November 25 - 30, 2025 - Basement Door - Slide Out Kitchen Drawers - Silverware Divider - Baking Cookies - Christmas Tree and Trains

My Blog Reflection

Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men.

Jane Addams

November 25, 2025:

Alexa's kitchen has a wide, deep bottom cabinet in which she wanted to install slide out drawers to be able to access the entire area. The pre-made drawers we found online were extremely expensive and did not take advantage of all of the cabinet space. We need to make our own. 

Last year we traveled to California in the truck to deliver a large painting we had that daughter, Annie, wanted for her home. While out there she gave us a like-new twin mattress she had that we could use to replace an old one at our house. She also had about twenty pine bed slats from another bed that she was going to throw away. I couldn't stand the thought of that so I brought them back to Missouri for possible future woodworking projects. They have been sitting on the shelf in my shop ever since.

These slats were perfect for making the slide out drawers Alexa wanted. Each piece needed to have a rabbit cut in it so the drawer bottom would be recessed. 

Alexa is wanting to learn how to use power tools and work with wood so I set up the table saw to cut the rabbits and she went to work.  She was quite nervous using the table saw for the first time, which is a good thing because in my opinion it is the most dangerous woodworking tool. After many years I am still nervous using it at times. You must concentrate on what you are doing at all times and be mindful of where your fingers are as you push wood toward the rotating blade. I shared all of my safety tips and watched her closely as she cut each piece. She did fine. On the right you can see the pieces with rabbits cut in them for the drawer sides.

Once all the rabbits were cut we nailed and glued the four pieces for each drawer together and let them sit overnight to allow the glue to dry well.

November 26, 2025:

This morning we cut and fit plywood for the bottom of each drawer. We glued and nailed in each bottom. Here is Alexa learning to use another power tool, the air nailer. She made a few rookie mistakes but nothing we couldn't correct.

We let the drawers sit for an hour for the glue to set up then took them to her house for installation. To let the glue dry even a little longer, we delayed installing them and instead worked on another project - the basement entry door. 

There is a basement door at the cellar entrance. It is an old, wooden storm door from the 1940s. It had a glass insert for winter and a screen insert for summer. The glass isn't very energy efficient or practical so Alexa wanted to replace it with wood. Here is a partial picture of the glass in the door taken when she first took possession of the house. You can see that the prior owner had put black duck tape around the door and the basement windows to seal out the cold. I'm sure we can come up with something better.

We didn't want to just nail a piece of plywood over the opening so we cut and glued in a plywood insert where the glass insert had been. 

Being an insert, there was no wood to nail into on the frame of the door. On the side facing out you can see the wooden strips we glued in to hold the plywood in place.  Alexa can add a 1/2 inch thick piece of styrofoam to this side to further insulate it.

We will put weather stripping around the door and a floor sweep to keep out the cold and the bugs.

Once the door was finished we moved to installing the kitchen slide out drawers. The metal drawer slides we purchased were made to be screwed to the cabinet walls for mounting the drawers. These are old, homemade cabinets and we were installing the slide out drawers over shelves because there were no cabinet walls nearby. A quick trip back to the house was necessary to cut some 2" x 2" pieces to mount the metal slides on. Some of the bed slats from California have been repurposed in Missouri. For looks I normally would have attached the sides to the back of the front pieces but the bed slats were only so long. We wanted to get the maximum drawer size. Here is a picture of the finished install. Alexa is thrilled. 

November 27, 2025:

No work on Thanksgiving Day. Alexa and Kelly were busy making brownies and a turkey breast dinner. A full bird, and another whole Thanksgiving meal, will be prepared next week when daughter Erin, and the two grandsons, Kellen and Free, fly in for a four day visit. It will be great to see them.

November 28, 2025:

Alexa a wanted a divider in one kitchen drawer for her silverware. She is using a plastic one now but too much drawer space is lost. We took measurements and got to work. Jay, Adam's dad, has a cigar shop in St. Louis and he saves wooden cigar boxes for me to use on projects. Here is a picture of one with the lid removed getting ready to cut it up for the project. The wood is lightweight and the good thickness for projects like this. It took two cigar boxes for this project.

With a few cuts on the table saw and miter saw, glue, and nails, we were able to create this custom made silverware divider. It will serve Alexa's purposes for years to come. I think it needs a couple of coats of poly.

November 29, 2025:

This morning Alexa and Kelly made chocolate chip cookies and froze some of the dough to make cookies with grandson, Freedom, when he arrives next week. I was allowed to eat a broken one and it was delicious.

After the cookie project we all headed to the basement to put up the train board and tree, neither had been put up for six years because we are usually in Florida for Christmas. 

The tree was decorated in fine style and other Christmas objects were displayed throughout the basement and the house. The trains and whistle are all in working order. It will be interesting to see what Grandson, Free, at age four, thinks of the trains. Kellen at that age couldn't care less. 

When I was a kid it was a toy like no other. These trains only came out at Christmas and I could watch them go around for hours. The inner train is a "Marx" train of stamped metal cars painted three-dimensionally. My dad bought it for me for my first birthday. The outer train is an "American Flyer". My Uncle Art gave me this train when I was about eight because he was no longer interested in putting it up at Christmas. When I was gifted the "American Flyer" my dad made this train board. I am still using it with very little modification almost seventy years later. 

We will not have Christmas here at the house but rather in Lake Tahoe, California, where the entire family is gathering on December 26th for a holiday visit until January 3rd. Since we will be flying out we had all the presents for the grandkids delivered to their parents. They are driving out and will have room for them in their cars. It will be a much different but exciting Christmas this year.