Scary Cabin

With the knee wall trim work mostly finished, it’s time to start building and installing the “cabinetry” that will make up the storage solutions. The back bedroom will have two open dog “cubbies”, two doors, two drawer units, and 6 tip out drawers.

If you start looking for tip out drawers, most of the information you find is for converting the under sink panels in kitchens and baths to tip out trays. You might also find some information on tip out bins for things like recycling or trash. What we want is a tip out drawer that is somewhere in between those two. Since these will be at the top of the knee wall, they won’t hold much, but we do want to make the best use of that space that we can. Rev-A-Shelf makes some soft close hinges for tip out trays that looked like they would work, but would they handle the weight of a tip out drawer plus contents? We ordered a couple to try out and then built a couple of tip out drawers to test them on.

Looks like they’ll work, but the installation is a bit tricky. Luckily we did this in stages and that resulted in a process that worked. First we cut and fit the drawer fronts. Then we mounted the hinges to the drawer fronts, placed them in the openings and mounted the hinges to the frame. Removed the drawer face from the hinges, built the the drawer part, painted and re-installed. With the drawer fully built, there would not be any way to attach the hinges to the frames while attached to the frame while still being attached to the drawer. So with the first two tip out drawers a success, it’s time to order more hinges.

Having a woodworking shop at home, it only makes sense to build the cabinet doors there. We built the two doors from poplar and made them a bit over-sized so that final trimming could take place on-site. With a little bit of fine tuning, the doors fit nice in the opening.

However, that’s when the problems started. While the face of the knee wall is fairly flat and plumb, the inside edges for the door opening are a little less, what’s the word … precise. It looks like there may be a slight twist in the side which make the top and bottom hinge angle slightly different, resulting in the top and bottom outside edge of the door being off by quite a bit more. The worse door was over 3/4” difference between the top and bottom. Looks like we’ll need to shim the hinges to get the angles matching. If the hinges were mounted to the face frame, this would not have been a problem, but someone thought it would look a bit nicer if the inside of the door opening was a bit more finished looking.

A lot of filling, sanding, and painting has most of the knee wall looking pretty nice.

We also built one of the bottom drawer boxes to see how it would fit and validate the design. The design seems to work (but the box is too big to fit in the back of the SUV, good thing we have roof rack!). The next challenge will be sourcing drawer slides that will work for the extra large drawer. The current design has the bottom drawers at about 35” deep x 41.5” wide x 10 or 11” high. Not a slide you can go down to your local big box store and pick up. The rest of the drawer boxes (and probably drawer’s too) will be transported unassembled and assembled on site, lesson learned.

Back bedroom

1. Dog cubby baseboard
2. Dog cubby outside trim
3. Figure out knee wall design — getting close
4. Knee wall door trim
5. Build/install bookcase
6. Install hangers for clothes
7. Install drawer carcasses
8. Install drawer boxes
9. Install drawer trim
10. Install baseboard
11. Trim wall to ceiling corners
12. Install conduit for ceiling fan
13. Build new ceiling fan mount
14. Install new ceiling fan

Front bedroom

1. Paint balcony door
2. Frame knee walls
3. Trim knee walls
4. Door for closet
5. Drawers and doors for knee walls
6. Install baseboard
7. Install wall to ceiling corner trim
8. Install conduit for ceiling fan
9. Build new ceiling fan mount
10. Install new ceiling fan
11. Install grill cover for vent fan
12. Install window blind

More trim boards, more fill, primer, paint. We tried to get a bit of head start by doing some of knot filling at home so we could start the weekend with trim board primer bright and early Saturday morning. Genny spent a lot of time painting.

While the paint dried … we were able to continue with some of the trim upstairs. We continued working on dog cubby #2 by installing the inside baseboard and ceiling trim. The top horizontal rail wasn’t fitting right and in the process of trying to nail it in place, on nail decided to exit the wood and enter my finger. Not much blood, but it did swell up and was pretty stiff for the next couple of days. Yup, nailed it good! After more fiddling with that top rail we determined that there’s something funny going on with the roof at that point. It looks like the roof boards curl up making the outside about a 1/4 inch higher than the inside, and this is over a 32 inch span. The board is going to need a taper to get the bottom of it level. Everywhere else, things line up pretty good.

Having enough boards and getting them all painted on Saturday make Sunday a productive day. Other than the top rail for the one dog cubby, all four cubbies are trimmed and ready for doors.

We were also able the get the bookcase trimmed (mostly). If you compare with last week where we just installed the carcass, it looks much better with trim.

What you can’t see from the picture is that the last shelf trim board is not attached yet. We ran out of biscuts (one short). You also can’t see all the gaps that need to be filed and sanded.

And one more thing. We had been using the bookcase area as a temporary closet of sorts and hanging clothes there. That obviously won’t work anymore with the bookcase installed so we added some hooks on the wall on other side of the door so we still have a place to hang clothes.

Back bedroom

1. Dog cubby baseboard
2. Dog cubby outside trim
3. Figure out knee wall design
4. Knee wall door trim
5. Build/install bookcase
6. Install hangers for clothes
7. Install drawer carcasses
8. Install drawer boxes
9. Install drawer trim
10. Install baseboard
11. Trim wall to ceiling corners
12. Install conduit for ceiling fan
13. Build new ceiling fan mount
14. Install new ceiling fan

Front bedroom

1. Paint balcony door
2. Frame knee walls
3. Trim knee walls
4. Door for closet
5. Drawers and doors for knee walls
6. Install baseboard
7. Install wall to ceiling corner trim
8. Install conduit for ceiling fan
9. Build new ceiling fan mount
10. Install new ceiling fan
11. Install grill cover for vent fan
12. Install window blind

A few months ago (OK, maybe 7), I wrote about the challenges of getting a California King mattress into the upstairs bedroom. To accomplish that we had to cut away some of the balcony railing and hoist it up to balcony and in through the balcony door. That removable railing is proving to be somewhat useful. Because the home shop is better equipped, I built the carcass for the upstairs built-in bookcase there. We then transported it using the amazing Drabbits roof rack on our 4Runner.

Since it’s made out of plywood, it’s not real heavy and it’s only about 4 ft. wide and just over 6 ft. tall. It’s also angled on one side to match the angled ceiling. We can get this up the stairway; no problem, right? Wrong. It was close, but it not close enough. So down comes the railing again. We hoist it up and Genny was able to hold it there while I ran upstairs, grabbed it and hauled it up. Another disaster averted.

With the bookcase securely installed we moved on to more painting and knee wall trim. Since we don’t want to break with tradition, the knee wall trim is taking way more time than originally estimated. Waiting for paint, filler and glue to try is really slowing things down. However, dog cubby #1 is mostly complete with the exception of the tip out drawer and some final sanding and painting. Dog cubby #2 is well underway and is a bit easier now that we have a good idea about how we want it to go together.

So the key now is to get a stockpile of lumber and get it prepped. That way we can spend more time building and less time waiting for paint to dry.

Back bedroom

1. Dog cubby baseboard (one done, one to go)
2. Dog cubby outside trim
3. Figure out knee wall design
4. Knee wall door trim
5. Build/install bookcase
6. Install hangers for clothes
7. Install drawer carcasses
8. Install drawer boxes
9. Install drawer trim
10. Install baseboard
11. Trim wall to ceiling corners
12. Install conduit for ceiling fan
13. Build new ceiling fan mount
14. Install new ceiling fan

Front bedroom

1. Paint balcony door
2. Frame knee walls
3. Trim knee walls
4. Door for closet
5. Drawers and doors for knee walls
6. Install baseboard
7. Install wall to ceiling corner trim
8. Install conduit for ceiling fan
9. Build new ceiling fan mount
10. Install new ceiling fan
11. Install grill cover for vent fan
12. Install window blind

Watching paint dry. Also wood filler and glue. The upstairs trim work is taking a lot of prep time. The baseboard for the knee walls in the back bedroom are about 10 ft. 8 in. long. The boards that we have are 10 ft. long. Adding the extra 8 inches means biscuits, glue, and pocket screws. Then some filler, sanding and paint to remove the seam. So what seems like a simple things, takes a few hours start to finish. All the rest of the trim builds on top of the baseboards.

We’re using pine for the knee wall trim. Not clear pine (does such a thing exist anymore?) but pine with multiple knots. Getting these prepped requires possibly cutting to size, filling knots, and two coats of paint. Once that’s done we can start using the boards. because of all the prep work, actual progress seem slow. The sides and top trim for one of the dog cubbies are installed. As we work on one section, we do get a better idea of what needs to be done for the rest, hopefully it get easier and quicker.

The exterior trim is finished, well installed anyway. The trim along with the rest of the exterior needs stain but that’s another project for another day.

Back bedroom

1. Dog cubby baseboard (one done, one to go)
2. Dog cubby outside trim
3. Figure out knee wall design
4. Knee wall door trim
5. Build/install bookcase
6. Install hangers for clothes
7. Install drawer carcasses
8. Install drawer boxes
9. Install drawer trim
10. Install baseboard
11. Trim wall to ceiling corners
12. Install conduit for ceiling fan
13. Build new ceiling fan mount
14. Install new ceiling fan

Front bedroom

1. Paint balcony door
2. Frame knee walls
3. Trim knee walls
4. Door for closet
5. Drawers and doors for knee walls
6. Install baseboard
7. Install wall to ceiling corner trim
8. Install conduit for ceiling fan
9. Build new ceiling fan mount
10. Install new ceiling fan
11. Install grill cover for vent fan
12. Install window blind

That’s right, it’s been 3 years since we purchased the scary cabin in the woods. Over the past three years it has become less scary and more comfortable but it’s still not finished.

Looking back at the original pictures, we’ve come a long way. We had a group of people hanging out in the finished downstairs and it works. It was comfortable. It is also satisfying to sit there and realize that yes, we made this what it is. We can actually now enjoy using the space.

When we started, we expected the remodel to take a year, maybe two, but certainly not three years or even longer. No one thing has contributed to the extended timeline, just a lot of underestimating how long various tasks take and just general poor planning. This past weekend provides a good example. Previously we picked up 6 1×12 redwood planks to use as exterior door and window trim and picked this weekend to do the install. Most of one day was spent ripping the boards down to trim size, cutting and nailing them up. It all went according to plan until we ran out boards. Three windows and a door remain still need to be done. With better planning, we would have had enough boards to finish and that task would be complete. Instead, another day of another weekend will be spent doing the exterior trim.

We continued working on the upstairs. Genny painted the balcony door (inside) so now all the doors upstairs are painted. More construction on the back bedroom kneewalls. We’re making progress on the dog bedrooms (or cubbies). Hope the dogs appreciate all this work going into making a nice comfortable space for them to sleep.

Here’s the updated todo list.

Back bedroom

1. Dog cubby baseboard (one done, one to go)
2. Dog cubby outside trim
3. Figure out kneewall design
4. Kneewall door trim
5. Build/install bookcase
6. Install hangers for clothes
7. Install drawer carcasses
8. Install drawer boxes
9. Install drawer trim
10. Install baseboard
11. Trim wall to ceiling corners
12. Install conduit for ceiling fan
13. Build new ceiling fan mount
14. Install new ceiling fan

Front bedroom

1. Paint balcony door
2. Frame kneewalls
3. Trim knewalls
4. Door for closet
5. Drawers and doors for kneewalls
6. Install baseboard
7. Install wall to ceiling corner trim
8. Install conduit for ceiling fan
9. Build new ceiling fan mount
10. Install new ceiling fan
11. Install grill cover for vent fan
12. Install window blind