Kitchen Cabinet Construction Planning
My 1980s particle board cabinets disintegrated after a water leak, and the replacements were on a boat turned sideways in the Suez Canal... No joke. All the local options were budget-busters.
So I taught myself AutoCAD and bought some tools.
I'm not afraid to learn or try new things. I've been a DIY problem-solver around the house for years - with a little help from YouTube.
I taught myself to use Autodesk Inventor to design the cabinets and refine the basic structural engineering.
After 4 or 5 design iterations, I had a firm grasp of the dimensional relationships and switched to a spreadsheet to calculate the details and organize my manufacturing process.
I used Google Sheets to compute piece dimensions, organize labels, and export to a sheet-goods optimizer program. I continued to use it for tracking work stages and organizing hardware.
Throughout the project, there have been numerous casual timelines and contingencies as I planned work around weather, work, and other commitments.
DIY remodel on a budget during a pandemic supply-chain collapse...
(Thank goodness for YouTube.) Key Project Features:
Design parameters included optimizing sheet-good materials due to spiking lumber costs
Materials purchases were timed by watching the lumber market for price changes, and monitoring local store inventories - it required a trip to Branson with a rental trailer
Work schedules had to accommodate both temperature and precipitation forecasts, making the most of usable chunks of time that allowed for maximum productivity considering workspace set-up/tear-town overhead
Over-all project cost was less than 50% of the original Ikea flat-pack plan, with a high-end custom fit to the space
