Assembly and Installation

Assembly and installation took place on two different days.  We’re in our late 40’s here, so we move a little slower on projects now than back when we were tearing siding off the house without a care in the world a mere 6 years ago.  

Once we had stripped the wall of the old crates, we had nice blank wall to work with!

Our blank wall in the garage - ready for a cabinet!

We had designed our cabinet in 3D using Second Life, so we knew all our cuts and exactly how things needed to lay out.  We planned the cabinet to stay as close to cut sizes so as to minimize unused resources.  Our design was for a 6’ wide by 4’ high cabinet that would be broken up into 3 sections. Two sections would get doors and one section would be open for tool cases to slide in and out, we called that section “the cubby.”  4’ was pretty tall, but that allowed us to get two upright pieces from an 8’ section with no waste.  The end pieces from our top and bottom of the cabinet were (2) 6’ pieces and the 2’ sections left over became shelves for the cubby.  No waste.   The backing board did leave a 2’ segment, but I’ll find a use for that, somewhere! 

I wanted 16” shelving everywhere it was possible, this area stores a lot of big and bulky items and 12” shelves were just not going to cut it.  So, the depth on the main cabinet is 16” and on the side shelves we had to go with 12” to accommodate the swing of the door. 

It’s a big damn cabinet.  

We built it down on the ground in front of the garage and lifted it up to the workbench in stages.  We had fixed 2x4’s to the walls on 2 sides for support beneath, then secured from the top and other side with brackets.  The final push to get the cabinet from the work bench up onto the brackets was a little ugly, but we did it.  

Note to self: add a garage winch system into dream home plans....

Cabinet base installed

 Next we will add the doors, do a paint touch up and start organizing the work station.  Yippee!