Cabinet meeting

There are two major, “construction” things left: the water supply line to the building and fabricating the cabinets for the enlargers and the work area – the dry side.

There are still dozens (100’s ?) of small things, but that’s the last two major items. It is too hot to work outside on the water line, and I need to do some more design work on the cabinets. So, this past week I’ve been piddling around with some of the small things: where to put safelights and timers, the tray storage, chemical storage, etc. More shelves? Yes. Where? Good question.

I finally came to the realization that many of these small decisions are based, at least partly, on the cabinets. Not placement, so much, as execution. Without the cabinets in place, I can think about a lot of things, but I can’t really do them. Without the cabinets to put things in and on, I still have all these boxes sitting around, and they alter my visualization of everything else.

So: time to build the cabinets - then I can see everything! Once I put all the items in the cabinets that fit into them, I will know what I have left over that needs to go on shelves, under sinks, and other odd places. Trust me, it has to be done this way.

The cabinets are going to be pretty basic. I elected to build them myself since I don’t want doors, but rather prefer them to be open. They’ll be made out of white melamine with shelves and sliding drawers as needed. I guess they could also be considered shelves as much as cabinets. Two will serve as the dry side and will have an enlarger or two on them. The third will be in one corner and serve as a work table for miscellaneous tasks and hold the print drying racks. One of the dry side shelvinets will have purpose-built storage for my collection of enlarging easels. And so on.

Today (through the miracle of the world wide web) I ordered a track saw*, which will aid in the making of the cabinets. I had been considering upgrading my table saw for a while, but when I researched the track saws, I came to the conclusion that my present table saw will suffice, and the track saw will make cutting out sheet stock much more accurate and safer! Safer is good.

* http://ezinearticles.com/?Understanding-the-Track-Saw&id=1799306