No Surfing Allowed

As part of my plan to get more woodworking done in 2009, I made a gate for the kitchen, keeping the place off limits to the dogs.  Well behaved as they pretend to be, they cannot resist the urge to counter surf when we’re not around.  The solution was to train the dog not to do this, not leave food on the counter or build a gate.  The latter was the easiest choice.

Now, another part of my resolution was to be less of a pack rat.  This meant I had a bunch of parts and wood laying around that I planned on using one day and then I have my “do people realize how much this junk cost?” pile.  So the gate would be made from left over parts I have laying around in the garage.  Now as the title suggest, I am the Cabinet Guy so what I have laying around is more elaborate than what most people have in their garage, so this is not staged.  For example a 21x54” cabinet cherry door from a client who swore this door was warped and wanted a new one, until it turned out the box was warped and the doors wasn't.  And some very nice 270 degree swing frameless cabinet hidden cup hinge which I bought for my condo kitchen project, but decided against it because I got lazy and took a short cut.

 

First thing was to get the door to the stretcher to  increase 5” in width.  No, just kidding, I couldn’t afford that contraption.  I just cut off the routed edges and then joined 3x6” oak to it with #20 biscuits.  The joints on cabinet doors are pretty weak, so I drilled and glued in a bunch of 3/8” dowels from the new extra wide styles to the rails.  That should make it strong enough for some abuse.  Oak joined next to cherry?  Yes.  I don’t care,, the dogs are going to scratch the heck out of it anyways and I stained the oak the match the existing oak trim to make it a little classier.  I did hand carved the end grain of the oak to match the profile of the cherry d

oor.  It’s the details I’m after in this project.

 

The door hangs on cabinet style European cup hinges from one of my past projects. I only have two, clearly not enough to handle the weight of this newly expanded door, so I solve it by putting a swivel cast I happen to have in my “pile”.   

 

That’s the project.  The whole thing can be removed when I’m ready to sell the house with out any damage to the existing casing.