Enough of COVID...what are you doing to the house? | Page 174 | GTAMotorcycle.com

Enough of COVID...what are you doing to the house?

Exactly. The key is getting an oversized kitchen and being able to then reconfigure some for your existing layout. If you can make it work the cost savings can be huge though.
Reconfigure is the trick and it's dependent on skills.

A friend was building a 35 foot sailboat and needed louvered cabinet door in unique sizes. He bought the next size up, found a way to break them apart, cut the cross pieces and re-assembled.

He refused to pay the going price for the finger pulls for the drawers so made his own from scraps of teak, using three sizes of hole saws and a router. Perfect fit

I had a narrow cupboard where I wanted to install pull out racks. The one that fit was silly narrow and left an unusable space next to it. The next size up was 3" too wide but I bought it anyway, cut 3" out of the middle and welded it back together.

When I did my kitchen 30+ years ago I made everything but the then popular oak doors, juggling sizes to fit.

When I did a bathroom vanity a few years later I had more equipment and wanted it in cherry so I made the doors by spending a couple of hundred on router bits.

While the finishes on the above are OK they are not to the same standard as factory units. It's not impossible for an amateur to match factory finishes but how practical is it for them to be able to be able to control spray patterns, temperatures, humidity and curing, all dust free in a possibly toxic atmosphere? The paint can be farmed out.
 
I’ve been supplying material to all level cabinet shops for years . The answer is always the same , what level of kitchens are you building? Custom high end .
What are the boxes? 5/8 W100 . And the doors ? Five style in 12 Colors from the thermofoil box .
That’s a nice kitchen. It’s not a custom kitchen .


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If white Mel is specked (rarely) W400 3/4".
We've never made a cabinet in anything less than 3/4". 1/2" backs
 
W400 is another 140/m , that’s an extra 3 bucks a sheet , that’s crazy talk LOL


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Used to be a staple 25 years ago. Rarely used nowadays. UV birch is king now.
 
Sadly the UV line in Guelph shut down so now your stuck with Columbia or those goofs in Quebec that think UV should have texture . Or Hardwoods with the Asian dragon ply . My favourite high end mill work guy has a very firm ‘ no import ply’ rule . North American only . He’ll pay a premium for States ply just so he doesn’t have to support the dumping from offshore .


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Sadly the UV line in Guelph shut down so now your stuck with Columbia or those goofs in Quebec that think UV should have texture . Or Hardwoods with the Asian dragon ply . My favourite high end mill work guy has a very firm ‘ no import ply’ rule . North American only . He’ll pay a premium for States ply just so he doesn’t have to support the dumping from offshore .


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Seems reasonable when you are competing on quality instead of price. I suspect material costs for high-end millwork guy are a far smaller percentage of the finished product cost than for bob the builder stapling together melamine cabinets.
 
You’d be surprised , in Canadian manufacturing everybody counts Nickles on basics . Where the high end guys are locked in is when the designer has spec’ed abalone shell veneer as a door panel . That doesn’t come from a lot of places ( Sanfrancisco if you need some)


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My latest blunder in no good deed goes unpunished , i had a good customer that wanted 4x12 sequence matched white oak plywood , false rift with a wire brushed finish as wall paneling. He wanted doors 3x9 to match so I thought ok , I’ll broker the custom doors so he can have a package. Beautiful straight grain on the doors faces and they edged the doors with regular cathedral. 8 doors at $900 ea rejected . That sucks


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Sadly the UV line in Guelph shut down so now your stuck with Columbia or those goofs in Quebec that think UV should have texture . Or Hardwoods with the Asian dragon ply . My favourite high end mill work guy has a very firm ‘ no import ply’ rule . North American only . He’ll pay a premium for States ply just so he doesn’t have to support the dumping from offshore .


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I made some cherry doors and used a new supplier for the rough lumber. It sucked. It wouldn't rip or plane right compared to the last batch obtained elsewhere. Somewhere I read that US cherry was superior to Canadian, possibly due to climate.

Dumping. My daughter orders craft stuff from Ali Express and she gets things, delivery included, for less than the postage would be here. Someone explain?
 
Cherry is an interesting one. I’ve never noticed a big difference in cherry from source , maple absolutely. Lot depends on who dried it , and cherry can have difficult grain , and since they aren’t huge trees it can be hard to get nice clean boards . And it will burn when machining if things aren’t really sharp.


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Going to start the great purge. Storage area first and then the garage cupboards. Probably sell in the spring.:(
 
Bought a carpet cleaner yesterday , tired of rentals . If I knew how horrible that water color would be coming outta that thing , I wouldn't live here
Tip: It's cheaper to hire a professional carpet cleaner in to do the work.

Your carpets will be cleaner, the re-soiling rate lower, and there is no risk of carpet shrink/stretch or seam uncoupling.

Your carpets will also look better.
 
We went thru a couple of carpet cleaners trying to clean up after my fil.Bissell is junk. Hoover makes the best. I clean my garage floor with it.
 
We went thru a couple of carpet cleaners trying to clean up after my fil.Bissell is junk. Hoover makes the best. I clean my garage floor with it.
The problem with DIY is the machines are dumbed down to be easy to use. I use the analogy of trying to wash your car by throwing buckets of soapy water at it, then using a shop vac to dry it off.

Soils on carpets are not released by soaking and vacuuming up hot water, they need agitation and friction to fully release and static to move them from the carpet into a absorbing pad. The DIY machines (and the truck mounted machines used by discount carpet cleaners) soak the carpet then suck up the dirty water -- well 50% of it. The other 50% is soiled water left in the carpet, it drains downward taking soils to the bottom of the pile and into the underpad where you can't see them. Carpets look great!

Those residual soils spread out near the bottom of the carpet pile and underpad, will resurface and start looking dirty once the carpets see foot traffic.

Almost 1/2 the carpet cleaning chemical is left behind, you wont see that either. Although it's dry it keeps working but this time in reverse -- it starts cleaning soils from feet, paws, whatever comes in contact with the carpets. I've seen ZEP clean the stain off wooden legged furniture.

Glad they do a good job on garage floors.
 
We had the “guy” coming in , it’s $289. For the great room , he’s here 1.5hrs and plastic wraps the furniture legs . With 2 dogs and 2 cats and off white carpets it was once a month. Deluxe Bissell heat thing was $299 at Lowes and wife can lift it . The Home Depot rental is good but picking up / dropping off . If this thing is even remotely good I’m thousands ahead . Will rip out for hardwood eventually , but wife says when the machine is sitting here she can do it when she wants , who am I to argue that?


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My wife has a carpet wet vacuum. She loves it and my sis and cousin use it also. Looks like it makes a big difference.
 

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