Monday, September 22, 2014

Upper Cabinets

At long last, the upper cabinets are starting to come together. The cabinets on the back wall also have to house the vent from the range hood and from the washer/dryer, which complicates things a bit. The only range hood that I was able to find in the right size turned out to have a rather large rectangular 10 by 3 inch vent outlet in the back of it, right where there was absolutely no space for even a small vent to live.

However, I think it's kind of fun, and satisfying in a strange sort of way, to come up against situations where something just doesn't work or doesn't fit and then realize that "Hey, I could change that". It took a suggestion from my father to get my brain out of its box in this case, but then I was off to the races, so to speak.

Here I am, happily applying the saber saw and metal cutting blade to the fan's duct inlet.


Here is a new vent-hole-in-the-making:

And here is the newly directed outlet. I covered the old hole with a piece of metal flashing, sealed it with high temperature caulking, just in case it gets hot, screwed it in place, put in a 3 inch 90 for the ducting and sealed it as well, and voila - no rear clearance necessary.

Next came the shelf to hold it. It seems that almost everything I do lately requires twice as much sanding time as anything else. This simple looking little box took most of a day by the time I figured out its size and shape, cut the pieces, sanded everything with two sanders, put it together, cut out the holes for venting, made the little box to cover the vent, and put Osmo finish on it twice. A speed carpenter I am not, it would seem.

Here it is on the wall. The fan works and blows like crazy out the vent, so the alteration doesn't seem to have caused any problems. I got an LED light-bulb for the light and that seems to work well too. I also made doors, but don't have them attached yet.

One more piece is in place here. The shelves aren't in because the dryer vent has to come through the wall and both vents have to then go outside.
More to come in this part of the story...

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