Hardly sucks at all

With reference to my previous post about the kitchen ("Sucks less"), I have to say that the completed shelf "hardly sucks at all," to use a long-standing Tepism.

On the shelf, I have put the basic ingredients (oils, salt, pepper), CD player (gotta have tunes), coffee accessories, toaster oven, sexy Shun knives, cutting boards, the most-often used utensils (yeah, I'm a sucker for OXO), cereal, recipie box (thanks Jean!), and cookbook holder on it. The electrical quad box and fluorescent light fixture are attached to the bottom. So far, it all works pretty well.

For the woodworking/tool-oriented among you (danger: geekery alert!), here are some details on the assembly. All of the 1x2 maple edging is attached with a biscuit joiner and glue. I would have done something more elegant at the corners, like miter joints instead of butt joints, but my compound miter saw is in New York. I built it so that it can be disassembled for moving: the vertical joints are a combination of a dry-fit biscuit and screws, and the flat piece against the wall is attached with biscuits and pocket hole screws from behind. The finish is Minwax stain and satin polyurethane (3 coats), finished off with paste wax. I would have preferred to use an oil-poly finish (such as Sam Maloof's version, sold at Rockler), which gives a much more natural/less plasticky texture to the surface--a lot more like an oil finish, but with more protection. However, this shelf is going up right next to the range (with no range hood--dumb, dumb, dumb), so it needs all the protection it can get.

The one thing I would do differently is make the spacing between the two shelves a bit smaller--I don't have anything on the lower shelf that requires the space, and it makes the top shelf that much more difficult to reach. However, I can change it, since the cabinet is made to be disassembled.

So this is all done just in time for the part of the semester when I really have to start tooling. Grr. Oh well.