DA old timers  

Good, thanks !  Keeping busy . . . as the world crumbles about us.

A kitchen island delivered and placed this weekend.  My first all-white cabinet, in fifty years of practice.  Häfele Matrix Slim-box A drawer system, custom aluminum "gallery rails" to bottom drawers.  Gloss white RTF doors, gloss white p-lam back.  Cabinet will be topped with "waterfall" ends, in white quartz or similar. Temporary grab handles visible . . .

details . . .

and more . . .

The drawer fronts are attached with these dinky clips, secured (?) with two screws 32 mm apart to the drawer front.  But the clip is grabbed by an impressive latch in the steel drawer side, with spring action, and are released when needed via a port inside the front of the drawer side. Time will tell how this system holds up.

My photo shows one of the pair of home-made jigs I used to transfer the screw hole locations from the temporarily-installed clips to the back of the drawer front.  Häfele doesn't offer such a device . . .

@sdr, Nice precision work, Steve, as is typical from you. Appears high-quality plywood for the case, too. Is that a domestic US product or imported?

FYI, I've used a lot of Medex(R) formaldehyde-free MDF over the years per client spec and absolutely hate working with it (excessive weight and horrible dust). I much prefer good old Baltic Birch or similar whenever I can find it and/or justify cost.

Thanks, tk.  This is the best pre-finished plywood I've worked with;  I'm not sure where it is made.  Standard number of plies, but free of voids, and the finish is like glass.   I bought flat sheets (3 for the job;  the drawer bottoms and backs are the same, with p-lam applied) but some pieces warped badly while I had them in my care.   This stuff was $140 a sheet.  Even more expensive, and heavier, would have been ApplePly, which can be had pre-finished. Its core of thin veneers is alder wood, I recently learned.  All this stuff has maple face veneers.

The rigid-thermofoil doors have an MDF core.  They came to me very slightly concave, enough so that I had to shape the front edge of the drawer bottoms to fit (being leery of how the drawer-front attachment system would work).   The weak spot of that custom-made door is the joint at the rear edge, where the plastic "foil" skin meets the melamine back of the panel.  I anticipate that joint admitting moisture over time, and widening . . .

This photo shows some drawers installed but missing their fronts.  The drawer hardware is visible;  the piece at the bottom is the receiving latch for the under-mount drawer slide;  the receptacle for the front clip is within the upstanding hollow steel drawer side, and the release for that clip is via the rectangular hole.  A Phillips screwdriver actuates the latch, and a plastic cover plate hides the hole.

The strip of wood (a scrap length of 1/2" bamboo strand flooring) at the bottom of the cabinet is a temporary aid to mounting the bottom row of drawer fronts.

@sdr, Love the juxtaposition of older, less old, and new workbench/cabinets (a kitchen island is just another workbench of a sort, no?) in that photo. Thx!

Heh.  Nice take !  This is a little room containing a part of Mat's tool collection, in an old building on a corner in the Duboce Triangle neighborhood.  Adjacent is a larger room, at one time a corner store of one sort or another.  Mat is a general contractor;  that  room is filled with his collection of building hardware, as well as a number of lamps and old lighting fixtures, and antique tools, etc, in a merry jumble, with a large work table in the center.  We open the store for a couple of hours a day and welcome fix-its like broken furniture and faulty lamps, for repair.  It puts us in touch with the neighborhood, which sometimes leads to larger work;  last fall we did a deck behind a house in the next street, after the new owners wandered into the shop.

The little room was for several years a budding bicycle shop, which has since moved around the corner to larger quarters.  We're on a leafy and busy urban bicycle route called The Wiggle, so called because it is a zig-zagging flat course in a somewhat hilly neighborhood.  The oil-stained floor in the photo is a reminder of that part of the building's recent history.

How are all my chickens ?  I just went back over the whole thread, to see who we were, mostly.  I looked briefly at every fifth page: 1, 5, 10, 15 etc.  We were mostly me, Eameshead, Mark and Spanky, and occasional Riki, Objectworship, Lunchbox, Niceguy, and tktoo2 near the end.  I though maybe there were others. Didn't we have another gal ?  Or was that before this thread began.  Hmm . . .  Of course I skipped 80% of the pages.

War, pandemic, crazy right-wingers.  Let's smile through our tears.  Maybe Mark will show up, magically, and others.  What are you all up to ?  I'll be 80 in November--how's that for a kicker ?  Wow . . .  

@sdr I'm way too new to DA to be able to answer your question. But what might help is to give them all the bat signal and put an @ right infront of their names so they get a notification via email. I can do it for you, maybe one or another will get in touch again. Hi @eameshead, @mark, @spanky, @riki, @objectworship, @lunchbox, @niceguy and @tktoo2 - SDR (who turns 80 this November) is calling you. He's having a party and wants you to come.   

@sdr, It's quite an accomplishment making it to nearly 80-years still able to design and actually make pieces such as yours! I'll be lucky to survive the day.

Perhaps you are remembering @solange? Or maybe @olive?

Wow. I appreciate the help.  I'm way behind the curve on such simple Web technique.  (You should see me stumbling about on the tumblr mobile app . . .!)

Thanks for your kind attention.  We had some fun, in the old days of the first iteration of this site.  So glad to have you on board . . .

I am still around, SDR, and glad to hear you are still going strong.  Nice cabinet, by the way.  My husband and I have taken our "retirement" as vignerons in the southwest of France near the village of Bergerac.  We live in a 15th century medieval château that looks great filled with all of my iconic 50's and 60's furniture.  My French neighbors think I am a total nutcase and want to know what I've done with all the armoires, lol.  My life is a completely open book nowadays and you can see photos at www.chateaufayolle.com

I'd love to hear from Mark and Olive and hope they respond to the shout out.

Oh Riki, that's great. So glad you heard Herringbone's bat signal !  My new hero.  (I had no idea that the @ would do that, and I still don't know how.  What's the difference between that and # ?)  

The Chateau looks divine, and so do you.  You made me laugh out loud with your armoire remark. Great to see your glowing visage at last.  Say hi to Frank, please, and congratulations on pursuing a dream.  So fine. What function did the roofless remain contain ?  Any chance of making it into a fabulous workshop for yours truly ?  Lol.  

The creaky old get-together, here, isn't dried out completely, yet, perhaps ?  Let's see who else might (re)join the party.

Still here and kicking.

Published my first book; "The Interludes A Sexual Odyssey" under my nom de plume JK Duval. Still pursuing all things mid-century and within the realm of clean modern design while working on the sequel and two other books. Busier than ever, happy as a clam at high tide and completely humbled by how well my freshman foray into publishing has been received and the 5 star reviews it has garnered. If life were any sweeter it would be a crime. Greetings one and all.