She looked online, and tried to find matching countertop material. No joy, the counters are a couple decades old. If we did find the same material it probably wouldn't match anyway, ours have probably faded significantly over the last twenty years. Looking into replacing all the counters? Nope, rather expensive. I suggested cutting board design shoulders on the edges to butt up to the stove to fill the space. A thumbs up from the boss.
The thin filler cabinets will be made from poplar with oak faces, and I found a slab of black walnut large enough to make the two cutting board countertops and back splashes. I started on the rough sketches to work out the two cabinet layouts and measurements and their bases. The storage cabinet will be fairly simple, but the pull out spice rack will be a tad more complicated, requiring drawer pulls and accommodating the gas line at the rear.
The walnut slab:
- walnut slab.jpg (355.55 KiB) Viewed 6734 times
I set up the table saw and dust collection for turning the rough slab into the pieces I needed. Before beginning on the table saw, I cut the slab into two 26" long pieces.
- saw setup.jpg (266.35 KiB) Viewed 6734 times
I didn't try and cut it in large passes. I made cuts no more than 1" per pass, and flipped the slab on each pass, then raised the blade another 1" after two passes. The first piece I only had to cut once as it had one flat edge. The second piece had to have two sides squared up and was more complicated. But both were eventually done. From the leftovers, I chopped two 6" to 7" pieces and set the saw up for 1" thick pieces for backsplash and repeated the process to get those done.
The rough work was done and once we are close on both cabinets I can begin to finish the cutting board counter top inserts.
- slab rough cut.jpg (362.55 KiB) Viewed 6734 times
We were in the middle of leveling the legs.
That looks like a real nice one! Great idea for the pull out space fillers as well. Will be watching to see the finished project..
