My brother and his partner, Adam and Mariel, recently bought a house with a kitchen that lacked sufficient cabinet space. One wall of the kitchen is completely empty, floor-to-ceiling, so it was natural to want some pantry shelves. They also wanted it to roll, fit a microwave and a Kitchen Aid, and be roughly the same height of their counter tops. The original model had 4 cutting board-type rectangles on the top for chopping and such, but that got scrapped for a better surface.
I had cypress lumber in stock to do the project (although I had to make a run to Topeka because I didn’t have enough). I had previously planed some of it and that made ripping the boards a lot quicker.
My plan was to build this from the bottom up, which I think was the right decision because the top ended up being pretty heavy. When I assembled the base, a couple of the 45s were gappy and I corrected them with a long screwdriver I use as a burnishing tool.
The bottom shelf is 8 boards that I joined together. I laid them out and took measurements for the vertical boards that would run all the way through the base. I did this to increase the strength of the shelves where the casters are connected to the vertical boards and the base.
I do a test fit to see if the bottom shelf and the vertical boards fit. They do and I glue and clamp them all together.
During my occasional trip to WoodCraft I picked up this slab of Canary wood that I couldn’t leave without. When I showed it to my brother, he was all for it being the top surface. Here it is framed with the cypress.
I dry fitted the middle shelves and top surface to ensure I had a good fit. It all looked good, so I proceeded to mount the middle shelves.
I used through-dowels to join the shelves, which should hold quite a bit of weight. I also really like the look of them. I cute them off with a finishing saw, which I show later.
Mounting the casters at this point was a logistical decision because I could move the shelves freely to assemble and sand without effort during the rest of the assembly.
You can see here, the dowels sticking out and then being cut flush with the board. I’ve done this on other projects and I’ve started referring to them as Micky Mouse buttons.
With the top mounted, hours of sanding by hand with the help of Adam, whose attention to detail trumps mine significantly.
I put 2 coats of de-waxed shellac and 2 coats of polyurethane. My initial approach was to put a diluted walnut or red oak finish on the cypress, but decided against it after many tests. I’m happy with the outcome and the contrast between the cypress and the Cedar is phenomenal. I’m not a big fan of “rustic”, but I think this qualifies with the knotty cypress. Oh boy, how that Cedar shines.
Hands down, the most gratifying part of the project was watching Adam and Mariel stock the pantry shelves. The microwave fits perfectly and freed up a lot of space in their cabinets and on their counter tops.
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