Built in Cabinets Completing overhead bins

DD 2023-06-30

This is my 4th post about my built-in cabinet project. Check out the other posts here:

I have been busy with this project by finishing the overhead bins and figuring out the electrical needed with the built-ins. If you remember in my first post, this room was divided from a bigger room when we added a 3rd floor on our house and have the stairs dividing the room. There used to be 2 closets with folding/accordion doors. Each closet had its own light inside and had a switch for each built into the door jams. In this new configuration, I wanted to have a new electrical socket under the table area and work lights of some sort mounded under the overhead bins. This required me to update the electrical and took some time.

Since there used to be a dividing wall between the 2 closets, there is a void in the back wall where I could mount some electrical boxes and run wires. I am not a licensed electrician but do believe I wired this all correctly. I figured out that the main power went to the ceiling light on the right and fed to a switch in the wall. Then the current continued to the left side to the other ceiling light and switch and then continues on to my son's room. I needed to reverse the wire for each switch to carry the power to the back wall. I installed a junction box and wiring receptacle in the void near the ceiling. These will be in back of the center overhead bin. I wired this receptacle to be controlled by the switch in the center of the wall. This will control some lights that I will install later. Lastly, I wired a second receptacle that goes near the floor under the table area.

Meanwhile, I was finishing the overhead bins/shelves. In my last post, I had just finished cutting the 3/4 plywood for each of the sides, top and bottom for each of the 3 shelves. I brought the big top and bottom boards out on to my deck a few weeks ago and used my router to cut dado grooves to hold the sides. I have a edge clamp that I used as a straight edge for the router. I cut each groove in 3 passes so these took some time.

Since these shelves are so big, I decided to poly urethane the inside faces of each piece before glueing them up. I put painters tape into the dado grooves to prevent the poly from going in them so that the glue will bond with the plywood as good as possible.

Next, I cut some angle pieces out of the 3/4 ply to help strengthen and make square each of the shelves. I glued and screwed the tops to the sides but I only screwed on the bottom panels for now. These shelves are quite big but they should provide for a lot of storage and accomplish my other goal, to cover all of the unfinished walls and ceiling where these closets used to be.

I purchased some 1/4 plywood for the back of each shelf, cut them to size and then put poly urethane on each. For the middle shelf, I also routed out a cutout for the electrical boxes.

My kids helped me bring each shelf up to the room and we installed them one by one, starting on each end and then installing the middle shelf.

Now you can see why I did not glue on the bottom for each shelf. They are very big and heavy and I needed to securely attach to them to the wall and ceiling. I marked and measured where the ceiling joists and wall studs were located and then drilled some pilot holes in the shelves to use with some 3 1/2 wood screws. My son helped me hold the shelf in position, then I drove in several screws through the shelf into the joists and or studs. Once it was completely secured, I attached the bottom panel with glue and screws while aligning the dado groves for each side panel.

Then, we repeated this process to hang the other 2 shelves.

Next steps:

Create a cutlist / cut diagram for the side cabinets (highlighted below)
Purchase more 3/4 plywood to construct side cabinets and shelves
Cut the 4 sides and rout out dados in the sides for the shelves
Figure out what to use to cover the back wall