Best kicthen unit

Today we’re going to build almost an entire kitchen with built-in appliances and not so common materials! Designing the Tiny Apartment projects required a lot of time because I had to try things out on paper as the space is pretty small and completely out of square. Eventually I came out with a plan. I put some days into designing the sketchup model even though it has mistakes as I am definitely not great with 3D digital stuff. First thing I did was to disassemble the studio kitchen that you might remember I built back in 2017. I am reusing the entire bottom cabinet and building the rest of the new kitchen around it. So, after reassembling the existing cabinet, I traced the shape of the plumbing components and cut it out using the jigsaw. Then I needed to make a hole to insert the washing machines tubings and for that I grabbed my forstner bit set to pick up one. I’ve always had the annoying tendency to make holes and cuts just big enough and in this case I had to enlarge the hole quite a lot after testing. And in the end it did work but was a hell to fit all the hoses and I wish I had made it a lot bigger. To install the existing countertop I had to make some modifications as I purchased a stainless steel sink and the hole needed to be wider. I traced the contour of the inner structure first so that I could have an idea of where to fit the sink. Here I was squaring up the left side as I had to cut it out of square previously to fit in the studio because the walls were weird. And yeah, old buildings on downtown Porto are horribly out of square but hey let’s pop out this rectangular shape. This top is made out of plywood and a cement board that is moisture resistant and dimensionally stable and only by the end of this project I realized I could have cut it inside with the dust extraction attached and no dust would be flying. But I guess it gave a cool visual effect. I had to remove a little section of the main structure and then it was ready to be glued in place using silicone. Oh yeah and I did seal the entire edge with silicone as well just for good measure in case water slips under the sink edge. I can now focus on building the structure for the oven and fridge cabinet using pocket holes. Rockler Woodworking and Hardware is one of the sponsors of this project and you will see me using a whole bunch of their tools during this video that really made a difference to speed up the build and make some tasks easier. I’m talking about basically all the blue tools and accessories you see me using. I’ll have a link in the description for those in case it might help you. The base section of this structure was reclaimed from the old small fridge so here I am just making the top section. By the way, I am using scraps of baltic birch plywood that is more than strong for this purpose. For the baseboard – I gave my cnc machine the task to cut some pockets for the air to flow beneath the over and the fridge areas. To support the oven, I attached two solid wood boards with screws to the structure and into the drawer cabinet to make everything super sturdy and connected. As the idea here was to use scraps and left overs from previous projects, instead of making an entire new countertop, I patched up a square over the oven section. I wasn’t super happy about this idea but it hold fine in my mind. You will hear some thoughts about this by the end of the video. So here I am again cutting the cement board and in the meantime I cut and finished a piece of water resistant MDF that in Portugal is typically died in green to be easily distinguishable from the regular material. I prepared the base of the countertop section and put it in place using silicone and screws. The colour became quite different because the finish on the old countertop part has aged. I forgot I wanted to place the drawer slides before fitting the oven so I can later take advantage of the space under to make a drawer. Notice that this green shelf is purposely cut short in order to allow for air flow. Now it’s time to work on the left tall component of the kitchen. To save money, I decided to buy cheaper materials as long as they are not visible because birch plywood is rather expensive. This is why you will see me using some more green water resistant MDF painted white. I wanted all the appliances to be hidden but the oven, that obviously would be kind of weird to enclose and probably dangerous, so this is why the floor cabinet on the left is protruding past the rest of the components. I mean, the main reason is because the built-in washing machines didn’t fit my budget so I went for a regular one that is deeper than the cabinet I made some rabbets for the backer board to sit on using my router table and jointed the parts with pocket holes once again. I sanded and finished the side of the cabinet that is facing out with water based varnish. As you will see, every piece that is visible from outside will be made out of birch plywood and yellow valchromat, just like the bottom drawer cabinet. Here I realized this was starting to get super heavy and would be impossible for me to move around and complete the tower cabinet build so I put in on the floor. The plywood I got for the backs was not the best looking but it was pre finished which was a great help. I also bought a bunch of these sheets to make all the drawers and bottoms for the next Tiny Apartment projects. I kept the correct spacing to fit the small dish washer and didn’t bother plugging the holes of the pocket holes because they won’t be visible. The top bigger volume will become the pantry and on a later episode I will make a cool solution to organize everything properly. I am now working on the right tower that will have the built-in fridge. This pocket is to provide some ventilation for the oven and passing the electrical wire to the outlet behind the fridge section. Again, I am using the green stuff because it won’t be visible. You will start to notice that things seem to be really out of alignment and they are, visually. Because the starting point, which was the bottom yellow cabinet, had non conventional widths in order to fit in the studio – and because I have appliances in many places, the overall look became a bit weird. So, beware OCD’ers, this might trigger you. I built the parts as I went mostly because the plan was not completely defined so you will see a lot of repetition in this video. Cutting, sanding, varnishing… Here I will need to plug the oven and the fridge so I had to change the wall outlet to a double one. It’s time to start working on the upper cabinets and I started by the exhaust fan. Made a hole for the aluminium tubing to fit and constructed the box fairly tight. This two strips will allow me to fix the box to the wall. I test fitted the fan and it seemed to work nicely. Once it was anchored to the wall being centred to the ceramic hob, I could find the final measurements for the right and left side cabinets. I butt jointed everything with screws because they will never be seen and these corner clamps from Rockler were really really handy to keep everything aligned and square. I almost forgot to make the rabbets for the backer piece so I reassembled them afterwards. As this is a concrete wall, I placed the boxes in the correct place and drilled small diameter holes thought the plywood backing pieces to mark the concrete. Then I drilled bigger holes for bushings and finally attached everything. Because the wall is horribly built, the left side cabinet had to be slightly trimmed to adapt to the waves. The fronts of the cabinets were cut from two different sheets but I tried to match the grain so it looks reasonably continuous. These two scraps are simple templates to trace the center of the hinges. Number 1 was used for smaller fronts are number 2 for larger ones. Then, I could align this concealed hinge drilling jig to those lines and start drilling. The provided forstner bit wasn’t really sharp so it took some effort. It might seem insignificant, but I actually enjoyed using this jig as I could align it with the same pencil line as in the door front and get perfectly spaced holes every time. Now it’s just a matter of snapping the hinges in place. During this build I got contacted by a Portuguese company that makes plywood called Laminar. They were very interested in partnering with me so I decided to use their products for the interior parts of the upper cabinets. Laminar is one of the sponsors of this video and they are very focused on the production of Eucalyptus Plywood. Besides Asia, it is extremely rare to find a factory producing this type of plywood, which makes them rather special. I found it to be quite strong and hard as it can be a great solution for structural works as well as pieces of furniture of a bigger scale. As the faces are great looking due to the straight grain, it can be used for shelves, table tops, and other woodworking or carpentry projects. Another idea would be to use it for interior design, wall panels, doors, ceilings and other contemporary architecture purposes. They invited me to their factory and I found it so cool that everything is still traditionally manufactured that I decided to film the process to show you, so I hope you enjoyed this segment. They produce all kinds of plywood meeting the customer’s needs using other species of wood as well as veneers. I will be using their products on a couple more videos in the future, so stay tuned for that! You can find the link to their website in the description. Alright so as I wanted to keep the exterior faces all in birch plywood, I picked some scraps and glued the remaining width needed with the eucalyptus plywood. I used floating tenons for reinforcement as these birch strips are going to be basically floating. The rest of the procedure was the same. Screwing, cutting, checking for fit, sanding and finishing. One of the back pieces needed a groove to make room for the electric wire of the exhaust fan. The middle top cabinet isn’t as deep as the other two because I didn’t want to mess up with the fan aluminium tubing. that means it is basically rested up on the cabinet beneath it and screwed to the ones on each side. Now that the fronts are ready it’s time to install the lift mechanisms. I followed the instructions from the manufacturer and it wasn’t too hard. Nice thing is that the jig to drill the concealed hinges holes can also be used to attach this component here. I’ll have a link in the description for these. Now it’s a matter of adjusting the strength of the lift system according to the size of each door front. Here I am using some more eucalypus plywood from Laminar to make a divider over the fridge. These corner clamps from Rockler were amazingly useful as I wouldn’t even know how to hold the wood in place while screwing it on a perfect position without them. Here’s a hole to insert the microwave wiring. Now I can work on the fridge doors. I took the opportunity of cutting out the handle shapes on the fridge doors to cut the remaining handle for the door under the sink to match the rest of the drawers. If you notice, I only carved handles on doors that I wouldn’t be able to open without a handle. I don’t really like to have protruding hardware around me because I have a tendency to hit it with my hands and kneed and even my shirts or jackets get pulled and stuck which is very annoying. So, this is the main reason why I choose to make holes as handles for the kitchen and the bathroom vanity also has flat handles. A cool trick to make sure your design is being cut in the centre of your workpiece, is to center it with the zero point on the software. I had to remove the fridge to screw the hinge plates on and the yellow tower is almost finished. The top piece was indescribably heavy and couldn’t lift my arms enough to make it fit up in there. To complete the missing space of the full design, I built a drawer just like the ones from the Studio Kitchen episode that you can watch right here. There was no space for the hand to fit in the drawer handle hole, so I created a recess on the oven divider. I hot glued a little yellow strip to cover the gap over the oven. This doesn’t need to be super attached, is just a decorative detail. I had some inicial ideas for the backsplash but ended up going with the same material as the countertop. So I made a hole for the wall outlet and sanded and finished the surface with two coats of a hight quality hard wax. I really enjoyed the finished look and the fact that it is moisture resistant. But then noticed that the color was different from the current countertop that had another type of finish that I tried to sand, scrape and still couldn’t get it enough removed to be fresh to receive the hardwax. I couldn’t sand the surface deeper to remove completely the previous finish because once you remove the cement layer that covers the top, the wood particles from the board get revealed and I didn’t want that look. So this became sort of a mess and I plan to replace the whole countertop for a fresh new sheet of cement board to which I will apply the same finish as the backsplash. Frustrating, yeah. I was really happy about the placement of the outlet hole and replaced the previous white plastic cover for a black one. I think it looks more bad ass… Now the final touches…the baseboard and completing the washing machine door. And that’s it for now! Or course there is still work to do as I am planning to replace the countertop, building a storage solution for this big cabinet to become the pantry, applying a thin light channel aaand closing the cabinet tops all the way to the ceiling to hide the aluminium tubing. I hope you learned something with my experience and got some good ideas for your next projects. A big shout out to the people that support me on Patreon as well as to Rockler and Laminar that all together made this project possible. Catch you guys later! Rather sooner than later, I mean! Ahah