Take a door to the paint store to match the paint. For the patched holes. I hope you get some compensation for the errors.
The first drawer handles I drilled were for 3.5 inch pulls, but the pulls are 3.75 inch! Found a dowel to glue in and re drilled. The handle mostly covers the mistake. I triple checked every hole I drilled in the new doors and drawers. It’s nerve racking.
They are.coming to make the template for the countertops tomorrow. They said they called on May 28th, both numbers, left a message and we did not respond. Neither phone had messages or missed calls that day…or the days around it. So we were delayed two weeks. Sometimes you just hate vendors. We’ll see how it goes.
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Maybe my reaction was a bit strong @tendstowardschaos because of a built-up allergy for builders. But I’m glad the builder feels as bad about this as you guys and is trying to do everything to fix it. The advantage of solid wood cabinets is that they can easily be patched and repainted and the damage will likely be almost invisible. It will be a lot of work though.
In our kitchen, the handles were all placed perfectly, but what we call the coffee bar (set of drawers with counter on top, and our appliances including the coffee machine live there) was just put in in the wrong place. When we figured that out, everything was already in place and attached to walls. We kept it where it was. It’s absolutely not symmetrical in the space, it’s around 8" off, but I guess it’s so off people think it’s intended that way. They also put in some doors upside down but that was an easy fix.
@marionberries that’s so frustrating! They are so weirdly specific about the date, calling both numbers, and then you guys didn’t have any messages or missed calls. Did they call an entirely different couple instead of you?
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Could have called anyone! We had to call them. But they have been very pleasant since and the guy making the template is competent and good. We have developed decent bull**** dection with all the quotes. I think part of the problem is that so many contractors are just not business people. They are hands on people.
Installing the knobs and pulls myself is strssful. And no one to blame if I mess up. When the rest of the doors come in I have about 17 more to install!
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Oh, @tendstowardschaos ! I am so sorry! It must be difficult for both you and your builder friend! I am sure they can be fixed and will look perfect. So close!
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I’m optimistic. 
Countertops go in a week from today!
We’ve already started our next project… The Yard. Between kids, work, life, and remodels, the yard has become quite overgrown. Not an odd occurrence out here in the boonies where the yard is just a glorified clearing in the woods, but it must be tamed 
(to suppress allergens and dangerous insect populations close to the house and barns). I bought myself a 6" chainsaw pruner to cut down all the little trees and shrubs, and have been having a grand time of it.
ETA: The edges of the yard, along the property lines and under the rows of trees, is overgrown with underbrush and saplings. And around our pole barn where field meets forest. I still have about two acres that is mowed and edged regularly.
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A little bit more progress on the Big Bookcase Project!
It turns out that in order to rip down the 14’ 1x8, I had to move my table saw which required moving out the UTV (snow plow vehicle) and the pass through table, etc. ANYWAY, today I got the base trim piece (formerly that 1x8) and the top trim piece installed today! Also the top moulding piece. YEY!
The next step will either be installing the vertical trim pieces, the mouldings under the cleats, or the screw plugs. It depends on my mood, what time I get to start, and TheMisterT’s work meeting schedule - because I don’t do the noisy stuff then.
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It looks great! I have a preparedness / safety question, I was in doubt where to put it, but I think this is the place for people who know things about building homes.
We live in a time where there is talk of war. Different countries deal with that in different ways. Germany is building civilian shelters again. While I absolutely don’t expect a foreign army to invade my country tomorrow, our government’s guidelines right now are that every citizen is responsible for their own safety. During the cold war, local governments were responsible for building large shelters for civilians, but that’s not something they’re going to do again. Our government’s argument is that wars these days don’t involve “classic” warfare with guns and bombs.
While I think it’s true armed conflics have changed, anyone who is following the news, knows that oldschool warfare is still very much a thing today. There’s an oldschool war going on in the Ukraine, only around 1200 miles from my home. And as I live in an area that has some major targets (several military bases, airports, plants that make things the military needs) I feel that it’s absolutely not impossible that at some point in the future we might need to seek shelter.
So my question is - what would be the safest place in our house to do that? Our house is a terraced, brick, 2 story house on a (modern) concrete slab foundation with a (1940s) concrete ceiling, and a wooden roof with concrete tiles. We have a Harry-Potter-style cupboard under the staircase that has no windows and is about a foot lower than the rest of the house. This is also where gas and electricity come into the house.
We have a kitchen on the main level of the house that is basically a rectangular room with no windows, but there’s no door in the door opening to the living room, and on the other side of the kitchen there’s a (solid wood) door with a little glass window that opens up into a hallway where the back door is. Our staircase is timber.
Which would be a safer place to shelter in emergencies - under the staircase because it’s the most interior windowless room, even though we’re under a timber staircase and the gas and electricity meters are there, or the kitchen, where we’re closer to the outside of the house, but we’re under a concrete ceiling? When we did the renovation, we were not permitted to dig a basement under our house, so that’s not an option. In case of a serious threat we could of course put up a door in the kitchen door opening and barricade the little window in the door.
In my country, we don’t have tornadoes or hurricanes, the most likely natural disaster here is high water, but we’re actually in the one area in the country that has the lowest flood risk. My family used to farm in an area with a high flood risk and our farm had shelter space in the attic. So I’m not familiar with the kind of risks that would involve sheltering on the ground floor.
Under the stairs because it’s more layers between you and the outside. I grew up near an Air Force base and as school children we learned what to do if there was an air raid. First choice was going to the basement, second choice was to sit under our desks until adults found us. After the Berlin wall came down the air raid drills became tornado drills. Tornado siren means go to the northwest corner of the basement or the lowest floor of the building with as many walls between you and the outside as possible.
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this was the 1980’s Cold War Era. The base was home to Intercontinental ballistic missiles and airplanes armed with nuclear weapons. Very scary realization for little kids. I had hoped my generation would be the last generation to learn this.
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Thanks!
I grew up in a place exactly like that! A village in Europe wih a US airbase and American nuclear weapons. But we never did any drills like that. It was very much hush hush, “look away nothing to see here”. They practiced with F16s almost every day and there was so much noise we’d have to pause class at school because we couldn’t hear the teacher. I live 20 miles away from that American airbase now, and pretty close to several Dutch airbases. This plus the industrial plants make me feel like this area would be a potential target.
We don’t have a car, and our area is always very congested. In case of emergency staying would probably be the best option. Having a shelter plan prepared gives peace of mind.
What I was mostly concerned about in our cupboard below the stairs is that the ceiling isn’t strong (just a timber staircase) but it is the innermost space.
When we replaced all the windows a few years ago, we got hard to break ones on purpose - for general safety, not specifically to prepare for emergencies, but it helps. Should they still break, our downstairs windows are supposed to break in one piece and our upstairs windows supposedly crumble in thousands of unsharp pieces. Previously I thought glass was just glass but there are so many options.
Under the stairs would be great if not for the gas and electrical. Bad combo if they are damaged.
The kitchen really depends on how reinforced the ceiling and walls are. It seems safest from stray bullets. Make sure there is a sturdy table to crawl under if necessary. Maybe install a door. If it’s inconvenient to have a door, take it off, but keep it where you can grab it and install quickly. Same with the little window. Of course, gas is a danger there too.
Maybe prepare both spaces as options.
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There’s no gas in the kitchen, so that’s a plus. But it’s only a small galley kitchen, so no space for a table. There still are hinges for a door in the kitchen, but the door was gone long before we bought the house. In case of an emergency, all the doors in the house are the same, so we could just take any other door in the house off the hinges and put it in the kitchen temporarily. The spaces are close to each other, so I guess it would indeed just be the smartest to prepare them both and hope we’ll never need it.
I grew up on WWII stories from my grandparents. One set of grandparents went through WWII in the same neighbourhood I’m in now, the other ones lived in a very rural area on a homestead-type farm. All of them witnessed a lot of combat as civilians. Their main story was always that our country was absolutely unprepared for WWII even though everyone could have seen that coming, and that a lot of people died unnecessarily. I’m afraid we’re doing the same thing again.
Both spaces are tiny so it requires a bit of thinking and planning, but I’m thinking of replacing the current storage system (shelves on the wall) with something that can double as a bench.
I have no good information to contribute to the disaster preparedness discussion, but it feels weird just to pop in after the latest comments with pictures of woodworking w/o acknowledging them. So.
Anyway, more slow steady Big Bookcase Project progress! I got the last piece of the quarter-round moulding in under the cleats yesterday - I had a miscut and had to buy another section. Luckily they sold me a shortie. And then I got what I am calling the “interior vertical” trim pieces installed as well. It’s really starting to look like something!
Today I hope to get the “exterior vertical trim” pieces in. I am waiting for a new piece of base moulding to arrive, because the one I got originally had a gouge and split at the top right in the middle of the run. I will install it, then the last course of flooring, and finally a base shoe piece to finish. I want the moulding down first, so should someone replace the floor in the future, the bookcase is finished all the way to the bottom. Replacing base shoe is standard when replacing flooring anyway.
In the meantime, I can start cutting and trimming out shelves and testing stain colors. There is oh so much staining to do. And then varnishing and maybe waxing. Oof.
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Yeah…I deleted my post because it was depressing me…I would rather see your awesome bookcases.
Good news on my home repairs: My stairs are finally done outside and I have a new mailbox!
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While depressing, your information was true and important. I think not knowing that stuff is a big part of why many of our countrymen are still warmongering. We’re not going to solve that here, I suppose so let’s focus on congratulations to you for getting those projects done!
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Your bookcases are looking great!!
My cabinets are almost ready to be painted! My husband is going to replace a couple of the 1/4" pieces which are bowed then we should be ready to start painting (once it cools down, it’s high 90s and humid this weekend). The table they’re sitting on is bowed, the cabinets are actually square 
I think we’re going to try painting them with an airless spray gun. Any tips?
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Thanks! These cabinets are so cool! I’m wondering if the bowing might work in the long run with the weight of the paper straightening them out over time, maybe even making them a little stronger against the weight of the paper? I don’t have any paint sprayer experience, really, but I would suggest painting them with the shelves out, perhaps filling the grooves with something to mask them.
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Thanks! I’m so ridiculously excited about them!
Yeah we were thinking the same thing about painting with the shelves out and masking off the grooves and the edges of the shelves so when we glue them in it is on the wood and not paint. I plan to have super light loose sheets on the top shelves and the bowing will drive me a bit crazy so we’re going to replace them :). We already have the plywood and my husband said he can use the existing pieces for drawer bottoms he wants to build.
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Not weird at all to show off your project!! My next project will be a shelter space but we’re all working on our own projects here. And your projects are always amazing.
Your bookcase looks great!! I can’t wait to see what the finished project will look like. It has made me much more skeptical of all the Pinterest tutorials for “built in bookcases in one weekend”. You are an experienced woodworker, who has skills and tools most DIY’ers don’t have, and this project is still taking you a long time. It looks amazing but it’s clear you’ve put in so much work already and there’s still a lot to do.
@photojenn We bought a paint sprayer because a friend recommended it to get our house painted quickly before moving in. Eventually we gave up because we really just didn’t understand how it worked. It’s still in a box in the garage and we haven’t even managed to sell it because we can’t really show that it works to a potential seller 
It also makes SO MUCH noise. Mr Imma hates painting anyway, and is neurodivergent, and the noise just makes his head explode. But your husband is a DIY type, I think paint sprayers are probably great if you know what you’re doing. The friend that recommended it has worked with it many times without any issue (but unfortunately wasn’t able to come over and show us how it worked).
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Did you get an air or airless one? This one looks pretty simple, just plug it in and pull the trigger. But I haven’t watched any videos yet. We plan to setup some cardboard to practice on before we go to the shelves.
This is the one we got. From my reading we don’t need to thin down the paint or anything (apparently you do for air sprayers)
We were originally going to paint roller and brush everything but there are just so many shelves that’s our backup plan if we can’t get the sprayer to work.
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