a nice cut. There's a power socket on the other side. So I'm not going to use this tool. I'm going to use my special cutting screw. And we have a beautiful clean cut from the hammer. Don't waste time with the tool. All right. I'm going to cut the sides and the back for the cabinet. It's important to use a 1 3 8 inch screw so it doesn't come through the two pieces of plywood. So it doesn't stick out the other side. I've cut the face frame. The top piece is a metal mullion between the drawer and the doors. Toe piece of the face. So I've got them cut. I'm going to drill them out with my pocket drill Kreg jig. This is a $20 jig. It's the cheapest one you can get. It does the job for what I'm doing. So that's cool. Obviously you're not going to go into production with one of these. So I got the face frame cut. It's prime drying. And now I'm going to make the doors. So the Kreg jig drills a hole in the wood and it is pre-drilled for the angle. And the screw has a flat flat head on it. So when it hits where you've drilled it to it'll stop. So you don't screw. So you don't. There I am. So you don't screw in too far. So this is a detail I've got to create on the doors and drawer faces so it shuts closer to flush. Half flush. So that's what I'm doing now. Try and stop me. So now I've got the edge of the door dadoed. On the hinge side, not on the shutter side, it's double doors. It's going to be square to match the other doors. So I'm doing a 1 8th round over with my router just to match the existing cabinets. And then it's drawer face to match existing. Next step is installing the face frame. I'm starting with the bottom piece. Putting on a little bit of wood glue. And I'm going to face nail it for the front because it's paint grade and I can hide that. Now I'm going to install the middle rail and I'm going to use the pocket screws that I've drilled in it previously. I got two pieces of plywood there to get my height level because the base is already level. So if I measure up parallel from that, I'm going to be good. And I'm using the wood so I don't have to think about where it goes. I just put on the wood and it's right. So now I'm going to put the face frame in the top. Just putting the screws in. Check the length. That's good enough. Glue it. Clamp it. Screw it. Screwed around in my butt. Measure stuff. Measure some more stuff. Double measure. So I'm using my laser level to mark the center of the door and make sure I put the first door in plumb and in the right place. I've also linked all my tools in the description box down below. So with these hinges I don't trust them. So I'm making the doors longer and then I'm going to get them to length after I finish them. It's right here. Hey, so now I've got the cabinet built. The doors are on and now I just got to make a draw box. I've got the guides. I've got self-closing side mounted guides. It's important to make sure that the is square so that the draw guides aren't on an angle like this or like that. I put some shims in there so the draw can clear the face frame of the cabinet and I put those in and made sure they're parallel. Time to make the box and put the face on it and that cabinet will be pretty done and ready for paint and print. So I'm using a bird's eye pine for the box. The piece I got was fairly straight when I got it but it wasn't cured and it got a little bit twisted up because I didn't really have it stored perfectly flat which you really need to do. So my bad. So they're not very straight as you can kind of see here. They're a little off and that could affect the operation of this draw box. A clever person would scrap this and get some plywood and start from scratch but I'm going to try and straighten it because I want to use this wood and I'll see if I can straighten it out. I wish I did it last night. So at first I soaked it in water. These are wet now and I'm going to try and bend them back and clamp them. So now I've clamped it the other way so I've got a little bit of I've got some cardboard shims two in the center and then one and one try and get that that curve out and when the wood dries hopefully it'll stay like that. Now I'm just going to do the 1000 green bottles sitting on a wall song and then after that we'll see what that wood looks like. Just wait there and we're going to do this live. 1000 green bottles of beer on the 1000 green bottles of beer. I'm going to cut right here. All right there you are. In the meantime I can fix this. This was a lip that goes underneath the tile. I had to cut it to get rid of the decrepit and ancient and non-functioning dishwasher that used to exist in this space. So I had to cut it with a fine saw. It's an ugly rough cut so I'm going to clamp a straight edge to it and cut it out smooth. Make a little piece here. We call that a dutchman. But it's just a piece of wood. It's got the same nosing and I'm going to put it in there. Bondo it up. Get it ready for paint while my draw box wood is becoming straighter. So I'm using my fine saw here to cut the cabinet straight. I've screwed a piece of plywood and to give myself a straight edge to cut against and voila. So I cut the piece to go in here. It's not cut to length yet but I didn't have the rounded bit to do the radius. Let's say that again. I had a piece of half round half inch and then I cut the section I needed. The radius is close enough. Ripped down a piece of poplar. Put them together so you can see. I'll cut that to length. Get that cleaned up. So I'm putting the bondo on where I put the join. I started running it without the camera. I'm going to mix them up. It's about a good mix. I don't know what that is. Like one tenth hardener. Something like that. Depends on the heat. It's quite warm so I don't need much. So you can actually shape the bondo with a knife or chisel when it's nearly dry. But you can also end up pulling it off. So it's better to let it fully dry and then shape it and sand it. So I ran out of green bottles. So let's see if the drawer pieces have straightened out. So it worked pretty good. They straightened quite a lot and you can test by putting them. I got them back to back right now. It's workable. I can do it. So I got the front and back piece made at least because that was straight. So I've cut a slot in there. Just wide enough which is just a little over 3 16th of an inch. Just a little bit wider So the bottom of the cabinet box slides into the slots that I've cut into the four face pieces which are mitered, glued and nailed together. So I had to do a little adjustment when I installed this drawer box just to get it operating more smoothly. In the meantime I had attached the face frame which was painted. We lost the footage for that. There's a situation. A power driver just wouldn't work in this situation. I'd just end up stripping the screw. These handles are probably like handmade from a long time ago. So the holes aren't perfect. So they don't just interchange so easily. Now it matches the rest of the kitchen. So we've kept it kind of original to the 1950s theme for now. Thanks for watching. Hit subscribe and I'll see you next time at Wilglourie.com But it's done so moving on. This is a 1950s kitchen. It'll do and what do you know. Don't forget to subscribe to my channel and thank you for watching.