Four years ago I moved with my family into a home in Farmington, Utah. That day my brother-in-law and I did a bad thing. While the womenfolk were outside doing something that, as it turns out, they shouldn't have been doing, Adam and I were in the kitchen. Alone. Just the two of us. We put our mischievous minds together and within a 20 minute time frame we'd conspired to demolish the old cabinets and then we did the deed.

When the ladies returned we weren't quite finished. My wife wasn't exactly happy. Four years later and I can't say that I blame her. It's been a long, strange trip. The first few weeks we washed our dishes in the first floor bathroom sink. Adam and I got the cabinets built and installed within a fairly brief span of time.

A couple of weeks later we'd completed the drawer fronts and got them installed. All that was left were 11 doors for the upper cabinets. Like I said, that was four years ago. There were a few hangups.

First, Adam insisted that we couldn't do rails and styles. That left us to either do solid doors or doors with laminate centers and solid oak strips around the side. We chose the latter. Then Adam decided to start working every other week for his uncle in San Jose, CA. That was one of the last times Adam was over at my house. And just by coincidence, that was just over four years ago.

Today I am nearly finished with the project. It was really Adam who inspired me. I was at a Christmas party a couple of weeks ago and talked with Adam. He told me that he was ready to come to my house, rip out my cabinets, and do it right this time. In the last four years Adam has become quite the woodworker. He's even learned to do doors with rails and styles. I decided to get busy. I didn't need any more of Adams help. Who knows how much that would have cost me in terms of time and money. I'd already purchased all of the materials and they have been sitting in my garage all this time.

One of the real sticking points was always hinges. Adam made it sound so mysterious. He was going to come over and show me what hinges to use and how to install them. I waited for him to show up. That wait turned into years. It's not all Adams fault. I didn't really want his help. But those hinges scared me.

It turns out that the nice people at my local Home Depot know all about hinges. And for under $10 they sold me a template and drill bit and gave me all the advice I needed to remedy my hinge problem.

Another problem was this long, skinny door I tried to build, oh, I'd say about 4 years ago. It was over 68 inches long and 12 inches wide. I didn't do a very good job of gluing the solid oak sides to the laminate core. I didn't wipe the glue off and a nasty residue remained. My sanding job as bad and I ended up sanding through the oak vaneer into the nasty pine middle. I ruined the door.

This week I decided to rebuilt the whole thing out of a couple of new, solid oak planks. It took me about 30 minutes to prepare and glue the wood. In another 30 minutes, after several hours of drying, I was able to cut the wood to my door dimensions, route the edges, complete the finish sanding and have it ready to stain and finish. Wow! It wasn't hard at all. I had the right tools.

I'd learned, and relearned, a lot about gluing during the past 4 years. Constant effort helped me to prepare the next 10 doors with little trouble. My router, planer, sanders, table saw, chop saw, clamps, assembly table, biscuit joiner and wet towel (for wiping away excess glue) all came in handy. Having these tools was great. My cordless drill and that template and drill bit made hinge and door installation a snap.

I even was able to use my dovetail jig, the Porter Cable 5116 model complete with instruction video, to rebuild to two biggest drawers. The DeWalt Planer was a handy tool for completing that project, too. All that remains is to install the knobs on the doors. Then the cabinet project will be successfully completed. All I needed was a little inspiration (or was that a threat) from my helpful brother-in-law Adam.

By the way. Don't purchase the Porter Cable Dovetail Jig without the instructional video. The jig is just about worthless without it. With the proper instructions, it's just about one of the coolest tools I've ever owned. I'm going to rebuild all of the kitchen drawers. Just not today...........
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