As shown above I was victorious (although it did take me like 2 hours).
I then decided to make a cut list on paper with a pencil instead of using SketchUp again. The part I struggled with the most was keeping the grain of the wood in mind. This proved to be somewhat of a challenge later when my good friend Holly and I were trying to share a piece of Plywood. Eventually it all worked out and I got all of my pieces out of the two pieces of Plywood.
These are two pictures of all of my cut up plywood. We used mostly the table saw to rip and crosscut the plywood. After all my pieces were cut I measured and made holes for my pocket screws.
As advised by Tim, I set up my pantry horizontally on a shop table and used corner braces to align the top piece to the side pieces and pounded them in place with a rubber mallet. This was the end of my first day in the shop. To start the next day I stood on the table and screwed the sides into the top.
Unfortunately, one of my pocket screw holes didn't line up properly when I screwed the screw in so Tim showed me this fancy tool to realign the hole. I ended up adding another pocket screw hole next to this one and then screwed screws into both of the pocket holes.
Then (with Tim's help) I flipped my pantry upside down onto the top shelf so I could add in my next two permanent shelves. Next I made 11" spacers to ensure my shelves would be even and straight. And used a bar clamp to keep the sides of my pantry close to the shelve pieces as I screwed them in.
Here is my pantry on its head with both of my permanent shelves attached and all the tools I used in a pile next to it. I used the same method to attach the second shelf as I did for the first one.
Then I had to go through and measure where I wanted my optional shelve braces to go. Initially I had installed the braces upside down (because the pantry itself was upside down so really it was right side up but either way I did it wrong but fixed it quickly). To do this I used the same 11" spacers and actually set my optional shelves up on them similarly to how I did for my permanent shelves. I measured out how far each brace should be in from the edge and then screwed the braces in accordingly. Also I was standing on the table for almost all of this process.
Next I had Holly help me flip my pantry onto its front so I could attach the back of it. To attach the back I used wood glue and staples. Before I could staple in the back I had to measure where the middle shelf was so I could staple into it without seeing it. I put the glue on first and then I put the staples in.
Then I used some pieces of 1x4 that Tim had in the scene shop. I used the power miter saw to crosscut the pieces into the length I needed. I annoyingly somehow managed to cut both pieces about a fourth of an inch to long and had to tediously trim them down to correct. Then I used wood glue and staples again to attach these support straps to the back of my side panels. As I was attaching the pieces the side panel slanted inwards so the right side of the bottom strap was attached wrong. I had to use a rubber mallet to take it out and then pull the staples out of it and then reattach it to the sides.
Next with Tim's help I took my pantry off the table and for the first time stood it up like how it will eventually stand for the rest of its life. At this point all I had left to attach was the cabinet doors (silly me thinking the hard part was over).
(After realizing I only had half of the number of hinges I needed) I followed the very vague directions that came with the hinges I bought. I created two 12mm deep holes using the 35mm bit on the drill press (my favorite tool). Then I drilled a hole into each door for the handles I bought using the 1/8 drill bit, which turned out to be too small causing issues later with the screws for the handles.
Then after much frustration I had the one cabinet door attached with the hinges I had bought.
UNFORTUNATELY the hinges I bought were for face frame cabinets which is not the kind of cabinet I was making. So the cabinet door hung over the side of the cabinet which was not what I had intended.
Tim realized that I had bought the wrong hinges and actually found a set of correct hinges in the studio that he was willing to trade with me for the wrong one I bought. He only had two instead of the four I needed so I still had to go back to Home Depot but it worked out in the end. I attached the other door with Tim's correct hinges. The correct hinges are called frameless cabinet hinges, who knew? This was the end of day two.
The correct hinges did not hang over the side of the cabinet but they did come in from the side about an eighth of an inch which later proved to be an issue.
So I went to Home Depot and got another set of the correct hinges but that eighth of an inch came back to haunt me and my doors actually wouldn't close properly due to it. So I had to take the doors off the cabinet, and take the handles out of the doors. Then I set the table saw to 10 and 7/8th inches and trimmed both of the doors down to the smaller size.
After the doors were the correct length I made the holes for the screws for the handles bigger by using a larger drill bit and they slid in with much more ease this time. And after that I got the doors screwed back into the hinges and my pantry was complete! End of day three.
Here is my lovely pantry in its new home already stocked with snacks! While some of the dimensions were not what I had originally planned in my design I am very happy with the way my pantry turned out. As shown above the optional shelves for later fit perfectly between the cabinet sides and the microfridge, and the braces for the optional shelves do not get in the way of the microfridge which is also good. I'm excited to get to use it a ton in the coming semesters! A big shout out to Tim for all the help in the construction process as well as a shout out to Holly and Tyler for helping me get my pantry to the fourth floor of Thomas.
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