Welcome back, everyone!
Last time, I got the island built up to this point, and this time, I’m going to get this finished up and ready to be assembled into the house. I’m going to go through a pre-finishing process to make this easier to get finish applied.
So I want to get anything flush seated all the way together and sand that flush while it’s seated before pulling it apart. That way when it goes back together, it will go back nice and flush. I am also going to do edge breaking anywhere that pieces meet together.
I want to get these face frame parts glued up into a unit before I break the edges and setting everything flush. I could use the leg assemblies to get everything aligned, but I want to sand those now and not have them tied up during the glue up. So I transferred the domino layouts from my legs to some strips to use as placeholders.
I’m going to get finish on the first batch of parts. Normally, I just do a clear oil wiping varnish finish, but normally I don’t try to match my furniture. With the island, I don’t want it to look like it is made of flooring, so I’ve been doing some experimenting with finishes. I tried using the same sealer I used on the floor and topping it with some ARM-R-SEAL, but it looks exactly like the floor. Next I thought about changing the sheen, but I didn’t like that the white pigment in the finish got into the pores and really accentuated them. So I went back to the flooring store and got this NordicSeal product, which is a shade lighter than the NaturalSeal I used on the floor. You can see the five different colors on the front, and I used that second shade for the floors
I made some test boards, and you can see there is some distinction between the two finishes. The NordicSeal is a little too white for me, so I did a 50/50 mix of both the NordicSeal and the NaturalSeal.
Here are the test boards with a 50/50 finish for the island, and there isn’t quite enough of a distinction, so I think I’m going to do more of a 75/25 mix of the two. Of course the lighting in the shop is different than in the kitchen, but I have had these test boards up in the kitchen as I’ve been mulling this over.
Just for fun, here is a comparison. The one on the right has the finish on it, and the one on the left has nothing on it yet. The one without the finish just has a little bit less vibrancy to the colors, but otherwise they look pretty similar. So this is exactly where I want the finish to be.
Now I’m getting a second coat on everything. The boards have all homogenized really nicely, which is good, because I was worried that it would be obvious that they came from different trees and sections and whatnot.
Before I get into the first round of glue ups, I’m going to finish prep the cabinet section with the face frame.
It’s all assembled, and most exciting, it’s finally out of my shop, which feels super nice. Next I’m going to work on the final positioning. The way it’s supposed to line up is with the overhang over the end of the leg ends up in line with the cased openings of the doorways. There should be a 4 foot aisle between the island and the sink, and 4.5 feet from the counters to the island on either side of the island.
One limiting factor is this supply vent in the toe kick down here. When they came to install this, I laid out the footprint of this cabinet, and this is where they installed it. You can see it’s tight all the way to the side, which I don’t really like, but I think they ran into a joist here, and they can’t cross that.
Luckily I was able to reposition that in a better spot. Now it’s at the right distance so that when the toe kick comes on, this is just inside of that toe board a little bit.
This thing is not attached to the floor and fully installed. I was thinking about putting some corner braces in here to give this some racking support but… I don’t think this is going anywhere. So, very exciting for me, this takes care of the last base unit that has to go in before countertops can be fabricated. Our stone fabricator is going to stop out in a couple of days to take measurements and get the countertops into production. So the next thing for me is going to be drawers and doors, so that’s what I’ll be doing next time!
Thank you, as always, for reading along, I greatly appreciate it. If you have any questions on the island or anything to do with the home renovation, please feel free to leave me a comment. As always, I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have. Until next time, happy woodworking!