You Still Could Win $100 in Our Family Room Makeover Giveaway! (Closed)

This is the third post in a series by Remodelaholics Cassity and Justin Kmetzsch who are adding a floor-to-ceiling storage built-in — sponsored by HouseLogic — to their multi-purpose family room. Comment on this post to be entered to win a $100 gift card. Read the rules.

In our last family room makeover installment, we went from demo to almost done pretty quickly. But there’s still a lot to do. First things first — Justin got to work building the doors.

The door is a basic tongue-and-groove shaker-style panel. We rounded the edges of the door “seams” to match the detail we have on the cabinet face frame. This also solved another problem: We don’t have a large belt sanding machine, which a professional cabinet-making shop would use to smooth the doors.

This is getting really exciting. Dry fitting the doors together:  

Once Justin built the doors, I painted while he studied for his landscape architecture licensure tests — another part of our crazy schedule. I know! What were we thinking?

Killer deal on hinges and latches

I got a deal on the cabinet hinges and knobs by going directly through a seller I found on eBay. The hinges were 36 cents each. I might have paid about $3 for a pair otherwise.

The knobs also were also a killer deal at about $1.25 each. We had budgeted about $15 apiece for knobs since that’s what we were seeing online.

Other bloggers said eBay is the place to look, so that’s what we did. Hurrah for the blogosphere. 

Building a sturdy hearth

Next, we tackled the faux hearth. We installed it last so we could just use the space we had left.

We saved money with salvaged building materials by re-using the 2x4s that we removed from the project demo. We made sure it was framed to be very sturdy, since it’s already become a fun place for my daughter to jump onto and off of. See the structure:

Here’s the state of the wall so far:

Justin built the doors in batches of like sizes to check them against each other and get into a cutting groove. Below, Justin is fitting all the upper doors:

Repurposing flooring as countertop

We had redone our downstairs floors in an earlier project, so we used the very last of our hardwood flooring — literally the last single square foot — as the countertop for our window seat and hearth. The reclaimed wood looks great and adds unity to the house. Below you can see it all stacked up, waiting to be used. (Oh, and I painted the wall.)

Before adding the countertops, we fitted the countertop edge pieces in place. We used rounded 2x4s, rather than buying oak rail, for instance, which could have easily been about $50. The 2x4s were a few dollars. We pre-stained and sealed the edges before installing (since the cabinets were already painted).  To install the edges, we glued heavily and nailed sparingly to limit patching.

For visual interest, we added the flooring to the cabinets. Before and during:

Once all the flooring edge pieces were in place, Justin cut the rest of the floor boards to fit the surfaces of the hearth and window seat:

Touch ups!

We added vertical supports to the faux mantle to finish the look and gave it all a fresh coat of paint:

This iron is just a power tool at the moment. We ironed on the melamine edge bands, which come with glue, onto the melamine shelves. We’ve been so busy that no clothes have been ironed for a while.

Tune in next week for the big reveal, complete with decor.

The giveaway period for this post is closed. What questions do you have for the Kmetzschs? What tips do you have for other HouseLogic visitors who might be tackling a similar project? By commenting below, you’ll be entered in a drawing for a $100 gift card. (To be eligible for the drawing, your comment must be posted below by 11:59 p.m. Central time on Nov. 13, 2011.)