"Swingman" wrote in message
m...

On 1/18/2013 5:13 PM, John Grossbohlin wrote:
I replaced the drawers in my vintage built-in kitchen cabinets with
solid wood drawers that I put together with hand cut dovetails. I didn't
use drawer slides... rather I fit them to the casework like I would
drawers in a fine piece of furniture. It is the same approach Frank
Klauz presents on his dovetail DVD.

Because each drawer was built to properly fit the opening they slide in
and out just fine on a coat of paste wax. Old school perhaps but they
work with the kitchen and they function well. Also, to use slides I
would have had to build structure in the cabinet to which slides could
be mounted--that would have been an annoying venture.

I bet they are beautiful and work wonderfully as you described.

Rest assured I certainly appreciate what you accomplished and I can, and
will do exactly that for a client, if that is really what they want ... for
that is name of the game, and the keys to the kingdom.

Reality however, is that most will head to Ikea quicker than you can drop
you're hat when they find out they won't get their self closing drawers,
soft close pullout pantries, toekick drawers, custom pot pullouts, lazy
Susan corner cabinet inserts, and drawer dishwasher cabinets ...

... that is, if they don't choke on today's labor costs of your above
beforehand.

All that notwithstanding, my hat's off to you. Got some photos? ... I would
genuinely love to see it.

No photos at this point... the kitchen is still in process in that I've been
stripping the frames and cabinet fronts so I can repaint the whole thing.
Some minor repairs have been made to the frames and I also made a couple new
cabinet doors. Quite frankly, it is in a state that it looks like Hell! LOL
As my "whole house" renovation progresses the kitchen will be ripped out and
reoriented. It will take me at least another 3-4-5 years to get to that
point and I couldn't bear to live with the poorly functioning and damaged
things that were there.

I understand the labor cost thing. I'm proficient at cutting the dovetails
by hand and in fact do not own any kind of router jig to do so. If I were
making a living at this and had 10, 20 or more drawers to do it would likely
be a different story. In my case the materials used were all left overs
from other projects so the drawers cost me next to nothing in terms of
money.

I must say that the new drawers fit much better than the originals. The
originals were undersized and would rack and droop so they did not slide
smoothly. For a few hours work with left over materials it was one of those
"good deal" projects.

John