We began with a meeting at my shop. We surfed the internet looking for ideas. Finally, one example stood out. It's was a dinning room buffet we all liked, but didn't like. Now, we thought, we could do this and that as presented in the example, but ... it would be much better if we also did this instead of that and added this and did this differently, etc. The concept was born.

The initial desire and plan was to match some existing furniture in the clients home. I visited their home to see the items which were some book shelves, very nice. Made from cheap composite wood but vaneered with very nice light maple. I visited my favorite lumbar yard and got some prices.

Next, I drew up some plans (quite a few and quite extensive as the piece is complicated). I got a little bit of maple from the lumber yard and did some stain and finish tests. Came up with a near perfect match. Then some general pricing and a meeting with the client again. The maple was perfect, but the wood costs were high. Back to the drawing board. The client was interested in a cheaper wood. Could I come up with some alternative to match sufficiently and keep costs lower? I didn't think so. Back to the lumber yard and the lumber yard guy who helps me a lot suggested a type of wood I did not know about: Kimberly Pine. I got a few samples of that and went back to the shop for more finishing tests. With tests in hand of both regular pine and kimberly pine we met again. The regular pine was OK but not great. The kimberly pine tests were beautiful! The client and I agreed the match was very good, the look beautiful and the cost was half that of maple. Decision made: make it out of Kimberly Pine.

Now, back to further plans and drawings to get details pretty well thought out and a final cost. That done, I met the client one last time with those details and we all agreed it was a great pland, good cost, let's do it!!!

The original plan through much of the construction of this piece was for the top to be granite and the granite would be surrounded by the kimberly pine in a nice edge molding treatment. Construction began on this basis. With some of the initial framework built, we met again at the granite shop. Before I even arrived, the clients had chosen a piece of granite. I was shown the piece and could not offer any objections: it was drop dead gorgeous, absolutely perfect! However, it was a piece that was about 1 and 1/4 inch thick. Initial discussions were for .75 inch thick granite and the frame was being made accordingly. Now, a more robust frame would be needed to hold such weight. Luckily I hand not progressed too far. The bottom frame was cut and ready for assembly and made of 2 x 4's. This would be plenty strong. However, I had intended to have the vertical framing the the top framing to be 3/4 in pine. Now, more strength was needed and a new, revised plan made up. I would now use 2 x 4's for the entire framing structure. Some new plans and modifications to the bottom framing to allow joints to fit the 2 x 4's and were back at continuing construction.

The framing went pretty well. Seemed quite strong and I though it was perfect. Later, when assembling the drawers, doors and facings, I found one corner was not perfectly square. That caused a few "tricks" to come into play to make all the elements fit and work properly, but that comes later in this story.

Almost all framing was constructed and in place. Now, I glued up various pieces to make up the broader surfaces; sides, shelves, etc. Roughly sanding them and cutting them to near final sizes.

The two outside panels and the two inside walls were the first to be put in place. These were cut to size and mounted. Due to the increased weight of the end result granite, some extra screws into the top for greater stabililty were added. This would call for two extra trim pieces on the outside walls at the end to hide the screws. But, the panels and walls once mounted with the frame prepared previously became an extremely strong structure. Could stack elephants on this buffet.

Finally, some pieces began to be finished and assembled. In order to fit the drawers properly (the slides and pieces to "frame" them in, etc.) I first constructed all the droors to completion except for the false fronts.

The facings of this piece were to be the nicely finished kimberly pine with leather panels. This leather was part of the original excitement and concept. The clients had ordered a couple of leather chairs to be in this room from Europe. They were only ordered at the time of design and construction so I could not see the leather color. The clients contacted the furniture maker and had a sample sent to them. From there, the sample of leather was sent to our supplier of leather (after extensive research on internet and some telephone conversations: Tandy leather in Texas). They received the leather sample, found a great match and a cow was bought. This stuff from them is bought via "cows". A single cow's hide was enough for us to cover the areas required by this project.

I now made up the first "leather" pieces. This was an engineering problem and challenge. I had to figure out a way to "frame" the leather with this beautiful kimberly pine. There are many ways to do most anything, but after a couple of tests I came up with a way to do it on this piece. I would router rabbit grooves into the pieces framing the leather and matching rabbit grooves in the pieces to which the leather was adhered. When put together, the pieces appear to be "flat" with the nicely finished would surrounding a slightly raised panel of high quality leather. Very nice!

Further details about this process. I overcut the leather pieces and then used contact cement to adhere the pieces to the backers. On the drawers, the backers were just cheap pine. On the doors, kimberly pine was used as the inside of the doors are visible when you open them. Then, after drying, I trimmed the leather to slightly under the size of the rabbit groove height (about half the thickness of the wood) so it could be folded down upon assembly. The framing pieces of pine were totally finshed prior to drawer front and door front assembly as I could not stain and apply finish coatings with the leather touching the final wood. Once all the droor and door pieces were totally finshed, they could be assembled to the leather panels. This was done as a glue up and additionally, screws (brass screws where visible) were used to strenghthen the final pieces on the back sides. Not an easy task or process but the end result was very, very nice.

OK. Now I put in the drawer slides. I had to cut and place pine strips inside the areas to the proper widths to center the drawers in their final positions. Used self closing blum drawer slides, undermounted. Put drawers in place and installed them to the slides. Check all that out - looks good, drawers slide well with a very quality feel to them.

Once the drawers were mounted I could continue and finish the drawer fronts. The fronts are the kimberly pine framing pieces surrounding the leather panels. Also, there was a front to the drawers made simply of regular pine. Once drawers were mounted and the drawer fronts were made and finished. They could be united. The process chosen and used on this project was a false front drawer which was mounted with some adjustable flase front hardware. This worked out great. It was another process I had never done before. I ordered the hardware and had to figure out upon arrival. They are plastic round thingy's which were placed into the final drawer fronts. Holes were pre-drilled to hole these items, 2 per drawer front. Screws go through the real drawer front into the fake front into these circular devises. One that's in place and before they are tightened, the drawer front is adjustable about 1/8 inch in any direction, thus I could get a real good alignment to the visible front framing pieces surrounding the drawers. Very nice solution to this scenario.

I did have a problem with the large front drawer. The right hand edge of the entire frame was not square. Thus when I got the drawer in and lined up, the right hand edge did not close. Stuck out about 1/4 inch. Was a bit perplexed with this scenario and did not know what to do. After much thought and some tests, I ended up putting a spacer piece (some 1/4 inch plywood) between the righthand side of the drawer false front mount. This pushed the right side front out that amount and flushed up the drawer upon closing. Not a great problem but not horrible. I was not and never will be happy with that right side of the drawer but myself and the client agree that it was not a big deal. One never sees it. Even upon opening, one does not notice unless getting real picky. No worries, everyone happy. Just next time, I'll check my framing better - lesson learned.

After the drawers, the doors were constructed. Much the same process. Once the doors were finished (wood stained and finished, leather in place and all assembled), mounting of the doors took place. Again, only the best. We used Blum europen style hidden hinges. It was the first time I used and installed this type of hinge. Excellent! Very high quality. Very good adjustabililty. Once I had the doors attached, a few adjustments and they were lined up quite well and functioned superbly.

Various "spacers" were continually being made as the process took place. The spaces are the boards above, below and between the doors, drawers and areas. Each was initially made and adhesion to finaly place was made as soon as the place presented itself. Periodically (seemed link hundreds of times) these elements were removed, adjusted and put back in place to make all of the elements fit and line up properly. Early on I knew how many times I put this and that together and took them apart. As time went on ... I have no idea. It was an awful lot of times.

Concerning those spacer pieces all over the place. Mostly as planned without too many problems. But ... again ... that non-square right corner. That caused all the pieces around the right side to need adjusting. Slight size cuts, slight angle recuts, etc. Pain in but, but all was adjustable and ended up good.

The shelves were made up of kimberly pine. One large shelf for the large interior section and two smaller shelfs for the smaller right and left storage areas. Each of these shelves are panels of 4 inch and six inch boards glued parallel. Then, the front edges received another piece about 1.5 inches which was routed to a rounded front edge. These front pieces produced greater strenght and more importantly, looked like the shelfs were very thick and provided the visual tie in of the rounded edge matching the finaly mouldings on the outside. Additionally, on the inside large shelf, I glued and screwed additional pine strips under that shelf to insure strength and insure that it would not warp with time or weight. The insides of the cabinet walls were drilled with the holes for adjustable pin hardware thus all shelving is adjustable.

With the flat facing pieces, walls, drawers and doors now in place, the modling was manufactued. All the molding received a common rounded router edge but top and bottom. Top edges were routed to a larger diameter than bottom. Once milled, they were cut to lenght and mitered where needed. Once they all were made and fit properly, they were finished. One by one they were then glued (and screwed where possible from behind) into place as my supply of clamps allowed. Took a number of days to get through all the molding pieces.

Finishing Process: