This weekend was dedicated to building the pantry cabinets. The pantry is tall (floor to 9 foot ceiling), wide (just under 8 feet), and shallow (interior shelves are just 12 inches deep). The last dimension means I won’t lose stuff to the back of shelves and it also means the light from the kitchen will illuminate the contents not matter how tight the shelves, so I won’t need to install lighting within the cabinets.

After cleaning the shop (it’s nice to start with a clean space), I set out to build the carcasses, and layout the shelving. The back fits into dados on the sides. The bottom fits into dados on the sides and back. The top fits into a rabbit on the sides and back. The sides were easy. I installed my stacked dado blades into the table saw and rand all the sides. Then I had a brain gap. With the sides and back being a full 8 feet, running a dado across was dangerous without a special jig and an extra set of hands. Then I remembered you can dado with a router if you have the right size bit. fortunately, my old router had an edge guide so after a bit of experimenting, I was set to dado for the bottom panel and rabbit for the top.

I finished the glue ups of the three cabinets and did a little more cleanup with the plan to start face frames on Sunday. However, that plan was premature.

Each pantry cabinet already weighs about 60 lbs and given the size, they need to be assembled inside the kitchen. So, I decided I would layout the necessary blocking and spacers for the eventual cabinet installation. This will help with the rest of the manufacturing and will let me separate the three to move then into the kitchen while insuring they will go back together with nearly invisible seams. The blocking also helps keep the cabinets true given their large size and minimal internal support structure along the front.

I took advantage of the relative mobility of the separate cabinets to drill for all of the shelf pins. Some of the shelves will be rather close together given the pantry will hold canned goods. There will likely be as many as eight shelves (plus the bottom) in each cabinet. That will provide better than 50 square feet of shelf space. this does not include the long term storage in the bin that will go above the pantry cabinets.

Each row of shelf pins has 19 holes. That makes the math 19 holes per row, by 4 rows (front and back for left and right), and 3 cabinets. My wrists are not happy but the job if finished. If you drilling more than just a few shelf pin holes, the jig is well worth it. The plastic is not the valuable piece by itself. You could make that yourself from scrap wood. The sleeved, self centering drill bit is what makes this work.

I also built the base (not pictured).

I’ll spend evenings this week building the shelves. They will consist of a 3/4" of the same prefinished plywood used on are carcasses and will have a 1" front edge of bamboo. The extra 1/4" will create a small lip on the under side of each shelf and add additional strength and stability for canned goods and other heavy storage.