The Tolman Family: New Custom Office Cabinetry by Justin!

After 18 months, we are thrilled to announce that our office cabinetry is finally done! In the fall of 2012 we decided that our little office with our big computer armoire and several stand-alone bookcases just wasn't working well for us. We decided we wanted built-in cabinetry, so we got an estimate from the cabinet maker that did the rest of our house. Since that price was so ridiculous, we considered purchasing pre-made cabinets from Home Depot, but they just didn't come in the sizes or shapes we wanted to fit our room well.

Then Justin said he thought he could build whatever we wanted--that cabinetry is just a set of boxes and not difficult to build. I teased him that it would take a year for him to complete them, and he laughed at me. But I was wrong about my estimate of a year too! In September we began drawing designs of what we wanted. Eventually, we settled on a design and Justin drafted it on his computer software by the end of October.

So here is the story of our cabinetry building experience from the last 18 months. Scroll to the bottom if you'd rather just see the finished cabinets.

I forgot to take a "before" picture of the office when it still had our huge computer armoire in it. We were so eager to move things out to start planning the cabinetry, it didn't cross my mind at that point to take a picture. But here is a "before" picture of the empty office.

"Before". The empty office with tape line on the floor as we worked to plan the design and spacing of the cabinets.

But to give you an idea of what the office looked like before, this computer armoire was in there next to the filing cabinet as well as two other bookcases. This picture shows our "temporary" office setup in our storage room. I'm so grateful to not have to be working at my computer in there anymore!

Our old computer armoire in our "temporary" office in our storage room for 18 months while we built the cabinetry.

After we got our designs finished, we went to Menards in November 2012 to buy all our wood on Black Friday specials! This was most of the wood for the basic structure of the cabinets, but we did make dozens and dozens of additional trips to Menards for more wood and supplies along the way.

Our initial wood purchase for all the cabinetry--November 2012

Over Christmas Break of 2012, Justin worked in our freezing garage to build all the boxes for the cabinets and cut all the shelves. I worked with him out there to help hold things, but kept that little heater pointed right at me the whole time!

Removing the baseboards in the office where the cabinets will go.

Fitting the boxes into the space on the short desk wall--the open space is a space for a chair to sit at the desk that had to be measured well to fill the space wall to wall. Our cabinetry design included a large desk section on one wall, and a smaller desk area on the opposite wall.

Fitting boxes to the long wall desk space--February 2013

Facing pieces are on all the boxes. Here Justin is securing two boxes together in preparation to hang them on the wall. You can see the ledger board on the wall behind him that we used to support the weight of the cabinet while we screwed them in to the studs. We learned our office wasn't built with many studs, so we had to get a little creative in securing them to the walls!

Long wall cabinets hung!! December 2013--between February and December we were pretty busy with two major surgeries and hospitalizations with Annie, family vacations, and Justin having a busy semester of teaching!

Upper cabinets hung on the shorter wall.

Justin installed two new outlets so each desk space could have an outlet at desk height. This was still December 2013--we made a lot of progress over Christmas break.

Getting ready to build the crown molding. These blocks created support for the upper most level of molding. You can see the first level of molding already attached. We planned to have the cabinets flush with the ceiling, but when we were ready to hang them, we realized they appeared too high, so we lowered them and used the crown molding to hide the extra space at the top.

Justin stained all of the shelves and drawer and door fronts in our storage room since it was so bitterly cold outside this winter.

Staining upper cabinetry before we move in the base cabinets--January 2014

Cabinet door fronts all stained and done!

Upper cabinetry all stained and polyurethaned. Base cabinets installed--March 2014

Jodi installed drawer glides on the drawer boxes.

Drawers all installed on their drawer glides and base cabinetry all stained and polyurethaned!

Jodi installing hinges on all the cabinet door fronts. March was a productive month after spending three weeks in the hospital with Annie.

Drawer fronts mounted to the drawer boxes

Installed the plywood base of the desktop on the short wall.

Installing the plywood desktop on the long wall. We had to put a seam in the wood to make it long enough, but the laminate that goes over it will be seamless.

Jodi installing the desktop on the long wall. I love using the nail gun! You can also see one of the new outlets Justin installed to be at desk height.

Justin spreading the contact cement on the plywood so we can install the laminate sheet. April 2014

Jodi spreading contact cement on the longer desktop. The contact cement was so highly flammable that it instructed us to turn off the main gas valve to our house while using it. It made it a little chilly even though it was April! We did all the staining during the winter too and our house would smell of stain for literally days since it was way too cold to open the windows to vent it out.

Justin applying contact cement to the back of the laminate sheet to go on the longer desktop.

Jodi rolling the laminate onto the plywood.

Laminate desktop done! Here you can also see the wood edging installed on the front of the desktop.

We installed the wood trim around the back and side edges of the desktop and here Justin is staining and finishing that wood.

We dinged up the walls pretty badly during this whole construction process, so I did quite a bit of spackling before getting ready to paint. We also learned that keeping painters tape on the walls too long causes it to pull off drywall paper when removed!

Painting. We learned that painters tape doesn't work so well with stain. We had a lot of stain seep onto our walls requiring a double coat of paint.

Molly wanted to help paint. She did a pretty great job!

Finally installing the door fronts!! (End of April 2014)

Installing door fronts.

Finishing touches--installing the knobs and drawer pulls!!

IT'S FINALLY DONE!! May 2014!

Justin truly amazes me! I underestimated his ability to do such a fine job on these cabinets! They turned out better than I'd ever hoped. If you didn't know we built them, you would just assume they were built with the rest of the house. Everything matches all our existing cabinetry.

Justin said if he knew back then when he had the idea to build the cabinets what he knows now, he probably never would have decided to build them himself! He admits it was a much, much bigger project than he anticipated, but we love the cabinets and we were able to get exactly the design we wanted. He says the experience of making them taught him so much that that alone was valuable.

My amazing carpenter!

Here are some pictures showing some of the details of the customization we were able to do by designing and building them ourselves.

This is an open book shelf on the lower cabinets of the shorter wall. We have an air intake there that we couldn't block with cabinetry, so we designed it this way and Justin cut a hole in the cabinet box so the air intake would still function just as well.

These are my filing cabinet drawers so I don't have to have an ugly metal file cabinet in my office. He built these drawers so the walls of the drawers are routed to fit hanging file folders so I don't even need to put in a metal frame to hang folders on! They work great! You can see the ridge on the top of the side walls that hold the metal prongs of the folders.

One feature I really wanted was a keyboard tray that would be hidden when not in use. So Justin made this keyboard tray with a drawer front that is on hinges and flips down. It was tricky to get the butler hinges perfectly set, but Justin did a great job and the hinges are recessed down for a smooth tray.