After completing the main kitchen area–roof, main cabinet and pizza oven (see part 5)–it was time to move on to phase 2: the side cabinet. I took some time off before starting this because I was pretty sick of working on it at this point and had to catch up on all the work I’d been neglecting.
But first: A final detail on the main cabinet. I had decided to leave most of the back of the island bare (no stone veneer) and cover with repurposed cedar because I needed an access door for plumbing and electrical and figured it would look better to have the whole thing wood, and it would save me some time and money on stone.
I had disassembled the cedar decking around the hot tub before starting this build knowing that I’d be moving the hot tub and repurposing that wood. So I had a pretty big collection of nice 5/4 cedar to work with.
I wanted a clean look with the door largely hidden, so I built a flush cabinet door with European hinges and a magnetic latch.
On top of this, I laid the cedar planking (just with a brad nailer) so it would just look like a wall–hiding the door.
Side Cabinet
The side cabinet would cover the giant blank wall and provide storage and more counter space. This would store things like wood for the pizza oven, pellets for the Traeger, and hot tub chemicals, plus hide a hose spigot while still allowing access.
There would be 4 cabinet doors made of cedar and adjustable shelves inside. Same stone veneer and tile to match the main kitchen of course. The kicker was that the far end would hide the cold plunge that had previously been contained within the cedar decking around the hot tub.
I started with the cold plunge surround because it had to fit the 100-gallon stock tank and stay within the boundary of an electrical box for the hot tub and a spigot on the wall. I’d determine the remaining cabinet dimensions based on this.
I essentially just framed right around the tank, left an access opening for the drain valve, and build pitched sides to support the lid to shed water.
The side cabinet itself was simple enough once I got the basic structure in place and level. It would just have 4 equally-sized openings for cabinet doors.
After framing, it was back to cement board. I also added a backsplash with a pitched top to keep things from falling behind the counter and any water draining away from the house.
I did the tile countertop next to keep things protected, and to buy myself some more time to figure out exactly how to do the cabinet doors since a flush mount was going to be tricky because of the depth of the stone veneer, and building the doors themselves would be a big project.
Then back to stone veneer. Lots of cuts again because of the cabinet openings, small spaces between them, inside corner and working around the pitch of the cold plunge lid.
I had to create access to the cold plunge drain plumbing and wanted it hidden, so I built a section that pops in and out with magnetic cabinet door hardware.
Cabinet Doors & Plunge Lid
Finally, I had to wrap it up with the woodwork for the doors and lid. I made both the same way, just at a different scale. The main panel was a series of boards glued with biscuits, and then I picture-framed the outer edges, again joined with biscuits.
The cedar took a lot of work with a belt sander to clean up, although I didn’t want to overdo it so I could preserve some of the weathering for character and some variation in color from board to board.
I used Thompson’s water sealer for protection without changing the color or look of the wood, and attached to the cold plunge frame with 2 piano hinges to cover the entire length.
The cabinet doors were the same basic process but I had to rip the material down to narrower pieces to get the dimensions I wanted. I waited until they were all glued up to sand so I could just run a belt sander over the whole thing instead of trying to handle such small pieces.
I mounted them with non-mortised European style hinges to get a flush look. It was a bit tricky to place the hinge on the cabinet openings and I had to bevel cut the front hinge side of the panels to get it to clear the stone when it was being opened, but it’s pretty minimal and not terribly unaesthetic.
I used the same magnetic pop-out closure as for the access door on the island so there was no visible hardware.
Next Up
All that’s left is the landscaping… which was a massive job. See it here.