Learning to design #4: The ulterior motive for learning sketchup - aka what some women really want

Looks good, wish I had those skills.

-- Jim from Heirloom Woodshop Southern Oregon

AHA. I knew there was a reason that you used sketchup to mock up a tea box.. the plot thickens.. Looks mighty fine…You could go with double hinged angled doors on the ends. ie hinged at the wall and then hinged in the middle to make an angle door…then magnets to hold the doors shut.

-- Drink once, cut twice. New website up.... lazylarrywoodworks.com.au

Does the little cabinet at the right have to have an angle on it? I think I would square it up and run it into the wall. Or, you could run the cabinets around the corner and under the window.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Forget about symmetry and run your cabinets from the right corner toward the left side.
Looks like you will add about 2-2-1/2” to the cabinet doors.
That’s not a bad thing.

That is if you are not going to run a counter under the window.

-- A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner

Working through a design problem it is critical to understand the ‘program’, to that end I would ask the following:

Do you want this cabinetry to ‘match’ the existing or could it visually stand alone in the room?
What is the specific storage requirements beyond ‘use as much of the space as possible’?
What is determining the basic dimensions of the cabinetry, both vertically and horizontally?

-- criticism: the art of analyzing and evaluating the quality of a artistic work...

If you are going to have those end cabinets angled, why not have an angled bookcase running on the sides of the main cabinet to the top to provide more symmetry? They might be handy for cookbooks and/or plants or whatever.

-- Mike, American in Norway

Some real cool ideas. I’ll pass it by the committee to see which one gets approval.

Larry’s idea got a “ooh, ahh. Hmmm…. interesting.”

Stefang – for sure. I will work on that drawing.

DaveR & Bob, those were version #1…. but the window is too close to the wall that the cabinets would not be deep enough to hold what I need (I need 12” inside the cabinets – the window is just barely past that – and when I mean the window I mean the glass part itself!) I am not running a counter under the window as I am not sure yet if I will leave the heater there (it’s not in the drawing yet). I was thinking angled corners because my committee prefers angles to rounded. I might consider squaring up the bottom cabinet even if it passes a little under the window. I’ll see if that idea gets approval. I agree – it would make more sense and give me more space. Then the open shelving above could be less deep.

Jlsmith – yes, I am going to have to try to get it to match other cabinets in a fashion and have already started that consideration… we want it vertically to look like it goes to the ceiling due to the low ceilings (only 8 feet). The horizontal problem, I described above which is governed by the depth considerations.

Looks like I have some work to do this saturday AM!

i’m not sure where you are going with this ,

but at least you have ,
a paddle ,
for your canoe now !

and a new upgrade in life ,
is a good thing .

keep us posted .

-- david ,new mexico ,allheart

If I understand you correctly you might consider the following:

The current design attempts to resolve the location of the window entirely within the space of the end cabinet. This is a lot to resolve in such a small and confined space, resulting in what seems to be the rather forced geometry of the end cabinet.

Perhaps if you tried to incorporate the need to reduce the depth of the end cabinet (in order to avoid the window) as a design idea you could turn a limitation into a feature. For example, you could take the idea of a breakfront and applied it to the cabinets. The middle cabinet could push forward, the flanking cabinets could stay where they are and the end cabinets could push back enough to miss the window (and its trim). Now this would violate your criteria for the cabinets to have 12” clear storage. However, it might be worth considering if you could find some use for this reduced storage.

If you decide that it is important to keep the angled cabinet the breakfront idea could still provide a way to integrate the angle motif into the overall design. For example, one idea would be to use an angled transition for each step in the cabinet.

This stepping idea could also be applied in the vertical direction. The middle cabinet could be the tallest and the other flanking cabinets could step down. Even small vertical steps would reduce the shear wall effect of the current design and it would also emphasize the vertical, something you mentioned you would like the cabinets to do.

-- criticism: the art of analyzing and evaluating the quality of a artistic work...